This discussion is getting ridiculous.

1. Work Matters
2. Aerobic "talent matters"
3. Inherent strength "matters"
4. Flexibility "matters"
5. Coordination in a weightless medium "matters" (by that I mean open chain)

They all matter. I showed up as an 18 year old for my military fitness test and cranked off 20 pull ups with no training for that. It was just from monkeying around at the the playground as a kid hanging off bars and doing flips and jumps and endless manouevres jumping from ground, hanging off bar and lifting my body over the bar and standing on top. Almost no kids in the playground could do what I could do. I had god given flexbility and power. So when I started to learn how to do butterfly after 30 years in triathlon as a 53 year old, I was able to get to a basic level of ability even with a debilitating back injury from which I could barely walk!!!

Now if I ask most swimmers to do the 110m hurdles they will fall over at hurdle number one. I could just say, "keep training you'll get there" I would be lying to most people.

I agree for age group swimming you don't need to be at the max limit of points 1-5 above. But the better you are on each of them you're going to get to a higher level of proficiency earlier. It is the same reason why my sister within 3 months can master most yoga moves that the rest of us can never hope to get to even with a decade of training. She's just talented for doing that. It involves 1-4 above, and the last point would be changed to coordination in a closed chain mode. If you throw both of us into the air and tell us to catch a baseball, or football or serve in tennis, once her feet are not touching the ground she does not have the level of coordination I do with the spine no longer in a compression mode and getting sensory feedback from body parts without the gravitational frame of reference.

Land animals are coordinated with gravitational force goes through spine, water animals are coordinated when their spine is no longer in a compression mode. It is entirely different how the brain connects to the body in these two modes.

Perhaps youth swimmers develop not just the flexiblity but the innate coordination when spine is unweighted.

Food for thought here.

Thank you thank you thank you

I have a friend who so often sets unrealistic time goals. I encourage him to, instead set performance goals.

Hey buddy how about you set a goal of biking 3 times a week for 6 months and see where you end up. But he prefers to say no I want to do 25 miles in under an hour. When in reality he is pushing himself to average 21 MPH for 10 miles

Same in business. You see if on tic toc and YouTube. Hey I’m setting a goal to make 1 million dollars. When in reality setting a goal to work on your business for 2 hours a night after work and 10 hours on the weekend would serve them so much better

But of course that sort of goal setting doesn’t generate likes and clicks

It is funny, because as an AOS I think averaging 10k a week would be incredible! Like, how close to 30 minutes could I get in a 70.3 swim? Under 30? Probably not, but I’d love to find out.

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Aaron Bales
Lansing Triathlon Team

Why isn't this in the Lionel thread? Taken a life of its own which is why the thread was created in the first place.

kids developing the innate aquatic coordination and flexibility - yes that is right.

one of the best water polo nations is hungary - very rich history and beautifully skilled players. i was absolutely fanatical about wp when i was 11-16. i read an interview with one of the hungarian coaches years ago about the best way to get better at wp and they said, unlike soccer and rugby where you are in some way training movements by walking to the fridge, for water polo, you need to be in the water as much as and as often as possible if this is your sport. we would be in the water before and after our 2 hour practices just mucking around with the ball and doing tricks and stuff. i never thought that as training but just as fun. we probably trained for 4 hours sometimes but it was just fun and so much shit talk.

we could juggle balls on our feet in the water (probably 4-5 kicks), throw both left and right handed in the water, and jump out to the line of our bathers just using our legs.

like you naturally playing on the play ground and kicking a ball, we just played in the water. it all adds up. now my shoulder kills me if i throw a ball but a great sport to play as a kid

I know I’m late to this party, but I think it is like that. Looking at ITU where swim matters the most, it is so exceedingly rare to find front pack swimmers who are front pack runners. And some of these folks have been training both for a long time. The coffee isn’t even.

My son is 6’4” and down to around 210. D3 swimmer. He is relatively late to swimming but played a lot of soccer growing up and could run a mile somewhere in the 5s his junior year. But he just doesn’t have distance running talent like he does swimming talent. Sophomore year he ran CC because they didn’t have soccer (COVID). Never got under 21 for 5k.

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Aaron Bales
Lansing Triathlon Team

I think too much is made of this swimming ability that kids have and adults new to the sport cannot replicate. When I say we have 11/12 year old girls in our club putting out times similar to Sanders, these aren't kids swimming 8, 9 times a week, these aren't kids that have been swimming for 10+ years and these aren't kids that have great technique. Many of them swim 2-3 times a week, have only been swimming 2-3 years and have pretty average technique plus average dives and tumble turns. And in fact that's why the sport is so injurious at a junior level, poor technique. There's no reason why an adult can't develop good technique. If they can't it's probably lack of talent, coordination etc rather than age. It helps having picked up swimming as a kid, but the benefits are, IMO, greatly exaggerated.

I'm going to quote this without wading through all seven pages of this thread.....

Snapping T has consistently over the years suggested that triathletes should stop biking and running to concentrate on swimming..... And maybe it would make them faster swimmers. But the sport is triathlon. If you are a mid pack or slower swimmer, but an elite cyclist/runner, who gives them up for a (year) to concentrate on swimming, is it guaranteed to make you a faster triathlete? Say you go 90 seconds faster on the swim but you are two minutes slower on the bike and four minutes slower on the run.... Have you done yourself any favors in the sport?

I am convinced that lightheir is right. That all of the swimming in the world is not going to have Lionel making the front pack at a major race. But ignoring his strengths to concentrate too heavily on swimming might very well have him finishing slower, overall.

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Jason
None of the secrets of success will work unless you do.

You're right. Because Lionel is an adult onset swimmer. And always will be.

How do you propose he fix this? Is there a time machine that he can get into and go back to age 12 so he can do the volume that Vincent Luis has done?

And your theory that basic athleticism will translate into fast swimming is so off base. But I suspect your lifetime swim volume and skill that resulted from it make this something that you can't see. It's like the math teacher who can't understand why people can't learn math because it is so easy for them.

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Jason
None of the secrets of success will work unless you do.

It’s like my daughter in law who can speak fluent Spanish merely from. Hearing people speak Spanish

Never a single lesson

She doesn’t understand why everyone can’t pick up Spainsh the same way

I am convinced that lightheir is right. That all of the swimming in the world is not going to have Lionel making the front pack at a major race//

Can we please stop with this line of bullshit, no one here or in the know, thinks Lionel is ever going to make the front group. What we are all talking about is him making the 2nd group, and routinely without a taxing effort..You all that keep saying this are just using it to justify your position, and it is not what he is going for, his swim coach, or what the real swimmers who know what it takes are saying..And this is a goal he can absolutely achieve, it wont be easy, but nothing is easy in the pro ranks when going for those marginal gains near your peaks...

Yet another swim thread that could have been a bastion of info, tips, and advice that instead devolved into the lightheir forum of excuses. How many times can you say 'Ill never put in the hard work so everybody else should just give up'.

I also got to play intramural water polo (between squadrons) when I was in the military college here in Canada and from time to time would get called up for the varsity team. I had reasonable good spatial coordination from other ball sports and could swim OK (but being 140 lbs does not make for good waterpolo size). I agree the only way to get the feedback for where you are in the water is to spend time in the water. As you said, when you walk to your car on ice and slip and plant yourself upright before falling you're practicing what you need to do in soccer. But when you are "falling in water" you get zero feedback from your feet and have to get the feedback from all parts of your body.

In any case on this thread people keep saying for age group level you don't need talent, but I can say coaching kids soccer, track, XC skiing for around 15 years, even at age group level, some kids have zero hope. No amount of training will get them to sufficient coordination to head a soccer ball. Others can head a soccer ball but you put them on skis and they just never develop the upper body timing and force. Head over the track and an infinite amount of training won't help some kids get to even a basic level of "age group" sprinting. Some people just have no hope in a given sport. On the adult side, I took an ex hockey player who did triathlon and I taught him to XC ski at a fairly pointy masters XC ski level in sub 2 years. This guy on the other hand who I also coached for triathlon had ZERO hope in the water. He had no shoulder mobility, and no body awareness once in the water, but on skates, on XC skis, running, this guy was just an ultra coordinated natural.

I disagree with the fish around here that at age group level anyone can be trained. If that made sense, it would be possible in tennis, baseball, XC skiing, speedskating, soccer, cricket.....and an endless list of sport, but we all know that in EVERY sport, some people just have no aptitude no matter how much we drag them along. Probably the swim people here are already biased because the people who show up for swimming are largely self selected

Actually I think we’re all saying he likely can’t even make the 2nd pack by today’s faster standards without killing himself. Things changed so fast in the swim that what used to be 1st pack is now 2nd pack.

I’d love to be proven wrong - Monty if you can help him please do it!

Dude I never gave up. I often probably swim more than you do in fact. Stop projecting.

140 pounds is a huge disadvantage for water polo!

Sounds like you’ve been around quite a few different sports - most of the people I know who have gotten into swimming more as an adult probably had some basic training as teens. A guy I know says to people he only took up swimming as an adult but I suspect that is because he feels he didn’t achieve a very good level and may have some shame / embarrassment when he raced school and club (when the real swimmers swam). And he did a 9 minute 800 free short course meters as late 40s.

But in true swimming terms a 9 minute 800 is actually very slow, like this was smashed by 15 years old girls with no goggles 50 years ago (in long course)

I do think that “talent” (a pretty ambiguous concept) is a different thing to time and opportunities to learn an activity, including swimming. Work beats talent when talent doesn’t work :) but you’ve been around lots of different sports so I guess everyone has their own take on

Yes I knew I was right. Was having some banter with they who shall not be named.

I must say, I’d prefer basic athleticism if I was trying to be a professional athlete. It may help.

'
To be fair, language is somewhat different that other skills. Off topic, but we have a language center in our brain - you knock it out (like a stroke), you lose your language.

We don't have a swim center in our brain, unfortunately. We actually do have sort of a running brain, in our cerebellum/medulla, which is why we don't need to specifically train run technique - our wiring figures out the best form for our ability and shape (even if it's weird looking).

Although I'm sure LS wasn't wearing $600 race jammers which would give him at least 3s per 100m, making his times look a little bit better.

dev makes excellent points here..
my son just swam a master's meet in Denver, the overall winner of 100 breaststroke was a 61-year-old..

I can about barely keep up with the high-school girls when they are doing warmup laps..
keep thinking about going to a master's meet but not sure about thrashing into last place, as dev says.. lots of work to be done before stepping on that deck..

and how many other pro triathletes are going to master's meets to humble themselves ? I like that Lionel does it..

haha, the only other pro I know of who shows up at swim meets is Lucy Charles. She went to the British Olympic trials in 2021 for Tokyo 2021 in the 1500 free. She missed the win by 0.17 seconds in a crazy sprint finish in 16:46:

https://triathlonmagazine.ca/...to-ironman-champion/

And maybe it would make them faster swimmers. But the sport is triathlon. If you are a mid pack or slower swimmer, but an elite cyclist/runner, who gives them up for a (year) to concentrate on swimming, is it guaranteed to make you a faster triathlete? Say you go 90 seconds faster on the swim but you are two minutes slower on the bike and four minutes slower on the run.... Have you done yourself any favors in the sport?

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See this is the funny thing. This swim gain is likely the smallest gains possible with the most work to put in if you are talking S B R training, y, yet said swim gain has the biggest impact on his race in world championship level events. Full stop. He realizes that, just look at the sport. The sport has evolved, the front of fields (front group + chase groups) have greatly multipled, so that at min if you are not in the chase pack, your race is pretty much over in world championship events.

It's chess not checkers. LS clearly understands it *now*
Again his "non chase pack swim" early in his career was not the deal breaker that it is now because the fields weren't as stacked toward the front end and his "uber" bike ability could "ride through the field".....He can't do that any longer so thus his "demands of competition" have ramped up.......Hi imo would be put in the "same workout for X amount of days until you get it" strategy because until he gets this, his world class podium results are over. Full stop. So if he can't fix his S his B or R won't matter at world championship events.


If he wants to just play out the string of the rest of his career, he would follow your advice. Show up knowing he has no chance at world champ events. If he thinks he still has 1 last rally to his career, then it starts and ends with his swim to chase pack ability. Doesn’t mean hard work means he makes it. But it means you can’t apply your theory in this instance. Until the swim is improved the B and R are meaningless for podium potential.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

To be fair, LS's situation isn't that of typical AGers. It's kinda unique to him - top world class bike and run, but loses the race on the swim. So obviously HE has to bring up swimming or game over in the current state of competition.

That's not the same situation that typical AGers have - they've got plenty of improvement left in bike-run, even if they're weaker on swim, and there are many ways for them to achieve their goals of improvement (they're not maxxed on the bike/run like a top pro like Lionel might be.) It's pretty easy to argue that typical AGers doing HIM or IM should get their swim to an acceptable level, but then focus on improving bike-run for bang for buck time gains, since the swim is so short relative to the other two.

I'm still myself a big fan of swimming a lot esp since I race a lot of Olys. It's pretty typical for half my training volume to be swimming through an entire training cycle (and I still lag on it by a lot compared to my bike or run, sadly). I think it does help run and bike to your potential even if your swim split isn't giving you tons of time on the clock, but it's really hard to measure that.

If anybody other than you had told me the race Jammers are worth 3 secs/100m I would have called BS.....do you really think it's that much? That is almost the effect of a wetsuit for a top tier swimmer.

Wikipedia says 1.9-2.2% for elite swimmers for Speedo LZR, about 1sec/100. And that's for a full body suit.



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZR_Racer