Joined: 12 Nov 2007 Posts: 5041 Location: in der nähe von München
Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 11:53 am Post subject:
That most recent comment by 'Anonymous' wasn't me.....but it might as well have been _________________ Clitus I'm bored, what plaything can you offer me today?
Joined: 24 Aug 2005 Posts: 13544 Location: Croydon, source of the mighty Wandle
Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 12:18 pm Post subject:
Couzens always gives good food for thought. I struggle every year with a goal of reaching 500 hours, usually falling short of 400. Still, I'd be happy with competing in another IM, and then I can worry about the time.
_________________ If you want to improve your perceived standard of living, spend time with people that have a lower one.
When someone deceives you, ask yourself what you wanted from them.
Joined: 24 Aug 2005 Posts: 13544 Location: Croydon, source of the mighty Wandle
Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 12:26 pm Post subject:
Quote:
I remember my promotion to the “A Squad” when coming up through the swim ranks carried with it a feeling of privilege to finally be ‘swimming with the big boys’ rather than something I needed to suffer for x amount of years in order to ‘get somewhere’.
I made a jump in commitment at 14 to run the 'big boys' workout in cross-country. Kids my age laughed at me until they realised I was in the top ten of every race that year. By the end of the season there were five of us running the varsity workouts, and we were kicking butt as a team.
I can't wait until I can make the time in my day to do something similar these days. He's right about 'other responsibilities'.
_________________ If you want to improve your perceived standard of living, spend time with people that have a lower one.
When someone deceives you, ask yourself what you wanted from them.
Just because top performers have trained for years doing big hours, doesn't automatically mean you need to train for years doing big hours to be a top performer.
Maybe top performers do well despite doing big hours, not because of it.
Just because top performers have trained for years doing big hours, doesn't automatically mean you need to train for years doing big hours to be a top performer.
Maybe top performers do well despite doing big hours, not because of it.
It's not logical, captain.
Interesting though as he did take the data from a 'study' involving MOP, BOP and FOP athletes and the hours logged prior to their race times.
Not sure if he took the graph from the paper or plotted it himself ( i would assume the latter as there is no reference) but I must admit the hours seem very high for the different IM times.
It would be interesting to take a diverse community such as TT and get the IM pb's and hours logged and see what the graph looked like. I would imagine it would be pretty messy and not at all like the smooth downward curve in the figure,
Still - interesting reading,
_________________ recovering from Epic Camp
Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, Outliers, goes into this in depth. His theory is that it takes 10,000 hours of anything to be truely excellent at it. Fantastic book if you get the chance to read it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005 Posts: 604 Location: Reading, UK
Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 2:42 pm Post subject:
edwarma wrote:
I think he's talking balls, is he not?
Just because top performers have trained for years doing big hours, doesn't automatically mean you need to train for years doing big hours to be a top performer.
Maybe top performers do well despite doing big hours, not because of it.
It's not logical, captain.
I think the numbers only say so much. As it's an average taken from the data given by a large range of athletes we would expect to have individuals with a lot more hours and a lot less. There'll be outliers from the group.
The average is just from a total amount of training leading up to the race that gave the PB and presumably when they filled in a questionnaire. There doesn't seem to be a definition of what was classified as training in this. Presumably some 9:30 IM athletes were competitive swimmers from a young age. If they counted all that (and the article implies we're talking full athletic history) they could easily accrue a lot of hours.
I don't think it states you have to do big hours in your training or that they're essential to top IM performance. Rather that if you look at the guys at the top of the IM field they tend to have a large training history. That history could be spread over 20-25 years though. Total training hours over a lifetime correlating to athletic performance isn't that surprising.
_________________ Blog - Twitter - Coaching - Training Camps
I've been reading Couzens' blog for a while now and while he's usually all right, sometimes he's just completely off the mark.
This is one where I'd say it's the latter... he harps on and on about how much "time" needs to be spent and hardly mentions at all how much of an effect genetics has on top-end performance and how the quality of training you do is way more important than the quantity.
Quote:
By the time the average athlete gets to a 15hr IM they have 4000hrs of training under their belt (5 years of single sport @~300hrs/yr + 5 hrs of triathlon @ ~520hrs/yr). By the time they ‘graduate’ to a 12hr ‘midpack’ performance, the average athlete has 6000 hours of training in the log books (an additional 2000hrs of training over 2.7 years for a 3hr performance improvement). However, to graduate from mid-pack (12hrs) to FOP (9:30) requires an additional 6000 hours of development!! Or, put another way, an additional 6-8 years of ‘2 a days.'
So, what does it take?
• Persistence (irrespective of bad races)
• A lifestyle that supports 6-8 years of ‘serious’ training. What is serious training? 18-24hrs/week of aerobic training (3hrs/day, 10 sessions a week, 48 weeks a year).
• A deep love of the process
So as a top age grouper and n=1, I have never done a year with more than 350 hours of training since I started triathlon in 2004. Period. This year I will do closer to 500 but only because I stepped it up to qualify for Kona and in achieving that now have two Ironmans to train for instead of one. Last year I did 12:26 at Frankfurt but would have done around 11 hours had I not sat by the side of the road for 90 min with a mechanical. 11 hours is nothing special for Frankfurt, but it's quite a bit better than the person doing 15 hours on 520 hours a year! Seriously, where does this guy get these numbers? Does he even coach a single age-group 15-hr IM athlete? I'd be curious to ask the 15-16 hour crowd at IMUK how many yearly hours they put in, and I'd be surprised if even 1% of them said 520. That's an hour and a half every single day of the year. Not even close. A FOPer needs to do 18-24 hours a week, 48 weeks a year? Give your head a shake!
The key difference between people like me and the average Ironman that Couzens refers to is that I've been a natural athlete since a very young age, "quite good but never really awesome" at every sport I put my hand to, and I have a natural competitive side that makes me love sports. So that's about 90% genetics, 5% supportive parents, and 5% actual hard work, in my opinion. That's just how it is, I've been born lucky to be good at sports which puts me so much farther ahead at the start than the average person who decides to complete an Ironman. I am to the average Ironman competitor what Chrissie Wellington is to me... someone who will always just be a lot better, no matter what. I'm not tooting my own horn here (God knows I'm not that good!) but just saying that genetics is so much more important than anything else. No top age-grouper or pro gets where he/she is without being genetically gifted at Ironman, end of story.
The second difference is that I train and race wisely. My X hours a year are spent following an efficient and effective training schedule, measuring my improvement and setting myself higher goals based on that, losing weight to be faster, training with faster and better people, training consistently, keeping from being injured, executing an intelligent race plan and not incurring a complete meltdown halfway through the marathon, etc. etc. It's no good to go out and do 520 hours a year of junk miles and expect to get better. Couzens seems to have this "more is more" philosophy while I believe the exact opposite, less is more. Seven hours of focussed quality training a week will beat 15 hours of random noodling around every time. Don't even get me started on the folks who can't put together a pacing plan for Ironman and end up walking most of the marathon or DNFing in the med tent.
By the way, I agree with the Outliers book that to be a number one pro athlete, much time and effort needs to be spent training. When everyone is that genetically gifted, something has to set you above everyone else and that's the quality and quantity of your training. But the average Ironman is a completely different story. In fact, I wonder why Couzens even bothered to write that article, as next to nobody he profiles in those quotes above has a hope in hell of ever doing a 9:30 FOP Ironman.
Just the cold hard facts.
edit: just reread this and realise it sounds totally ranty and negative... which it isn't meant to be! And Couzens and Gordo are not totally off the wall most of the time, in fact their latest post was (I thought) quite interesting and relevant to we older age-groupers.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005 Posts: 604 Location: Reading, UK
Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 4:12 pm Post subject:
Actually reading Smaryka's comments I feel I should add that I'd agree Couzen's conclusions in terms of yearly/weekly/daily training required definitely go too far.
All I can see from the study he's commenting on is that if you take a large pool of sub-elite athletes in Ironman and ask them for a single figure representing their total lifetime training and for their IM PB you'll find a correlation. I don't think that's surprising, I also think it doesn't tell you much either.
It doesn't tell you when or how they trained. What the spread was. What the relevance to tri was etc. I also suspect that were you to classify people as naturally good at sports or bad at sports and then look at training volume you'd find a correlation too. No idea if there's any study for this, not least because classifying natural athletic 'ability' would be tricky. I'd not be surprised to see those who were good at athletics tended to have trained for more total hours, if for no other reason than they're more likely to have been involved in sports and enjoyed it.
I would take away Couzen's points that persistence and a deep love of the process are important. Also I'd note that the graph shows that there's diminishing returns for increased total training.
_________________ Blog - Twitter - Coaching - Training Camps
Interesting article, but I don't think he is trying to suggest finish time = n / time training. That would be way too simple. For example when I was over in Hawaii in 2004 there was an 18 year old French Guy who won the 18-24 age group in 9 hours and change. I bet no one told him he had to do 5 years of single sport, an additional 2000hrs of training over 2.7 years and an additional 6-8 years of ‘2 a days' first. Or Simon Lessing when he came 2nd at Nice in 1992 aged 21 or 22. On the other hand I bet we all know people who seem live the tri lifestyle to the max and have been putting in huge miles for ever and still don't break 10 or 11 hours. Many factors at play and IMHO a big part of the relationship between time in sport and race times is down simply to experience.
I would take away Couzen's points that persistence and a deep love of the process are important. Also I'd note that the graph shows that there's diminishing returns for increased total training.
Russ, I'm 100% agreed there. The only thing that really bugs me about Couzens' post is the way he phrased it: "what it takes" as if every single person who ever got it into his/her head to be an Ironman superstar could just go out and start with 300hrs/year basic training, followed by 520hrs/year triathlon training, etc. etc. It just doesn't work that way, not for pros and not for BOPers. And neither does the opposite: it's not required to do that many hours to put down a 12 hour Ironman result, and in fact could even be detrimental to average athletes trying to achieve their best.
Couzens is a recognised coach in the sport (he's actually looking for new clients too, go figure) which makes this kind of "research" all the more irresponsible. Sure, you and I know how to read an article like that and take it with a grain of salt. Novices who read articles like that -- with its conclusions based on suspicious statistics manipulated to "prove" his hypothesis -- and think they need to follow those principles to be successful at an Ironman race might be turned off the sport and never even want to give it a try. Same for BOPers who want to be MOPers, and MOPers who want to be FOPers. Would be a shame, and in that sense the sport could do without articles like this.
_________________ http://smaryka.blogspot.com/
I would take away Couzen's points that persistence and a deep love of the process are important. Also I'd note that the graph shows that there's diminishing returns for increased total training.
Russ, I'm 100% agreed there. The only thing that really bugs me about Couzens' post is the way he phrased it: "what it takes" as if every single person who ever got it into his/her head to be an Ironman superstar could just go out and start with 300hrs/year basic training, followed by 520hrs/year triathlon training, etc. etc. It just doesn't work that way, not for pros and not for BOPers. And neither does the opposite: it's not required to do that many hours to put down a 12 hour Ironman result, and in fact could even be detrimental to average athletes trying to achieve their best.
Couzens is a recognised coach in the sport (he's actually looking for new clients too, go figure) which makes this kind of "research" all the more irresponsible. Sure, you and I know how to read an article like that and take it with a grain of salt. Novices who read articles like that -- with its conclusions based on suspicious statistics manipulated to "prove" his hypothesis -- and think they need to follow those principles to be successful at an Ironman race might be turned off the sport and never even want to give it a try. Same for BOPers who want to be MOPers, and MOPers who want to be FOPers. Would be a shame, and in that sense the sport could do without articles like this.
True, True,
But to quote AC "Baker, Cote and Deakin (2005) studied the developmental patterns of expert, mid-pack and back of the pack Ironman athletes. They found that on average there were 12,000 hours of training behind a 9:30IM performance"
Here is the Abstract from the original paper: "On the utility of deliberate practice: Predicting performance in ultra-endurance triathletes from training indices"
"The theory of deliberate practice (Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Romer 1993) and the principle of specificity maintain that specific forms of training (i.e., deliberate practice) are the most beneficial to performance improvements. However activities that share common elements may also be useful in perpetuating performance adaptations. This study examined the roles of specific (i.e., all swim, cycle, and run training/competition) and non-specific (all other training/competition) forms of training in predicting performance in ultra-endurance triathletes. Twenty-eight UE triathletes provided information regarding training performed throughout their career and completed detailed training profiles for the year leading tip to their key ultra-endurance race of the season. Forward stepwise regression analyses were used to determine the predictability of time spent in the various forms of training on overall race performance and performance in each of the triathlon events. Results generally supported the specificity of training hypothesis; however there was some evidence of transfer among the activities. Further, the amount of variance accounted for by sport specific forms of training was typically less than 50%, indicating a large degree of inter-individual variation remains unaccounted for by 'deliberate practice'. While these findings provide additional support for the role of non-specific transfer in developing expertise, a number of unique limitations should be considered in future research."
So clear as mud then.
n=28 is not a lot for this type of study. As someone mentioned they may have had swim or run development at a very young age all counting to their overall total.
If i can find the time - i might try and do a TT survey. I think the results would be pretty interesting.
_________________ recovering from Epic Camp
Smaryka, I understand where you are coming. I did less hours than that to do a sub-12 hour IM. But I think to say something like:
smaryka wrote:
So that's about 90% genetics, 5% supportive parents, and 5% actual hard work, in my opinion.
is even more silly. I don't have any more genetics on my side than a normal person. To say that it is 90% about genetics just means that people like me, very much not a "natural athlete", might as well put our speedos on ebay.
How do you quantify genetics? How do you decide that it is 90% genetics? Why is it not 1% genetics, with the rest being opportunity and directed effort? Why is it not 0.001% genetics?
My view is that genetics determine your ultimate ability. But it is the training that you do that gets you there. And for most people, they do not put the rest of their life on hold to make sure that they focus everything on doing the optimal training for them.
Can I go sub-10 hours? You bet. Will I? I don't know. I have a family with two young kids, I am old, have two dogs that need to be walked, a challenging job, a long commute and a love of chocolate. With all of that, I think I can get close but I am not willing to make all the sacrifices that are necessary. Do I think that genetics come into me doing a sub-10 hour time? Not in the slightest. Sub-9 hours? Probably.
In terms of the points that Alan Couzens makes:
Alan Couzens wrote:
Reality Check #1: There is very little difference in commitment between the top of the age-groups vs the Open Elite.
Russ, you qualified for Kona - how do you compare your commitment to a pro?
Alan Couzens wrote:
Reality Check #2: It still takes a long time to get good
Smaryka, how long have you been a "natural athlete"? How many hours of running around, or swimming, or hockey, or whatever did you do when you were young?
This is similar to the "10 year" rule that says that a 10-year
commitment to high levels of training is the minimum requirement to reach the expert level (whether it is at music, maths, swimming, running or tennis).
In terms of the hours point, Alan Couzens misses one distinction that Malcolm Gladwell makes. Gladwell says that the hours are necessary to achieve greatness but not sufficient. I think that's your point, smaryka, about effective training.
I'd also be interested to know how many of the hours that people have quoted Alan Couzens are based on accurate training logs. It is very easy for some people to over-estimate how much training they do (and I know someone who did DIUK this year who very much under-estimated how much training he did).
Rob, I think a survey would be very interesting! It would be even more interesting if you could get data from something like trainingpeaks where people put in all the training that they do and it shows their race results.
_________________ My blog is here
Joined: 04 Oct 2005 Posts: 604 Location: Reading, UK
Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 9:32 pm Post subject:
Tigger wrote:
Alan Couzens wrote:
Reality Check #1: There is very little difference in commitment between the top of the age-groups vs the Open Elite.
Russ, you qualified for Kona - how do you compare your commitment to a pro?
Based on the pros/age groupers I've trained with and met what Couzens said is to an extent true. If there are differences in commitment it might be willingness to push themselves harder within a workout.
Perhaps there are genetic elements, but I'd be hard pressed to say what or how much difference. There is often a difference in history - they have been training hard for longer.
I'd agree the specific numbers and volumes Couzens talks about are not necessary to achieve those performances. I don't have a 12000 hour training history to achieve a sub-9:30 Ironman. Whether that's some form of natural ability, or simply better focussed training I can't say. Certainly never regarded myself as a natural athlete.
I think more training volume will generally lead to better results with a few caveats. You can't be just pootling about for all the extra volume. The training still needs to be focussed. I tend to view it in terms of training load - combining intensity and volume. You have to get the load right - train as much as you can absorb day to day.
If top age groupers and pros are doing anything differently it's they are managing high training loads through a combination of volume and intensity. It's the ability to handle high training loads, recover and keep up that level of work that makes a difference. How much genetics determines that is way beyond me.
I would agree with you when you talk about going sub-10. For many the limiter is life and the choices they've made. Most pros have made choices that have enabled them to focus purely on their racing goals. Most age groupers have a lot of other things in their life which make it harder. I have no idea now how I used to train well when I commuted daily!
My opinion anyway.
Also as an aside it's a little disappointing to learn there were only 28 in this study...
_________________ Blog - Twitter - Coaching - Training Camps
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
Chat
Albums
Memberlist
Bloglist
Wiki
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
Same for BOPers who want to be MOPers, and MOPers who want to be FOPers. Would be a shame, and in that sense the sport could do without articles like this.
