I can’t believe that I am up so late wondering this, but alas, I am. Taking elites/pros out of the equation, are there other sports/hobbies/activities where age groupers have to dedicate substantial amounts of time to accomplish a task? I realize this is a very subjective question. Taking IM for example, there has to be some sort of effort on the AG’s part to cross the finish line. Many AG athletes spend many hours a week training to accomplish this goal. What other activities can we point to that might parallel IM training in this regard? Something where the end goal is so difficult, your average person would have to work on this task for many hours a week just to meet the bare bones standards of “finishing”?
Nothing I can think of…especially with no monetary compensation…
Serious ultra-marathon cycling requires more hours than IM. Unlike running and swimming, where you can get in a solid, even killer, workout in an hour, on the order of 75% of the training to race FC508, RAAM, PBP, BMB and equivalent races needs be out on the bike for long, long hours. Its not that you don’t benefit from an hour of brutal hill repeats - its just that it won’t make any difference if you don’t know what its like to ride all day, watch the sun go down and keep riding until it comes back up. Even when I was training for 300-450 mile events, that meant an awful lot of workouts that were above and beyond what a “long ride” would be for an IM athlete. I can’t even imagine the training regime that the RAAM winners follow.
Mountain Climbers?
The “finishing” requirement in your last sentence almosts defines endurance sports. There are lots of people spending huge amounts time on other sports. I have a neighbor that spends more time fishing than I do training.
Thom
When I was a speed skater we would skate three 2 hour and one 3 hour practice a week. Sometimes pick up another practice at another rink.
In addition to that we would ride our bikes 150 to 200 miles a week from March through August. The guys that made nationals would do more than that and the world team guys were just amazing.
But unlike Ironman, you had to stay with the leader of the race cuz if you got lapped you were removed from the race.
jaretj
Almost any decent AG swimmer on a USS team will swim 12-16 hours a week pretty much year 'round.
This is not the elites, just your average teenager on a competitive team. My daughter was swimming 2 hours every weeknight, 3 mornings a week for an hour and 3 hours on Saturdays at 13.
Add a little dryland training and it does add up.
G
D1 swimming
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Definitely D1 swimming. We would typically get in 2 or 3 mornings a week for 1.5 to 2 hours. Every afternoon we were in the pool for at least 2 hours, sometimes up to 3 hours. Also, 2 nights a week, we would get in an hour in the weight room (sprinters would go more often). Wrap up with either a meet or another 2 hour practice Saturday morning and it’s a pretty full week. Glad I’m not doing that any more!
What other activities can we point to that might parallel IM training in this regard? Something where the end goal is so difficult, your average person would have to work on this task for many hours a week just to meet the bare bones standards of “finishing”?
That’s easy. German house cleaning. 
Well being decent at Golf for one, you can put in 6 hours each weekend day and an hour or so each day with one or two 2-3 hour mid week sessions and never break 90. It is a sport where people can play for hours and hours every day for years and years and still suck. Anyone reading this that thinks golf is not a realy sport and/or easy, borrow some clubs, go break 80 and get back to me.
Good call.
I played tennis growing up …that was good for at least 2-3 hours every day, and that is not including conditioning. I remember what a HUGE deal it was to get even one day off.
Adults addicted to the sport (aka my mom) will put in a pretty good amount of time as well with league matches, practice matches, group clinics, private lessons, serve practice, etc.
Malcolm Gladwell in his new book Outliers uses the 10,000 hr standard as the benchmark for being able to be truly great at something. That works out to about 10 years of 20 hours/week - for endurance sports training, I would say that’s about right!
That being said to address the topic directly, I think the better approach is to look at adopting the lifestyle - this is something that you want to do. It becomes part of you. If you take that approach, then the results will come - they are almost a bonus.
Definitely D1 swimming. We would typically get in 2 or 3 mornings a week for 1.5 to 2 hours. Every afternoon we were in the pool for at least 2 hours, sometimes up to 3 hours. Also, 2 nights a week, we would get in an hour in the weight room (sprinters would go more often). Wrap up with either a meet or another 2 hour practice Saturday morning and it’s a pretty full week. Glad I’m not doing that any more!
Yep. As a mid-distance/sprinter we were 4 mornings a week 2-2.5 hours swimming, and 3 mornings of 1.5-2.5 hours circuit training/weights/running stadiums. 4 afternoons a week another 2 hours of swimming. And 15 minutes of abs/core/pullups every practice (law of diminishing returns anyone?). We’d do the maximum 20 hours a week easy. But as an Age Group swimmer we’d hit 20-25 hours 50 weeks a year.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned gymnastics. Those guys and girls are practicing Constantly.
Great call on golf BUT…
Time on the range and course combined, consider also a similar following b/w Golf and tri magazines (despite that we simply re-read the same articles over and over and over), I was a hopeless golf addict for years b4 getting into racing…BUT
my sleeping, eating, stretching, daydreaming, naps, etc etc. arent really considered as minutes/hours spent training for IM, I find these things are most detrimental to my personal relationships etc. regarding IM training. Not to mention in huge base and super intense build weeks your just spent alot of the time. Beer and a hot dog at the turn is considered nutrition in Golf. Thats the difference.
How about serious and technically-skilled MMA fighters? One of the reasons why I pay attention to the UFC is because the best of those guys have to display mastery in even more disciplines than is required by triathletes. Beyond that, their basic cardio has to be top-notch, consistent weight-training is mandatory, and flexibility is probably off the charts.
I’ve heard about the 10,000 hour benchmark and I think it’s interesting. I read an article from quite a while ago where they quoted a nordic skiing great. I can’t remember who it was…it might’ve been Gunde Svan (it wasn’t Bjorn Daehlie, however)? His belief was that it took 10 years of consistent training and practice to truly learn how to properly classic ski (as opposed to skating).
**What other activities can we point to that might parallel IM training in this regard? Something where the end goal is so difficult, your average person would have to work on this task for many hours a week just to meet the bare bones standards of “finishing”? **
How about quilting and/or scrap booking? Both require (what appear to be) huge investments in equipment and time and the degree of finished product varies wildly…
d
Any comment on how long it would take to become “properly” proficient at skate-skiing?
I am a mediocre-form classic skier and have not yet tried skate-skiing, but thinking about it a bit here between sentences, is there even any vaild comparison between the two styles? I’m trying to picture both, and I guess what I see is that world-class classic skiers rely on rhythm and power that they try maintain with tight consistency, whereas for skate-skiers there is more variance in their technique(s).
There’s a great chance that I have no idea of what I’m talking about, and for that I apologize.
I’ve heard about the 10,000 hour benchmark and I think it’s interesting. I read an article from quite a while ago where they quoted a nordic skiing great. I can’t remember who it was…it might’ve been Gunde Svan (it wasn’t Bjorn Daehlie, however)? His belief was that it took 10 years of consistent training and practice to truly learn how to properly classic ski (as opposed to skating).
Ironically, for many years 1,000hrs/year has been the benchmark standard for world class nordic skiers. The Norwegians have studied this extensivly - the great Bjorn Daehle was part of those studies back in the 80’s and 90’s.
Assuming they start to become serious in their early to mid teens, the the goal in the Norwegian elite skiing development group is to build up to roughly 1,000 hrs of training a year by the time they reach their early 20’s. They then fine tune the yearly volume to suit the skier - usually with a bit less overall volume. They did find that 1,000 hrs was some form of break point - that when people started to do more than that, that often performance started to trail off. Reason: More overall fatigue. More down time for injuries and so on.