How much air resistance is experienced by a cyclist over the Tour de France? Around a thousand times less than what you're experimenting against water whilst swimming.
We are comparing fundamental training methods between a sport where the biggest race is close to 90 hours long and a sport where the biggest event is currently under 21 seconds for the winners. Not sure I get your comparison here. Is the biggest even in swimming really currently under 21sec (50m) or under 15min (1500)?
This seems silly to me, but this might explain that triathletes typically have very strong swim legs or very weak swim legs when compared to their entire race. If you train for all 3 legs using the same methodology, you are training incorrectly for at least one of the legs. which is the case for the majority (+50%) of all tris in my humble opinion. Not that much because of event duration per se, but rather because of the highly technical nature of swimming.
We all know what Economy is right? Well believe it or not, it is commonly stated in the Cycling community that Economy can not be improve. Wow. That statement sounds very arch to my swim coach ears. I usually don't argue though. Do you know how they solve their distance per stroke issue? Shifting up a gear. Their feet is clipped. No energy loss, no slipping. Really, cycling is very very easy, technically speaking. Only gains in Economy pertains to achieving a better power/aero compromise for time trialing.
So among the 3 disciplines, there's only the swim that can significantly be improved as a consequence of improved Economy. Those tris who ignore this fact, those diesel Energiser Rabits showing up on the deck with their gizmos and stuff, always swimming the same way the same pace day in day out will probably continue dreaming to bring their 1500 down U25. With smart swim training, that goal rapidly becomes their warm up pace.
Finally, all allusions to cycling (coming from me in this thread) were made with both roadies and trackies in mind. They race the 500 (around 37sec) the kilo (around a 1:05) etc.... And to add to their complexity, they can't dive. They won't reach their maximal speed off the block like us. They use a fix gear bike with no brakes on. And they must build their speed 1mph at the time. Neuromuscular demand is therefore much greater than for us. Alex Simmon is a well know aussie cycling coach that specializes in using power to train trackies. Recently broke the world record over the hour (indoor) with one of his masters.
alex-cycle.blogspot.com/
Coggan's wife is also a trackie. To the best of my knowledge, he used her a lot to test his TSS model.
How much air resistance is experienced by a cyclist over the Tour de France? Around a thousand times less than what you're experimenting against water whilst swimming.
We are comparing fundamental training methods between a sport where the biggest race is close to 90 hours long and a sport where the biggest event is currently under 21 seconds for the winners. Not sure I get your comparison here. Is the biggest even in swimming really currently under 21sec (50m) or under 15min (1500)?
This seems silly to me, but this might explain that triathletes typically have very strong swim legs or very weak swim legs when compared to their entire race. If you train for all 3 legs using the same methodology, you are training incorrectly for at least one of the legs. which is the case for the majority (+50%) of all tris in my humble opinion. Not that much because of event duration per se, but rather because of the highly technical nature of swimming.
We all know what Economy is right? Well believe it or not, it is commonly stated in the Cycling community that Economy can not be improve. Wow. That statement sounds very arch to my swim coach ears. I usually don't argue though. Do you know how they solve their distance per stroke issue? Shifting up a gear. Their feet is clipped. No energy loss, no slipping. Really, cycling is very very easy, technically speaking. Only gains in Economy pertains to achieving a better power/aero compromise for time trialing.
So among the 3 disciplines, there's only the swim that can significantly be improved as a consequence of improved Economy. Those tris who ignore this fact, those diesel Energiser Rabits showing up on the deck with their gizmos and stuff, always swimming the same way the same pace day in day out will probably continue dreaming to bring their 1500 down U25. With smart swim training, that goal rapidly becomes their warm up pace.
Finally, all allusions to cycling (coming from me in this thread) were made with both roadies and trackies in mind. They race the 500 (around 37sec) the kilo (around a 1:05) etc.... And to add to their complexity, they can't dive. They won't reach their maximal speed off the block like us. They use a fix gear bike with no brakes on. And they must build their speed 1mph at the time. Neuromuscular demand is therefore much greater than for us. Alex Simmon is a well know aussie cycling coach that specializes in using power to train trackies. Recently broke the world record over the hour (indoor) with one of his masters.
alex-cycle.blogspot.com/
Coggan's wife is also a trackie. To the best of my knowledge, he used her a lot to test his TSS model.
