Head scratcher: I have watched Joe Skipper race for many years. He reminds me much of Lionel in terms of being stubborn. The big difference between him and Lionel is that Lionel did improve his swim as well as win races. Skipper’s latest Youtube video explains why he does not need a coach, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tVXhmPcNOA. With the results he has had the last 18 months being self-coached, there is NO WAY he does not need a coach. He would rather examine sports cars than his swim stroke.
Skipper is on the downhill while Sanders is on the rise, but I wouldn’t say that Joe needs to follow Lionel’s path. Apart from being relatively weak swimmers, there’re not many similarities between them. Sam, to add a new name to the mix, does well without a coach, doesn’t he?
Joe’s never been good at middle distance, and did great at hard long distances. He needs to find a way back to it, either through identifying health problems or better recovery with a young kid. Lionel’s been great at middle distance, but his long distance results have been mixed, due to bad pacing or nutrition.
Lionel’s improved his swim recently, but Joe’s been working on swimming with a swim coach as well. We haven’t seen the results yet. None of them have an official head coach, do they?
Joe stopped doing long runs early this year (source: Tim Ford on talking triathlon podcast). He also would go to swim sessions without a specific plan (source: Tom Oosterdijk but I’m not sure). He has changed both of these things since, including getting swim instruction, but the damage (plus the damage of racing too much to prove something) has been done.
So, he may think he’s uncoachable by an outside coach, but not sure how coachable he is by Joe Skipper.
I do not believe there is such a thing as an uncoachable athlete, there is however such a thing as an athlete that consciously or subconsciously chooses to not be coachable. That may sound like a semantic debate but see my post in the Sodaro thread about the 3 C’s of coaching …. Those 3 C’s “take two to tangoâ€
I watched Joe’s latest video. As a Brit I’m a big fan. Until the last 18 months or so he has probably been our best and most consistent long course athlete. In his video he almost glosses over his ‘health scare.’ I hope he has got to the bottom of what it was and is sure it is safe for him to train/race. I wonder if he has had any blood testing done to see if there are any obvious issues. I found myself rolling my eyes as he mentioned racing again towards the end of the year. Just take the full year off Joe, don’t put pressure on yourself. A couple of weeks off after your last race probably isn’t going to be enough down time if you are suffering with fatigue. He made a good point about if it ain’t broke don’t fix it…a bit like LS always tinkering rather than sticking with what you know works. Finally he has consistently said before racing that training has been going well. If that is genuinely the case ( and he can tell by feel/numbers) then as he said maybe it’s his non existent taper that is the issue. Really hope he comes back fighting for next year.
I watched Joe’s latest video. As a Brit I’m a big fan. Until the last 18 months or so he has probably been our best and most consistent MALE long course athlete. FTFY
I was talking about a male athlete who competes against other male athletes. It’s obvious what I meant😉I wonder why, when the British women have so many in the top 15 (plus Lawrence), there are so few GBR men showing. Besides Skipper, I guess there’s McNamee and Brownlee. We’ll see how Teagle gets on in Frankfurt.
I was talking about a male athlete who competes against other male athletes. It’s obvious what I meant😉I wonder why, when the British women have so many in the top 15 (plus Lawrence), there are so few GBR men showing. Besides Skipper, I guess there’s McNamee and Brownlee. We’ll see how Teagle gets on in Frankfurt.
I was talking about a male athlete who competes against other male athletes. It’s obvious what I meant😉I wonder why, when the British women have so many in the top 15 (plus Lawrence), there are so few GBR men showing. Besides Skipper, I guess there’s McNamee and Brownlee. We’ll see how Teagle gets on in Frankfurt.
It always comes in waves.
On the topic: why should bad taper be a thing foe him suddenly he has raced for ages? Maybe he is just past his prime.
