So how does one assess his own real potential? I know this is probably going to get some interesting answers and maybe some jeers…but I’m genuinely curious. Is it all about past performance or is it VO2 max testing or something else. If you were a coach and wanted to pick an athlete what would you look for…how many of you feel that you have reached your peak potential or realized yourself in triathlon. How many of you wonder how far you could go if…
there is no physiological test or tests that can predict this (yet)
you just have to train like a demon then check the stopwatch.
if I was a coach I would look for people who go fast. there is no more perfect test than timing someone and its pretty easy too.
I often wonder how far I could go if I HTFUed and didn’t get hurt, or sick, or the pool didn’t close for a month, and other excuses
I don’t think there’s really a test to show that. I honestly think I could be a competitive endurance athlete, but like alot of other athlete’s, I can’t stay healthy for more than 2 months at a time. Just an example of one of the many variables that have to work for you. I say there’s easily 150 factors in determining your potential, from things like V02 Max, all the way to desire.
I’ve always wondered the same thing. I think most athletes can become quite good. I think the key is consistent training for years. Like 5-10 years to reach your peak. Like some others said the consistent thing is the hard part. I seem to get injured a lot and some of my friends have never had an injury. I’ve often wondered why. I think everyone has their own individual battles and just need to find what works for them.
I also think that a lot of rookie triathletes reach for too much too quick. If you look at many of the ironman stars of today they spent years racing as short course athletes before taking on the long stuff. You need to basic training (build a fitness base) long enough as a beginner in order to be fit enough to actually “train” for the big stuff. This takes years not weeks or months. Anyway. Just my opinion.
This is where coaching becomes an art.
I wouldn’t turn down a chance to see someone’s VO2 max. I think that’s part of the puzzle.
Seeing their untrained run performance is helpful…ie. there are a plethora of stories of an elite runner recalling his freshman PE class doing a mile and running 5 minutes.
Anther indicator is how quickly their performance increases in the first few months of training.
Another factor is how dedicated they are. Face it, raw talent itself isn’t enough.
I’d also want to see their running form. Not everyone who becomes elite has great running form, but it’s one quick way to get one of the puzzle pieces if you’re evaluating an untrained person and want an indicator prior to watching them progress with training.
Take a minimum of four years of full-time training without any layoffs or injuries. If you are not good after four years then you lack talent. Not that you can’t improve after four years, but that is enough to see if you have any natural ability.
Chad
The great thing about triathlon is that if you lack talent you can still get very far and be successful with hard work and consistency. If you look at most of the pro stories they were either very good straight away ( junior sport stars, win their first triathlon… ) or take little work to rise to the top ( very fast progression ). Some people get to where they are through hard work but their peaks are not nearly as high. If you have talent you know it, your better than everyone else with the same or less work… the cream rises to the top.
I think though that with endurance activities it can take a LONG time to find out what you can achieve. I’ve gone through a series of plateaus where I think I’ve maxed my potential out but with a little rest and a renewed vigor for an aggressive training schedule I’m continue to make progress. Personally i think my limit right now is an AG podium at an Ironman race, but I’m open to expanding that limit once I get there.
Also how far you can go without “talent” is often limited by the big three resources: money, time and dedication.
plus if you are too short to swim great, you can probably run a bit better
and if you can’t handle lots of run volume you can be an uber biker
and so on
.
So how does one assess his own real potential? I know this is probably going to get some interesting answers and maybe some jeers…but I’m genuinely curious. Is it all about past performance or is it VO2 max testing or something else. If you were a coach and wanted to pick an athlete what would you look for…how many of you feel that you have reached your peak potential or realized yourself in triathlon. How many of you wonder how far you could go if…
Did a blog post on this, but do you really want to know? Mental toughness alone is such a complex variable whose influence is integrated over every day, that I doubt many people get that close to any inherent limits without Lance Armstrong-level horse steroids.
one way to consider the potential of an athlete for a specific sport is to make anthropometric comparisons to other elites in the sport. Granted, this is not the be-all and end-all but it might help.
for example: British Journal of Sports Medicine 1989;23:30-33; doi:10.1136/bjsm.23.1.30 Copyright © 1989 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd & British Association of Sport and Exercise Medicine. Anthropometric comparison of cyclists from different events.
J P Foley****, S R Bird****, J A White****
Department of Movement Studies, Christ Church College, University of Ulster, Jordanstown, Northern Ireland.
An anthropometric analysis was conducted upon 36 competitive male cyclists (mean age 23.4 years) who had been competing on average for 8.2 years. Cyclists were allocated to one of four groups; sprint, pursuit, road and time trial according to their competitive strengths. The sample included cyclists who were classified as category 1, 2, 3 or professional (British Cycling Federation and Professional Cycling Association). The sprint cyclists were significantly shorter and more mesomorphic than the other three groups (p less than 0.05). The time trialists were the tallest, most ectomorphic group, having the longest legs (p less than 0.01), the highest leg length/height ratio (p less than 0.05) and the greatest bitrochanteric width (p less than 0.05). The pursuit and road cyclists were found to have similar physiques, which were located between those of the sprinters and time trialists. The biomechanical implications of these differences in physique may be related to the high rate of pedal revolutions required by sprinters and the higher gear ratios used by time trialists.
I believe Australia has used a type of Youth Talent Identification for years. In rowing they recruited untrained women based only on body size and put together a team that went on to the olympics ('88 ?). (i don’t know the specifics, only caught a part of the story a long time ago). I believe it was also used extensively in eastern block countries.
EDIT
found another, this looks like it would be an interesting read.
Annals of Human Biology
2000, Vol. 27, No. 4, Pages 387-400
Morphology and performance of world championship triathletes
G. J. Landers* 1**, B. A. Blanksby** 1**, T. R. Ackland** 1** and D. Smith** 2*
1The University of Western Australia, Australia
2Queensland Academy of Sport, Australia
Performance is related to body morphology in many sports. With triathlon making its debut into the Olympic programme in 2000, it was deemed important to determine which physical characteristics of elite-level triathletes were significantly related to performance. Seventy-one elite and junior elite triathletes, from 11 nations, competing at the 1997 World Triathlon Championships were measured on a battery of 28 anthropometric dimensions. A factor analysis was conducted, which reduced the number of variables to four and these were used in a stepwise linear regression to determine which morphological factors were important to performance. Elite triathletes were significantly (p< 0.05) faster than their junior counterparts (males 1:52:26 vs. 2:03:23 and females 2:07:01 vs. 2:14:05) and showed less variation in performance times. Run time variation was the largest of the component disciplines and tended to show the importance of this discipline to the final outcome. Following a factor analysis the four distinguishable morphological factors that emerged were: robustness, adiposity, segmental lengths and skeletal mass. Relating these factors to the total time obtained by the triathletes in this study yielded a regression equation that correlated significantly with all triathletes, accounting for 47% of the variance in total triathlon duration. The regression equations illustrated the importance of low levels of adiposity for elite triathletes for total time and most of the subdisciplines. The other factor that showed importance was that proportionally longer segmental lengths contributed to successful swimming outcome.
You can’t test how much someone is willing to hurt. There are likely a lot of athletes out there with amazing genetic potential, who don’t have the mental ability to HTFU and end up FOMOP at best. And there are likely a lot of athletes out there who are mediocre from a genetic perspective, who are so mentally tough that they can take 100x the pain of the average triathlete - and end up beating the pants off pretty much everyone.
hell thats easier than testing how aero a bike is
=)
You can’t test how much someone is willing to hurt. .
My thoughts; You are what you are. What ever you accomplish/ed was/is your potential. We all have hurdles in our lives and make the best of what is served to us. But, what we accomplish is our potential….Period. Coulda, woulda, shoulda are excuses. You pick the sport, I get so tired of hearing people tell me that if it wasn’t for an injury, coach that didn’t like them, etc, etc, they would have been XYZ. BS. You didn’t; therefore, you couldn’t.
For example, I was a HS All American Baseball Player that played in a college summer league between my Junior and Senior year in HS and hit .329 against D1 pitching. I tore my shoulder up at the end of the my senior season.
I was a HS All American that hit D1 pitching in a college summer league. No more, no less. Was I a D1 player? No. Could I have played if I hadn’t hurt my shoulder? Well, my shoulder **WAS **hurt and I didn’t play D1 even though I tried after the injury; therefore, the answer is no.
This is very interesting. I’m actually amazed at guys like Andy Potts and Matty Reed who are so fast running yet they are big guys. I’m 6’1" 175lbs and standing next to Andy I felt small…I’ve always thought that elites are typically super skinny but they prove otherwise. Thanks for the very interesting reply:)
hell thats easier than testing how aero a bike is
=)
You can’t test how much someone is willing to hurt. .
Can we wind tunnel test my pain tolerance
if you were a coach and wanted to pick an athlete what would you look for
An athlete who would do the workouts you wrote for him/her, an athlete committed to getting faster, an athlete who communicates with you well so you can adjust the plan if needed, etc.
nothing to do with talent!
Anther indicator is how quickly their performance increases in the first few months of training.
that has very little to do with potential and a lot to do with current fitness. If you take an out of shape person they will make a lot of fitness gains in a couple months (ie might drop MINUTES off a 5k time). If you have a well trained athlete and work with her for a couple months she might drop a couple SECONDS off a 5k time.
Aerobic training is not rocket science. If You Do The Work You Will Get Fitter. The End. so untrained + a couple months = you didn’t really learn much.
four years?
uh oh, my grad program’s only 2.5. I’ll have to get another master’s degree 
DD says it takes 10y to be an overnight success in triathlon
so there’s the answer, train seriously for 10yrs and do the day after day week after week thing and see where it gets you .
I was just discussing this on a ride this evening. I wonder often if I developed some dietary and training discipline and really buckled down what my potential is. According to my stress test my metobolic rate is that of a world class athlete. On the other hand, at my thinnest (9% BF) I was still in the high 170s, not exactly Kenyan (and I’m nowhere near 170 right now). I think I could be middle of FOP but nowhere near ‘elite’. Much easier to discuss potential than live up to it.
According to my stress test my metobolic rate is that of a world class athlete.
With all due respect, that does NOT mean you could be a world class athlete. It’s like saying “I have blonde hair like a couple world class athletes.” High metabolic rate just means you get to eat more than the rest of us.
(the other biometrics are one way to look at it - some body types are suited to sport X better than sport Y but that’s not the be-all, end-all to it either)
yeah, so figure out what’s keeping you from that moFOP and stop slacking