I have to say, on one hand I find it odd how much his swimming gets bashed considering how happy I would be if I could put up his times.

On the other, I'm amazed at someone with such an engine as he has who just doesn't really make much progress despite years of effort. I wonder --- "does this guy just power crazy inefficiently through the water like a mad man and exits into t1 nearly exhausted?" If his technique is so bad and his engine so strong, the guy must be wasting a ton of effort. So if he could -somehow- get efficient in the water he'd either exit the swim to be even stronger on the bike or be in the main pack with the bulk of the rest.

I don't think it's fair for me to sit and laugh at his times, which are still better than mine. But I'm just so amazed he doesn't get better! (ya ya, I know there are a few people who like to point out he is getting better...but he's usually 2-4 minutes back depending on the race and that doesn't change much unless he gets lucky with the group, which usually requires the group to get unlucky.)

Masters Nationals are in his hometown in late May ... with a 19:13 seed time he would likely not be in the fastest heat. Based on last year he would have been seeded 11th (Calgary hostes) and typically Ontario hosted meets have more depth.

His 400 time was a second slower than the top M60-64 at this meet & 11 seconds slower than the top W45-49.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/...eoesophageal_fistula
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_palsy
2020 National Masters Champion - M40-44 - 400m IM
Canadian Record Holder 35-39M & 40-44M - 200 m Butterfly (LCM)

Remember that he probably doesn’t practice diving at all and may even fear it so every dive and flip turn as well chews up time.

This is the more interesting benchmark IMO.

Who woulda thunk that coaching yourself, particularly in swimming, may be suboptimal for a PRO who has self-confidence issues.

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"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden

His most recent times are 25 meters short course. Is your referenced meet, also short course? He of course is a professional athlete and the masters swim meet is for hobbyists? In USA there are many fast adult swimmers that would rank favorably in regional adult swim meets or masters nationals, but just don't actually participate because they don't really care, so except for the top few, the rest don't show up to compete, unless the meet is very close to them geographically.

Yeah, hoping the 50 time especially is due to start/ walls. That is like a 27 converted to SCY…

I’m sure pure sprint skills aren’t a priority, but that is interesting. Hopefully a baseline for improvement:

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Aaron Bales
Lansing Triathlon Team

That's the biggest issue that most of the pros have who are trying to improve their swim. The race is decided within the first 400m and if you do not have the gears to be there, you get dropped and there isn't any making up later in the swim. Doesn't matter how big your engine is.


I see this with a lot of pro triathletes who don't come from a swim background. Development of technique is a big part of swimming as well as fitness specific to the water. It is a skilled based sport, but also requires an incredible amount of fitness to swim fast and efficient. The first thing is pro triathletes without swim backgrounds aren't swimming enough, especially since the front is getting faster. The swim training they are doing they are coming into it with too much fatigue from the bike and run. The two most costly things for the brain to do is learn a new skill and move. With swimming, you are asking it to do both. If an athlete comes into a practice repeatedly with a lot of fatigue, it's going to be very difficult to drive skill adaptation. The brain will not be able to focus.

I hope this helps,

Tim

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http://www.magnoliamasters.com
http://www.snappingtortuga.com
http://www.swimeasyspeed.com

I don't think it's as simple as him being horribly inefficient. He's worked with several coaches, including the Aquabears long-term, and those guys would definitely have fixed or pointed out any game-breaking technique errors he has. Even on his videos, he doesn't look bad, sure there are small things to fix, as they almost always are even with pro triathletes, but nothing that's killing his times.

I love LS as well as the rest, and yes, he does swim pretty darn well for an AOS-swimmer, but I've always felt he's just another one of us that just isn't cut out for top pro tri swimming (or elite swimming in general). I think of him as an example of the potential of what can happen if the most motivated non-swim-gifted triathlete who started swimming as an adult could reach after years of busting their tail with good coaching input.

Like it or not, there's a bell curve to natural ability in swimming, as there is in run and bike, and no amount of technique or fitness training will get you to the elite ranks if you don't have that level of innate talent.

I'm actually skeptical he could even make the "AA+" ranks of teenage boys swimming standards even if he quit triathlon completely and focused full time on being a pure swimmer, including swimming with top coaches on deck and faster guys to push him harder in the workouts. His rate of improvement seems to show he's plateaud out despite tons of hard work, which strongly suggests he's pretty much at his max level - tons of extra work yield seriously diminshing returns at this point, like 1-2sec/100.

I will add after reading the above - without knowing how hard he works on takeoff speed, that may be his only hope. Meaning if he hasn't invested in high takeout speed training, MAYBE he has some possible gains there. But I doubt it - many of the guys beating him in the water aren't super specializing in takeoutspeed in the way Lionel would have to just to have a chance at keeping up in the start. They're just better swimmers, period. His pool times confirm this - Lionel's pool times are just slower even at distance, than the frontpack pro triathletes. It's not like he's dropping sub 1:05 100m splits for distance, and somehow can't keep up on race day.

I was at this meet and witnessed some of this.

Comments:
1) Lionel seemed like a nice guy. (I met him for the first time).
2) I suspect his goal was too have FUN and work on his swimming weaknesses.
(It probably doesn't make sense to hyper analyze the results).
YOU GOTTA LOVE THAT APPROACH!!

3) I will say however...
Lionel did standout for looking incredible fit relative to, the elderly, out of shape people he was swimming with in the 50 and 100.
(A pretty good number of these were undoubtedly once competitive youth swimmers).

4) MY PURPOSE for this meet was pretty similar....

I was once a D1 distance swimmer.
But it's the off-season and I am not in swim shape.
I went up to watch an ex-college buddy try to break a national age group masters record.

I swam the 50 breast.
This was a stroke that I always sucked at.
And I had not raced breaststroke since I was 12.
I finished last in my age group.

I also swam the 400 IM.
This was equally ridiculous.
I did swim this event competitively as a late teen.
But I haven't raced, or trained butterfly, back or breast since highschool. And I am NOT in good shape.

I was 7 seconds ahead of the women next to me at the halfway mark.
10 seconds behind after the breaststroke leg.
And 20 seconds behind at the end
Ridiculous!

SnappingT “The first thing is pro triathletes without swim backgrounds aren't swimming enough,”

Quote of the year right here, if it had a like button I would of smashed it!

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"Be your best cheerleader , not your worst critic.”

Since he is in a testing-off season phase, I would like to see him do a crit race

Seems like a terrific way to get injured. He’s not exactly WvA on a bike.

Your point comparing Lionel's times to other age-groups really misses the mark. When you race a triathlon, do you spend the whole next day comparing your finishing time and splits to other age groups ? I wish I had that much time on my hands.

Dude is investing his off season in trying to improve on a weakness. Good on him.

Man, all the Lionel swim bashing and comparing him with 12 year old boys, 60 years is missing the point. The guy has the Canadian National 1 hrs record. How many swimmers could beat EVERY CYCLIST IN CANADA? Only Paula Findlay (as a swimmer and triathlete, who can bike too).

At least he shows up at swim meets. Most triathletes are too chicken to show up at swim meets and most swimmers are too chicken to show up at a triathlon and almost no cyclists actually even want to try the world hour record (and Lionel beat Jen Voigt's distance too). Its easy to pick a guy apart, but at least he is out there.

Also I just replied to your post, but it is a general reply to the thread. I do agree that he muscles through. You can literally see the problem during the run in his hip mobility and as swimming is in tri is long axis, it is almost certain that he is creating drag on his hip rotation.

These all seem like good results for Lionel. What was the order of events? He swam a lot of this on short rest/back to back? Kudos to him for showing up even if some people want to say they're slow times. The 1500 looks fine for his racing goals.

What someone views as being critical, I think others (those that grew up swimming) just view it as matter of the sport of swimming. Swim times are cut and dry, and USA swimming tracks and stack ranks every age group swimmer for every swim event.

Teams stack rank times, and swimmers stack rank themselves, team wise, state wise, nationally, and use USA swimmings age group motivational times.

First, the fastest pro triathlete is no where near elite swimming level. Second, you're placing too much emphasis on "innate talent" and not enough on just the work that needs to get done. Swimming in triathlon at the elite level isn't that fast. I won't speak specifically about Lionel, since I coached him in the past, but you don't have the best insight into what you're talking about.

I hope this helps,

Tim

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http://www.magnoliamasters.com
http://www.snappingtortuga.com
http://www.swimeasyspeed.com

If you coached Lionel in the past, why isn't he as fast as he saw he should be?


What the heck does he have to do not just to become a front-pack triathlon swimmer, but just to be faster than most of the AA+ teenage boys that he hasn't already done?

He's not swimming a lot less than the other pros in the field. For sure, he's swimming a lot more than a lot of the teenage boys that can outswim him. And do you honestly think by him swimming 40k/wk, he's going to make front pack?

What makes you so sure he has the potential to swim as fast at a top pro elite triathlon swimmer when he's shown no capacity or history of doing so, despite some really good efforts?

Unless you have clear answers to these, I don't see how it's NOT talent that's limiting him in his case.

(Note I'm not saying LS has no swim talent - I'm just saying I suspect he doesn't have the same swim talent compared to the strongest swimmers in the pro tri field, almost all of whom were proven outstanding swimmers in their youth. And unfortunately, those are the folks he's gonna have to go through to win the big races in today's fields)

This is exactly the problem with the dick swinging from swimmers (I compete in 5-10 masters meets per year so let me explain).

Swimming inherently is a front of pack sport. There is literally no place for being slow.

The sport self selects the slow kids out of the pool and eventually the kids who are not particularly fast quit. This is the way it is.

I can go to a regional 70.3 and be 5th out of the water in my age group out of 150 people and end up 5th out of 150 after the bike and run, but there are 145 people in the tri slower than me, so I can give myself a bullshit pat on the back. I can also go to a local swim meet and be 5th out of 5 in a 400IM or a 1500 free. There is no MOP and BOP in swim meets. Everyone is fast. No pat on the back for me, because I suck so badly relative to real swimmers

But that is the problem with the sport. There is no place for slow people.

When slow people race, its only those who are not lifetime swimmers and don't care to be last, or they are people like Lionel who will have swimmers laugh at him for his times being slower than 13 year olds. Lionel does not give a shit about these talk downs, and the rest of us finishing last out of 5 at a swim meet don't care either.

But most people care about finishing last or perceived to be slow. Why do so many triathlete go do the local 5km or 10km run or local bike TT but they WON'T touch a swim meet with a ten foot pole. Anyone who does an Olympic tri, can easily race the 50/100/200/400/800/1500m free in any swim meet yet almost no triathletes show up.

Its because most people are too self conscious around "real swimmers" to endure being scrutinized for being "that triathlete hack who can't swim"

Good on Lionel for not caring. I'd personally kill for his freestyle times and would be happy to be mocked at for being slower than 13 year old kids.

But guess what. A lot of people care. They don't want to be the last kid hitting the wall in a pool with ten lanes with eveyone watching them finish last. They eventually drop out. You just get left with the faster/talented people

I only worked with him briefly.


That would be a good start, but like just about any pro he'd have to dial back the amount of training on his bike and run. Also, he doesn't need to make the front pack. He only needs to be within about 2.5 minutes of it.


Because triathlon isn't very fast in the swim. It has certainly gotten a lot better, particularly over the last 3 years, but it still isn't anywhere near the range where just about any talented athlete who is willing to put in the work can close the gap to the front.

I put on a swim camp for pro triathletes every year and every year every pro who shows up drops a significant amount of time in the 10 days that they are here. That's why I know.

I hope this helps.

Tim

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http://www.magnoliamasters.com
http://www.snappingtortuga.com
http://www.swimeasyspeed.com

Your post resonated with me. I have two older sisters who were on swim teams for years and I was weeded out quickly. I took it up as an adult but I still don't swim particularly well.

As someone who seems to have done a lot of swimming, is it sort of like running in that some have a natural penchant for it that is difficult if not impossible to overcome? I presume some of the advantage is morphological, but small kids seem to be able to move at very brisk paces. With running, at least some physical maturation is necessary to move to elite times.

Any additional insight would be appreciated.

Why haven't you reached out to him yet? If it's so clear to you, why haven't you promised him some improvement if he shows for your camp? I'm sure he'd be game for it given how motivated he is about real, measurable improvement.

I as well as everyone here would be very impressed if you could have him come to your camp for 10 days, walk out with 'significant' drops in time, that stick.

I never said anything about sticking. I think anyone would be naive to think it would only take 10 days to drop a lot of time. Just like it's naive and inaccurate to think that triathletes are limited by their "innate talent" to improve in the swim. I can offer a pathway forward that takes an incredible amount of hard work over a significant period of time. But there is a pathway forward for getting better. Most triathletes aren't willing or able to do it.

Tim

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http://www.magnoliamasters.com
http://www.snappingtortuga.com
http://www.swimeasyspeed.com

Swimming is a hard sport. Kids / people quit hard sports. The outliers are the ones that last to older age group swimming (17/18) and above. It is not uncommon for large competitive metro swim programs to have 80 to 100 kids in each of the following categories: the 8 and unders // 9/10 ages // 11/12 ages. By age 13 and above, the larger programs get much smaller. The volume, commitment, time away from doing other things, social life trade offs, is very high. 15 to 20 hours of swimming per week for the older kids, the time to and from the pools, lengthy swim meets, dryland training, etc. Many kids drop out for all of the preceding, whether they are fast or not. Throw in being slower, and there's a higher drop out rate on top of that for those swimmers. Programs that have those 100 swimmers at 11/12 age group, would be lucky to have even 5 or 8 kids at age 17/18... and generally those kids are really, really fast, with maybe 1 person slower, that still swims.

Someone mentioned why can't Lionel get to a AA+ category. That would be amazing for an adult onset swimmer, and perhaps there are some, but I've never heard of one. In USA Swimming it goes BB > A > AA > AAA > AAAA. No AA+ category, but that being said, an AA time for a 17/18 boy would be front of the pack triathlon swimmer all day long in Ironman distance, and within the front pack swimmer in Short Distance/Draft Legal.