why does David Roche keep banging on about being in sub-4 at altitude shape?

Agreed

Genuine question: Are the Roches actually capable of coaching Olympic quality athletes? I don’t mean just taking a guy like Christian Allen, looking at his training history/previous coach’s program at BYU, and basically following that protocol with a slight adaptation to trail. Can they actually create a unique plan that would further promote fitness and success in already established elite runners?

And what has happened to other top ultra-runners they used to coach? They won a big race and then disappeared. It seems they have a theme of pushing too hard and then people fall apart.

They definitely are capable of this. Their roster is pretty full of elite athletes who have improved and had success at big races under their coaching guidance. Obviously this is just a prediction (so I'm open to the fact that I could be wrong too), but I would predict that they will coach multiple Olympic athletes in the upcoming Olympic cycles.

Some small dick energy in this chat

exactly this. It's easy just to write on a plan "run 1 hour at marathon pace," which, if your marathon pace is 8 minute pace, maybe that's doable. But if you're highly trained, that is a very hard workout.

The Roches run a coaching farm, plain and simple.

Wow. This makes so much sense. I know it’s conjecture, but I can see this being the case. It tracks.

They probably aren’t coaching him or any other (or very few) elite athletes. It’s more about marketing and return on investment.

For example, if the Roches know that, for example, put on their website that they coach X ultra runner gets them X new athletes or Instagram/YouTube followers a year, which nets them, say, $25k more a year, then they can afford to pay that athlete $7k a year simply for the privilege of using their name and picture

That’s funny that you think the Roches are paying athletes for their clout. They are far too selfish for that. 28 pages later and it’s still not clear that the Roches con others for their own benefit?

They absolutely use others to their benefit. I'm sure they try to sell elite athletes on the idea that the Roches will put their name and picture on their website for free exposure etc.

Then, if that doesn't work, they say they'll pay them like $2k a year to do so

No. He does sessions in windpants with no shirt.

Also, in regards to their site: I know for a fact that there are a handful of athletes listed on there that are not coached by the Roche’s anymore, yet they still list them there for clout…

I was coached by David for a couple years and here were the red flags:

1) The coaching is not very personalized. He cycles through a lot of the same pre-planned training blocks and gives little explanation regarding his decisions. Most of the feedback you receive is via woohoos, etc.

2) The coaching doesn’t feel collaborative, as he is unwilling to taking into account what has worked for you in the past and it is very much his way or the highway. Coaching should be more of a partnership in my eyes. I don’t think he is capable of taking feedback.

3) I had an injury that required surgery. I adopted a very conservative return to running program while I was doing PT and David kept saying “he didn’t trust PTs” and was trying to get me to run more than prescribed. I wanted to take my time and get it right for the long-term. It was in this moment that I told David I wanted to exit coaching and he basically sent me a two sentence email telling me I was awesome without acknowledging my perspective. It didn’t strike me as very professional. If I had listened to David I likely would have had a much different result returning from injury. I haven’t had a single issue since then. I had a friend that had a very similar experience exiting SWAP.

It’s a great question. In college and shortly before discovering running, I was deep into the bodybuilding world. This was pre-influencer era, or at least influencers as we know them now didn’t exist.

I started to get turned off when the so-called experts turned out to be a huge circlejerk/MLM scheme. Coach A would refer a book from nutritionist B who in turn “just couldn’t get enough of” physiotherapist C… and so on. I hadn’t really felt that kind of ick again until the Roches. Now it’s “we’re full, but so & so is a super rad coach and runner who has room on their roster.”

Case in point: a guy I run with now is coached by a runner who is coached by one of David’s runners, and he proudly proclaims that he’s a SWAP athlete.

Same. Exact. Experience.

#3 is the most troubling and I was told to rest for 2 weeks after a diagnosed stress fracture. So many more things to say but just want to cosign this.

Also so much more to say about this but another previous athlete of David’s here. After a diagnosis with a grade 3 high risk stress fracture, he told me I’d be able to run a big international race (100k) just 6 weeks after. Good thing I was smart enough to listen to my own medical team because I can’t imagine a more irresponsible thing to tell an athlete.

I've long viewed Sage as Bowen Yang's successor.

So they are actually worse than I thought. And I know them. But these accounts reveal such arrogance and recklessness and it is actually dangerous. Now Megan’s whole return to an aggressive gravel bike position 2 weeks after major abdominal surgery makes more sense. She can do what she wants, but she wanted to advertise how “awesome” she was by getting back to it before any doctor, friend of hers or not, would ever have permitted it

Other athletes look up to them. They look to them to show what’s good and possible. They are all about optics, not long-term health and performance.

Regarding his way or the highway, I know someone who wanted a consultation to find out if it was a good fit and what his approach would be like. David sent a curt email stating that he didn’t do consultations because he needed to be on call for his athletes at all times and couldn’t take that kind of time out. (Interesting that he has all the time in the world to train and post though.) He said the athlete would have to agree with their program without talking to them or they would not take them. If anyone wants to dispute this, the person has the email to back it up.

His distrust of PT’s is the tip of the iceberg. He has talked down on MD’s, RD’s, researchers, other coaches etc… this is what happens when you get a little online fan club, you suddenly become the authority on every subject suddenly, but they make sure to sprinkle in passive aggressive and half-assed caveats that they are not experts… that’s just David calling back on his law school training. Lawyers don’t care about the truth; they just want to make sure you know that THEY ARE RIGHT.