I remember some quote from the Slowman about that. Without the genetics you won't be top tier no matter how hard you train. You may be very good, but.....

Now where can I get a gene transplant....Damn!

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Dick

Take everything I say with a grain of salt. I know nothing.

Are you suggesting that for 99.9999% of us the fun of training and racing should be paramount?

I know a lot of racers who think they can get better. I don't hear any of them saying they will be IM winners. I have never heard a single man or woman say they are so gifted they can and will beat anyone. I never heard Lance say it. I never heard Michael Jordan say it. What they do say is that smart hard work will usually pay dividends.

The benefits of racing and training are mostly extrinsic to winning, so I'm confused about your point. We all know some are more gifted than others, but so what? We all take what the Gods have given.

Yours may the most well-known "secret" on the planet.

-Robert

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"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." ~Anne Frank

Genetic profiling seems to be the modern implementation of an older concept: identification of young super-atheletes. The Sovets pioneered the idea decades ago (using the most modern technology available to them at the time) and look how their athletes did in the olympics. I wouldn't be surprised at all if China and other countries were doing profiling today. How would the idea fly in the US?

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king of the road says you move too slow
KING OF THE ROAD SAYS YOU MOVE TOO SLOW

"Triathlon training for the Genetically Ungifted". I can smell "Loser" all over it. I'll show you the training logs, but you can look at my body comp: I am not built for speed, endurance or anything much. Its pretty obvious that you can train hard for some improvement, but you'll never going to win. More titles "Humility comes easy at the back of the pack", "Punish yourself for pleasure", "Finishing before the prize-giving", "But at least I have a proper job". At least I don't have to worry about what I do after a career in professional sports, I'll never have one. But I can't imagine anyone in triathlon who isn't motivated: you just can't do the training required without a lot of inner drive. When the gun goes off everybody is racing.

I don't think it is a dirty little secret, everybody has a lot of time to think about why they are doing this, and it isn't because they expect to win. I do it because it is a challenge to myself, because I do some fun things in training and events, I am improving my physical capabilities and I like the community because we are sharing something special. There are not many sports that encourage healthy participation in the way that Triathlon does. Most others you are either exceptional, or don't bother. It doesn't stop our admiration of top performers, or the fascination with how they achieve it, but most of us have worked out our own reasons for hanging in there long ago.

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Those who know do not speak, those who speak, do not know.

Bigger picture question:

If genetic profiling allowed you to predict which sport would be best for your one-year-old child, would you want that information, and would you use that information to steer your child into that sport?

Just curious.

Robert

I sit fascinated watching my 9 year old son, who is the smallest kid on the field everytime he laces up his cleats. He plays shortstop, bats leadoff, has a cannon for an arm, already pitching in the mid 50's, and has speed to boot. It blows my mind how good he is. He practices constantly and without prodding, it's what lights his fire.

On the flip side, my oldest son practices just as much and cannot hold a candle to the younger one. He is average while the other excels. Sometimes it bothers me to see how hard he works yet he sees his younger brother excel. Playing on all star teams and a select team of the best players in our community. I wonder how it makes him feel inside. It's an interesting dichotomy because I can tell he is envious but the younger one is still always trying to impress the older one. I'm sure it will always be that way.

Fortunately my oldest som is starting to get the endurance sports bug and my wife and I are encouraging him down that road. He has the prototype body for it which I do not. I just love competing at something and staying in shape.

Todd

This certainly is the crux of the problem duuuuuuude.

This is also why I spend way more of my disposable income than my wife would like, on becoming a better trigeek.

I would love to win at Kona but I know I never will, because of the points you note. Much to my disappointment I might add.

I am now on a mission to become the best I can be and to enjoy the journey. That is why I bought a Cervelo when I'm nowhere nearly good enough to work it near its potential. I should ride a Huffy if talent was the criteria for good stuff.

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TriDork

"Happiness is a myth. All you can hope for is to get laid once in a while, drunk once in a while and to eat chocolate every day"

True.

I did this because:

1. I think that I had a bit of a knack, for it.

2. I was lucky enough to be able to train with, and tap into the reasources of some of the best people in the sport at the time. We/they trained very hard and I was able to get myself to the next level.

3. How I did, relative to other people( a key thing to being "successful" in long racing) did not affect me directly.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

I couldn't agree more, and it's great to hear a former elite say this. I am 33 and in my 6th year of tri, and I am experiencing some of my biggest performance gains to date. I can also "feel" that there is more to be had - I'm getting better at getting better. It has taken me 3 years of dedicated training to get where I am, and the next two years should be even better.

mp

Your point is well taken, but I do have a question or 2.

This question may have no basis in reality, but say you have a "blank slate" athlete. He or she is 18+ YO and no real prior athletic experience to speak of. Say you start them on a training program in January, and do an OLY race in May. Their time in this OLY race is 3:30. Have them continue this program and enter them in a similar OLY race in September and finish with a time of 2:45. A very strong improvement. Say they get the bug and want to keep the same program for the next year as well. After another year can they seriously expect to apprach 2:00. In 3 years? Is it your position that these kinds of gains can be made even 3 or 4 years down the road?

My second, totally unrelated question would be, as a coach, how do you judge when an athlete has reached their potential?

Right Fucking On!

Ignore the nay-sayers, especially the ones that are full of yays for themselves.

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ironguides.net : Home of The Method
Join the New Generation of Champions!

--- Your best is our business. ---

[reply]At the end of the day, you're going to be limited by genetics - and money* or time can't change them.
*For a few more years, at least[/reply]

that is true but endurance sports allow the dedicated ungifted to reach something like excellence. The genetic limitations are less important than in any other sport. I don't have citations, but it seems to me that (for example) hand/eye co-ordination and strength don't respond to training nearly as well as the endurance systems do.

For my own case - I've been perfectly useless at sport all of my life, however much I practised. For most of school, second last in any race was cause for celebration, dead last was usual. When I started training for running, it was a revelation - consistent training actually produced significant improvements ! I was amazed.

Ten years later, I discovered that the guys in my running club thought I was the most naturally gifted runner in the club. It was meant as a compliment, but it annoyed me intensely. 'Gifted' forsooth, it was nothing but a talent for training that ever got me anywhere.

It's not true that a year or two of training is enough to realize most of your potential. Career PR's in running usually happen after 5-10 years of consistent training, I'd suspect it is not much different for swimming and biking. I'm still improving my triathlon times after five years of taking it semi-seriously, which followed twenty-plus years of running.. and I'm an old fart, older and fatter every year.

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"It is a good feeling for old men who have begun to fear failure, any sort of failure, to set a schedule for exercise and stick to it. If an aging man can run a distance of three miles, for instance, he knows that whatever his other failures may be, he is not completely wasted away." Romain Gary, SI interview

I was having a whinge to a friend of mine that I was out training with - he was mucking around - I was getting ready for an Ironman.

I complained about another friend who had been a national level cyclist and rode at the commonwealth games in 86 aged 17 years. At 18 he held the NZ junior record for 1k TT (still standing) and just missed out on the junior world record on an ashfelt track with very little banking - he rode off the track after that attempt and never really turned the pedals in anger again. He still is pasionate about cycling and rides a lot for fun. I always wished that I had his talent as the only way I ever achieved anything was doing hours and hours of donkey work.

My very wise friend turned to me and said "never underestimate the talent required to train hard."

 "How would the idea fly in the US?"

My guess is that it would fly just fine. I would want to make a distinction between using gene profiling to identify young potential superstars, and using it to maximize the performance of an adult age-grouper who wants to add more information as to how best to train his/her particular body physiology. I think there's a difference, the former would be more likely to be seen as objectionable than the latter, but in my mind gene profiling is (potentially) a tool like any other- VO2 testing for instance.

Ken

Its so hard to detremine the potential of anyone isn't it. A great VO2Max test is nice but if yiou dont'have the desier to train a couple of hours per dya for a few years consistently then it won't amount to all that much. If you don't have good biomechanics/structure then you are going to keep getting injured even if you do love training and are very disciplined. So how do we know after one year? Taking your example of the blank slate 18 year-old (male) - I would say their ability to get under 2 hours for an Oly distance would be pretty tough, I'd give them about a 2% chance because they've missed most of the window of opportunity 12-18years old) where they have the hormonal super-duper thing going on naturally and can recover from training well and change the body more from each session. And they won't have good coordination or good swim mechanics. So this person has a very long road to see if their body is going to hold up to the training over time. Things as simple as re-curring shin splints can really put a damper on the whole experience. So many young swimmers with big engines take 2-3 years of struggling with running injuries before their legs are able to handle the stress of running long distances consistently. If they absolutely loved the sport with a passion and trained their ass off for a year then they might get good enough to have some improvement and be encouraged to go on or meet some really neat friends that they love hanging out with and training with and that might keep them going another year so they will start to see some real gains.

How do I know when an athlete has reached their potential? I don't. But the main indicator that they aren't going to get any better is their desir to keeping working at least as hard at it as they did the year before is the first sign that its all getting to be too tough to improve. Sometimes after a down year and a break an athlete will find that life isn't quite as fulfilling without the challenge of exploring their limits and they will come back to the sport with re-newed energy and comittment and then really find their potiential. I hate making generalizations because some one will always point out an exception but generally I'd say if a person is over 30, has been working at this diligently for 7 years or more with good avice and hasn't improved for at least 2 years then its unlikely that they are going to. There are always so many things you can do to try and work on or around your limitations, its hard to exhaust all possiblities in searching for your potential.

But! and this is a big one - even after the absolute limit of improvement over-all has been reached (and mine was about a zillion years ago) there can still be a lifetime of enjoyment and fulfillment in striving for excellence in some aspect or in relation to our age group or present circumstances. The process is so much more rewarding than the outcome in my view.

Thanks Skid, great stuff.

Couple of thoughts.

Years ago my (inactive) sister-in-law said to me very matter of factly "Peter, you've been doing this running and triathlon for a few years now, and you haven't won any races at all. Why do you keep doing it? Don't you know you'll never win?!" I just smiled at her... That was one of the most motivating things anyone had (or has) ever said to me...

I tri-buddy of mine is in his 70s. He has a fantastic attitude. As far as he's concerned all he has to do is slow down SLOWER than his peers each year, and he's actually improving. Plus (he says with a wink) a few of 'em die each year as well, which helps...

Skid( Is this Scott?),

1. For an athlete to get absolute max potetial out of their body, I agree with you that they need to push the envelope in some capacity from age 14 - 18 during that key period of growth and development. It is a rare indvidual who will pick up an endurance sport after the age of 20 and rise to national or international standards.

2. The recruiting techniques for the next wave of top triathletes have already been established - find those odd, top ranked age-group swimmers who can also run. This is how the current top three junior triathletes in Canada were recruited and encouraged to get into the sport. They had great swimming credentials and they could also run( close to 15:00 for 5K) All three of them run varsity cross-country in the fall here in Canada and place in the top of the field and then shift to a swim/cycle focus over the winter.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Yeah, this is Scott in the little land of the long white cloud. Bring on summer! Feel kinda bad for you northerners getting the big chill coming your way.

This thread was started mostly as a discussion about adults reaching their potential (I think), but why I stuck the comments about training when you're young is because so many people who did endurance sports as kids come back to them much later after years off and do great. So in assessing a person's potential it pays to look at how much training they did in their youth, even if they've had 10 or 20 years off since then. The other thing about those young kids you'r pointing out here Fleck is they know how to do a couple of hard hours 2x/day most days of their life - swimmer kids have a much different perspective about what "hard training" involves. Adult athletes who never went through that process when they were young have a much different perspective on what's hard, thus they also have a hard time accepting how much work it will be to realize their potential.

Scott,

I recall doing testing on fitness levels of people when I was doing my undergrad degree to get base line Vo2 max levels for the man-off-the-street types. It was always a challenge, because people would always want stop when they started breathing hard or sweating! In their worlds - that was working hard!

Fleck

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

I have come in a little late on this, but it seems that there is a little mis-communicating going on.

The original post seems to me to make the point that you can see very quickly whether someone has raw potential. It did not suggest that raw potential can be quickly realised.

I agree with the original point, and I also agree with Skid's position that it takes years to realise raw potential. Indeed, I would argue that we never truly reach our potential (whatever that may be) as none of us trains perfectly (whatever that is).

Jeez, I should be a diplomat

My first post was in reply to the original supposition - that you could get a good idea of your potential in a year. My reply was that it takes about 3 years to get a good idea of what your potential is. THEN the discusion moved on to various slants of that original idea and my last post was concerning how long it might take to actually reach your potential. Often times a thread moves around doesn't it, so its best to read the whole thing to understand where people are coming from. Cheers, Scott.

And lets make clear that the original poster didn't make the "original supposition". The orginal poster has been watching the thread with some interest, and has a few comments of his own. He doesn't think that three years is a particularly long time to discover your potential. He's not convinced about the need for hard training in the teen years in reaching full potential - for instance, Noakes actually argues against this in the case of distance running (with arguments that are probably applicable to other aerobic sports), although can understand the mental aspect from having done so could be important. In the original poster's personal experience, it wasn't until he was 20 that training really gave benefits - before that age it seemed to have little effect - again showing how much personal variation there can be in training response.

The original poster still feels that all the technical discussions of training methods and products are in some ways a delusion, tending to revolve around issues that will only improve performances by small fractions, and missing the big picture. He has also personally observed how athletes can substantially change training programmes and still get virtually the same results. (Obviously, there are certain bounds on this, such as most people will need some speed work to go fast, or some long work to go long.)

What he would really like to see is more emphasis placed on enjoyment of training, instead of solely aiming to optimise training in terms of physiological responses. For instance, he might suggest heading out on the local roadie hammer session, rather than sitting on the turbo doing a carefully structured set of intervals, just because the former is more fun. Of course, there can be satisfaction in following a programme of drudgery to a T, but if you want to be in this for the long haul, it might be better to make sure you're having fun - if you've enjoyed it, then all the hard work really will be worth it. (When a winner says their result makes all the hard work worth it, what about the people they beat? Was their hard work not worth it???)

YIKES! You're right - I forgot all about the original post by you that started this thread, and instead got all worked up with this idea of potential. Even then, we sort of arrived at the same point (and are in agreement) in the end didn't we? - regarding the value of process vs. outcome. My apoligies to ozzy bill too, now that I re-read my last post it sounds like i was doing bit of scolding. Think I'll just slink back off into my wee corner of the world again now...........

The purpose of training and all those toys for most is to see how you YOU can be. It is then when you find out what YOUR genetics REALLY are. You don't find out by looking at your parents or your brother, Steve Larsen and family being a good example. Another being the Merckx family. "Anyone", with enough work, can make it to extremely good. Genetics only seems to make the difference between being extremely good and exceptionally good.

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Frank,
An original Ironman and the Inventor of PowerCranks