What's this "talent" nonsense? Talent doesn't get you down the pool. Technique and fitness get you down the pool. Perhaps your "talent" allowed you to gain good technique because your proprioception is excellent, or perhaps "talent' allowed you to build a big engine because you have a high hematocrit or a great ability to build mitochondria or a high pain/misery threshold.

I got "fast" quickly because of the things I listed above. I had a great on-deck coach with whom I spent a lot of time looking at video (like VCR video), magazines, and the like to learn what good technique is. We learned what you are supposed to do, he told me what I was actually doing, we figured out what I needed to do to change (entering the water in front of your head? Try entering at 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock. Done and fixed), and I supplied the ability to translate that into physical movements (that's my biggest inherent trait, or "talent") very quickly. I'm also gifted with lots of fast-twitch muscles, as evidenced by my PRs of :23.1 50scy and 5:17 500scy (set a year apart). Try taking 20 strokes per length in about 11 seconds in a 50.

---

----------------------------------
"Go yell at an M&M"

Why do you think I was surprised by him? I said nothing of the sort, IIRC.

my view on talent has been pretty consistent. sure, it matters, but I don't care about it, not one bit. you can't control it, I don't even know if you can meaningfully assess "talent" vs "prior experience and background" and it doesn't influence anything that you should be doing in the pool, so forget about it and focus on the things that matter.

---

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

[quote lightheir\

Even you yourself were surprised at the one recent guy who filmed himself in a short pool and had few/no major technique flaws, yet said he swam OWS at 2:00/100. Even if he's lowballing, for sure, he's not swimming sub 1:20, yet his technique was pretty clean. What's up with that?[/quote]
IIRC, his technique sucked because he wasn't actually pulling any water. Show me *any* healthy person who swims 2:00/100scy, and I'll show you someone who is either not pulling any water, has the turnover of a sloth, is dragging his/her legs at the bottom of the pool, or some combination of the three. At that pace, you aren't "swimming".

---

----------------------------------
"Go yell at an M&M"

Guess what - there are quite a few folks on this forum who do exactly what you did, with high-level coaches, self-video, and plenty more than you did. None of them got at fast as you, and most of them not even close.

You take 1000 rando new triathletes, put them through the exact same program you did for 1 year, and you predict how many of them will then beat 99% of triathletes in short distances swim races. I'll bet with confidence that at least 95% will fail this test.

THAT is what talent does. You gotta acknowledge it before you even begin to assess an athlete to give advice - the advice you give someone with the talent level of Michael phelps is very different than the advice you given someone who likely has a max talent ability of swimming 1:50/100 for triathlon races.

You gotta be kidding me. Truly talented people stick out so obviously compared to joe MOPers that it's a freaking joke.

You don't even have to be a swim coach to pick out the kid with potential D1 ability in a field of otherwise totally average YMCA swimmers. At the least, you can say THAT particular kid should be swimming with the competitive group, not the YMCA group.

And talent matters a LOT in coaching and advice. It affects the volume you give them, the group you make them swim with, and for triathletes, the realistic expectations about where they should spend their time training (especially if they are truly talented cyclist/runners.) A primary goal of picking the best coach is picking one who has successfully worked with those in your talent level - Bill Bowman wouldn't necessarily be the greatest coach for low-talent BOP swim triathletes, as compared to a no-name coach who has had a lot of success training lots of them without burning them out.

Technique and power in swimming are directly related as one would expect. But swimming is unique enough that they are so related that personally I regard them as the same thing. First, without the talent and technique to establish and hold a good catch, you cannot apply whatever power you may be theoretically capable of. Not sure what the current terminology is but that combo of talent and technique can be referred to as "feel for the water." No technique, no power, even if you are weightlifter strong. And worse, absent that good long catch, you cannot properly stress the systems you need to fully develop the capabilities for high swim power. That is a big rub. That no power without a catch issue leads to a big circular problem when trying to develop swim speed - it takes a lot of work to get fast BUT you cannot work efficiently unless you have good technique. Second, without good body position (i.e. low drag) you cannot maximize the effectiveness of power. Body position also has a high degree of natural talent involved as well as some technique. At a minimum, there is a huge range in natural buoyancy among different humans and there are some people who just naturally float in a near perfect freestyle position.

Most endurance sports, and definitely running and cycling, have essentially a straight sloping line for the talent/technique curve. This is a little simplistic but basically it is a straight line from shitty to great in running and time trial cycling. Everyone's progress will stop at a different point but getting started then making significant improvement is possible for almost anyone. Swimming is different. That talent/technique line has a huge cliff in it. It is extremely difficult to scale that cliff and, unfairly, some people get to start at the top of the cliff. Getting to start at the top of that cliff is where talent plays a bigger role in swimming than in running or cycling.

Technique and engine/fitness are tightly linked. You just can't do some aspects of some strokes without a big engine, and aside from some people having a decent genetic starting point, the engine also has to be developed with endless miles. In my case with a 4+W per kilo engine, coming into more serious swimming lately, I am probably able to get away with countless more sins than a 3W per kilo athlete, and then I can work on removing those sins, because my starting engine is large enough to survive wiht those sins (for example over last year, I built up to dolphin kicking underwater the entire length of a pool or 10m off push offs, which would be much harder with less aerobic capacity). I also had something like 20,000 hours of lifetime aerobic training coming into my serious swim phase of life and just increased my annual hours in the pool from maybe <80 hrs in many years to 400 hrs.

I absolutely agree with you that beyond pure technique, fitness/engine matter big time (I said it early in this thread). Right now I am trying to catch up to lifetime swimmers putting in 100K per month every month for the last 2.5 years that they were doing (and more) as kids. I THINK I can close the gap on many of them and even surpass SOME with developing a bigger swim engine WHILE incrementally picking up technical elements.

I am not resigning myself to being an Adult onset swimmer who will suck for life and as it stands when I go to a regular pool, I can comfortably "pass" as a "real swimmer". People on deck look at me and say, "oh man, if I could put my technique in your body, or put your engine and drive in my body and brain we'd be set". So I'm going to keep working on closing that. I took 40 seconds off my 400IM and 12 seconds off my 200 fly in the last 2 months, so it's possible.

But almost all triathletes complain that they have a disadvantage on pure swimmers, but almost no triathletes will give you a 1000 km year of swimming to uplift their swim. I am not saying that's what everyone has to do (everyone has priorities in life), but that guy beating us in triathlon swim, they did countless of those as kids. We can't just pick up tennis rackets and serve like Federer as adults but for some reason everyone thinks that Amberger (tri) or Phelps (swim) have some god given gift in swimming when we forget their 40 hour weeks of training to get there. Almost no triathletes are doing that.

FFS, I'm not talking about the Michael Phelps' of the world. I'm talking about schmucks like me, who quite frankly sucked for the first couple of years I competed as an age-grouper when I was 13-15. I was at the back of the lane, and nearly quit a few times. I even had a teacher comment to me that "you don't look like a swimmer". But according to you, I'm this amazingly talented swimmer.

I don't think talent matters for any of that coaching and advice. What they are capable of matters, which is basically "what are you doing now, and are you at your limit". Talent doesn't enter the equation except how fast they might be progressing through the ranks..

You'd be surprised how good the elite level coaches can be at working with low-talent athletes, many of them simply choose to work only with elites because that's a much harder / riskier / more rewarding path. But to think they couldn't teach the fundamentals to a BOP athlete without burning them out is silly.

---

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

I applaud your strong swim efforts Dev, and you deserve every second of gain you get. You're a great example of how hard work and dedication can lead to positive results over the long term.

But then you also have guys like klehner, who will beat you by a fair margin in short distance (and possibly long distance) swims despite having a year of swim training (albeit serious training) under his belt.

THAT is the difference between a dedicated but not-outlandish talent swimmer like yourself (and most of us on these forums), and the truly talented. Hard work counts, but can only get you so far compared to the gifted ones, like it or not.

If Dev were 25 years younger and didn't have a pretty significant injury to his nervous system, I bet he would have improved much more than he has. Ken was in his 20's when he was an AOS. That's substantially different than trying to pick it up in your 50's.

---

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

We're just picking hairs here, but I'll let Dev speculate as to whether he could have made gains on the order of ken.

I'll still say you take 1000 everyday joe new triathletes, train 'em like Ken did, and 95% won't get remotely close of the reuslts he got.

why is Ken the gold standard benchmark? Why does it matter if 95/100 aren't able to achieve the same degree of success he did at the same rate he did...

---

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

No kidding. Well past time to leave me out of this. Anecdotes, after all.

---

----------------------------------
"Go yell at an M&M"

That's the whole point of this conversation - acknowledging the reality that there are real differences in swimming talent that dramatically and fundamentally affect outcomes and training.

Which is almost certainly the real reason the OP posted about differentiating between typical AOS-swimmers (mediocre normal talent) compared to swimmers who were competitive youth swimmers (highly selected talented swimmers) and the huge gulf of performance between them that literally seems (and like is) unbridgeable by the MOPers regardless of training due to the talent gap.

No shit! I'm not sure I even consider 20s to be AOS.

I'm a 2x AOS. I started once back in '02...when I was 32. Within a very short time (a few months) I was down to 17:30 1000y TT of basically just doing TI drills. I did that for about 6 months, then we moved out of state which sort of derailed everything. Then life got in the way and I didn't swim for the intervening years until fall of '16.

Fast forward 17 years, I'm 49 (rapidly approaching 50). Man its a whole lot more WORK, now to see much smaller gains.

Who has ever said otherwise? My point has consistently been that it doesn't matter what your "talent" level is. (whatever "talent" actually means) You just do the work, assess whether you can handle it, assess whether it's resulting in improvement or not, and keep plugging away. The result will be what it is.

]

Where's the value in that? How does knowing (or thinking that you know) that you'll never be as fast as that other guy in the next lane help you improve, in any way? Improvement is what we are really after, and anyone can do that.

---

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Being able to assess an athlete's level of talent and expected rate of improvement is a critical coaching ability as I explained above. Ignoring talent and just hoping to 'improve' without realistic benchmarks leads to frustration and burnout.

Why are you "expecting" a rate of improvement at all? If you are basing an "expected" rate of improvement on anything other than what the athlete has been able to do in the past, then that's just pulling numbers out of your ass. I've never, ever had a coach who expected a certain rate of improvement. I've had coaches who have predicted what time I could do based on what I was doing in training, but to predict a rate of improvement? I don't know any coaches who do that.

---

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Same thing. When they tell you that for your upcoming race, "X" should be your A-race goal, they are making that decision entirely on your expected rate of improvement from your current ability.

That's not a rate of improvement. That's saying that the workouts you've been doing are indicative of someone who is capable of doing "X"

If a coach were to tell me that I should expect to improve from time "X" to time "X-Y", when I'm not currently doing workouts that indicate that I can do time "X-Y", that's pulling numbers out of your ass.

---

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

I think you guys are having difficulties due to semantics and due to a difference in approach stemming from coming from diff backgrounds. In semantics, the diff between "technique" and "talent", and between "technique" vs "power" is hard to explain and agree over verbally. To try to be brief, i think "talent" for swimming encompasses having a big engine, having a strong, and flexible, upper body, plus the ability to coordinate your body in the water. That said, great coordination and technique only gets you so far w/o power and a big engine. The D1 swimmers all have big engines and excellent power, which is why generally speaking they can become excellent cyclists within just a year or two on the bike. STP is a good example of this.

Your differences in approach stem from Jason coming from the optimistic "glass is half full" perspective, e.g. who cares how much talent someone does or does not have, just get in and swim hard and you'll get as good as you can. This is vs lightheir coming from a running background where he beat his head against the wall running up to 100 mi/wk trying to run a sub-17 5K but never could due to talent limitations. Thus lightheir wants to be more realistic about what an AOS might achieve, though i believe even he might agree that he has improved more over the past few years than even he thought possible, mainly due to grinding out many hours on the Vasa Erg. What say ye, lightheir???

---

"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Ya, you've hit the proverbial nail and the real "gorilla in the room". Guys get in and swim 30 min 2-3 time per week and wonder why they're not going any faster.

Dev - You are the ST proof that, even at over age 50, a person an dramatically improve their swimming IF they are willing to work hard at it. Your prescription of 1000 km per year, or 20,000 m/wk for 50 wk/yr, sounds about right for big swim gains.

---

"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

I know exactly where he's coming from, but yeah, I am the eternal optimist. I have to be, cuz if I didn't think that I could get a little bit better every day, then what's the point? (leaving aside the question "better than what?). I can sympathize with lightheir, I spent my final 2 years in college banging against the 2:08 2fly, 1:56 2free, 53.5 1free barriers. Everyone comes up against a wall eventually if you go long enough and train hard enough. I mean even Michael Phelps didn't set a PB for the last 8 years of his career. 8 friggin years!! But (at least publicly) he never stopped thinking that he could go faster than he did in '08.

re: the 17min 5k, I do think that it's dangerous to put a number on someone's talent/potential. I mean, what number do we put on Ledecky? Is she a 15:20 1500 swimmer? 15:10? If she "only" manages to go 15:15, does that mean she's a failure and wasted the talent she had? Or is multiple world records enough? I much prefer the approach where you commit to the process, only worry about those things that you can directly control, and the result is an inevitable outcome of the process.

---

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

I too never stop improving, even though realistically, there are zero big gains in my future, and only (very) small ones in SBR.

I keep saying it over again, but it's the whole point of my participation on this thread - in swimming, good swimmers place way too much emphasis on 'technique' and clearly imply that their excellent results should be eminently replicable by hardworking MOPers who similarly focus on technique or technique/power.

When I'm saying, that's likely a bunch of bull - TALENT is the main reason you ex-D1 swimmers dominate MOP swimmers. Those MOP swimmers would likely be unable to even handle the volume of a college swimmer, or similarly, even if they did, they would still have barely FOP results, if even that. Even if you ex-D1 swimmers didn't go to youth swim programs, and didn't swim until adult-onset, you'd be like klehners - dominating swim triathletes within a year of 'real' swim training. (Though you may never be at D1 swim level, sure - there is some cost to starting late.)

Yes, this does come in part from me having run up to 100mpw and averaging well over 80 for months at a time, yet barely improving from when I was running 55-60 mpw. I see nothing special about swimming that suggests that the improvement curve won't plateau similarly after moderate training levels.

I wasn't good enough after HS to swim D1, I'm not ex D1 and likely would never have made it to that level. I swam varsity at a mid-level university in Ontario.


clearly imply that their excellent results should be eminently replicable by hardworking MOPers who similarly focus on technique or technique/power.

No one has ever said that. That's an argument that you keep having with yourself. The only thing I have ever said is that there is room for improvement, and reading the comments from people who's opinions I value, they say similar things. I don't believe I've ever quantified how much improvement is possible with any given change or within any given swimmer, because that would require presumption of facts that I cannot possibly know.

Yes, this does come in part from me having run up to 100mpw and averaging well over 80 for months at a time, yet barely improving from when I was running 55-60 mpw.I see nothing special about swimming that suggests that the improvement curve won't plateau similarly after moderate training levels

where has anyone argued otherwise? If you are talking about people saying that AOS should really be swimming more than 30-45 mins 2x per week if they expect to improve, well,. that's because 2-3x per week at 30 to 45mins per session doesn't usually qualify as even a moderate training level. It's nowhere near your 55-60mpw that you've just implied as "moderate". Id argue that 55-60 is well beyond "moderate" and you're going from "high" to "very high", at least compared to what average folks are doing.

---

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly