I wonder if it’s just fatigue catching up with him as well. He responds well to more and more and more volume for a few years in a row, until he doesn’t.
We’ve seen it with others as well. Maybe his body just needs some time to absorb some fitness without continuing to train into a hole.
We often see these forced recoveries from an injury or surgery where the athlete comes back completely on fire. I do wonder if a lot of these guys are just addicted to racing and their training and don’t do a good job of truly holding back and recovering.
In the world of overtraining vs bullseye-just right, vs undertrained, I imagine the problem with most pros is not undertrained. It’s not very easy to hit that bullseye every time.
There is an interestimg experiment going on right now with Laidlow inviting Jamie Riddle to train with him for the Nice build up. It will be intetesting to see if team Laidlow can calm the youthful exuberance that messed up his last couple of big (for him) races.
Some people do well under guidance and some just rail against it.
I kinda look at things a little differently. If you can honestly say you’ve done everything in your power to put yourself in the best position, then at that point the result is the result. It’s less about what position he can or can’t be in and more about the “investment” you are doing for yourself to then get the best result. So when I hear people talking about having to improve to top 3 level or else, I roll my eyes at stuff like that. That’s sorta not the point. So again if you are saying he’s maxed out his ability, cool. I just don’t think he has on the swim yet.
When an athlete who’s that type of swim ability says 35k swim week is his PR volume, I’m kinda shocked and to me I think is leaving some swim gains still to be had. If he’d have said he’s at 70k swim weeks for months on end, then yeah I can kinda agree that you are what you are at that point. I just don’t think he’s reached that point, maybe others disagree.
I can’t answer on the children or teenager part of this. Take a look at gordo byrn and what he has written about raising “fit kids”. He is on x and has a substack. He is quite interactive and very thoughtful on these issues.
But the training principle is if you can gradually get the same results on x hours and intensity over 3-5 years is that better than getting those results in 1.5 years on 1.5x? Guess different for everyone. Then if you start doing 1.2x once you achieve that level, you have a bit more left to grow too
And of course you can improve swimming but you won’t see this from one race to another, it often takes a good while and a lot of trial and error ( technique wise but also the right program)
Muscle recruitment maybe? Cam was a rower, which uses a lot of similar muscles.
The better example is Braden Currie, who jumped into the sport in the lead pack with no swim background. Though again with the muscle recruitment idea (or maybe feel for the water), he was an adventure racer where Kayak/Canoe is a big part it.
I couldn’t find exactly what his swim background was, but Tri247 says “In 2016, Wilde added his third world title at the age of 19 when he won the Snowy Mountains ITU Cross Triathlon World Championships – in addition to his two XTERRA U19 titles.”
If you can be fast enough on the swim to win a world ITU title at age 19, I’d say you’re in that group of super-swim talents, even if it still was his ‘weakest’ discipline.
SL was never fast enough at swimming to consider racing ITU.
Not saying it’s impossible, but for folks who have already worked super hard and haven’t made the jump like SL probably aren’t in that lucky group of late-onset swimmers who are intrisically talented enough to swim as fast as a world-class ITU swimmer.
I would think that helps for sure, he has aerobically developed his upper body muscles. I seem to recall reading about Lange also starting to swim “late” from being a mountain biker, but it seems as if he was already winning competitive tris back in 08, so it might be late compared to ITU folks that have been swimming since they are 5, but still much earlier than Long and Sanders.
I have zero evidence to back this up, but my guess would be that these guys like Cam Wurf and Patrick Lange also learned to swim with coaches on deck and in a group setting. Magnus kinda fits into this category too. I don’t think Sam does.
Sam and Lionel both swam/swim with Aquabears with a group in hopes the group setting would push them to a new level. It hasn’t.
The farrrrr more likely scenario is that those two just weren’t one of the lucky ones born with the rare talent of having the intrinsic potential to swim at world-class triathlon level.
There’s a reason why almost all top tri coaches expect their new recruits to already be top or near-top swimmers, or else they make them commit on their own to getting themselves to a reasonably competitive level before they take them on.
From all the local intel I get privy to from pros who live in Tucson along w UoA triathlon program athletes Long has never used AB’s and/or on deck coaching for all of his swim training.
If your only using on deck/squad workouts for the couple of times a week “quality” sessions, you’ll never get much specific feedback or eyes on you that you would in other sessions. That’s just reality of training demands. Those sessions are designed to do a specific work at specific paces, your not going to get pulled to the side for 10 mins to work on form. That’s not the purpose of that type of set.
