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"Price is what you pay. Value is what you get." - Warren Buffett

 

"You gotta operate the easy way", 'I made a G today,' but you made it in a sleazy way" - Tupac Shakur

 

What do these two quotes have to do with swim training?

 

"Think about it, think think about it" - Flight of the Conchords.

 

When it comes to buying stock in a company, price is what you pay, value is what you get.

If you pay a premium for a great company, you might still be underwater on your seemingly sound investment.

If you paid $20,000 for a car that was only worth $5,000, you got horrifically ripped off.

 

If you swam a 6k threshold workout to get 0.01 faster in your 1500 as a 12-year old with awful technique, that's a rip-off too.

Except kids don't really have the agency to decide what they do or don't do - more often that not, they're at the behest of the coach.

 

You train so that you can get better. If your training isn't making you better, what are you doing?

If your training isn't making your swimmers better, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

Hopefully reading this blog (those coaches aren't, lol).

 

Today I'd like to present what I call the FLAT model, which is an acronym I think I may have actually originally come up with for once:

 

1. Fatigue
2. Loading
3. Adaptation
4. Transfer

 

Fatigue is a temporary decrease in performance due to previous work.

Adaptation or Supercompensation is the stable increase in fitness due to training and recovery.

As Warren Buffett might say: "Fatigue is what you pay. Adaptation is what you get".

We don't train to get tired. We train to get fast.

 

Then you have Form, or Performance, as Fitness minus Fatigue. This is the end goal of what we do.

 

Your primary physiological goal is to develop as much relevant fitness in the kids as possible while keeping fatigue within reasonable bounds, and then maximizing performance by deloading fatigue with a taper when the time is right.

 

Fatigue is an often necessary part of developing Fitness.

But developing Fitness, and eventually Performance, is the real goal, and we should never forget that.

 

Loading is how we apply work to create valuable Adaptation, incurring Fatigue along the way at the necessary level.

Improper loading means that you don't get much bang for your buck. It increases risk of injury, and blunts adaptation.

So much like Tupac would say, "you made them great today, but you did it in a sleazy way", not in the interest of their development.

 

Here's a basic diagram that shows how training stimuli of different Loading magnitude can incur Fatigue and produce Adaptation.

As you can see, if you underdose, you still get a positive response, but it's smaller. Moderate return on investment.

It's not too hard, you're still making progress, and this is what you want to do early in the season. Minimal effective dose.

 

If you dose correctly, you get the ideal response. Moderate to high return on investment. This goes up as they get fitter. But just like "buy low, sell high", sometimes it doesn't always work that way. We apply a load based on our judgement of what they're ready for, but sometimes they're tired, or sometimes they're really fresh, and we end up underdosing, overreaching, or overtraining.

 

If you're non-functionally overreaching, you can get the same adaptation as if you were underdosing, but they're working so much harder for it. And if you overdose, you get a negative response, and you worked so hard to get it. A huge negative return on investment.

 

This can kill swimmers QUICKLY! They're working so hard, they get nothing out of it, and it really feels like a waste of everyone's time. Most often you actually see this happen when swimmers are anxious and wanting to work really hard, but aren't ready for it (or maybe they're getting sick), so they just dig themselves into a hole thinking they're doing the right thing. It's worse when the coach pushes it.

 

If you can do a 4k set and a 6k set and get the same dose (as would be common in an underdose / overreach situation), do the 4k set! The return on investment is better, and the load is smaller. People might get stuck up on things like "we need to develop capacity" - trust me, the capacities of skill and wanting are more important than the marginal increase in aerobic volume, which is acutely stressful, but you can always get anyways later in your training phase when it will have its greatest effect on chronic fitness.

 

You're using the minimal effective dose, thus leaving them the largest physiological reserve for continued training and improvement.

So as you can see, there are definitely incentives to start at a reasonable workload, and progress it intelligently. Don't get greedy.

 

Now here's Olbrecht's version, which shows some different types of exercise intensities and their impact on dosing.

Of course within each of those categories you might Touch, Train, or Tax those systems. If you just do 2 dive 25s (likely a Touch), you don't need 30-40 hours of rest to supercompensate. But if you did 12k of extensive endurance, you've likely Taxed their body and would probably need more than 12 hours to bounce back. For anyone that disagrees with me - go swim your 12k, then we can chat.

 

Plus, each of these doses are system-dependent (if you train aerobic you'll improve aerobic), but fatigue can be a little more holistic. If you exhaust your glycogen stores, or fry your nervous system, or just crush their will to live entirely, that will keep you from training. So if you do a bunch of threshold stuff that drains your fast twitch muscle glycogen but doesn't give you a sprint adaptation, you can see how that would case anaerobic capacity to deteriorate, especially when it's done over and over again in a systematic way.

 

So, these are all pretty theoretical, right? These are just concepts that we understand and apply to our training?

Well as it turns out, some smart people have actually figured out the math behind adaptation, and it's pretty awesome.

 

This is work in the realm of Dr. Dave Clarke and Dr. Philip Skiba, two ex-MIT big dogs that do some really cool stuff.

Dr. Skiba's book "Scientific Training for Endurance Athletes" is an especially good read that I enjoyed and highly recommend.

It's geared towards a variety of sports, and the swim times are pretty slow, but the metabolic science is rock solid.

 

In their 2012 work "Rationale and resources for teaching the mathematical modeling of athletic training and performance", these guys do some Excel implementations of various physiological models, intended for use by Exercise Physiology professors.

 

Most specifically, they do a practical implementation of the Banister Impulse-Response Model, which basically accurately describes everything we just talked about. You accumulate fitness and fatigue due to a training load, then fatigue evaporates while fitness remains relatively stable, and you're left with an increase in performance (subject to detraining).

 

 

This shows a single training load being applied, but in reality you would have several lined up, day after day, and you absorb the load exponentially (and fitness and fatigue both decay exponentially, but at different rates).

 

Link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23728131/

 

So here's where it gets really interesting - if you know how your athletes respond to work and recovery, you can design an optimal tapering plan that allows them to maximize the short-term performance gains from their training.

 

What does it mean to know your athletes?

 

It means that you’re able to have solid estimates of 5 key parameters:

 

1. Performance (their current state - even better if you estimate their Fitness and Fatigue that makes it up)
2. Fitness Multiplier (how much value they get from training)
3. Fatigue Multiplier (how much of a price they pay for training)
4. Fitness Residual (how long they can hold onto fitness)
5. Fatigue Residual (how fast they can shed fatigue)

 

Athletes want as high of a level of Performance as possible, both at the start of the program, the end of the program, and potentially during the program to meet their commitments. Coaches on the other hand are generally more concerned with the development of Fitness, with the understanding that Fatigue should be relieved prior to the most important competitions.

 

The ideal athlete would have the following characteristics:

 

• A high level of initial Performance that gives them room to train hard and maintain a decent level, while also providing them the best possible base to move forward off of
• A large positive Fitness Multiplier, so they get as much benefit as possible from training
• A small or negative Fatigue Multiplier so that their Performance doesn’t drop in training
• A negative Fatigue Multiplier would mean the work serves as active recovery
• A large Fitness Residual that allows them to continuously compound their training blocks
• A non-existent Fatigue Residual so that they can recover from the work instantaneously

 

For this ideal athlete, training is simple: train as much as you can, as hard as you can, no need for rest, just show up to the meet and crush it with your insanely high accumulated Fitness.

 

If you get a freak athlete, this is what you're getting. This is the type of stuff that led everyone to endlessly hammering threshold.

 

The typical athlete is more in the following range:

• A relatively low level of initial Performance so they have to be careful to avoid injury
• A modest positive Fitness Multiplier of around 1, meaning adaptation equivalent to work
• A larger Fatigue Multiplier of around 2, meaning Fatigue accumulates faster than Fitness
• A large Fitness Residual that allows them to keep their Fitness for around 27 days
• A smaller Fatigue Residual that means Fatigue will evaporate over around 10 days

 

Using these parameters, an athlete breaks even (Performance-wise) from a single training day after 11 days of rest, continues to approach maximal supercompensation after 27 days of rest, and then the supercompensation gradually deteriorates as it gradually approaches baseline. This may seem that it’s just replicating the values of the parameters, but it’s actually not.

 

For example, if the Fitness Multiplier is changed to 1.5 (representing an extreme return on training investment), breakeven occurs after 5 days of rest, and maximal supercompensation takes place after 20 days of rest. This also improves performance by 93%. If it’s changed to 2.0, breakeven happens immediately on day 0 of rest, and supercompensation happens on day after 16 days of rest with triple the performance of the baseline.

 

What about modifying the Fatigue Multiplier? Changing it from 2 to 3.0 means the Performance breaks even on day 18 of rest (rather than 11), with supercompensation peaking on day 33 of rest (rather than 27). However, no matter how high the Fatigue Multiplier gets, if you wait long enough, there will be a positive training effect as long as fatigue fades faster than fitness. However, performance potential is reduced by over 20% compared to the baseline test. So make sure you choose your genetics and parents carefully!

 

Here's something really cool from a 2020 paper out of Australia where the authors used this training load modelling to predict swimmer performances within a standard error of 0.62 seconds, but often MUCH less than that. Basically, you plug in the training, you plug in the times, and you can get how the swimmer adapts, and extrapolate their adaptation process to future training.

 

Notice when it was off - the start where you don't have as much information or history, and the add of about 0.6 from expected around day 300? I can only assume that was a mental lapse or illness, probably getting back to work and accumulating fatigue after the competitive period around day 200. What else is interesting is they found that by breaking down training into more and more categories, it didn't really give much more useful information.

 

Link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31955652/

 

Now, there are a few caveats to this. First, training has to be reasonably specific. You can't just load up on 10K a day and expect your 50 Free to get better when you're doing 0 meters of 50 pace. This gives us the final letter in our acronym, T, for Transfer.

 

Transfer is how you connect your Training to your future training, and eventually your Race Performance. Without transfer, you might spend your time and effort developing fitness that is irrelevant, or worse, harmful. When might it be harmful? Imagine if you do a bunch of bodybuilding-style hypertrophy work and no stretching. That will not help your 1500. Or you supercharge your anaerobic capacity with a bunch of fast 25s and 50s, and then end up going too acidic or burning through your carbs too fast. The classic example is putting in a bunch of threshold-only work, and then your 50 gets slower. Good coaches like Bob Bowman know how to preserve speed even when they're doing 8k long course workouts. They know how much they need to do to maintain, and they know how to stimulate the systems with targeted work to ensure athletes are mostly moving forward (although mistakes do happen).

 

At this point I'd like to give a shout out to Anatoliy Bondarchuk, who passed away recently (RIP), and who also wrote a great book called Transfer of Training in Sports. People that throw a discus or do shot put don't just do the same things all year round. They use different weights of implements, and they go through different movements, periodized to put it together later and peak on the day. 100m sprinters don't just do 100m reps - they do short accelerations, they do lower-intensity tempo work, and they probably do explosive exercises like jumps as well as some speed-endurance. But on the day when the lights are brightest, they run a fast 100.

 

Given that running a 100 is a pretty finite and deterministic event lasting around 10 seconds, why don't they just run the 100 over and over again and do better and better, if specificity is the king of all adaptations? Because the race is the perfect test, rather than the perfect training. The race is just one small point at the top of a huge pyramid of development, and Bondarchuk understood that.

 

These ideas all give rise to the Bondarchuk pyramid, a progression of work from general and preparatory to developmental and specific:

 

 

And you can break it down even more:

 

Some of these descriptions are open to interpretation (based on replicating race swimming in its entirety, being metabolically relevant, stimulating the same muscle groups, or preparing the organism), but here is how ASU coach Herbie Behm makes his categories:

 

And here is the pyramid with a few more examples.

I think this does a good job of highlighting which activites are higher-transfer than others (metabolically or technically). You can look at things like max speed as foundational, just like basic endurance, and then you use both of those pieces in specific work.

 

However, what I will say is that I think you can take it to an even higher level, and look at Transfer in an even broader way.

 

Enter the Munro Transfer Model, which I came up with in October 2025. This is a way to relate and connect each of the strokes, as well as different types of training.

 

Butterfly. Backstroke. Breaststroke. Freestyle. Each of them have something in common with the other.

 

• They might share a common kick, or a rotational axis.
  • Fly and Breast are symmetrical front strokes that rotate through the short axis of the hips and use some lateral elements.
  • Free and Back are alternating strokes that use flutter kick and flip turns along with long-axis rotation through the spine.
  • Fly and Free are both on your front and overall use a fairly similar catch and pull pattern.
• Every stroke uses dolphin kick, requires feel for the water, makes up part of the IM.
  • Fly and Back are Front Half IM, Back and Breast are Middle IM, Breast and Free are Back Half IM.

 

Not to mention that the events themselves share some energetic relevance to one-another:

• 50 Fly, Back, Breast, and Free could all be considered power-adjacent
• 100 Fly is technically similar and energetically adjacent to 50 Fly and 200 Fly
• 200 IM certainly borrows from everything from the stroke 100s to 400 Free and IM

 

So here's what the model looks like:

 

And each event has its own set of event-specific skills, with each event having a level of Novelty and Density:

• 50 Free LCM has a dive, dolphin kick on your front, and uses free pull, flutter kick on your front, and a free finish
  • Let's say this is a Novelty of 5 different skills in 50 meters - that's a Density of 10 skills per 100 meters
  • Versus 1500 Free is marginally more Novel with Flip Turns and Wall Dolphins (7), but much less Dense at 7 / 15 = 0.47.
• 100 IM SCM and 200 IM LCM both have a novelty of 16 skills, with a density rating from 8 to 16
  • Everyone loves 100 IM precisely because it is so dense - the SCM 50s have a density of 14 per 100m.
• 200 IM SCM is the most Novel event (20 skills) and also fairly dense (10 per 100m).
  • Is it any wonder that the swimmers that are the best at this event are so skilled?

 

 

So if you look at every event, you can develop a Skill Inventory on Starts, Turns, Underwaters, Finishes, Pulls, Kicks, and you can even look at it in an energetic way in terms of Power or Endurance.

 

 

And then that allows us to ask some key questions:

• What is the transfer of every skill to every event?
• What is the transfer of every skill to one another?
• What is the immediate transfer of every skill to performance?
• What is the long-term transfer of every skill to performance?

 

And then we can categorize things in a way similar to the Bondarchuk method, in terms of Technical Transfer.

 

First is Replication:

• Tasking: If you do Butterfly, that's perfectly transferable to Butterfly. Fly is Fly.
  • I think Bondarchuk would put this as EVENT.
• Subtasking: If you do Dolphin Kick, that's transferable to Fly, because it's used in Fly.
  • High-transfer, like a Competitive Exercise / CE-tier
• Supertasking: If you do Fly, that's transferable to Dolphin Kick, because it uses Dolphin Kick.
  • Same as above.

 

Then you have Adjacency:

• Positional Adjacency: Arms Up vs Arms Down vs Split
• Planal Adjacency: Front vs Back vs Side
  • These might be Specific Developmental tier, or mid-level transfer.
• Muscular Adjacency: Flutter vs Dolphin vs Whip
  • You're working the same muscles - pretty Specific Preparatory.
• Categorical Adjacency: Breast-Breast Touch Turn vs. Back-Back Flip Turn
  • These are a similar idea, but they're different - maybe General Preparatory?

 

So then you can naturally have some ideas of a Connective Net or Graph on how each of these pieces might connect.

 

 

You just have to make sure you don't get too into the weeds - what does Arms Down Whip Kick have to do with Fly? You're conditioning the legs to some degree, but the movement pattern is different, and you're not using the arms. It's better for Breast.

 

Then we can look at Physiological Transfer:

Replicating the Event

Tasking: 100 Free is 100 Free - transfer is perfect.

This is Event-tier, high-transfer.

 

Replicating the Movement

Energetic Subtasking: Doing a 50 Free at 100 Pace is part of a 100 Free (Power, some Endurance)

Energetic Subtasking: Doing 100 Free at 200 Pace is connected to 100 Free (Endurance, some Power)

 

And you can compensate for the deficits of the above by adding reps or intensity:

Super-Subtasking: If you could do 100 Free at faster than your current 100 Pace, that's an Endurance match and a Power overload

Super-Subtasking: If you could do 3-4x50 Free at 100 Pace, that's a Power match and an Endurance overload

These are all Competitive Exercise tier, and prepare you directly for the event.

 

Energetic Adjacency: If you do a 50 Free, that's adjacent to 100 Free in Power and Endurance

Energetic Adjacency: If you do a 200 Free, that's adjacent to 200 Free in Power and Endurnace

I would call of the above Specific Developmental exercises that replicate the movement and are energetically adjacent.

 

Replicating Part of the Movement

Technical Subtasking: 100 Kick or Pull is part of a 100 Free

Equipment Tasking: Doing a 100 Free with FINZ is similar to a 100 Free

I would call of the above Specific Preparatory exercises that replicate part of the movement and are energetically adjacent

 

Using the Same Muscles

Technical Adjacency: One could argue 100 Fly or 100 Back is adjacent to a 100 Free - similar Power / Endurance, different stroke

 

And you could take this down to System-Supporting Activities, Technique-Supporting Activities, or Organism-Supporting Activities,., but again, this is so General Prep oriented that the transfer is so limited that it's tough to program when you could do other things. If you're not hitting the same muscles or systems, then I would really be interested if that is that is the optimal way to spend your time.

 

 

So, how can you take a set, and increase its transfer? I think it comes down to the following factors:

1. Stroke: Change this early so you're using the same muscles, or similar movement. For example, change Back to Free.
2. Power/Intensity: Fix this early to make it systems-relevant - like doing the work at race pace instead of slow.
3. Equipment: If you want the work to be most kinesthetically specific, there should be no equipment.
4. Endurance (Acute/Chronic): By making it closer to the event, you're replicating the one-off effort more accurately.

 

For example, instead of doing 6x25 Fly MAX with a parachute to get ready for a 100 Free:

• Turn it into 6x25 Free MAX with a parachute
• Stretch it out to 6x25 Free 100P with a parachute
• Take off the resistance so it's 6x25 Free 100P
• Decrease the chronic volume so it's 4x25 Free 100P
• Increase the acute endurance so it's 100 Free 100P

 

That's not to say that 6x25 Fly MAX Chute doesn't have a place in the preparation of a 100 Freestyler, but perhaps the pieces you get from doing that set early in the season can be progressively transfered into something that will make the difference in your 100 Free later in the season (instead of just grinding 100 Frees or Broken 100s the whole year long).

 

 

So there's a bunch of my current thoughts on Transfer! I know this is a lot of information, but this is my first time putting this out to the world so I would be really interested to hear anyone's thoughts. Thanks for reading, and I hope you're enjoying the blog series.