Are you a 'skilled' swimmer?

As much of the EC team is on the verge of kicking off ‘Swim Game v2.0’, I could not think of a better time for this post.

I received a little bit of heat/disbelief when I posted some comparison tables looking at relative fitness standards for swim, bike and run in a recent blog. To be fair, the upper end ranges in that table were assuming ‘elite’ swimming skill/economy.

Elite swimming skill can be an elusive thing to define, let alone achieve. Certainly, in the triathlon world, it is seen as a ‘holy grail’ of sorts, something that is the exclusive domain of the fortunate few who ‘grew up swimming’. But before we write off the possibility of converting ourselves into ‘skilled swimmers’, let’s consider what it means to ‘grow up swimming’.

I can’t think of a squad that I’ve been involved with in which attendance of at least 5x per week was not mandatory. When I think back, it also strikes me how, once committed to the squad routine ‘drop outs’ were few and far between. When I think back to my own squad experience, even coming in as a late starter at 12 years old, I was still swimming with the same folks that I started with when I finally made the move to college.

Another interesting tidbit, while I can recall doing a lot of standard drills over the 10,000 or so km I reckon I swam over those years, I don’t think I did one T.I. drill at any point in that time. This is not to suggest that there is no benefit to the TI drills but rather to suggest that the mindset of a ‘quick fix’ to turn an unskilled swimmer into a skilled swimmer is misplaced in the world of swimming.

Another personal observation as I’ve transitioned into triathlon: Even with these 600,000 strokes or so of motor patterning behind me, my status as a ‘skilled swimmer’ is up for revocation at any time. If I swim my usual tri frequency I fall somewhere between ‘triathlete swimmer’ and ‘skilled swimmer’ in economy terms.

It takes a lot of time and a lot of meters to create a ‘skilled’ swimmer. However, the good news is that swimming is the kindest of the 3 sports on the body, both in terms of connective tissue stress and energetic cost. It takes very little energy to cruise up and down the pool (providing technique is decent). For that reason, many athletes are amazed at how well they deal with a ‘swim camp’ period of overload volume. Athletes are often equally surprised by the technical improvement that comes with these periods of constant exposure to the water.

So, in addition to expressing the relative upside that will come with converting yourself into a ‘skilled’ swimmer I also wanted to provide a more realistic measuring stick for those triathletes who have great fitness but lack the background of (or time to turn themselves into) a ‘skilled swimmer’. Data derived from Holmer (1972) & Khort et al. (1987)









The tables show relative paces for a number of different fitness levels for a 100 for time, 400 for time, 800 for time, 3000 for time and Moderately-Hard, Steady and Easy training paces.

Fitness categories are expressed in both VO2max and CP5 numbers so that athletes with good field data but no recent lab data will be able to have a good estimate of where they fall.

When looking at the data, 2 things become readily apparent:

a) There is a BIG difference in performance across the unskilled-skilled spectrum for the exact same energy output. In other words, at 400 time trial effort, an unskilled athlete with a VO2max of 3.8L/min will swim ~7:40. A skilled swimmer with exactly the same size ‘engine’ will break 6:00. When you extrapolate this difference to the distances in IM racing, the implications become apparent.

b) There is a notable difference in the range of paces from easy-flat out between the three groups. In other words, the less skilled the swimmer, the more they will tend towards being a ‘one pace swimmer’. For the unskilled swimmer, an easy pace is only ~28% slower than their max pace. For a skilled swimmer, the range from easy to ‘all out’ is a much greater 45%. The reason for this is really at the heart of this post, the better the swimmer, the less resistance they create at higher speeds.

This is something that is rarely emphasized in the world of triathlon swimming. Everyone is doing their hour of drills at 2:00 or 3:00 per 100 pace without realizing that, at these paces resistance doesn’t matter a whole lot! I am not suggesting that drills shouldn’t first be practiced slow but they need to be progressed to fast (and be able to be incorporated in) fast, whole stroke swimming in order to have any practical significance. For this reason, regular, short fast swimming is more important in the pool than any other place in the athlete’s program.

With the potential ‘free speed’ available to many triathletes, when extra fitness training is limited by fatigue or when fitness improvements begin to show diminishing returns, the best place to spend some extra time may be in the pool.

Train Smart.

AC

The importance of strength to endurance

"When the body is strong, the mind thinks strong thoughts" - Rollins

When it comes to athletic training, a central thesis that I have developed over my years as a coach is that all athletes, from ultra-distance Ironman athletes to 100m sprint runners are, well, for lack of a better word, athletic.

In other words, while there are certainly individual differences that are clearly obvious across the sports, there is also a homogeneity in the fact that, as muscle is the precursor to movement, individuals who specialize in movement are fundamentally more muscular than ‘the norm’.

Sure, there are those athletes with tiny or lithe skleletal frames that get away with less obvious muscle. Tour De France climbing specialists come to mind. However, relative to their frame, (which is fundamentally fixed) athletes, on the whole have a lot of muscle.

Studies that express physique as a 3 digit ‘somatotype’ of ectomorphy (skinniness), endomorphy (fatness) and mesomorphy (muscularity) reinforce this fact that athletic subsamples from distance runners to hammer throwers all have a higher middle number (mesomorphy) than the general population. A visual representation of this from Fox et al. (1988) is shown below:



As you can see, somatotypes among the sample range from ~254 for the meso-ecto distance runners to ~471 for the meso-endo weight throwers to ~271 for the pure mesomorphic weight lifters. However, for all of these athletes, mesomorphy predominates, i.e. the middle number is always the biggest.

There is a very simple physiological reason for this: Muscle = Movement. If you want stronger or faster movement, you need bigger or faster muscle. If you want more watts on the bike, the absolute limiter is muscle mass. If you want these watts to be aerobic, then the aerobic quality of that muscle comes into play but it can’t be denied that if you want 400W, you need at least 400W worth of muscle.

From an aerobic perspective, studies have shown that each kilogram of aerobic muscle can take up ~160ml O2 (Schwerzman et al. 1988). Therefore for a large athlete, say a 175lber, to have an elite relative VO2max of 75ml/kg in a whole body exercise requires ~37kg of appendicular muscle mass!!

My own results from those athletes that I’ve worked with who I have both DEXA (anthropometry) data and VO2 data from the lab have tended to back this up.



Athlete 1 is a relatively well-trained ectomorphic runner/triathlete of ~5’10, 155lbs.

Athlete 2 is a larger endomorphic novice-intermediate triathlete of ~5’10, 220lbs

Athlete 3 is me :-) An ectomorphic intermediate triathlete 6’4”, 180lbs

Athlete 4 is a very well trained meso-ecto IM triathlete 5’11, 165lbs

Athlete 5 is a big, powerful mesomorphic front of the pack AG triathlete 6’3, 215lbs

There are some interesting, practical applications that stem from this data. First of all, the bigger the athlete’s chassis, the bigger their engine needs to be in order to perform well. Athlete 3 and Athlete 4 have a similar amount of muscle mass. However, there performance is markedly different. A large part of this is that while they have a similar size engine, athlete 3 has this engine in a big Chevy chassis, while athlete 4 has it in a smaller streamlined chassis. For a guy with a big chassis like Athlete 5 to attain a high performance level takes a huge engine!!

Additionally, while there are small differences in the aerobic ‘quality’ of the various athletes muscle, it’s equally clear that the overall trend is as peak VO2 goes up, muscle mass also goes up. It’s also both clear and interesting, when looking at the 5 athletes, while VO2 is clearly scaled to muscle mass, it does not appear to be scaled to stature. This is one of the key observations that has led me to adopt the viewpoint of symmorphosis, i.e. that VO2 will increase in response to functional demand rather than adopting the more traditional limiting viewpoint that some folks are born with a big heart and a consequent big VO2. The lack of correspondence between folks with big hands, big feet, big heads, big noses and big VO2 has led me to question this viewpoint. Big muscles on the other hand…..

As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, a related unexpected observation that I’ve continued to witness in the field is that top athletes are able to produce quite high levels of max power output. It is rare for me to see a top AG athlete of average size be unable to produce at least 1000W in the field, even if this power band is never deliberately trained. Admittedly, these aren’t Cavendish numbers, however the power gap between these numbers and what I typically see from endurance trained MOPers (in the 600-800W range) can’t be denied.

When we look at the functional attributes of muscle, this begins to make sense.
Considering each kg of slow twitch muscle can typically generate ~50N/kg (Hakkinen,1989) an athlete with 40kg of appendicular muscle, say 30kg of which is in the leg will be able to generate ~1500N (~340lb) of force with legs full of slowtwitch fiber. If they were strength/power athletes full of FT muscle, for the same quantity they would be able to generate an additional ~300N/60lb.

Therefore, it is not so much that strength is important to endurance sports but rather, a certain amount of oxidative muscle mass is essential to endurance sports and, as a by-product of having a good amount of muscle, the athlete will also be relatively strong.

If we accept the conclusions above, then clearly the next step is to suggest that training to make the aerobic (slow twitch and FOG) muscle fibers larger providing this doesn’t have an excessively negative effect on mitochondrial density is a worthy goal. Indeed, there is some research support that shows that total muscle mass in endurance athletes is correlated with VO2max, and performance in weight supported aerobic events (e.g. Kerr et al., 2007, Mikulic, 2008)

While you may argue that this is all fine and good for the weight supported events in a tri, i.e. swim and bike, don’t I need to be light to run well? Yes, the lighter runners with an appropriate muscle mass for their small frame will be the fastest runners but this isn’t your choice. When it comes to frame, you’re born with what you’re born with. An athlete with a larger frame who attempts to hit the same weight as an athlete with a small frame puts himself in exactly the same position as an athlete who puts on 10lb of fat during the off-season, i.e. a higher proportion of his weight (in this case bone) is not movement producing.

In conclusion, aerobic muscle mass is never a bad thing and for many athletes, the absence of sufficient muscle mass for their frame may be limiting. For this reason, appropriate strength training (with a focus on ‘aerobic strength development’ is an integral part of high performance endurance training.

Train Smart,

AC