Terry Laughlin from Total Immersion in a fascinating debate on BT

Triathlon Forum
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There’s a fascinating debate with Terry Laughlin himself from Total Immersion on BeginnerTriathlete, where he’s justifying his “go-easy” training methods for all athletes, not just beginners. A few strong swimmers are actively participating, which is making for a very interesting discussion. Was wondering what the opinion of the fishies on ST was about the points brought up.

Thread here: http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=208275&start=81&posts=97

Some of the controversial quotes from Terry himself on the thread:

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"Unlike in running and cycling, there has never been any correlation established between ANY fitness measure and swimming performance. Energy system training works for some swimmers. Fails for far more.

The only absolute correlation that exists in swimming is SL x SR = V. And that equation is far more influenced by neural conditioning than aerobic."

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"I know this is anecdotal, but I never swim “extremely hard,” let alone on a regular basis, yet swam the USMS 2-mile Cable Swim in 46:20 at age 56, breaking my own USMS 55-59 record.

This summer my goal is to break my USMS 55-59 1-Mile Cable Swim record during my final year in the age group. At no time will I swim extremely hard in training. And if I reach max effort during the event, it will only be for the final 100-200m."

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You can’t win the race during the swim leg, but you can certainly lose it - or seriously compromise your chances for a satisfying outcome. Unless you are a near-elite, who practiced lots of “red-line” swimming in your youth, your best races will happen when you keep your HR relatively low during the swim and can recover it fully within 90 sec to 2 minutes of leaving the water.

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Of the 3 disciplines in triathlon, swimming is the only one ideally suited to restoration. If you train strategically, a good, relaxed, technique-oriented swim practice can aid in your recovery for the land-based training that is more naturally stressful. If you try to HTFU in the pool, you will almost certainly compromise your run and bike training.
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none of that sounds controversial to me unless you are a pro who needs to be strong enough to get to, and stay with the lead pack the whole time

also I bet, just as in discussions about LSD running, that “easy” training for him is pretty brutal for the average age grouper noob.

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I think the controversial part comes from his stance that you really should never “HTFU” in the pool according to his philosophy. (The title of the thread is from someone asking whether he needs to HTFU in his swim training.)

If you read the threads in context and to whom he’s replying to, you’ll see that he’s against the approach of working hard in the pool for strength and endurance. Per his philosophy, pure focus on technique will yield all the speed you will ever need.

I happen to think this is true for rank beginners, but I definitely don’t agree with this even for an early intermediate swimmer. I don’t think technique alone will get you into even MOP if you don’t have any endurance and power training.

I just learned to swim a little less than 2 years ago, but for sure, after a year of needed technique-focus, I didn’t get any faster by following the “swim easy” approach. In contrast, I’ve made definite improvements with serious intervals and distance (after seeing a coach to verify my technique didn’t have any fatal flaws that were really going to inhibit me.)

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ive got a long way to go before I can swim as fast as my coach who doesn’t really train anymore at all.

that would suggest to me that technique is still my major limiter

Im at like 10x100@1:40 he is at infinityx100 at 1:10

heh

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terry laughlin himself can keep putting out that garbage slow swimming while the rest of the swimming world gets fast.

as usual, someone is trying to sell a gimmick to lazy rich triathletes that want to skip the work.

the only truth he spouts is a ridiculously verbose wall of text that really simply means, pace well.

“You can’t win the race during the swim leg, but you can certainly lose it - or seriously compromise your chances for a satisfying outcome. Unless you are a near-elite, who practiced lots of “red-line” swimming in your youth, your best races will happen when you keep your HR relatively low during the swim and can recover it fully within 90 sec to 2 minutes of leaving the water.”

“brevity is the soul of wit” LOL

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ive got a long way to go before I can swim as fast as my coach who doesn’t really train anymore at all.

that would suggest to me that technique is still my major limiter

Im at like 10x100@1:40 he is at infinityx100 at 1:10

heh

I highly doubt that it’s all technique.

To give a related example, I’m was a pure runner, and trained very hard (70-100 mpw), and had a stress fx 2 years ago. Took 4 months completely off running and I couldn’t even bike for most of it because it was too much pressure on the foot.

Came back slowly - started with running 3 miles per week total for 2 weeks, then ramped up to 10 miles per week.

At that point, I tried a 5k and cranked it out in 19:55. (My PR is 17:50.) Definitely nowhere close to my PR, but for the typical BT forumite, that’s faster than they’ll ever run no matter how much they train.

You could similarly say “it was all my excellent running technique.” Which is a load of bull. Serious conditioning pays huge dividends for years. But building to that level takes hard, hard work. Just because the experts make it look easy doesn’t mean that they didn’t train their rear off to get it in the first place.

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Ask him if he’s coached anyone fast. When he comes back with a “no” or no answer, well then, you’ve got your answer for his creds.

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Ask him if he’s coached anyone fast. When he comes back with a “no” or no answer, well then, you’ve got your answer for his creds.\

But you are like, one of the fastest swimmers in the world right mark?

I think the claim is more like, you can get 90% of the way there without brutal swim workouts, with just technique and lots and lots of practice.

i don’t think the claim is that you can be first out of the water without brutal swim workouts.

i need to swim more

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The first thing little kids do when they learn to swim is sprint 25s up and down the pool. NOT do a shit load of yards. (some drill work too).

You need to sprint more.

As well as go to bed as it’s past 1am central time. :smiley:

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You can’t win the race during the swim leg, but you can certainly lose it - or seriously compromise your chances for a satisfying outcome. Unless you are a near-elite, who practiced lots of “red-line” swimming in your youth, your best races will happen when you keep your HR relatively low during the swim and can recover it fully within 90 sec to 2 minutes of leaving the water.

I would go out on a limb and say EVERYONE’S best race will happen when they pace their swim well. But that doesn’t mean keeping the RPE/HR low during training is an effective way of becoming a faster swimmer.

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true dat

You need to sprint more.

As well as go to bed as it’s past 1am central time. :smiley:

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The thing that really bugs me about TI is that it’s easier to have better, not worse, technique when you’re swimming near-all out. Last time I did a swim focus, my best technique started to come when I incorporated sets of 25s at very high intensity, thinking about technique, though. Good technique and lolly-gagging is a contradiction in terms.

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I sense a Garyhallsr smackdown comin…

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ive got a long way to go before I can swim as fast as my coach who doesn’t really train anymore at all.

that would suggest to me that technique is still my major limiter

Im at like 10x100@1:40 he is at infinityx100 at 1:10

heh

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I expect there is a ‘efficient frontier’ that optimizes fitness and technique (not that they are mutually exclusive) but one quote i recall (sorry, can’t remember a cite) is that in swimming a 33% increase in power yields a 10% increase in speed; but a 10% decrease in drag yields an 11% increase in speed. it certainly seems that decreasing drag should be an important part of training. now, certainly you can learn this by swimming slow as well as by swimming fast. but whichever way, one needs to learn it in order to achieve quality race times without extraordinary effort.
I would think there would be some way to graph speed at various distances to determine fitness vs. technique. similar to the nomogram of Mercier-Leger-Desjardin for running.

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I would go out on a limb and say EVERYONE’S best race will happen when they pace their swim well. But that doesn’t mean keeping the RPE/HR low during training is an effective way of becoming a faster swimmer.

Yeah. In terms of the swim side of things, I’m all about train hard-race easy. On a four point scale, I largely train at a level 3/4 effort, and then back it down to second gear on race day.

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I sense a Garyhallsr smackdown comin…

Gary Hall Sr. HAS jumped into a few of these threads on BT! I’m one of the people over their challenging Terry on some of his protocols. In fact it was a post of mine he was responding to when he suggested that thershold work in swimming isn’t worthwhile. Out of respect, I have tried to suggest that there’s room for different forms of swim training protocol and to exclude pace work is a mistake, but he refuses to allow for that. It’s dissapointing really, he and his supporters come across as fanatical as opposed to reasonable sometimes.

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I think the controversial part comes from his stance that you really should never “HTFU” in the pool according to his philosophy. (The title of the thread is from someone asking whether he needs to HTFU in his swim training.)

People at BT should be forbidden to use the term “HTFU”.

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I think the controversial part comes from his stance that you really should never “HTFU” in the pool according to his philosophy. (The title of the thread is from someone asking whether he needs to HTFU in his swim training.)

People at BT should be forbidden to use the term “HTFU”.

I’m on BT, would to apply that to me? :slight_smile:
There are some very fast and solid athletes and coaches who post over there.

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I think the controversial part comes from his stance that you really should never “HTFU” in the pool according to his philosophy. (The title of the thread is from someone asking whether he needs to HTFU in his swim training.)

People at BT should be forbidden to use the term “HTFU”.

I’m on BT, would to apply that to me? :slight_smile:
There are some very fast and solid athletes and coaches who post over there.

I say that mainly because as a group they are so thin skinned that they’ll go crying to administrators if you write something
they don’t want to hear. That’s certainly not HTFU.

Being fat and slow is one thing, but being a crybaby is another.