That was ridiculous watching him show the extremes of athletic incompetence to perfection in one event!
I feel a lot better about my poor swimming ability now. Mo reminds me of Eric the Eel! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P8U4g_srRU
Did his wife(?) change shoes while on the rowing machine?
I don’t know if you ever came across the Superstars shows? I think they made them in several countries, mostly in the 70s or early 80s. It’s basically taking a bunch of top class athletes and pitting them against each other across a range of different disciplines.
BBC made a one off special several years ago. I think it was a few months after the London Olympics in 2012, so quite a while back.
The contenders were all british athletes who’d competed at the olympics. As I recall it included Mo Farah, Johnathan Brownlee and Joshua Jackson. I remember Farah being comically bad at everything except running. I think Joshua Jackson won it.
I’m sure there’s Youtube videos about. Can’t look for one right now.
I remember it very well!
Each of the “specialists” was banned from taking part in their most closely-matched discipline. So, Mo Farah couldn’t take part in the 800m and the Brownlees were not allowed in the mountain bike race.
If anybody wants confirmation that run and bike fitness are not all that interchangeable, Mo Farah was USELESS in the mountain bike challenge. Easily beaten by almost everybody. I think the boxer (Anthony Joshua) won.
The Brownlees kicked arse in the 800m as you would expect… I think Ali edged Johnny. But they were AWFUL in the 100m sprint. I mean, it was like 15 seconds and so far behind the winner (also the boxer) it wasn’t funny!! Almost no fast twitch fibres whatsoever!
The B’s were decent at rowing (kayak). Not so good at the dips.
I tried looking for this video when there was a thread running about transferable fitness and the difference between general aerobic capacity and specific, localized aerobic fitness. This was to be my exhibit A but I couldn’t find the bloody thing. I’ve got some friends at the BBC so I might ask them to dig copy out of the archives for me.
Cheers, R.
Edit: corrected myself, it was Anthony Joshua, future heavyweight world champ!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/mediapacks/superstars
Was able to find the 100m I mentioned. Look how badly the killer Bs suck at sprinting!!
I forgot it was both Brownlees. Thought it was just Johnny for some reason. Yeah, they really were awful. I think I could possibly beat that!
It does demonstrate that being very aerobically fit for one sport doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be very physically capable in general.
Reminds me I’ve been meaning to add some variety to my training for a few years now, but haven’t.
I had rather good explosive power when I was younger. I’d say I was better suited as a boxer (but no thanks!) or sprinter than an endurance athlete. It all seems to have gone away. It’s hard to know whether it’s just age that did the damage or if the endurance training has a big part to play. I suspect it has.
I think there is still huge overlap with bike and run training.
However, if you do ZERO bike training like Mo Farah and then race it, yeah you are gonna suck like a rookie since there are so many easily corrected sport limiters that stop you.
A better test showing the crossover would be to take Mo Farah vs a bunch of normie nonbiking folks as well as some top swimmers with great cardio but no bike experience, and train them on the bike equally for 3 months. Mo Farah will absolutely destroy all the normies and likely all the swimmers too, just from the crossover of his run leg ability once you remove those low level bike limiters through the 3 month training period.
I think there is still huge overlap with bike and run training.
However, if you do ZERO bike training like Mo Farah and then race it, yeah you are gonna suck like a rookie since there are so many easily corrected sport limiters that stop you.
A better test showing the crossover would be to take Mo Farah vs a bunch of normie nonbiking folks as well as some top swimmers with great cardio but no bike experience, and train them on the bike equally for 3 months. Mo Farah will absolutely destroy all the normies and likely all the swimmers too, just from the crossover of his run leg ability once you remove those low level bike limiters through the 3 month training period.
I bet you in 1 year of riding we can make Mo into a crazy fast climber…not so much a TT or road stage guy.
I think there is still huge overlap with bike and run training.
However, if you do ZERO bike training like Mo Farah and then race it, yeah you are gonna suck like a rookie since there are so many easily corrected sport limiters that stop you.
A better test showing the crossover would be to take Mo Farah vs a bunch of normie nonbiking folks as well as some top swimmers with great cardio but no bike experience, and train them on the bike equally for 3 months. Mo Farah will absolutely destroy all the normies and likely all the swimmers too, just from the crossover of his run leg ability once you remove those low level bike limiters through the 3 month training period.
I bet you in 1 year of riding we can make Mo into a crazy fast climber…not so much a TT or road stage guy.
True, but you’re already talking pro/elite level cycling. As I mentioned, we all know that for the very pointy end of ability in specific sports, the effects of sport/endurance overlap becomes increasingly less pronounced (or else triathletes would win all endurance events.)
Mo would still kill all the normies+swimmers after 3 months of training in all nontechnically dominated bike races (he would likely be Joe Average in a downhill MTB technical race, for example) including TT/road/climbing solely on the overlap of his running cardio and leg endurance.
The top swimmers might catch up to him if the bike training period is extended long enough to overcome the effects of this x-over (years, for example), but the bike/run overlap is huge no doubt.
Mo would likely be a dangerous climber even in an elite field if we took him out to 1 year of bike training, I agree!
Surely the swimming portion for Mo was exaggerated. I mean surely, right?
I’m sure that Mo exaggerated the extent of his near-drowning in that video, probably to lessen the expected gap after his (monster) treadmill.
Although to be fair, I’m sure he’d look pretty terrible in the water even if he were to give it his best shot that day, probably not a whole lot better than that
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdTzO4ILNA0
It’s ridiculously bad. Not even worth watching. If he’s not swimming with goggles then is there any point in him even doing this? I guess it was just a fun thing to do with the fam. Totally noncompetitive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdTzO4ILNA0
It’s ridiculously bad. Not even worth watching. If he’s not swimming with goggles then is there any point in him even doing this? I guess it was just a fun thing to do with the fam. Totally noncompetitive.
Def totally noncompetitive but you gotta admit that he is pretty awesome running fast on his Woodway TM!
Was able to find the 100m I mentioned. Look how badly the killer Bs suck at sprinting!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJMIwlQB-28
looks like a great show cant believe super heavy weight boxer won the 100m and in that time. If you do find the series I am interested in watching
Anyone else notice that Mo was the only one to properly sight his exit in the pool? Finished right by the stairs. #efficiencies
I feel there is a very good chance that he purposely swam and rowed with such absurdly bad technique in order to be a good sport and/or funny.
Was able to find the 100m I mentioned. Look how badly the killer Bs suck at sprinting!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJMIwlQB-28
looks like a great show cant believe super heavy weight boxer won the 100m and in that time. If you do find the series I am interested in watching
Back in the 70s/80s it was a much watch TV show. The trouble is that most sport is so much more professional now that it kind of doesn’t work as it did. Kevin Keegan did it in pretty much at the peek of his career and got banged up pretty good in a bike fall - toe cages that wouldn’t of released and, I think, they were cycling on a running track. There is no way a top football (soccer) player does anything that risky today. To be fair they shouldn’t of been doing it then. You’d have to have people at the end of their career or from minor sports but back then it was genuinely top class competitors.
There was a guy from Judo called Brian Jacks and what he could do in the gym element was pretty amazing. He was as much a sporting hero of mine, because of what he did in that show, as traditional sports people were. It bugs me that there was this great inspiring TV the whole family could watch that made you want to try sports and there isn’t really anything like it today. As kids we literally would do squat thrusts and press ups there and then because it was so impressive.