You can get the basic message from Marc Becker’s “The Method” document which is somewhere on the ironguides website. It was a fairly thinly disguised summary of what he’d watched Sutton have his athletes do. Sutton himself (“doc”) made mention of it on his own forum once.
The philosophy of EVERY good coach is exactly the same - get the athletes you have as prepared as possible to achieve their best performance on race day. Coaching “philosophy” is one of the most absurd terms in use today. What is my coaches “philosophy”? That I should be prepared to win races. If a coach starts talking about his philosophy, that’s a pretty sure sign you should run away.
What you are actually interested in is Brett Sutton’s methodology. I.e., HOW does he actually get his athletes fit.
If you start confusing philosophy with methodology, then you start drawing all sorts of conclusions that aren’t there. I.e., doing a steady 3.8km swim weekly is a workout. The correct interpretation of that is that, even in swimming, it’s important to do event specific workouts. You wouldn’t train to run a marathon by only running fast 5kms, and Sutton applies that same logic to swimming.
The hard part with any sort of interview is how would you expect one of the most seasoned coaches in the sport to express what he knows about training in a single sitting. Impossible.
I think Brett Sutton is more than a little crazy. I believe he’s a bit reckless with his athletes and that he doesn’t care if he breaks a lot of athletes along the way to creating a few very successful ones. But his thoughts are always worth listening to. Not always, IMO, worth following. But certainly worth hearing.
EDIT: the other thing to be wary of is to think that you can NOT recreate a methodology simply by copying workouts. If, for example, I just go read Michael Phelp’s training log, I cannot just clone that for myself and think that I’ve recreated Bob Bowman’s training methodology for myself. All I’ve done is copy a bunch of workouts.
I believe he’s a bit reckless with his athletes and that he doesn’t care if he breaks a few athletes along the way to creating **a lot **of very successful ones.
I think Brett Sutton is more than a little crazy. I believe he’s a bit reckless with his athletes and that he doesn’t care if he breaks a lot of athletes along the way to creating a few very successful ones. But his thoughts are always worth listening to. Not always, IMO, worth following. But certainly worth hearing.
Well said, Jordan.
What I have always found interesting regarding Brett Sutton’s comments and an over-riding feature of what he does, not so much the training itself and the methodology, is that a key thing is that he takes the worry away for these elite level athletes - particularly the women. I don’t want to stereotype here, but elite level athletes and particularly elite level women athletes seem to worry about, just about everything. Sutton seems to give them the confidence to just train and race in the moment and apply all of their energy both mental and physical to that.
The two takeaways you went with aren’t really true as eluded to.
I wouldn’t take away that “there is no place for speedwork in ironman” when I see 1min and 30second sprints on the treadmill and 20x1min power intervals on the bike along with hard 25s in the pool. There is a mixture of speed, strength and endurance every week if you were to take an ironguide plan as an example…
the rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct.
any of the three branches, namely natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and metaphysical philosophy, that are accepted as composing this study.
a system of philosophical doctrine: the philosophy of Spinoza.
the critical study of the basic principles and concepts of a particular branch of knowledge, esp. with a view to improving or reconstituting them: the philosophy of science.
a system of principles for guidance in practical affairs.
a philosophical attitude, as one of composure and calm in the presence of troubles or annoyances.
meth·od·ol·o·gy –noun, plural -gies.
a set or system of methods, principles, and rules for regulating a given discipline, as in the arts or sciences.
Philosophy .
a. the underlying principles and rules of organization of a philosophical system or inquiry procedure.
b. the study of the principles underlying the organization of the various sciences and the conduct of scientific inquiry.
Education . a branch of pedagogics dealing with analysis and evaluation of subjects to be taught and of the methods of teaching them.
Origin:
I humbly submit the preceding courtesy of dictionary.com. I think it is a perfectly acceptable way to phrase the question, how does Brett Sutton conducts his coaching inquiries - or to paraphrase using def #5 - “what is Brett Suttons system of principles which guide his pursuit of the practical affair of coaching”.
Seems as if you know something about his philosophy, i.e., you say that he can be reckless - so is his philosophy that one must move themselves to the breaking point (wherever that may lie for the individual) in order to progress? So what DO you know of his philosophy (or if you wish, methodology)?
PS - It’s not as if the guy asked if Brett Sutton believes in making his athletes “strong”.
What I find interesting is that the Sutton Philosophy/methodology/approach (I won’t debate what it is), results in a far greater probability of successful outcome for elite females than it does with males. Sitting on the outside as an observer and fan of the sport, my layman’s perception is that physiologically the women tend to respond better because they are generally lighter (in other words the physics of all that running means they have to deal with less force per stride), and have more body fat reserves to protect themselves against the day over day training load.
The other point that Rappstar has made in the past is that the depth in male elite triathlon is greater than on the women’s side, in that the differential between 1st and 10th place in any major tri for men is a lot less than women. This means that in male triathlon there is less margin for error and guys generally won’t succeed “in spite of their training/tactics”. If Sutton is experimenting on his athletes, the female athletes have a better chance of still succeed in spite of training experimentation, whereas the guys will likely slide down several spots off the podium
Not that these are Sutton athletes, but a recent example is IM Arizona. Matty Reed did Clearwater + IM Arizona on the men’s side, and Leanda Cave did Clearwater+Arizona on the women’s side. On the men’s side, there was not enough spread in the outcome for Matty to overcome the handicap of having Clearwater in his legs…whereas on the women’s side there was.
“I believe he’s a bit reckless with his athletes and that he doesn’t care if he breaks a lot of athletes along the way to creating a few very successful ones”
That is a statement that comes up very often with successful coaches. and it would be v hard for you to proof that.
Interestingly he made a comment that if he was still coaching Chrissie it would not be acceptable for her to go that fast as she does.
I think you know peter Reid’s ex coach quite well , and do you think he burnt out Peter Reid as many would claim ?
What I find interesting is that the Sutton Philosophy/methodology/approach (I won’t debate what it is), results in a far greater probability of successful outcome for elite females than it does with males. Sitting on the outside as an observer and fan of the sport, my layman’s perception is that physiologically the women tend to respond better because they are generally lighter (in other words the physics of all that running means they have to deal with less force per stride), and have more body fat reserves to protect themselves against the day over day training load.
The other point that Rappstar has made in the past is that the depth in male elite triathlon is greater than on the women’s side, in that the differential between 1st and 10th place in any major tri for men is a lot less than women. This means that in male triathlon there is less margin for error and guys generally won’t succeed “in spite of their training/tactics”. If Sutton is experimenting on his athletes, the female athletes have a better chance of still succeed in spite of training experimentation, whereas the guys will likely slide down several spots off the podium
Not that these are Sutton athletes, but a recent example is IM Arizona. Matty Reed did Clearwater + IM Arizona on the men’s side, and Leanda Cave did Clearwater+Arizona on the women’s side. On the men’s side, there was not enough spread in the outcome for Matty to overcome the handicap of having Clearwater in his legs…whereas on the women’s side there was.
fleck it seems traithletes seem to worry about everything in general.
And i think its mostly male that ask will an Dura ace make me really faster than ultegra
should I write an 404 or 808 to be able to finish my first an IM
or am I wrong …
(a) Do not plan periods of decreased overload for “recovery” purposes.
(b) Do not plan transitional training phases where fitness is partially lost.
(c) Instead, demand consistent high quality technical performance at practices. When performance quality deteriorates, allow athletes to terminate participation in that practice segment. This facilitates each individual’s capacity to tolerate particular levels of strain, avoids performing in detrimental excessive fatigue states, and allows athletes better in-session recovery.
(d) The orientation of athletes is turned from trying to complete all training, to completing the greatest volume of quality training possible. This is particularly beneficial for avoiding maladaptation and has the concomitant benefit of increasing the v olume of quality performance and decreasing the volume of inferior performance.
(e) Since athletes are encouraged never to enter excessively fatigued states, the likelihood of their entering an overtrained state is greatly reduced. With that reduction, it becomes unnecessary to plan for unloading macrocycles.
(f) Athletes are continually challenged to do more quality training. The neurotic imagination of symptoms that happens with institutionalized overtraining is avoided.
(g) The success of this approach is dependent upon the sole criterion for cessation of a training stimulus: When performance decreases, despite a compensatory increase in effort, the practice item should be terminated.
(h) For the coach, the following decision making activity is appropriate:
If you were going to make an amendment to what I wrote, it would have been appropriate to add something along the lines of “breaks athletes but also gives them a lot of success first.” The other thing to keep in mind is that the success stories always get WAY more attention than the failures.
And, of course, there are those athletes who Sutton has “influenced,” but who then leave - Emma Snowsill, for example - and achieve their long term success having had Sutton as their coach, but only briefly. I wonder why. Chrissie left, and I’d wager that’s the reason that a big part of why she’s still winning races
But really, when you look at the track record, I think a lot of it is based on how you consider success. If someone has one remarkable season, but then drops off the radar with injury, is that success or is that a broken athlete? I suppose it’s both.
Sutton will always have his fans and those who think that he’s the greatest coach to ever walk the earth. I’m not interested in debating with those true believers. I’m not interested in having you “fix” what I wrote. I meant exactly what I said, and I didn’t need you to “fix” it for me.
I doubt it is a selection bias. There’s just less room for error in men’s triathlon, so he its just harder to get the same level of results across the board.
What was the delta between Caroline Steffen and Mirinda Carfrae at Kona? Amy Marsh and Carfrae?..8 minutes and 30 minutes. So in a space of 8 minutes, one woman came in and in 30 minutes 10 more came in.
For the same deltas on the men’s side we got 3 more men and 22 more men reespectively. Seems like the margin for error is a lot less simply because there are more men in the same spread to bump an athlete down the rankings
“Coaching philosophy” has become the latest catch phrase in the sport. You see a lot of the “coaches of the minute” talking about “my philosophy about X is…” And then they sound off about some sort of absurd topic like “the importance of core strength.” There is nothing wrong with asking someone about their philosophy as a coach, using the strict definition of the word. What I object to is the buzz phrase “coaching philosophy.” If people actually used the word philosophy to mean what it does mean, as you said - “a system of principles for guidance in practical affairs,” then that’s fine, although of course, then you need to clarify exactly what the word “principles” means. That’s why I think methodology is more appropriate - “a set of methods for regulating a given discipline.” I.e., what you “do,” as opposed to what you “believe.”
Especially since it’s VERY difficult to interpret what someone BELIEVES or THINKS simply by looking at their workouts, I think it’s only fair to look at the methodology - the practical end result of those beliefs. I.e., when there’s a full marathon on an athletes training schedule, there could be a whole bunch of ideas behind that. And some of them might be reasonable. And some might be unreasonable. But regardless of the validity of the thought process behind it, I consider the practical end result - that you tell an athlete to run 26.2 miles as a training run - to be reckless to the health of an athlete.
