Why Generalists (Triathlon Coaches) Triumph in a Specialised World
by George Blackwell
As my last newsletter (where I summarised ‘Think Again’ by Adam Grant) went down well, I thought for this week I’d give some of my reflections from another non-sport specific book in relation to endurance coaching and performance.
In ‘Range’, David Epstein outlines the case against narrow specialisation for peak performance and makes the case instead for “range”: accumulating diverse skills/experiences culminating in a late specialisation that fits with your unique strengths and preferences. People who pursue this path tend to go through a relatively unstructured “sampling period” where they try different things, develop various skills, and learn about their own strengths, weaknesses and what interests them the most. There’s nothing wrong with specialisation, but you can add value by balancing it with a wider range of experiences, outside views, and ongoing experimentation.
Chapter 5, ‘Thinking Outside Experience’, had me thinking more specifically about the strengths that being a triathlon coach could have for endurance coaching more broadly. Epstein discusses the strengths of broad experience, being able to draw parallels between seemingly unconnected disciplines to solve problems or be innovative. He calls this ‘analogical thinking’. When it comes to solving the physiological puzzle of elite endurance sport, I feel that triathlon coaches are in a unique position, with understanding, context and solutions from 3 different disciplines that may give them the right ‘analogical thinking’ to solve a problem where a specialist coach might not be able to.
To give a specific example, when you look at the individual disciplines of swimming, cycling and running, the training philosophies vary considerably for equivalent ‘time-frame’ events. For example, an elite 5k runner (13 minutes) trains in a substantially different way to an elite 1500m swimmer (14-15 minutes), who equally trains very differently to how a time-trial specialist would on the bike for an event that’s 13-15 minutes long. Principles, lessons and solutions can be drawn from all three and applied in different ways, but you need the ‘Range’ to be able to do so effectively!
This is partly why the coaches at TMR Coaching are looking at continuous personal development with further education and experiences to try and ensure Range.