Simone Manuel on Bowman Practices: “The hardest training I’ve ever done in my entire career”

2025 Pro Swim Series – Fort Lauderdale

Although the Ft Lauderdale Pro Swim didn’t net the results Simone Manuel was expecting, she has seen many positive signs for her swimming this winter. Feeling completely healthy, Manuel is back to not only swimming full workouts with Bob Bowman and the Texas team, but she is logging serious yardage, getting in some of the hardest training she says she’s ever done.

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FastSwimming
19 days ago

So no sprint training? I mean she didn’t mention Maida at all and he’s supposed to be the sprint coach

TerrapinDude
19 days ago

Key to remember: not all training is created equal. Given Regan’s results with Bob and Katie’s results with Florida, you might want to say that Meehan’s methodology was broken. Then, you look at Torri Huske’s result @ the Olympics, where she was on fire. Different athletes respond to different types of training; without knowing the sets and the intervals it’s really hard to judge. Based on Simone’s results since her comeback, Bob’s stuff is obviously working for her.

Kae
20 days ago

Let’s go Simone!!!

Tani
20 days ago

This doesn’t sound like a recipe for success….

Buckeyeboy
20 days ago

Hope she doesn’t get “overtrained fatigue syndrome” or whatever else she allegedly had whilst at Stanford.

Last edited 20 days ago by Buckeyeboy
Thomas The Tank Engine
Reply to  Buckeyeboy
20 days ago

That’s what surprised me.

She had overtrained fatigue syndrome and then she chose to train with Bowman, who’s famous for his crazy sets of training (that even broke Angel)?

It makes no sense.

Troyy
Reply to  Thomas The Tank Engine
20 days ago

*Agnel

He sure ain’t no Angel

Kawaik25ean
Reply to  Troyy
20 days ago

yeah Angel sure he is not 😨​😵‍💫​

Differently of course, it reminds me of some people (on swimswam too) saying four years ago that Bowman was going to destroy Marchand.

Crazycucumber
Reply to  Kawaik25ean
19 days ago

People said that???

Thomas The Tank Engine
Reply to  Troyy
20 days ago

Thanks.

I swear I wrote Agnel, but obviously my cellphone thought it was a mistake and corrected me 😓

Crazycucumber
Reply to  Thomas The Tank Engine
19 days ago

In the video she talked about how this is the frost year post 2021 that she did a non-modified workout. So bowman wasn’t giving her excessive yardage leading into 2024.

Also, OTS is much more a product of not recovering sufficiently than it is training very hard. So Manual could theoretically train very hard and swim lots of yardage as long as she recovers properly

Troyy
20 days ago

Guess this was why she was a bit slower in season than usual last week.

SwimmA
20 days ago

Smash ‘em, Bob

xman
20 days ago

uhh isn’t this what got her in trouble at Stanford

Fake Gregg Troy
Reply to  xman
20 days ago

Overtraining is often not from “training too much” but doing the same thing too much. That being said there are multiple types of overtraining but Bob bowman is usually a guy that has a lot of variety in training

FRDS
Reply to  Fake Gregg Troy
20 days ago

Oh please, Greg Meehan probably listening to Simone interview and saying, “Wtf?”

Mr.Mister
Reply to  Fake Gregg Troy
19 days ago

It’s not because of doing too much, but an imbalance between work and rest. You can be doing not much, but having terrible sleep and bad nutrition, you will still get overtraining syndrome.

ALEXANDER POP-OFF
Reply to  xman
20 days ago

I think a big issue is she didn’t get to taper in 2020.

Thomas The Tank Engine
Reply to  ALEXANDER POP-OFF
20 days ago

That’s baloney.

Unless your name is Ledecky, no American swimmer can afford not to taper at Olympics trials.

She also didn’t have great swims in Tokyo, she didn’t even make 50 free final (her semis swim was 0.34s slower than her trials time), and her relay splits were significantly slower than her usual standards. So your “no taper” theory is shot.

Are you saying she wasn’t tapered in Tokyo?

Last edited 20 days ago by Thomas The Tank Engine
Joel
Reply to  Thomas The Tank Engine
20 days ago

Calm down. I’m sure they mean that Simone trained right through 2020 (someone’s home 25 yard pool for a few months apparently) and did not taper until Olympic trials in 2021. I know a few swimmers who did that and suffered for it

ALEXANDER POP-OFF
Reply to  Joel
19 days ago

Exactly. The 2020 Olympics were cancelled and I think she and Ledecky trained right through it. Some people don’t like to read.

Erin
Reply to  ALEXANDER POP-OFF
19 days ago

I think Ledecky’s results last week show that she also probably was overtrained. The difference is that the margin between her and her closest competition was so much wider than Simone’s.

I think what’s also consistently left out of the conversation about Simone is the mental stress of being a Black woman, with so many Black male loved ones, in the United States in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

Snowstorm
Reply to  Thomas The Tank Engine
20 days ago

Do you not remember what year the Tokyo Olympics were in?

Troyy
Reply to  ALEXANDER POP-OFF
20 days ago

That’s what I was thinking back when it happened. One of the few athletes that had access to a pool basically the whole time and normally she’d have at least one taper meet each year.

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