Collateral Damage: The Talented Athletes Our Systems Leave Behind
I’ve been pondering a different, more uncomfortable reality lately. Some of these ideas were sparked when at the British Aquatics coaching conference and a recent physiology workshop with INSCYD. I’ve been talking with a few coaches and diving deep into understanding athlete phenotypes. I’ve realised that many successful systems aren't actually developing talent. They are simply acting as a filter. We celebrate the few who made it to the podium, but we rarely talk about the Coaching Graveyard: the dozens of athletes who followed the plan to the letter, only to stagnate, burn out, or quit the sport entirely.
The Myth of the System that i the best one
The danger happens when we ship a successful athlete off to a "better" squad, assuming a more intense system is the natural next step. If that new system’s philosophy doesn't match the athlete’s phenotype, the progress stops. We see it constantly: a pathway athlete moves up, the training stimulus changes, and their "spark" disappears. They didn't lose their talent; they just entered a system that clashed with their engine.
Because a system has worked in the past, we assume the coaching was the primary driver. In reality, that athlete often arrived with a specific set of biological characteristics that allowed them to survive the system. Not to say that a change in the coach’s philosophy isn't necessarily "wrong," but if it doesn't match the athlete’s phenotype, the progress stops.
Understanding the Engine: The Greyhound vs. The Husky
If we think about phenotypes being like different dog breeds that we can relate to, a pure endurance dog like a Husky, a pure sprinting machine like a Greyhound and a border collie which is a hybrid between the two.
1. The Husky (The Oxidative Diesel)
The Husky is your "Volume-Based" athlete. They aren't built for the 100m sprint; they are built for the 100-mile trek. They are the backbone of endurance squads, often overlooked because they don't look "flashy" in short drills.
The Gift: Extreme efficiency and a high percentage of "Type I" slow-twitch fibers. Their body is a master at clearing metabolic waste. They can handle a training load that would put a Greyhound in the hospital and the husky will turn up on pool/track side the next day asking for more.
The Curse: They lack "top-end" speed. Their engine takes a long time to warm up, and they struggle with sudden, sharp changes in pace. They often feel "one-geared."
The Temperament: Resilient, steady, and often very "coachable." They love the grind and take pride in out-working everyone else.
The System Failure: We try to make them "faster" by giving them the Greyhound’s workout: short, high-intensity sprints with full recovery. Because they lack the glycolytic "gears," they can’t hit the required intensity to actually change their physiology. They just end up tired and slow. To make a Husky faster, you have to grow their aerobic engine so large that their "cruising speed" becomes faster than everyone else’s sprint
2. The Greyhound (The Glycolytic Ferrari)
The Greyhound is your "High-Threshold" athlete. They are built for speed, power, and immediate impact. In a club setting, these are often the kids who win everything early on because of their natural "snap," but they are also the most fragile in a high-volume system.
The Gift: Massive anaerobic power and explosive "Type IIx" muscle fibers. They can change gears instantly and have a "kick" that others simply cannot match.
The Curse: They "burn hot." Their engine produces high levels of metabolic waste (lactate and hydrogen ions) very quickly. They are like a top-fuel dragster incredible for 10 seconds, but they need a total rebuild if you try to drive them cross-country.
The Temperament: High-strung and sensitive. Their nervous system is finely tuned; when they are "on," they are untouchable, but when they are tired, they feel completely "broken."
The System Failure: We try to build their "base" by forcing them into long, slow miles or high-rep grinds with short rest. This doesn't build them; it erodes them. It turns their explosive fibers into "slow" fibers, killing their only weapon. They don't need more work; they need higher quality work with much longer recovery.
3. The Border Collie (The High-Performance Hybrid)
If the Greyhound is a Ferrari and the Husky is a Diesel Tractor, the Border Collie is a High-Spec SUV. They are the most common phenotype in youth sports, and unfortunately, the most likely to be mis-tuned.
The Development Gap: Most young athletes (U12–U16) naturally present as "Border Collies". This is because they haven't yet fully developed the dense Type I (oxidative) fiber network of an adult Husky, nor the raw glycolytic power of a mature Greyhound. At this age, their VO2 max is often still on a natural upward trajectory simply due to heart and lung growth, not necessarily because of the specific training "System".
The Gift: Incredible athleticism and adaptability. They are fast enough to run with the sprinters and tough enough to go the distance with the endurance group. They are the "straight-A" students of the training world; they will do exactly what you ask of them, and they’ll do it well.
The Curse: Because they can do everything, the system often asks them to do everything at once. They are used as the "bridge" in training sessions pacing the Huskies on the long runs and pushing the Greyhounds on the track.
The Temperament: High work ethic, often to their own detriment. A Border Collie will run themselves into the ground before they admit they are tired. This is exactly why we see a massive dropout rate around 15 years old just as their biology starts to shift into a more permanent phenotype, the years of "doing it all" finally catch up to them.
The System Failure: They suffer from "Biological Confusion". By trying to be both a sprinter and an endurance athlete every single week, their body never gets a clear signal on how to adapt. Because their VO2 max continues to improve with age regardless, coaches assume the high-volume/high-intensity mix is working, while in reality, they are just eroding the athlete's long-term potential.
The Cost of "Fitting In"
If we only measure success by the ones the system worked for, we aren't coaching —we’re just sorting. When we ignore these phenotypes, we create a "middle-of-the-pack" stagnation that eventually leads straight to the graveyard and how many athletes are we sending to the graveyard long before we helped them achieve their potential?
Why "Work Harder" is the Wrong Answer
When I look at external programs particularly in swimming. I often see a "standard" set: something like 40 x 25m on a 30-second turnaround. At first glance, it looks like high-quality speed work. But we have to ask: What are we trying to improve, and who is actually benefiting?
When you perform high-repetition, short-distance sprints on a short recovery, you aren't necessarily training speed; you are training metabolic tolerance. Depending on the athlete's phenotype, the result of this set is wildly different:
To the Husky, 25 meters isn't a sprint it’s a warm-up. Because their body clears lactate almost as fast as it’s produced, a 30-second turnaround is plenty of time for them to recover.
The Result: They cruise through the set. It becomes a decent aerobic stimulus, but they never actually hit a high enough intensity to develop any new "top-end" speed. They just get better at being "steady."
This is where the system breaks. A true Greyhound will hit the first five reps at a blistering, elite pace. But because they "burn hot," their muscles are immediately flooded with metabolic waste. A 30-second turnaround is nowhere near enough time for their high-threshold fibers to recover.
The Result: By rep ten, their speed drops. By rep twenty, they are "grinding"—their technique falls apart, their "snap" is gone, and they are now just training their body to move slowly while under massive distress. You haven't made them faster; you've just taught their nervous system how to struggle.
The Collie will suffer through the set with a "straight-A" work ethic. They will hold a respectable pace, but the short recovery keeps them stuck in the "Grey Zone."
The Development Trap: Especially with younger athletes, we see VO2 max continue to improve with age, so we assume these high-repetition sets are working. In reality, we are just riding the wave of their natural growth while slowly "muting" their explosive potential. We are training them to be masters of the "middle," but never masters of the podium.
The Reality: Conditioning the Fiber, Not the Clock
Instead of prescribing 25s for the whole group, we should be looking at the Physiological Tax and what physiological outcome we are trying to attain:
If you want a Greyhound to get faster, they might need 25s on a 2-minute turnaround. They need to be fresh enough to actually recruit those high-threshold fibers.
If you want a Husky to improve, they might need longer reps that actually challenge their oxidative ceiling, rather than short bursts they can do in their sleep.
When we ignore the phenotype, we aren't coaching speed we are just seeing who can survive the flood. The ones who can't? They end up in the graveyard.
Moving Beyond "Hope" as a Strategy
We need to stop treating physiology as a black box and stop throwing vases against the wall just to see which three don't break. If we want to develop athletes rather than just filter them, we must shift our perspective:
Stop Prescribing, Start Observing: If an athlete is chronically flat, don't ask if they are working hard enough. Ask if the type of work matches their engine.
Respect the Recovery: A Greyhound produces metabolic waste differently than a Husky. Giving them the same rest periods isn't "fair" it’s biological sabotage.
Individualise the Stimulus: We must move away from the ego of the "Standard Plan." A truly great coach doesn't have a system; they have a biological conversation with the athlete.
The Choice
The Coaching Graveyard is full of "Border Collies" who were worked into a state of biological confusion and "Greyhounds" who were slowed into submission by "base" miles that eroded their only weapon.
It is time we stop rewarding systems that produce one champion through pure survivorship bias at the cost of twenty "failures" who simply didn't fit the mold. If we only measure success by the ones the system worked for, we aren't coaching—we're just sorting.
Stop guessing. Stop hoping. It’s time to start coaching the athlete in front of you, not the system behind you.