Serious Training Thread - Tinman Haters, what is his system missing?

babushka_lady wrote:

Regular&Standard wrote:

2. It seems that Tinman has a one size fit all approach. He has a set of principles and ideas for training and this is basically what everyone follows. This approach can work well for large groups of people which is where Tinman does seem to have success. We can’t deny that Tinman has taken some HS kids or Sub elites and gotten them to run very well.

But when we look at athletes at the highest levels there are workouts and training blocks that are very different then compared to a one size fits all approach. As other people have mentioned there are “Special Blocks” (Two a day workouts), very hard and challenging long runs and long blocks of high mileage that can be seen in other elite’s training blocks.

I would say this is my issue and impression with Tinman's approach (and really most training systems).

Reading through the literature he's put out, I get the impression that he doesn't individualize much. What I mean, is, his approach is similar to daniels' tables, where race times = some sort of training paces, regardless of anything else. Even hearing about the same workout over and over again makes me think that he just uses a canned approach.

(to be clear, zero disrespect intended to Dr. Daniels, who goes to great lengths to systematize ways to adjust training from the intensities he provides in his VDOT tables.)

Now, this works reasonably well for high school and the general population, but when you get to the elite level, you're not dealing with the general population, you're dealing with outliers.

Pretty sure coaches like Vigil tested their athletes in a lab quarterly and figured out their vVO2max pace, VLT, etc. I'd expect that of every elite coach to be honest. The best method of assigning training intensities that I've ever tried used blood lactate curves along with associated heart rate and speed data. Currently, I'm playing around with power data and using individual power duration curves to calculate workout intensities.

Any person that doesn't do more to individualize the training from general principles, to better suit the athlete, IMO, does not deserve to be called a coach.

So, to summarize my issues: #1) does not appear to adjust training to suit individual, #2) seems to use the same canned plans over and over again, no matter who he's working with.

Disclaimer: I don't follow what Tinman does on a daily basis. Just my impression from what he's written

enoughalready wrote:

babushka_lady wrote:

I would say this is my issue and impression with Tinman's approach (and really most training systems).

Reading through the literature he's put out, I get the impression that he doesn't individualize much. What I mean, is, his approach is similar to daniels' tables, where race times = some sort of training paces, regardless of anything else. Even hearing about the same workout over and over again makes me think that he just uses a canned approach.

(to be clear, zero disrespect intended to Dr. Daniels, who goes to great lengths to systematize ways to adjust training from the intensities he provides in his VDOT tables.)

Now, this works reasonably well for high school and the general population, but when you get to the elite level, you're not dealing with the general population, you're dealing with outliers.

Pretty sure coaches like Vigil tested their athletes in a lab quarterly and figured out their vVO2max pace, VLT, etc. I'd expect that of every elite coach to be honest. The best method of assigning training intensities that I've ever tried used blood lactate curves along with associated heart rate and speed data. Currently, I'm playing around with power data and using individual power duration curves to calculate workout intensities.

Any person that doesn't do more to individualize the training from general principles, to better suit the athlete, IMO, does not deserve to be called a coach.

So, to summarize my issues: #1) does not appear to adjust training to suit individual, #2) seems to use the same canned plans over and over again, no matter who he's working with.

Disclaimer: I don't follow what Tinman does on a daily basis. Just my impression from what he's written

Do you actually believe Tinman hasn't figured this stuff out? Even his posts from 2003 on this message board showed that he knew all of these things long ago.

fact checker 642572498 wrote:

adfasdf wrote:

I don't understand all this Tinman Elite bashing. Their squad is nowhere near as talented as a Bowerman TC and it seems like all the athletes have improved in 2019 or even 2020. Everybody is at least in the 13:30's. I hadn't heard of many of these guys except for a few. Pretty impressive to be honest to have this kind of depth. I think in a couple years the bulk will be sub-13:20 and be in the same conversation as Bowerman.

https://tinmanelite.com/team

Everyone on their roster is an All American. They are all very talented. Their improvements are MINIMAL considering they are now 3-4 years older than they were in college and they are living at altitude for the first time in their lives.

In fact, I would wager that 99% of their improvements are because they are older and at altitude. If you take a random 14:00 senior, train him for a few years at altitude, he's probably going to break 13:40 regardless of who his coach is. And all the tinman guys were well below 14 in college.