Episode: 353 - Assess, Reflect, Check-In: The Key to Unlocking Performance
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Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!
IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon and Purple Patch Coach Max Gering discuss the ARC process: Assess, Reflect, and Check-in. This methodology is integral to the Purple Patch coaching model, emphasizing reflection to drive action and improve performance. They highlight the importance of understanding one's "why" and assessing progress objectively, both in training and life. The conversation underscores the need for intentionality in training, avoiding the "more is better" mindset, and the value of course correction. They also stress the significance of reflection in maintaining motivation, clarity, and commitment and encourage athletes to seek help when needed.
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Episode Timecodes:
:00-1:14 Promo
1:30-5:40 Introduction
7:40-17:14 ARC
17:30-22:52 Refection
26:54-54:02 ARC Concepts
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Transcription
Matt Dixon 00:00
Greetings, folks. We've got a treat for you today. It is myself and Purple Patch Coach Max scaring we're talking about reflection. We're talking about a process that we put into the Purple Patch coaching methodology, which we label arc, which is assess, reflect, check in. It's a wonderful time, and it's a great opportunity, by the way, if you're self coached and you want some support and guidance from a Purple Patch coach to help you go through the process after you listen to today's show, just reach out to us. Info@purplepatchfitness.com would be delighted to set up a consultation with you, of course, as ever, if you ever want to become a part of the Purple Patch team and you want to be coached at saevar via our tri squad program, one of our other squad programs, or, of course, individual coaching. Reach out to the same address, info@purplepatchfitness.com this is an important moment today. You're gonna hear me talk about moments a lot. Get out of the weeds, look back, understand what's gone well and not so well. Drive forward with action. I think you're going to find it very, very useful. And I should add, it's not just for the triathlete, so we're going to focus on triathlon a little bit, but this applies to anything in life, including business. Enjoy the show. Take care. I'm Matt Dixon, and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. The mission of Purple Patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential. Through the lens of athletic potential, you reach your human potential. The purpose of this podcast is to help time starved people everywhere integrate sport into life. and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. As ever, your host, Matt Dixon, and ladies and gentlemen, he is back. Goodness me, this is becoming a trend. We welcome back to the show, Purple Patch coach, Max Gering and Max, how we doing today?
Max Gering 02:00
I am doing well, it's good to be back. I'm excited for this one. It's gonna be a good one. Good.
Matt Dixon 02:05
Yeah, it is. It's gonna be fun. We're gonna be talking about reflection and a process that we have at Purple Patch arc, which is all to be revealed soon. But, uh, before we crack into what we like to call the meat and potatoes, how have you been Max, what's been going on?
Max Gering 02:22
Things have been good. It's Monday. Monday afternoon here in sunny San Diego, busy coaching and things have been busy at Purple Patch. You had a big webinar last week, so my calendar is full this week with lots of people reaching out, looking to chat about what we're doing at Purple Patch and looking for more information. So that's how I'll be spending a lot of my time this week. In addition to coaching my regular athletes,
Matt Dixon 02:45
I've got to ask coaching, and I'll throw you under the bus a little bit, but you're always in the trenches with your your athletes. And I'll give you one of the perhaps impossible questions, although you're good at thinking on your feet, so watch what's your standout coaching moment being or experience this week, since we last
Max Gering 03:08
spoke, that's a tough one. There's so many No What's the standout coaching one thing I'm really excited about that I'm doing right now is I'm coaching an athlete through running his first 100k race. Busy executive has three kids, a lot going on is in his life and coaching him through doing that, but with a multi sport approach is a lot of fun and challenging, and we're having a good time doing that together. But I think the thing that was the most oddly enough, exciting about last week was had an athlete where everything was complete chaos. Work through him a curve ball in every single direction. Had to pull multiple all nighters. That was just the way it was for work, and wasn't able to train at all. And it was tough, tough mentally and emotionally for him, especially after having been in a phase where he was making a lot of progress. So the experience of getting through that with him and then helping him get back on track was definitely the win of the week, I would say, out of all the athletes that I got to coach last week, you
Matt Dixon 04:09
know, what a three little curve ball, and I'm glad that you, you came back with with something strong we saw highlighted one of the big things of having the Coach, which is getting folks out of the weeds and navigating obstacles all the part of the the performance journey. I would say, yeah.
Max Gering 04:27
But what about you? What have you been up to, Matt? Tell the listeners, what's been going on the life the Matt Dixon,
Matt Dixon 04:35
the matt the Matt Dixon, yes, that's, that's how I like to be referred to. But very much. So thank you, Max, you know what it's Thank you. It's delightful that you ask. It's nice to be asked. Not many people ask me how, thank you, Max. I'm doing very, very well. No, very, very busy, actually, and always really interesting, intriguing and in a really healthy way, challenging. So I just. So as you mentioned, I guess I'll start with the webinar. We had a great webinar last last week. Over 100 people live with us, and that was really fun. That was all about training for an Ironman, or half Ironman in a in eight to 12 hours a week, something that we're pretty darn good at, Purple Patch. So we will leave the the link to the recording in that if you weren't able to attend live, but that was a they're really fruitful. Some great questions in there. Had a lot of fun on that. And then Kelli and I actually, for next week's show, had a fantastic interview with a woman called Gwendolyn bounce. And Gwendolyn is a, she's actually now the Senior Vice President of The Wall Street Journal's Leadership Institute, but she's the author of a fascinating book called not too late. You know it Max because we've been talking about it internally with the team, but not too late. And it's all about rediscovering, re emerging yourself in mid 40s, someone she was a, absolutely not an athlete, and took up Spartan racing and and so Kelli is making her second appearance on the show ever. She, she did a great job. We had a three way discussion with Gwendolyn. She goes by Wendy, I think is absolutely unmissable. So we're going to release that next week. That was a really, really enriching, and I would say empowering conversation, and then I'll even give you a third as well. I was down last week in Scottsdale, Arizona. We were leading a workshop with our senior coach, will and will, and I were working with sasquahana. Took me about two months to to learn how to say the organization's name, but it was great as with their leadership team, or what they call their growth fellows, high performers within their portfolio companies. And we did a great leadership summit there, leading them through a workshop. We even hiked up to the top of Camelback as a little bit of physical exertion as well. And it was, it was really, really empowering and and I think really beneficial. So that was, that was something where you sort of, you go away a quick four hour workshop and come back, and it was just so empowering, really enjoyable. So beyond the regular coaching and everything else, and that has been a pretty busy time, but now I'm locked in with you here. I'm excited for our our conversation as we, as we march forward in today's show that's to
Max Gering 07:25
do it, but it's, it's awesome to hear what you've been up to. I'm sure the listeners like it as well. A lot of really fun, fun stuff happening, a lot of competing demands, as we say. But when you use the purple path magicality, you manage it all.
Matt Dixon 07:37
So let's, let's talk about today. What are we? I'm gonna let you lead this part. What are we? What are we in for today? What are we talking about
Max Gering 07:45
today? We are gonna touch on probably one of your favorite topics, my favorite as well, the importance of reflection. And we're gonna talk about arc, which is assess, reflect, check in, something that we're always doing as coaches with our athletes, and we've done as coaches at Purple Patch, but something that we're leveling up this year in the way we do it and doing it in a more organized way to really help our athletes get the most out of this process of assessing and reflecting and checking in. And today, we're going to walk the listeners through the importance of why it's important to take a stop, take a step back. Stop, reflect. Think about what you've done. Think about where you want to go, both in sport and life. So that is what we were going to do today.
Matt Dixon 08:29
Yeah, arc is arcs, really, I would say a component and a now 2025, more formalized component of the broader Purple Patch coaching model, which I'll talk about the Purple Patch coaching model, I'm sure today. And I say it's more formalized because we've, we've sort of added this tagline, naming convention to it, to really help formalize it across the Purple Patch coaching team, who were already utilizing it, but now in a more formalized but also across the broader Purple Patch athlete base and and it really helps ensure that we can scale this, I think, critical component of all high performers, which is pulls come up out of the weeds reflect so that you can move forward with real purpose. And so, yeah, as you said, we're going to want to share this with with the listeners and and the truth is, whether you're coached by Purple Patch or not, this is, I think, an absolutely incredible tool for for performance in anything, not just in sport, but in broader life.
Max Gering 09:32
Yeah. And I think the cool thing about it, which people hear, is we go on. It's, it's kind of two part. On one hand, that there's a big picture, thinking about your life, thinking about why things are important to you, but it doesn't also leave out the practical aspect of, okay, what am I now going to go do about it these next three months? So that's what people can expect to get out of this. One is some inspiration, but also some really actionable steps.
09:54
Yeah, that's great.
Max Gering 09:56
So then why don't I think a good place to start is a little bit. About the Purple Patch coaching method and the four A's that we talk about a lot, I think that will give us a good way to make sense of everything. Yeah,
Matt Dixon 10:08
that I think I should sort of take a step back and just just talk about the coaching model and some of the why behind it. And if you can bear with me for a couple of minutes here, I'll give it a little bit of history on this, because I think the context is, is really very helpful. And then I'll break out what we call the forays, the part of it. And I think if you're if you're listening or if you're watching, you should burn in your mind's eye an infinity loop that's going around, because this is an ongoing coaching process. So the the origins of this lie actually in the Purple Patch, pro squad. And it was a it was a model to ensure that every member of the pro squad that I was coaching, typically around 10 to 12 athletes, we're always synchronized of understanding where we were in the coaching process. Goal setting was a critical component, prioritization and focus, making sure that they were really placing their energy into the things that I felt would drive the performance needle. I also needed systems of accountability and support and making sure that we had course correction. Then the main subjects we're talking about today, is reflection always ensuring that athletes were having check ins to stay on course. And so the model emerged out of that to make sure that we could sort of systemize that. But if you go a next step further, then as Purple Patch started to evolve beyond just myself, we started to have members of our coaching team. So as the head coach, as it were, I had two or three coaches, then four or five coaches, then six or seven coaches. And now, of course, we have our whole try squad with many, many athletes on it. And so this has become a critical process to for lack of in the in the really positive sense of the the word to scale our coaching process. So it is a system to apply a coaching methodology where, when you're coaching an athlete, they're going to go through a similar process, apply through your personality, your lens, as I would be, as coach will would be, as coach Nancy would be. So we all apply to this framework and and I think where it becomes really empowering is it's a system and framework that eliminates a lot of the components that can create friction, confusion and ultimately a lack of effectiveness in coaching relationships, because it establishes alignment between coach and athlete or athlete themselves on what we're looking to achieve. It ensures that there is clarity on where you're putting your energy. It is a system where there's great coaching opportunity to say, hey, now that we have this alignment and clarity on where we're going to put our energy, I can hold you to account, and that's a part of the model. And then, as we talk about today, there's reflection. So basically, it's, it's really four A's as we talk about it, and and shall I just continue on and the four is while, while I'm on the race. So there are four eights. And it's very, very simple, and you can scribble these down if you'd like. Number one is aspiration. And really what that is, is a planning process, pausing quite often at the start of the season, but as we find out, even at the start of each week, which is what am I striving on? So what am I doing? What does success looks like coming out of that sort of purpose, and why? What are some objectives, so some stepping stones that are going to drive my actions towards it? So aspiration, that's a phase that's very typically rushed by coaches and athletes. They sort of say, Oh, I'm just going to sign up for races, but they don't really get sort of anchored in their why really define success? What are they looking to achieve out of this commitment and then establishing goals that lead them on that journey towards that? So we bucket that all up as aspiration. It's not just to add like the item.
Max Gering 14:18
Yeah, one thing to that, I think you mentioned that people kind of skip it, and I think you're right. I think people kind of put it as the oh, I want to do an Ironman. I want to do this race. And they just aspiration begins and ends with the name of the goal, the name of the race. And I think one thing it's really good for people to think about is, how do I want to feel? What's the experience that I want to have? People you know just like you, oftentimes they say, you know, people don't necessarily remember what you did. They remember how you made them feel. What's the feeling, the experience you want to have in this next chapter of what you're working towards with your coach? And then, if you're having a hard time figuring out what you're striving for, you can think about it in the reverse way. Think about what you don't want. Think about what you don't want your life to look like, what you don't want this next chapter to look like, and that can help athletes that are having a hard time thinking about the first day of aspiration come up with what they actually want to strive
Matt Dixon 15:12
for. Yeah, I think it's good because people and let's use sport as the as the obvious sort of example of this. But people can do our sport triathlon for many, many different reasons, and but it's important to understand the why. I had a professional athlete that was very, very gifted and talented, but she could never answer the question, why are you doing this? What's really important to you? And and that ended up being a really, a really large limiting factor. And I'll give you a really tangible example. Someone might call it. Want to qualify to the Hawaii Ironman great, or finish an Ironman great. But if you start to really understand what's important to me is I want to do this because it's, it's yes, going to provide pride, satisfaction and everything else, but I want to be a great role model to my kids, this is really like, and show them that commitment and accomplishment comes with all of these aspects, and that's really important, that can actually inform how you go about everything from picking races and goals to training. And if that's a real driver, longevity and health might be important. Community might be important, exploration and fun might be important to you. Qualification and being a professional athlete, that's a very different thing, a different set of standards and actions. So when you really get into that, it can drive both a lot of your decisions around what to do, and then, if you're coached, obviously the coach and athlete. And with that alignment, I think that aspiration phase of it, you can't if you're coached by a coach, I don't think you can both move on until there is alignment there, if you have, if you have real alignment. And that's another a but we're going to back it up in bucket. It into aspiration. Having alignment is such a critical phase, the second phase of our infinity loop that comes through. So we could sort of call it Part Two, is action, and that's okay, if that's what success looks like. And these are my goals. What are the things that I need to focus on to move me in that direction? And perhaps most importantly, is, what are the things that I can remove as distractions? There are always 100 things that you could focus on, but right now, either this year, this season, or this block of training, or even this week of training, because you can go through this on an ongoing week to week basis, what are the most important things that drive my performance needle, and what are the things that can wait they might ultimately be important, but they're not important now, so it's a real prioritization exercise, and that second phase is where you get clarity of action, you filter out distractions, so you're prioritizing, and it's basically A contracting face, because out of that's like, Yes, this is going to be our focus, and we're deliberately not going to focus on X, Y and Z. We're only going to focus on A, B and C, and that's a hugely important factor, because out of there, then we move to accountability. And accountability is where Max basically, if we've done a good job as coaches and we and we have alignment with our athletes, of this is where we're going. And then we define and the athlete understands and says, Yes, that's it. I'm in. That's where, basically, you and I are coaching them to that. We're holding them to account. We're providing support. And of course, I think this is also really important we course correct, because you're going to hit obstacles you just mentioned in our in introduction, the athlete whose program went off the rails. What do we do now? So you gave a really living example of that action phase. It's where we're doing the doing that that makes sense. Yeah,
Max Gering 18:58
yeah. It makes a lot of sense. And I think the cool thing about when you do one and two right, when you need to course correct, it's very easy to course correct, because you don't need to reinvent the wheel. You just go back to what you originally did, which is okay, you go back to doing the things that you need to do, and you refocus and figure out how to do
Matt Dixon 19:15
that exactly. And now someone said, Oh, should we add this? No, this is what we've agreed on. And, you know, like a big part of the the Purple Patch, pro success, in fact, our success across all of our athletes, for many, many years, has been anchored under this umbrella of nail the basics, Master fundamentals and filtering out distractions. Because yet, so many people ask me, What's the most surprising thing about coaching world class athletes? And the answer I always give is the most successful athlete journeys that we see is what we manage to remove from their program rather than add and so that that sort of action into accountability, holding ourselves true to that is really powerful. For. And then, of course, the the final component of this. So we've we've got aspirations, so we've set our purpose, goals, mission, success, etc. We've prioritized through actions. We're doing the doing with the accountability section. And then we've got assessment, our topic of today, and that that's really a key component, which, again, many athletes just get into the grind. Coaches get into the grind week to week, layering off. And they never pause. Get out of the wheats, come out of the 1000 foot view, come to 5000 feet, and actually look back and say, How am I doing? What's good, what's not so good, and how does that inform? And then re engaged and and from a process, I sort of chat about it briefly, but this process is obviously going to occur every year, season planning. You go through a whole season, but at a smaller level, it can also happen at key transitions. So post races, you know, when you go through and you finish, and it was like, Okay, what was good price pre race? Now, what do we need to do? How do we need to adapt? But also some weekly, you know, Sunday special that we talk about. And the first part of the Sunday special is what we're talking about today, which is reflection. I guess that that, in many ways, leads us into the arc process. Yeah,
Max Gering 21:20
yeah, yeah, no. I think that's a really good point. And one question I have for you is like, why now, you know, we're doing this based on a quarterly. We can do it at a lot of different points in time. You're saying, but we've chosen to do this with our athletes at the end of the quarter, leading into the next quarter. So in terms of sport, why is this an important time? Why quarters? Why is this an important time of the season to do that? Just maybe one or one or two sentences on that for people listening? Yeah,
Matt Dixon 21:48
what we're doing, and we're doubling down on this this year. I think it's all I think we've always done it. I would say more informally, certainly I would say less coordinated across all of Purple Patch. And so I've kind of done it with my athletes. You've done it with yours. Brad's done it with yours. But this year, we're really making this more of talk about it in the team. If you remember a moment, it's a really unifying moment. And the reason it's by quarter is that everybody, or most everybody, aligns their life on the regular calendar. So we think about terms of things in terms of months. We think of things in terms of quarters. We obviously think in terms of seven day weeks. So I prefer to build training plans, not in weird 10 day cycles or 23 day cycles or anything else, but try and build it around how we live our lives. So Monday through Sunday, we always start the week on a Monday and and so at the end of each quarter, while every athlete within the Purple Patch ecosystem is has a different stage of development, a host of different goals, etc. If we throw a blanket, an umbrella over the majority of athletes, we like to move people through blocks of training that have a focus. And the obvious example of that is in q4 so in October, November, December, we will label that as kind of off season. Some people are still racing world championships, but as a rule, our mindset as an organization is off season. So that's a quarter there. Q1 is coming off out of the holidays. And that's kind of pre season. That's where we've been preparatory. But some people might be going to race Iron Man New Zealand, to be on a different track. But generally, most people are here. So we are in that general lens, finishing the end of one sort of emphasis phase, build of a season, and most of our athletes are starting to transition, and it's never a binary switch. It's not a light switch. It's not like it's Oh, boom, everything changes, but we fade into a different emphasis of training. We're moving away from, in this specific case, this specific moment, we're moving away from the more preparatory nature of work. We're still committing to strength, but it's not quite as much of a bullseye. We're starting to do early season racing. We're moving from short, short, high intensity to more sustained threshold and above type work. Things starting to get real. And so this is a moment of let's look back at this last 1012, weeks of training, what have we done well? What have we not done well and that so that we can move forward, and as we start to transition our focus and our emphasis and our training, we're doing it with purpose, and we can individually and collectively course correct shift emphasis. Shine the light in some areas rather than others. And so it becomes a real moment. This is something that we will do, and we'll review. We will revisit this show, this exact show. We'll do it again, because this is basically end of March, so April, May, June. We'll do it again at end of June, and we'll say, okay, mid summer, let's think back. Many, many, most people have done quite a bit of racing by then. How's it going? How do we now go and build out the second part of the year, which is the heavy racing and, of course, leading into championship season? So that's that's really why this is a time and and this is for every individual athlete, collectively, tri squad athletes, we all do this together. And so we thought would be fun to include the listenership into this process as well and help them. That's
Max Gering 25:50
good stuff. And we'll get I think we should get into arc in a minute and talk a little about what are the questions people can ask themselves at home so they can do this. One thing I think people should bear in mind, I was talking about arc with my wife last night. We had to go to the mall to run some errands. We were in the car, and I wanted to talk through because I was getting ready to talk through it with Matt's this week. And I thought of two things. I thought, you know, it's, it's a little uncomfortable to pause and reflect, because two things can happen. On one hand, it can be really empowering. You can look back and you can say, wow, these are things I did really, really well. I'm really proud of myself. We had a lot of success. On another hand, it's a hard look in the mirror, and you have to look at your past three months and say, Okay, did I do the best I could in these buckets, in a, b and c? Am I living up to my potential? Am I holding myself to the standard that I really would like to be holding myself to, and the I think the outcome, the ideal outcome of doing arc is you should feel empowered, but it's okay to feel a little bit uncomfortable and feel like, okay, I got to step up this next quarter. There's there's there's gains to be made, there's improvements to be had, and it's okay if pausing and reflecting leaves you a little unsettled, that's a good thing. I think it's a sign that it's working and it's going to work, and will help make sure that you're not just living the same quarter over and over again throughout the course of a year.
Matt Dixon 27:15
What taste I love that you use that phrase a hard look in the mirror. I wrote it down because the truth is, if you're listening right now and you're and you hear that, think, oh, that sounds uncomfortable. Guess what? When you're if you've established racing goals, and they're very, very important to you, for you to achieve those goals, for you to have a breakthrough race. At some time, you will have a hard look in the mirror in that race, anyone that has achieved a great performance has not gone through great discomfort a along the journey, but also in the race, you're going to be looking hard in the mirror. It's better to look hard in the mirror now than it is to look in the mirror and not like what you see because you haven't followed through on your expectations and the things you want to do. So this is, this is, even if it is tough, it is also empowering. So, you know, we by taking on this challenges, we're going to be looking hard in the mirror better to do it on the journey than it is to look in race day and really not night, when you see because that's how, that's how races start to fall apart mentally. Yeah,
Max Gering 28:30
should we get into a little more? I think, I think we, should we mentioned we are one of our favorite expressions get out of the weed. So we started with that. I think something that athletes can think about is the classic but important question of, what's my why? Why am I doing this? Why is it's always a good it's a good reflection question to remind yourself why you're doing what you're doing, and why is it important to you? What are you looking to get out of it? So that aspiration that we talked about in the beginning is a key part of of arc. Yeah. And then what are what should someone ask themselves, if they're trying to assess how they did the past three months? All right, with the end of March, they want to figure out how 2025 has been going so far. Should they do it based off of what will my own training, nutrition? How should they break it down? Is there a right way to break it down?
Matt Dixon 29:18
Yeah, there's no, um, this. There's no formal structures to this. And quite deliberately, by the way, very similar. For folks that have listened before and heard us talk about the Sunday special, for example, we don't have a rigid structure. All it is is a process that then you can work through that works for you, because in a Sunday special for example, some people are paper and pen, some people are Google Calendar, some people are some fancy planning tool, whatever it might be, the important thing is to really understand and learn the context and the concepts. So there's great flexibility, but the framework. Is critical, as you say, yeah, the first thing is, you got to get out of the weeds. You got to give yourself a little moment. And by the way, this is not rocket science. It doesn't take that long. That's the important thing, but the process important. So look at the bigger picture and reconnect, as you say, to the white then you want to try and extract the lessons out of this. And I think the basic, biggest lessons are, as you mentioned first, okay, objectively, let's try and park the emotions here. Objectively, what went well, and that's relative to the actions that I defined were really important on my coach and I defined that were really important. How did I do relative to those actions? What were the things that went really, really well? More my training was good. It was executed well as intended. I was really consistent. I actually focused on my recovery and sleep. That's always been a challenge for me, but I actually really prioritized that, and when I look back, I did a good job on that. That's good, something to build on, something to continue to integrate my post workout fueling was good. I upped my protein. I was really good on daily hydration. So you look for things that were really good, you can also look at the more the less granular things, but but things that are a little less intangibles, like, Yeah, I had some setbacks, but you know what? I was pretty proud at how I got back on track your athlete that you talked about earlier, that was good, because that's a mindset thing. I had complete custard at work. I pulled two all nighters, but I didn't let that go off the rails, as I have historically. I actually, with the help of Max, got back on track, and that was a really important lesson. So so it can be free form, but it can be things that are quantifiable and more qualitative in nature, but really give yourself the sort of the props list, if you want to call it that. And the reason you do that is, firstly, a little bit of perspective, because when you're grinding day to day, week to week, sometimes we forget our progression, and we actually can pause and be like, Oh, we haven't done too bad here. That's pretty good. But also, you want those successes to say, All right, I've got to double down on those. I've got to cement them. I've got to formalize them, etc. And I think that that that's really important. I'm guessing you, you take athletes through that, do I start with the positives as well?
Max Gering 32:23
Yeah, I think starting with it obviously depends on the person. Some people you start with just where the conversation begins. But I think in general, it's important to acknowledge what went well and why, and start with overall speaking like, how was it for you? We talked a lot about fun. I think last podcast we talked we did together, we talked about winning is fun. Did you enjoy this last block of training? How did you feel like what were not just your physical energy levels, from hydration to nutrition, but your your mood, your emotional state? So any question that's going to get somebody thinking, and usually it's it's good to start with the positive questions, and then I think what didn't go well, a good question to ask is, you know, maybe would you have done something differently? So it doesn't have to be what didn't go well, maybe something wasn't wrong. But if you were to go back and do it again, which you're gonna do this quarter, right? That's the beauty of being alive, you get another chance. So it's quarter number two, if you're gonna go do it again, which you are, unless you're planning on giving up, what would you do differently? And that can also help people then start to make the mindset shift to the next part of arc, which is okay, from these lessons learned and from reconnecting with my mission, how is that going to inform now what I'm going to go do the next and I
Matt Dixon 33:41
think on the I don't like use to use the word failures or negative, but I think it's important that you objectively sort of rate yourself and rank yourself, of like, No, these are the things that I didn't do well. Like, my sleep wasn't as good as it could be. Or I'll give you an example of an athlete that I coach that said, you know, I woke up to go for my run, and I read the news, and something was happening, geo politically, and he was like, I just got depressed, so I didn't go for a run. Well, that's, that's actually something you want to write down, because that's, he can't influence world events today, so it's something that's out of his control, that he enabled to, you know, detract from his own performance journey and and of course, even if he was sort of bummed and a little bit down, a little bit at a press from the best thing he could do was go and do something in his control, which is to go move his body. So that would be something that you would write down, be like that. That's not a good practice or habit. I can course correct on that. There was no reason for that. But really identifying that and not thinking about it as a punitive exercise, it's actually things that you can look at to say this objectively, I did not do well. I committed to myself that I was really going to focus on my sleep. So did I do that? Well, no, I consistently X, Y and Z is like, No. And it's not saying, therefore I am a failure. You don't need to go down that road. It's like, therefore I have an opportunity to double down now, because it informs exactly that. Okay, how do now these insights, my positives, my negatives, I've got them, not in pursuit of confidence erosion, but in pursuit of action now reconnecting with my mission, that that aspiration. How do these info insights inform my next steps? How do I need to adapt and change what needs tweaking, what needs to maybe be re committed to, and what's my primary focus moving forward. So you're basically moving back into that flow. And this a really, really important moment, which is the lists themselves, however you write them down or note them or memorize them are worthless unless they lead to action, re engagement, reprioritization, and start in the process again, in the context of what you've done, something to build on the positives and things to course correct on the negatives.
Max Gering 36:17
Yeah, I like that, and it's it's important to again, not for the sake of making yourself feel like a failure, as you said, but to be critical of yourself. And we're in the business of helping people tap into their potential and creating high performers. And you know, better than most, after your years of working with high performers, they don't want things like to be sugar coated. They want the hard truth and the honest truth about what they doing well and what they're not doing well so they can get better. And when you do this the right way, you start to learn how to coach yourself through life and ask yourself the hard questions and be critical of yourself. So I agree it's super important. And one thing I've spoken a lot, yeah, yeah.
Matt Dixon 37:00
Can I just interrupt there? Because I think that's a really important moment when I reflect on coaching athletes. I mean, you you know that Max, you know that I love to have fun and, and I, you know, one of our brand things is serious, where the wink, where this is fun, and high performance should be fun, and we want to get results, and, and it's there. But I think if to sort of highlight one of the areas of success, important success, not just in the pro ethics beyond is a word authenticity of coaching. And if you're a coach listening, I think this is really important. The worst thing you can do is varnish varnish, something we're in, in sort of fake truths, and just think, positive, positive, positive. It's like, I'm always quite happy to say you didn't do that very well. Like, that's not very good. That's he but, but it's not therefore, it's you. It's never personal. It's because, if you have alignment, and what we're looking to achieve, what we're both looking to do is improve. And so the most I'm going to absolutely drive when I see behaviors that I really like and actions that are great, and execution that is great. Positivity is really important. People need and benefit from really positive feedback. But equal to that, if it's not executed as well as intended, it's just as important and just as positive to say that wasn't great. And when that authenticity really emerges, you start to have the magical word in the coaching relationship, which is trust. And trust is, you know, you with one of your coached athletes, me with one of mine. But it's also me as an athlete with myself, because you if you are self coach, which I never think is optimal. I always think someone being coach in any endeavor is better for a whole bunch of reasons that we've talked about. But if you remove the personal side, the identity side, I didn't do well, so therefore I'm a failure. And you remove that side of it and say, Actually, I didn't do well and I need to improve, that's a catalyst to really ignite performance in many ways. Yeah,
Max Gering 39:24
very good point. And for the athletes that are self coach, or even if you're a coach, but you're doing this exercise to help to develop trust with yourself, you know, because you're checking, checking in with yourself, to go to the I think, to keep it moving to the next point, our job as coaches is to always write. We're constantly keeping in top of mind what our athletes aspiration, what's important to them, what's happening in their life, and then we're always there to help them focus on the things that are in their control so they can actually then move the needle forward, which is even when you didn't do something well. Well, okay, how? Why didn't it go well? What was in your control that made it not go well and okay, that's the thing we're going to now focus on. So I think to keep it going, it's okay now, this next quarter, this next phase, keeping your mission in mind, what are you going to focus on? It doesn't have to be, as you said, it doesn't. It's not rocket science. Doesn't have to be sit down and write a thesis with yourself. You know? It's enough. If you walk away from arc with one thing that didn't go well and one to two actionable things that you're going to refocus on this next month or two months, you'll get a lot out of this exercise,
Matt Dixon 40:43
I agree. This is, this is not extensive. This isn't forensic accounting, you know where we're going through and looking at the books. This is, this is really an important moment. That's why I really like that word of transition when you reflect back, so you can look forward, and if you think about where we're at as a broader organization and group of athletes. We're shifting the emphasis of training. So things are starting to get more serious for our athletes and for most Purple Patch athletes. This means that, hang on, we're just about to get some more heavy interval work, dialing in really sustained efforts. Okay, we're going to do some early season racing and prep work. So we're going to start to fine tune and get some more performance running off the bike for the triathletes becomes more important. We're going to integrate some racing simulations in there, you know, starting to build experience and familiarity and confidence. And I think this moment that is really important, because what that means is in the rear view mirror, not evaporating emotionally or physically but but what is in the rear view mirror is all that stuff that we've done with off season and all that stuff that we've just done with sort of priming for this right now. So before we just charge him blindly to the it gets serious work. You want to think at an individual level, okay, what have I not done that? Maybe I need to nurture a little bit more. Or maybe I'm not quite ready for that, so I need to be a bit more pragmatic. And so this becomes a huge moment of of of ensuring that you that every person is doing the right thing for them in the coming block, you know? And it becomes, you don't need to be coached to think about that, but you you do need to integrate this moment into life in many ways. Yeah,
Max Gering 42:30
I think it comes to mind is not intentionality, like interesting what you mentioned, because even if you had a really good off season this, this is still important. You don't want to get caught up. I know you've mentioned this before, not getting caught up in the momentum, even if it's positive momentum, because then you lose intentionality. So I think this is super important to help people set the stage for this next phase of training.
Matt Dixon 42:56
Yeah, run a runaway train has momentum, but that's we want to make sure it's pointing in the right direction.
Max Gering 43:02
Yeah. So what can someone expect to get out of of this? Right? We have, we have the motivation aspect of it, right? So stepping out looking at why you're doing these things, boosting motivation, you mentioned clarity and confidence, right? Confidence in themselves. I did this well, okay, I can keep going. And you talked about ramping, ramping it up, you know, ramping up this next stage in training, having a focus on, okay, now, at what point does this shift? And you say, Okay, now I'm just gonna go execute. Do you then just not do arc? And you don't ask yourself these questions till the next, end of this quarter, or, as we mentioned the beginning, you know, what is continuing to integrate this process look like into your life? Is now it so?
Matt Dixon 43:56
So firstly, this is not a one and done for the next three months. I'll see in three months, and I see, because there's always these interactions, and in any that the best laid plans always, there are always things that we don't anticipate. So flex in the program is important. So I sort of alluded to it earlier, but the weekly Sunday special, that sort of point that is a little mini arc moment in many ways, because you reflect on the weekly basis, you course correct based on what happened your athlete that has become the theme of the day. You know, he had to course correct because his life turned to custard, so that that's really normal. So this is an ongoing, almost mini cycle that you always do just week to week. It's ingrained in habit. It helps drive coaching effectiveness these bigger moments, the sort of quarterly basis or post race. Sometimes you do it on an individual level. I think it's really, really good for you. Mentioned motivation, like re engagement. Motivation will always ebb and flow a little bit can. Commitment is there, and this is a recommitment process. I think that's really important. And then it gives you clarity and confidence on, okay, this is where I'm going to apply my focus. And that can be really powerful when you've got all of these competing demands, where it feels like you're in the middle of a snowstorm. It's like, No, this is what we're looking to get done. And it enables you. We talked about the shifting training emphasis that we have at Purple Patch, enables you to move in in execution mode. Yep, this is what we're doing. Let's go. And that is giving you time back. And when I would say time, I mean mental capacity, not spending time on things that are not a part of your greed. It's like, okay, this is it. It's a really big moment. So I think it really transforms the effectiveness of training more broadly and and I think that's what you get, is effectiveness. You get clarity, you get confidence, you get execution. So out of it, whatever training program you adhere to, it's going to have much higher likelihood of success, and that's why it's such an integral part of, ultimately, the coaching and athlete process. I would say, yeah,
Max Gering 46:20
what you don't just keep my mind you said that is, if you not doing this as a recipe for the mindset of just chasing hours and miles and just more and more and more to calm your anxiety, I think because you mentioned getting time back, and you can only get time back when you have that clarity about what you're going to do and what you're not going to do. So that. I mean, that's why for the people that have been following along the show for even before I was at Purple Patch, that's why this is such a integral part of the Purple Patch methodology. Because without doing this, you're you're going to fall victim to that, that, uh, chasing more and more and more mindset.
Matt Dixon 46:57
I tell you what. I can't tell you how many people at work. I mean, we talked about heading down to Scottsdale, how many busy business professionals, executives that I work with that when you first start that, the first thing that they'll say is, I wish I had more time. And when you start to work with them, beyond the physical and you look at the organization, everyone that's really committed to their job typically has, you know, an endless list of things they could get done. So never in their life do they finish work on a Friday and think I got everything done. There's always more. So they're always chasing and chasing and filling time and filling time. And so, you know, the Sunday special that we've talked about today, where you actually say, No, this is what I am going to do, and with deliberate intention, this is what I can move to next week. Isn't procrastination. Is actually a prioritization. It becomes a liberating tool where you feel like you're making progress, rather than constantly chasing, chasing your tail. It happens with athletes the same as well. You know how fit is fit enough? It's natural, if you're just in the weeds, that however fit you get, there's more, there's more, there's more. And so it does get into this. And actually it can really, really mess with athletes heads, like, if more is this, more is better, is more is better, and then suddenly it is that cage. It is that monkey on the back. It is impossible to integrate into life. It is a distraction and a dissolving impact to your relationships and how you're showing up in broader life, and it becomes a negative and so this is really about empowerment, and in many ways, that's my my closing thought on this.
Max Gering 48:45
I love it. This is the key to the good life. You do this, you'll you'll train with intention, you'll live with intention, and you will tap into your potential in sport and life. I think it's
Matt Dixon 48:56
we're getting there. You're getting very high on that one Max is fantastic.
Max Gering 49:03
It's how it works. Yeah.
Matt Dixon 49:08
One, one thing go on. Then I give you a little window of opportunity if you if
Max Gering 49:12
you do this exercise and you realize you're not really sure what you need to do, the next key step is ask for help with any any step you know you're not sure what you need to prioritize in your life, talk to your talk to your spouse, talk to your partner. You're refused to work, talk to your boss, talk to your co workers in sport, if you're not sure what the next steps you need to take, that's really what we're here for. That's what we work with our athletes for. And so this is a shameless plug to come meet with me if you've made it this far in the episode, clearly, you're interested in what we're talking about, and you don't have to go out it alone. And I think a good a good point of reflection is realizing where you need help and where you can do it on your own, and not being afraid to ask for help. So you can always Purple Patch. Coach,
Matt Dixon 49:58
yeah. I know. I think it's, I think it's a great point, because we, you know, the, you know, if you're coached individually by myself, you Nancy, Brad Scott, etc, within Purple Patch, this a part of the coaching process. But if you're a part of the Purple Patch, try squad, or any one of the squads. Sometimes very difficult to do this alone and really get direction. And this a great opportunity for internally squad athletes to say, Yeah, I'm just going to grab a session. And obviously that's an internal thing of like, young just reach out. So Purple Patch athletes listening. This is a great moment, because you've got a framework for a coach to talk you through. And then, as you say, just listeners that are self coached. It's a great time to just get a little bit of help, because it with that. I think the outcome of it should be, yep, clarity, boom, and I'm up to go and then, and we check from there. So see, I think it's a good example. And I think that the simple thing on Matt Max is, if someone wants to investigate more. Just feel free to reach out info at Purple Patch fitness.com, and we can. We can take it from there. Yes, we can. We can. Well, it's a lot of fun. We're gonna reconvene in a couple of weeks on our on our next subject, and next week, Wendy bounds, we'll take it from there. Gwendolyn bounds, not too late, a really empowering conversation. And as ever, everyone, thank you very much for joining Max and I and appreciate the feedback. Keep the questions coming in. We love receiving your questions. Info at Purple Patch fitnesses.com as well, and we can get some good feedback with with you being the co host Max, we're going to keep it going. Yes, we're stuck with you're stuck with me for now, but we'll take it from there. Guys, thanks so much for joining and thank you for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing. Head to the Purple Patch channel of YouTube, and you will find it there. And you could subscribe, of course, I'd like to ask you if you will subscribe. Also Share It With Your Friends, and it's really helpful if you leave a nice, positive review in the comments. Now, any questions that you have, let me know, feel free to add a comment, and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. And in fact, as we commence this video podcast experience. If you have any feedback at all, as mentioned earlier in the show, we would love your help in helping us to improve. Simply email us at info, at Purple Patch fitness.com, or leave it in the comments of the show at the Purple Patch page, and we will get you dialed in. We'd love constructive feedback. We are in a growth mindset, as we like to call it, and so feel free to share with your friends. But as I said, Let's build this together. Let's make it something special. It's really fun. We're really trying hard to make it a special experience, and we want to welcome you into the Purple Patch community with that. I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun, keep smiling, doing whatever you do, take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Reflection, Purple Patch, coaching methodology, aspiration, action, accountability, assessment, training, performance, motivation, clarity, confidence, self-coaching, athlete development, high performers, ARC, assess, reflect, check-in