Yes, like Sami didn't have to put up with getting the #hit beat out of himself during the swim.......oh wait
perhaps I'm confused about that.

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Genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger.

If you think swimming with a large pack is slower than in a smaller pack or alone, then yes, you are confused.

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The Triathlon Squad

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I think that's beside the point, and also obvious. What I think Paulo is trying to say is hinted at in his comments:

1. most elite athletes would dominate their AG on little training
2. if you want to compare yourself to an elite that raced the pro race, well then, sign up as a pro.

in other words, he's calling him a sandbagger.

Everyone wins when great athletes take the leap and gets hungry. A rising tide raises all boats. The strong rise to the top, the weak get culled out.

Sami is fishing from the shore, neither rising to the top or getting culled out. You can make a great living there, but you'll never win glory like in Old Man and the Sea.

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

I'm quite certain he makes a pretty great living in his current role and triathlon is simply a hobby. Wouldn't call that sandbagging.

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"One Line Robert"

The distinction between 'age group' and 'pro' is hardly meaningful.

Plenty of pros have just as many family, life, and work obligations as age group athletes. In fact, I know a number of 'age-group' athletes who essentially train full time, and a number of pros who work full time.

All we can really say is that this guy went 8:58. That's impressive regardless of how you qualify it.

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___________________
Twitter | Kancman | Blog

no, you are absolutely right. I'm not making that argument. And by "living", I was speaking metaphorically.

I was merely pointing out that, given Paulo's recent passion for raising the bar in triathlon, it makes sense to me that when someone who would add to the process chooses not to partake, he would make the comments he made.

Anyway, I'm totally making this shit up. Let's ask Paulo if we have questions about his posts.

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

Good point.

I posted this with the intention of creating discussion about his training. I wasn't even thinking about the pro vs AGer aspect of it. Yes, 8:58 is impressive.

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https://twitter.com/mungub

I believe this thread is directed at age groupers. The people who make up the sport...

Everyone wins when great athletes take the leap and gets hungry. A rising tide raises all boats. The strong rise to the top, the weak get culled out.

Sami is fishing from the shore, neither rising to the top or getting culled out. You can make a great living there, but you'll never win glory like in Old Man and the Sea.

Eric,

All true.

I don't know Sami, but 20 years ago I was more or less at his level as I came close to breaking 9:00 myself a few times. I did that while working full-time. At the time, I contemplated, going "full-time" with the training. Several others were encouraging me to do so. 9:00 is "fast", but back then, I realized that I was still over 30 minutes or more behind the top Pros of the day on a similar course. Would training "full-time" have allowed me to go 30 minutes faster? That's the big question. Perhaps it might have - I'll never know. I'll be honest that money was a factor in my decision - triathlon was making me several thousand dollars a year plus free equipment at the time. Not enough to live off of. I decided to keep working and train as much as I could around the work that I had. No regrets.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

and guess how many of those can go sub 9 on 12 hours?

1% =)

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

Jack what's your point?

Absolutely Fleck, you assessed your reality and made a great choice and never looked back. I don't know Sami either but it seems like he's a truly gifted guy and would be successful at anything he tried if his blog is to be believed.

My only issue is that it seems like Sami is making the case that less is more, when in fact we know more is actually more. Also, once that case is made, so many of us here on ST jump at the bit to duplicate whatever panacea the latest flavor of the day is pushing, jumping at the red herring of 11 hours per week when in fact the operative stat here is likely Sami's genetical numbers, or the quality of the quantity and quantity of the quality if you know what I mean.

Like you always say, 2 hours a day, every day, for years. It's that simple.

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

training advice directed at age groupers using someone with elite talent as an example may not make sense.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

Well said.

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___________________
Twitter | Kancman | Blog

Completely agree. I said this earlier, but the only way I see the less is more approach working for anyone is if they have a huge base to start with and are sort of just on maintenance.

Consistency over time!

Edited to add - The article, while incredibly interesting to hear how anyone gets sub 9 hours done, is like snake oil for your average AG'er.

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"One Line Robert"

I think Paulo is just jealous that Matt Dixon's stable of athletes is much better than his own.

The bottom line is: Sami has been doing this for years and years ... that's what most people don't see, and I believe he doesn't even say it? If I am not mistaken, it's not that he never does anything "long" it's just that he picks his moments or day or series of days to do some key training. I would like to see the fancy bar graph for the last five years and I bet his consistency is UNREAL and he has very similar numbers year to year ... I would also bet he rarely if ever gets sick, injured or burned out ... look at how many weeks he is less than 12 hours of training ... maybe 8 or 9!

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Dave Latourette
http://www.TTENation.com

If I tell you I didn't know who is coaching the athlete in question, you will not believe me. But now I do understand the "snake oil" comments made above.

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The Triathlon Squad

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I don't think Sami is saying that his process will get everyone the same results. Its telling people that the standard "beat yourself into the ground" training many athletes do, is not for everyone and there are options. One piece I really agree with, and what probably keeps him on a consistent fitness level is with the lower amount of mileage logged, the few injuries he gets. If you take out the stress fractures, plantar fasciitis, or other over-use injuries people go through, there can be a better, gradual improvement in fitness.

You can't discount superior genetics allow him to go sub 9 hours, but how much focused training is really necessary to take a person as far as they can realistically?

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Brett Miller
Cydesdale Triathlon
M2 Revolution

It really must suck to be you. You seem so sure of your training methodologies, yet don't seem to be able to find a stable of pro or elite athletes that match up to other coaches who must clearly be crap according to you laconic abstruse missives on these forums.

His typical training week does not look easy. figure this: intervals on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday...long on Saturday, long on Sunday...recovery in between. Sounds fairly basic, but hard. What is not there are those "easy" spins and runs that so many of us will add to the mix. Also, the swimming. If you added 3 more swims, a couple short runs, and an easy bike ride, then you're up to 18-20 hours, which is pretty big for an AG athlete. Not sure he would get much return on adding those to the mix, as the intensity in the tue-thu block would be good.

Aside from the fact that the blog is not the easiest read, I think it's useful. Train hard, but not so hard that you have to spend too much time recovering from hard workouts. I like it.

Second in his AG, not AG runner-up.

This is interesting, but it doesn't do anyone much good without knowing his background. It seems like every time I hear someone going on and on about how much they've improved by lowering volume and increasing intensity, they have a history of big volume so there's a big base and their body is responding to a change in training. I've heard similar stories about people who did a lot of intensity and then went to high volume with lower intensity. It makes me think it's the change in training more than the training program itself. After so many years of a similar program, maybe you need to mix things up to reach the next level.

I know Sami a little bit. A couple years ago with did a Coachella weekend where it was music, beer and bad food all day and night. I would sleep till 9am, he was up at 7am swimming laps in the little resort pool then going for a long run. He's also done all kinds of bike tours all over the world, climbed Mt Kilimanjaro and run (he created it also) one of the largest real estate sites on the internet. Conversely, I have a hard time fitting in fantasy football, work and my DVR into my training schedule.

I read this article and was really intrigued. At first glance, it seems a 395w (50min power) and a swim split fast enough to win the races he has this season, would be nearly impossible on his volumes.

I figured I'd try to write his coach (Matt Dixon) and ask him a few questions to see if he would respond. Matt was kind enough to write me back so I thought I would share his thoughts with you. Below are my questions in bold and his responses not in bold.

I read the latest blog article written by your athlete Sami Inkinen (http://samiinkinen.tumblr.com/...waii-ironman-secrets). With enough consistency... would this limited amount of volume bring success to any or most athletes?

The funny thing is that the recipe for any athlete is very different. Sami is a big guy (180+) and responds well to intensity. Different to Rachel Joyce or Jess Smith (who won 70.3 worlds as an amateur) who are smaller and need higher volume. The key to coaching is finding the recipe for EACH athlete. This being said, I don't believe a high volume athlete should train beyond their capacity to maintain health ( and ability to adapt ). We build Sami's training as this is all he has. We are FORCED to do 12 or so hours. Not by choice. We just maximize his time budget. Does not mean 12 hours per week is the dream recipe. My pros do plenty more - as they have time to recover properly. Sami's point is that many age groups are have lots of time commitments drive themselves into a hole without thought. I agree

You wrote an article on your blog a while back about Jesse Thomas and the secret to swimming better. It more or less said the key to being a great or better swimmer was swimming more. How can you explain Sami's success with the incredibly low volume of swimming. I'm assuming he was a collegiate swimmer and needs to put in little work to swim fast?

This is VERY individual.

He is by no means a swimmer.. and not fast. He has improved a lot over the last 4 years of coaching, but no where near where he could be. The issue is that he needs a consistent swimming load of high volume to make the breakthrough. He cannot commit to it with his commitments.

He needs ~ 50% of his training volume in the winter months to be swimming to improve. It has not been possible up till now.

The fact he swims as good as it is... simply talent and a little miracle. I would not call it good or effective coaching, and would NOT work for most.

I absolutely believe in large volume for swim improvements.

The key is that he swam well over an hour at IM hawaii. "OK" for amateur, but not good enough if he wanted to race pro. Luckily, he is not competing against those guys. He took advantage of the large group and swam above his training or ability... in THIS case (swimming).

If Sami wasn't a collegiate swimmer, I'm assuming that he has some endurance sport background either in cycling or running... more than likely at a high level.

no high volume background at all. None. Not a former collegiate athlete either. what he has been is consistent over the last 8 + years

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Chris Thornham
Co-Founder And Previous Owner Of FLO Cycling