Finding Elite Age Group Performance in a Time-Starved Life
You’re probably asking yourself how do I succeed as a multisport athlete with such a busy lifestyle? We’re here to tell you it’s possible, and Ignacio Lopez-Mancisdor is the proof. With a full family and full life of time commitments, Ignacio pushes the limits of his athletic potential with Purple Patch.
The Athlete:
Ignacio Lopez-Mancisidor is a busy executive based in Miami with a wonderful family
that includes four children ranging from three to fifteen years of age. To say that he leads a busy life is an understatement. Infused into this is high athletic ambition, matched with great potential, as he is a strong swimmer, cyclist, and runner. Ignacio is able to compete at the higher end of the age group rankings in all distances of triathlon. His profile is a classic one for Purple Patch -- producing elite age group performances within the context of a very busy life.
The Challenge:
Iggy, as he is affectionately called within Purple Patch, has to navigate the non-negotiable components of his life, while also seeking big results across various endurance sporting challenges. His priorities are, in our mind, spot on and start with: health, being a wonderful partner and father and a high performer in the workplace. These are the non-negotiables. Being greedy, he also seeks great sports performance. But, if you have learned anything from us at Purple Patch, it is that the sports performance journey promotes performance in life. It is a virtuous loop, and a recipe where Purple Patch thrives with its athletes.
Our challenge in Iggy’s journey can be highlighted in a few bullets:
Logistics: His work and family commitments often make training rhythms less predictable than desired. No surprise here as a busy executive with four children. We often say that life is not a spreadsheet. It is more fluid and chaotic, and Iggy’s situation is a wonderful example of this.
Mental Energy: When a person gives so much to family and work, it can and will disrupt willpower and mental capacity that goes into sport performance. This is amplified following big events and challenges, and Iggy loves big events and challenges. Knowing consistency is king, it is important for us to integrate space into the program.
Keeping Up with Peers: Iggy is all about podiums and high-level amateur competition, usually against peers who have more stable situations, training capacity, and scope for improved sleep and recovery. How do we train effectively and compete versus a seemingly slanted playing field?
Complexity: When Iggy first joined Purple Patch, he was concerned around diving into a coaching relationship. He felt he needed support and help, but was worried about the level of accountability and assumed complexity. He already has so much to think about and manage -- would a high level coaching relationship just be an additional burden. Was he going to have to weigh his food? Do a deep dive into every heart rate file? Rigidly hit every session with vigor, or be cast as a weak failure? Iggy wondered if he could step up to ‘act elite’ when being coached.
The Solution:
As you might tell by now, this case study is a profile of an incredibly smart and perceptive athlete who is willing to chart a course of performance that is suitable to his own situation. It is a lesson to us all, no matter our level. Let me outline our antidote to the challenges Iggy faced:
Logistics: Instead of panicking about the lack of predictability, we leaned into the chaos. We built a weekly program with ‘anchor sessions,’ fluid in placement but not in order of execution. These two to three ‘key’ workouts provided the stimulus for driving the performance needle. Iggy was then asked to remain open as to the amount of hours accumulated in each week, with a heavy dose of more supportive and generally lower stress training. In weeks that life ebbed, and capacity was high, he would nail every session as prescribed without change. He might even add some low stress load. On other weeks, when logistics and stress rose, he would retain the focus of the key sessions, but sometimes evolve when they would not happen. This inevitably led to some supportive sessions being reduced in specificity or duration, if not completely removed. Whatever happened, the mission was to layer consistency and not sweat the weeks when life flowed.
Mental Energy: We have a saying at Purple Patch: ‘It takes courage to recover.’ Iggy embraced this. He has taken on plenty of challenging training and events already this year, including multi-day bike rides in the freezing rain from Seattle to San Francisco, and the Dirty Kanza 200km gravel race. Physiological stress was high, and then a return to the challenge of life was immediate. The only long-term performance path was to amplify leeway in training load for the seven to ten days following a big bout of training or racing stress. The mindset shifted to family, and, as his coach, he was encouraged to remove structured training for the period while maintaining positive daily supporting health habits. Good eating, sleep, and hydration remained, while asking Iggy to mentally recover ‘harder’ than any athlete. It has provided a nice pathway to long-term development and success.
Keep Up with Peers: This one is simple. The grass isn’t greener, and Iggy is already busy enough to worry about what others are doing. And, this is a marker that every reader can learn. Proper training isn’t what is written in books, or emulating what other successful athletes do, especially the pros. Success comes out of finding the recipe that works for you. Iggy embraced this, and now spends little time caring about what his peers are doing. It is not a race to do more, it is a race to the finish line in the least time possible.
Complexity: There is a reason that we have a saying at Purple Patch: ‘Nail the basics.’ Our mission was to empower Iggy to develop autonomy and make life in training and performance as simple as possible. He rides with a power meter, runs with GPS, tracks sessions, and utilizes a heart rate monitor. All these are useful, but his biggest asset is his sense of self and honest conversations with how his body and mind are doing. The data can help paint the picture and provide some objectivity, but it won’t provide answers. Also, the slightly crazy, wild, and free adventurous spirit is a real driver of performance, especially for Iggy. Oh, what is it? That’s right. Fun! Iggy has fun. It can be seen by his crazy adventures and training spirit.
The Results
So where does this leave us us? A great father and husband, who excels at work and enjoys life. Wow. We could stop there, but we won’t. Iggy is also someone who thrives in sport at very high performance level. In between his adventures, Iggy just won his age group at the Steelhead 70.3 and now begins his quest for the Dirty Dixon Double -- the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championships followed a month later by the Hawaii IRONMAN World Championships. Whatever happens, his family will be cheering, and he will go home happy.
We can all learn a little from the spirit of Iggy.