Episode 218: Conquer The Optimization Challenge - Getting the Most Out of the Time You Have
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Optimize your training in a time-starved life
The endurance training circles are buzzing again about this (not-so-new) trend - Let's call it Zone 2 training, or to put it another way, training that is high in volume in low in intensity. There is inherently nothing wrong with this style of training unless it doesn't work in you time-starved life.
Today, Matt discusses training optimization and getting the most out of your training time as a time-starved athlete. You shouldn't chase the same training hours as someone who has similar fitness and experience level than you, but who has no time limits. It wouldn’t be smart. If you have time contraints in your life, you have an optimization challenge and Matt provides insight.
How can you optimize your limited training hours to yield best performance returns?
You'll learn:
How to frame effective training with positive adaptations
(17:10) "As you go on the journey to improve in any endeavor, there needs to be a challenging demand or stress applied, because it is only under challenge and adversity that there is a stimulus for real growth and development.
(19:30) "Every single coach and athlete should be seeking to develop a program from which you can maximize the amount of training that you can execute while continuing to produce positive adaptations."
Why more training volume is not always better
(31:48) "More training doesn't always result in higher adaptation yield."
The importance of being pragmatic and flexible with a dynamic mindset
(35:12) "If you try and follow an incredibly rigid training program that is built around the accumulation of training hours, you are going to fail because what was good last week and appropriate this week might not be the same as next week."
The secret to optimization success and prioritizing what is important
Bottom line: You need to demystify training. Look at the hours you have and ask yourself, "How do I get the most out of it?"
Episode Timestamps
0:00-13:28 Introduction and Matt's Personal Picks of the week
The Purple Patch Center is Open! - Learn More and Schedule a Visit
Purple Patch Website and Newsletter
Listen to the original Sami Inkinen Episode
13:40- The Meat and Potatoes - Conquering The Optimization Challenge - Successful Racing in a Time-Starved Life
Purple Patch and Episode Resources
This episode is sponsored by our collaboration with INSIDE TRACKER. Inside Tracker and Purple Patch- Receive 20% off their services with code: PURPLEPATCHPRO20
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Full Transcript Coming Soon
Matt Dixon 00:00
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.
Matt Dixon 00:20
Hey guys. Today, we talk about optimization and all about getting the most of the training time as a time-starved athlete. It is a continuation of our time-starved athlete series. And you can document this as a little bit of a guide for you. Well, as a time-starved athlete, you have no choice but to chase the best results you possibly can from a schedule that has to integrate into broader life. How can you optimize that? You're going to find out in today's show, but I should add an additional tool that you can put in your toolbox. One, which many Purple Patch athletes leverage is to narrow down the focus and the precision. And that can come from the insights and recommendations from the team Inside Tracker. Understanding your personal biometrics, and how to build your focus in training, recuperation, nutrition, and even some additional supplements is a great pathway to ensure that you get the most out of your hard work. And, of course, enable longer term success. It's simple and it's empowering. It's really quite fun to even track the results. All you have to do head to insidetracker.com/purplepatch, and we have a code for you: purplepatchpro20. That gets you 20% of everything at the store. All right. So with that, let's all hold hands and let's get going on today's show. Now remember, if you love the show, please don't forget to share it with your friends. And of course, follow or subscribe. Whatever your favorite channel to listen to podcasts. It helps others find the show and embrace the education and get smarter and healthier and even faster. All right, Barry, we're all together. Let's do this. Let's do the show.
Matt Dixon 02:08
And welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast as ever, your host, Matt Dixon. And I'm sure that you've heard the saying, "less is more." It's a lovely quote. But it's not actually an accurate reflection of a really smart approach to training and exercise. I mean, doing less for the sake of doing less is not going to magically yield results. Let me tell you a story about one of my athletes. I began coaching Sami Inkinin in 2008 and Sami's goal was anchored around driving towards elite amateur triathlon. Now he was really physically gifted, you don't get the nickname "Sami the Bull" for free, ladies and gentlemen. And he already had a few solid amateur results. But I will say that when we started that journey back in 2008, he was the poster boy for the time staffed athlete. He was in the earliest stages of Trulia, you might know that company the real estate search engine, trulia.com. It was a startup that he cofounded. And as the COO of a tech startup, there just simply isn't much free time. And yet at the same time, Sami wanted to radically improve his triathlon performance. He wanted to train and compete at the longer Ironman distance, hopefully, including the Ironman World Championship. Now, one more thing about Sami - he was and is, to this day, a really curious guy. He was a living breathing example of the quantified self before it was kind of already a theme. Weight, sleep, training, everything -all tracked. So we had a case study built in because of Sami's habits that we could look back. And that started well beyond when I started coaching with him.
Matt Dixon 04:04
Now, what was the challenge? Well, it's clear. How could Sami navigate past the overwhelming common perceptions of the time that in order to yield performance in half Ironman distance or Ironman, you had to do at least 20 hours a week to be successful. That was just almost common law. And as a coach, I looked at Sami's life and realize that it was quite simple. He didn't have 20 hours to give. And yet he still had that ambition. He wanted to compete and be the very best of elite amateur triathlon. So that left us with a challenge. An optimization challenge. How do we find predictable high performance on Sami's weekly training budget, which was only 10 weekly hours. Now, if I had Anthony here with the mathematicals he would tell me that that's about 50% of the amount of training that he would be able to do each week on what the common perception is called for. Well guess what? We did it. Sami won overall amateur titles at the Alcatraz triathlon, the historic Wildflower triathlon many times, he won overall amateur titles at multiple 70.3 distance or half Ironman distance race, as well as Ironman races, and he became the amateur Ironman 70.3 overall amateur world champion, as well as an age group world champion at the Ironman Hawaii World Championships. There's a lot of champions in there. While he was at that Hawaii Ironmen, he broke nine hours. That's kind of the mythical amateur barrier in that event. Sub-nine, all on a weekly training regime of 10 weekly hours. Now, Sami is gifted, he is a physiological beast. But these results flourished because of a healthy dose of pragmatism and optimization. So what should be your biggest lesson from this little story? Outside, of course, choosing your parents wisely. Is it that 10 hours is your magic pathway to performance? No. Remember how we started the show? This isn't a pitch about that, quote, less is more. Let's face it, look, if I really believe that 10 hours is what it took to find world class performance, then the hordes of professional athletes that I developed up to the world class level, would have followed the same low weekly hourly recipe. Hey, if it works for Sami, it must work for everyone. No, the lesson is that in this case study for Sami, leading as a CEO of a tech startup, if we dumped a let's quote, "regular training program" on top of Sami's life 16, 18, the magical 20 hours, it is doubtless that he would have failed. The only path to your success is in a single word - "optimization.' Today, guys, we answer the question, how can you optimize your limited training hours to yield the best possible performance returns? And guess what? It turns out that we're pretty good at helping amateurs answer this question. And so I thought, why don't we extend our insights to you? Now, before we dig in, I should say, a little laziness is beginning to get noticed.
Matt Dixon 07:42
I have still yet to provide all of you with a title for this next piece that we do, where I like to keep you up to date with some observations and musings that I see from other parts of Purple Patch, or the big wide world of performance. I've been mumbling on with "what's going on." So perhaps you've got an idea. What can we title this nice section? Maybe it's Matt's, I don't know, Musings? What do you think? Let me know, ping me a section title on our socials @PurplePatchfitness that's at the Instagram and also on Facebook, or @purplepatch, which is in the Twitterverse. But whatever you think, give me a little bit of a title because I'm really struggling. And I like to think of myself as creative. But here I am. I'm stumped. But with that, what is going on?
Matt Dixon 08:37
What's a what's going on? Here we are April 2020. Center in San Francisco, the Performance Center, the Purple Patch Performance Center, and it was ready to open. Well, you know what happened. And over the last two years, we've been able to inhabit this beautiful space that I record. In the lovely recording studio. We had really treasured office space, we had some quiet classes going on where we could have some small group coaching. But it was only for a very small group of people as we as with everyone else navigated the pandemic. Finally, I can say, we are opening up. Now the good news about this? If you find yourself in San Francisco, you don't need to be a Purple Patch athlete to join. In fact, it's on a drop-in basis. You can come once, you can buy five-packs, you can buy 10-packs. We are incrementally opening. We are starting with our bike sessions, small group coaching, high return you don't even need to be a triathlete. In fact, I'd have to say most people that are coming right now are not triathletes. They just love to ride their bicycles and they want to improve and embrace the methodology. We are also going to have small group strength classes, small group coach treadmill, and circuit classes. And of course, the regular suite of services that we already have from bike fitting with IOG, SMI, or Sports Medicine Institute with their orthopedic massage, sweat testing from Precision Hydration, and a whole bunch of other consultations. We are open. It's a lot of fun. It's fantastic. And of course, if you're not in San Francisco, but would like to come and join us for a special package, where you get a little dab of everything, you're welcome, we'd love to have you. We will package up something for you. Head to Purple patchfitness.com and go to the center tab, you can see what's going on. Okay, second thing I want to point out, this is your last chance for the next ask Matt anything episode that's coming up. And it's all about running themes. If you have any questions around your running, you're frustrated, you don't see yourself as a runner, you're perpetually injured, whatever it might be, feel free to head to the podcast page, the main Purple Patch Fitness website, and on there, you'll be able to leave me a voicemail, we might even play your voicemail live on air. And then I will do my best to give you the best answer that I can. It is the "Ask Matt Anything" episode -those have been very, very popular. And we're anchoring this one a little bit more specific all about running. It is the last chance we've got some great questions already. But if you do have a question, please ask it there. You can even ask questions beyond running I should say we'll just save them for the next Ask Matt Anything which will be in a few more weeks time. All right, final thing. The newsletter this week. We like to do as you guys should know by now a complimentary educational newsletter and I get down and dirty this week. I do a lot of insights around last week's podcast, which was all about showing up. And I try and provide some valuable context. I also get into a discussion on a really important blog that was offered. Well, let's label them the late comers. Those that are rushing right now to start their ramp for training. Oh my goodness me I am behind the eight ball getting ready for a half Ironman or Ironman Distance over the coming 3,4,5,6 months. If you are behind the eight ball that is a "do not miss" blog on the website, I would encourage you to do it. Okay. So word of the week this week. Well, Barry is having one of those trendy ones guys. He's having a mental health day. I don't even know what it is. Don't get me started. He began throwing technical terms around like screen fatigue and needing a little bit of me time. But far from being overworked. I think that it is no coincidence of this fatigue that suddenly bubbled up, has emerged less than a week after his amazing life changing water fast. seven to two hours where he said Matt, I dropped over the course of that 72 hours, four pounds. Goodness me. And guess what, ladies and gentlemen, more than a week later now, he's only two pounds over where he weighed two weeks ago. Hey, you do the math. Anyway, by definition, he says it's a success. I think I'm gonna need my abacus to work that one out. But enough to say no word of the week this week. So guys, we go right in riding on the coattails of Sami and cannon Yes, Sami the bull, we are doing the meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 13:42
Yes, it is the meat and potatoes. And I've got to say before we get into this, the timing of this week's show is perfect. You don't want to why? Because we venture into the meat of training. For many athletes, the events are looming. And so many of you guys are starting to really wade chest deep into the heavy duty work. So this is a good time to try and hold your perspective and hold the course on what it means to be a time-starved athlete. Also, most of you guys that are training for events are doing it in a backdrop of an environment in which there is high change, a sort of new normal with a host of emerging logistical challenges. And all of that carries an additional emotional strain or stressor. We've got the return to office, the heavy commute, kids activities and sports coming back. We are no longer home alone. And I think that's really important as we continue to integrate sports into life. And thirdly, the third reason that I think that this show is so timely right now is the trendy phrase across so many health experts and coaches around this new thing. I'm not sure if you've heard of it. It's called "Zone Two." Wow, doesn't that sound cool? Why are they pitching it like it's something new? Anyway, there's this heavy promotion of high high volume, long duration, low intensity training, which before you ask, there is nothing wrong with. It's really, really good. But if you're listening as a time-starved athlete, there is no value in you getting drawn to thinking all high volume, low intensity - that's my path to success. Because as you find out in today's show, we must reconcile that scientifically valid concept, and of course, the experience of athletes, we need to build the base, we need to build the foundation, a lot of your training should be lower intensity. We need to build it within the context of performance within your life. And so, we're going to go through a few sections today.
Matt Dixon 15:56
The first section, part one, let's call it "Framing Effective Training." Now, I think that we want to do this and come back up to the level of what we're looking to achieve and what effective training looks like, because we need to have that as our grounding for today's show. And I should say, I hope that for you loyal listeners, this is a little bit of a reminder, a little bit of a grounding for us as we dive in. I think there are two critical concepts that we must hold hands and establish, before we go about building our own optimized approach to your time-starved training. The first of which is that in any goal, success requires commitment. Hard work consistently applied, and the ability to manage setbacks and adversity. So in other words, there's no easy path here. If you want to do something, let's agree that it requires a massive amount of commitment, you got to show up, you got to work hard. So there is no easy path, there's no hacking here, it requires hard work, boom. That is point number one. Point number two is as you go on the journey to improve in any endeavor, there needs to be a challenging demand or stress applied, because this is only under challenge, and adversity, that there is a stimulus for real growth and development. We've talked a lot about that with that word stress in the recent weeks. So therefore, your journey towards excellence, whatever your own personal brand of that is, it's not going to be comfortable. It is in fact, the stressor that is essential to facilitate success. Now, my discussion today is all anchored in sport, of course. But think about it. Those two things, success in any goal requires commitment, hard work, etc, etc. And we need to have a demand a stressor to stimulate growth and development that extends well beyond sport will be on sport. Really important. And in fact, if you think about it, I can't think of a better case study of the hustle, the work ethic, the mode ability and adaptability required for performance than that of a small business owner, whether you own a coffee shop, or an auto body shop, or maybe that of a coaching company like purple patch. I'm here to tell you that it is relentless. It requires serious ambition and follow through. And guess what, anything worthwhile in your life that you really care about is going to require commitment. But it's also going to require you leaning into the fact that it is a journey that's going to include turbulence and challenge, in fact, to be the very best output and outcome, it can be that turbulence is necessary. And so if we anchor in this concept around the life of an athlete, let's boil it down and make it really digestible, really simple. As an athlete, your mission coming back to that mission of training, effective training, your mission and performance readiness is really quite simple: add a demand, so there's your training stressor. Adapt from that demand, the result is that you get fitter, stronger, more resilient, etc. And so every single coach and athlete should be seeking to develop a program of which you can maximize the amount of training that an athlete you can execute while continuing to produce positive adaptations and many people forget about that second part. So you want to maximize load while being able to adapt in a positive fashion on a physiological standpoint. So, to be clear, what I said there is that is not anchored around maximizing training hours for the sake of just volume, you need to find the right balance. It's an ongoing planning challenge for both coaches and athletes. And aiming to get the prescription right to ensure that you have enough stress to stimulate development, but not so much that the results become negative, or bleed into that awfully dreadful second job syndrome. Okay. So on top of that very basic training stimulus that we need to apply, and hopefully finding it in the right balance, which is an ongoing management cue. It is also really important that we consider a few supporting elements that will actually improve your capacity. You think about it. You want to absolutely maximize your capacity to adapt to training. And so the supporting elements, this is where they really come to the forefront. And they are not nice adults. It's not just oh, if you've got time, dear, wouldn't it be great if, because we consistently observe that it is almost impossible for any athlete to succeed, if they don't have a really solid foundation of the supporting habits. Now, if you're an avid listener to the show, you should be able to stand on your chair at this point, and shout with a big smile on your face and say, "I know this, I know what he's going to say." And you should, because it's really critical that we know this. If you are going to optimize your training capacity and results, you must integrate, and failing to integrate or embrace these habits will limit your training capacity and unhinge the whole program. And so there are two main categories. The first is recovery very simply. And that's proper sleep quality, proper sleep quantity, downtime, rest and recuperation, actually allowing yourself to be a little lazy, perhaps integrating meditation, or some other practices under that banner. And of course, some of the supporting habits that are really important that foster tissue health and joint mobility such as foam rolling and massage. Okay, so that's under the big banner of recovery. And then the big beast in the room, the one that is really confusing and very emotional for people - Nutrition. So that's really critical to have a foundation of really positive eating habits, both in terms of the type of macronutrients, the quality of them, the quantity and the timing, that becomes really important, a subject for another day, of course, secondly, post workout fueling. So ensuring that you are always bold and double underlined, always consuming calories within 30 minutes post training. And then thirdly, really consistent daily hydration habits, that kind of a forgotten part of this. But hydration is really important for recovery, for tissue health for your immune system, and many more bodily functions. And so we really care about daily hydration. And on top of it, it is a tool to ensure that you can manage your eating habits around quality of foods. And also for alertness, focus, and attention. Dehydration will impact that. So we really care about that side as well. So, boom, if we take all of those, and we add the critical role of everything around the body stability, strength, mobility, guess what we arrive to? It's what effective training is, I hate to say it, but it's the Purple Patch Pillars of Performance - endurance training, strength, nutrition, recovery, and you get that recipe, right? And we then want to apply those principles, because that is what makes up effective training within the demands of your time-starved life. And so this effective training approach is what we were seeking to do when we took Sami's training on his limited budget and said, "Okay, how can we integrate these four pillars into his life to get optimal return?" And what we did with Sami is what we want to do with you. Okay, so that's a mindset around and perhaps for many of you guys a reminder around effective training. But now let's move on to putting those challenges into action.
Matt Dixon 24:40
Okay, so when we thought about putting this into action, we really needed to understand what are some of the challenges faced beyond the most basic one, because when we're developing an athlete when we were trying to improve Sami, as quantified as he might be, this was not a mathematical solution. Ultimately, we're not building a bridge here. Life is, for all of us, a living, breathing, ongoing journey of ups and downs, high energy, a massive logistical challenge. It can be chaotic. And in the chaos, we as athletes and coaches must make smart daily decisions, so that on any given day, we want to try and get the best training to yield the optimal results. And so it's an optimized training approach. So let's look at the other side of the coin. Now, I'm going to save the last name here. But I'm going to utilize a different case study than this is a real case study. His name is John. He is also in tech, which is part of the reason that I chose him. He's very busy. He's in a successful tech company. He's also a father of two. And John was on a quest still on a quest to be frank, but was on a quest for great Ironman performance, and he had high motivation for success. Now, in principle, he's kind of a bit of a tsunami, he's actually pretty strong and gifted, perhaps not to the natural level of Sami the Bull, but at the same time, he's a good athlete. And he's relatively young. And he has a similar profile, tech, et cetera, et cetera. And John arrived at Purple Patch wanting coaching from me individually, the same way that Sami chose to work with Purple Patch. But he came with a pre-existing condition, if you want to call it that, a very strong mindset around quote, "what it takes for success." He had loitered for a long time on too many of those his the dirty word - forums. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, triathlon forums. And from that he gleaned a lot of advice, and you did a lot of reading. Here is a line pulled directly from his first email to me.
Matt Dixon 27:12
"I know what it takes. And what I've got to do is find the time to do the time." That's a cute, saying, by the way, John, that was cute. I'm going to keep throwing that back in your face, I just need to find the time to do the time. "I actually have pretty good control over my schedule. And I think I can easily get in 20 plus hours a week each week. I'm fully committed to this. And the good news is I have the full family support. And so I'm looking forward to working with you. And I am, as I know, they often say all-in." Whew! Well, John I will have to say, I read that. And I thought that sounds encouraging. Or did I actually think this might be a red flag? Ultimately, look, if we take the rosy lens, he has a super job, his family's behind him, he's got the time to hit some serious training hours. Pretty good. Yeah. But my first question, when I read that email is, does he really have time. He's a husband. He's got kids. He's got a pretty serious job. And I don't think it's part time. And so as we got going on the journey, it actually became more apparent that John was, for lack of a better phrase, really entrenched in a belief. And that belief was very simple. If he could check off 20 weekly hours, and then he was going to be successful. And so his job, no matter working with at the time, very heavily labeled the recovery coach, he was going to find a way. And in the initial months, he was clearly clearly behaving in the very normal way that I think most athletes do. What he did is he set his training time, he took my plan, and he molded it a little bit, much to my chagrin, but he took my training plan. And he bolstered it up and he got his 18 to 22 hours. And then what he went doing was he went around, and he built life around it. His work, his travel, his family, and no matter what happened, he would force the calendar. So what did that look like? Well, sometimes it might been getting up at 4 am gotta be on the bike, 90 minutes to two hours on the trainer and then finishing the workout outdoors. Little run off, he had to be done by 9am Because then hey, the family is behind me. I'm with them all day. No one even knew I was gone. He would end up during the week having some very, very early sessions and even some late sessions so that he could book end of the day. And then inevitably, because he was ramming in training at the end of the day, he would have some post training occasionally, after dinner or or do training, have dinner, and then carry on working, always pushing back that bedtime later in later. And on top of it all, what was happening for the family, that supportive family? Not quite what you might expect, because, yeah, on a Saturday, John was there, he was present. But actually what they were getting was a body, not a person. Someone that was tired. And over the course of the weeks, fatigue creep became really real, systemic stress started to build out. But guess what, a bull is stubborn. And the bull in this case - John was really stubborn. And ambition will often typically cloud reality. I think you know, the rest of the story here. John arrived to his race, he was really fit. And the race day was a disaster. He didn't blow up, he didn't have three quarters of a great day and explode. He just had nothing, no power all day. Even his wattage that he would see in training, it just never showed up. He didn't pop his cork, he just never even got to shake the champagne. It was just miserable. And the outcome more than two hours slower than he anticipated. What the f. John was mystified? Where did John go wrong? Well, let me tell you, something that might not shock you. More is not always better.
Matt Dixon 31:35
So we started the show with less is more. And I said, Now let's not write equally more is not always better. And John is a living example of that. More training doesn't always result in higher adaptation yield. If you are unable to positively adapt to that stressor, I would even go out on a limb and say that more is unlikely better for the majority of endurance athletes when you take in the context of their life demands. So what does that mean? Look, if you take any athlete off the shelf, and they can successfully absorb 20 hours of weekly training, or 30 hours, or even 40 hours, fantastic. There is nothing wrong with high volume training. And, in fact, it's wonderful if we only consider high volume training within the vacuum of scientific methodologies. The problem for John and you the time-starved athlete, is that these training hours must be completed by definition around the numerous other responsibilities. Now we define training as a stressor that you apply to hopefully yield a positive adaptation. But what you have to do as a time-starved athlete is consider all of the other stresses that you navigate in broader life, work, travel, finances, friends, and family and all of the commitments and responsibilities that come around it. Some of the challenges that so many people face with sleep, imperfect habits of nutrition, including, I should say, the habit of alcohol. And of course, even the way that we see ourselves in the world, what we might label your self image the list could go on. But the important point here that I must hound into is that their body, your body is no good at differentiating different sources of stress. So if you're crossing time zones, or got a deadline at work, that is a stressor on the system the same as Hill repetitions. It's going to systemically suppress you and the stresses of your life accumulate. Meaning that you can only grow and adapt if you consider your ultimate training program on any given day, any given week within the context of the other stresses that you must navigate.
Matt Dixon 34:03
Now, there's an old Purple Patch saying that says, "life is not a spreadsheet." And that was unbelievably relevant to John. And it's also relevant to you. This is the very point that we had so much success around Sami, who many people knew as this quantified guy that tracks everything, but he wasn't shackled by data or spreadsheets, he was pragmatic. And we have to understand this. There is an ebb and flow of the number of variety of stresses in your life. And you don't have loads of free time and your schedule is probably constantly shifting week by week, even day by day. And so there is a blunt truth if you are looking to optimize whatever training time you have, and that's that you are absolutely unable to cram unsustainable training hours in to a time-starved life, at least over the long term, whatever your training budget is, you will not succeed if you try and RAM more it. So that's just a simple fact. The second thing is that if you try and follow an incredibly rigid training program that is built around the accumulation of training hours, you are going to fail. Because what was good last week and appropriate this week might not be the same as next week. In fact, your only real chance of long term consistency emerges from what we call a dynamic mindset. You have to plan your week within the context of the non negotiable commitments from work life and those supporting habits. And then you build your capacity and your health, and you optimize your training. So what I want to do is I want to help John, and you, ourselves. So hold hands with me, because we're going to try and put a plan into action. Now, as we get going, putting a plan into action. I've got to be frank. Our friend John, he was a performance dipshit. He was a lovely bloke, but he was sure stubborn. And I gotta say he was relatively uncoachable until he evolved. And he became really coachable. Guys, we can all evolve, we can all improve, we can change. It's not comfortable. But John changed. And this is how we changed. This is how we helped him evolve. Well, with John, I leverage multiple case studies to really try and help paint a picture. I wanted to almost create a, not to be too egotistical, but an enlightened path. Now one of those case studies was so charming, let's say, John, look, here's someone that basically looks like you, acts like you relatively similar, perhaps a little bit more genetically gifted, because he is an outlier, let's face it, but he is someone that you can look up to, or you can almost be mentored by. So why don't we use him as a little bit of a blueprint, this is what we did saw me a nice so that we could try and solve this challenge, seeking high performance while really wanting to show up in life. And I painted the picture of how we saw me and I retained pragmatism in training and adopted an optimization mindset. Now, a few quick hits, if you want to be successful, here they are, get your notepad and your pens out.
Matt Dixon 37:31
Number one, you cannot look at total weekly training hours as a barometer of success. Period. It would be silly. Number two, you shouldn't mimic other training plans, and then try and force those magical plans that really work for Jenny, or Sue, or Barry or Kevin, whoever it might be success comes from you aligning your plan with your life. Number three, your best plan is never static. It isn't anchored in a rigid spreadsheet, we need to embrace a living and breathing approach to training that actually works with life, not against life. Number four, pragmatism as a mindset is the dominant thing that we focus through. And finally, finally, you're going to come to your best plan. So far is training plan by facing the challenge and focusing on life first. Sort out life logistics, and then optimize the training hours that you have.
Matt Dixon 38:33
Well, let's put it into a little bit of an ABC as it were already, A. The first thing that you do is you want to look ahead and calendar out those non negotiable weekly commitments that you have. Now, this might be the hours that you're at work, some of the really important projects and meetings, perhaps you're adding commute time. But then you want to add time with family, friends, and all of the associated activities that might be including coaching Jenny, softball team, whatever it might be. Now, I should note here, that Sami and all of the other executives that I work with, really love this process. And they like it beyond just planning their training. We tend to call it the Sunday Special. And it's really a process of looking ahead in any given week and saying, "let's frame out what my week is like, but also plotting the meetings." You're not building agendas. You're not thinking about what you're going to say or what you're looking to get out of it, but it's at least framing in your mind. This is my week. This is where I need to execute. This is where I'm going to place my focus. And you have a picture a lovely picture of all of the non negotiable activities in work and life. that you are going to be wading through. Now, what it enables you to do why we call it the Sunday Special is typically people tend to work Monday to Friday. So on Sunday, you're effectively coming up for perspective. And you enter Monday on what we call execution mindset. In other words, you have clarity perspective, you know what's coming. And with familiarity, you are empowered to go and tackle those components. Even if it's a crazy week, it's going to be really effective. Now, if you map these day, by day, you're going to be able to start to envision how many hours do I have in a week? What's realistic, and I want you guys to remember, Sami realistic, not John, aspirational. What are some really realistic training blocks? Good. The next thing that you do is you can take out all of the all important supporting habits. Now this really gets overlooked by almost every coach and athlete. All right, when we got to go to work, when we got the family good, you got his training, times, let's go and hit it on boom, boom. And overall, the training time tends to be too high than is really sustainable. If you want to be successful over the long term, then you need to make sure that you prioritize and calendar, your supporting habits, most folks overestimate their capacity. And they're going through an exercise of self sabotage, because they neglect - what we talked about before - the non negotiable elements, sleep, downtime and rest, including a transitional time towards sleep where you might read, hopefully, without a screen, etc. Planning sufficient times to prepare and consume and clean up meals. And then one other thing, because you're not a robot, integrating some social time, some downtime, we are not dominated with the focus of training or the focus of work, or being present with family but just being. It doesn't need much for it to be a little bit of flex in the program.
Matt Dixon 42:21
Now, I want to pause here and have a little bit of a tangent because I think this is really important. Let's just pause and think about what I just said, calendar out your non negotiable commitments in life, then put into that calendar, all of the supporting habits, sleep, meal preparation, downtime, rest, social time, etc. And that creates a picture. It does remind me of something that a question that I often ask both athletes or executive teams when I'm working with executive teams, and it's a really leaning question. I say, "If you boil down everything in your life, like forget about your work, forget about finance, whatever is what I want to know is tell me the two or three things that when it all comes down to it, what do you really care about." And if I went around the room, most people would lean into stuff that would not be that surprising - my family, my health, et cetera, et cetera, most of us fall into that bucket. I really care about my family and friends, I really care about my health and longevity, etc. So that's when I pause everyone. And I follow up because I'm a little bit of a bastard, and I don't let them off the hook. And I say, Okay, if those things are really important to you, and you tell me right now that ultimately, those are the things that you truly care about. Show me how they are represented in your life each week? How are you showing up and making sure that those are a part of the fabric of your week? And let's pick one, I really care about my health and longevity. When someone says that I'm like, Okay, well, let's have a look. And when we look at their life, they're consistently quite typically eating on the run with probably less than valuable choices in nutrition. They compromise sleep consistently, exercise tends to be random. They have one, two, maybe up to three glasses of wine most evenings of the week. In other words, their actions don't promote health in any way. Now, I'm not trying to get folks to live like a monk. Life should be joyful. But quite often, we see that actions directly countering their stated belief of what they care about. And so bringing it back to this subject is your with this in mind. If you believe when you heard me earlier in the show, say supporting habits in your performance are really important because you need to commit to those so that you can build your capacity and yield the best results possible, you better start integrating them into your life before you even think about it. And so you have to actually think about integrating as a habit, the elements of your life that you really value, family, social, healthy habits for eating and sleeping, everything that's not just going to optimize your physical performance for sport, but for actually, for you to show up in an authentic way around the things that you care about. So we have two steps, calendar the non negotiables, integrate and calendar, the supporting habits. And when you've completed those first two steps, you know what you'll have? You'll have a really clear picture of the actual, honest, pragmatic time on your schedule,
Matt Dixon 45:59
We're going to see the weekly blocks that you have. Now for Purple Patch athletes, depending on their events that they're training for. We see a typical range of time-starved athletes between on the very low end somewhere around three to four hours very, very busy people - Those typically not chasing IronMan, I should point out - up to maybe 16 or 18 hours, we have non time-starved athletes that do more training hours than that. But the top end of a time time-starved athlete tends to be anchored around 15 or 16 outs. Our average Ironman athlete tends to have about eight to 12 hours each week. Okay, let me say that, again, our athletes, Purple Patch athletes that are training for an Ironman, they tend to average somewhere between eight 9, 10, 11, 12 hours. And so what we're faced, right then, is okay, you got eight to 12 hours a week, or whatever your training hours are. And then you come to the final phase, which is quite clearly the optimization challenge. Now you have a very simple question to answer. What is the best program to produce the biggest performance yield within the hours I have available? Now, the fewer hours that you have available, the higher the proportion of those hours is likely going to include higher intensity. So if you've got 40 hours, the vast majority will be lower intensity. If you've got four or five hours, the majority is going to be higher intensity. Let's come back to Sami he had 10, free weekly hours, that was an average. Hence, his program included a much higher percentage of his training hours that were completed at very high intensity. He did more high intensity training than the vast majority of elite amateurs who were less time-starved. And yet with this prescription, and in support of his big physiological gifts, he broke nine hours in the Ironman Hawaii World Championship, he became amateur world champion. And it's very clear, it's that 20 weekly hours is not always better than 10. And in fact, in Sami's case, he would have failed if he had have tried to sustain 20 training hour weeks within the context of his life. Equally, in Sami's case, the fact that he only had 10 weekly hours, if we had provided a program where we kept the most of those 10 hours at low intensity, it wouldn't have been enough of a stimulus to provide the physiological adaptations to adequately prepare him for his race. And so he is the living example of an optimized trained athlete within a time-starved life. And this is your optimization challenge. So as you go away and you read new see things on social media or the dreaded forums, etc. And people say this is how to do it. It's nonsense. The right way to do it is the right way for you and your life. And as a time-starved athlete, you cannot get the results that you want without ingraining into your psyche optimization. This is the secret if there is one and so you need to ignore what other people are doing. You need to demystify training. You need to look at the hours of you have and say, "how do I get the most out of it?" And below. So when I read that blog, and I see, oh, no, you can survive an Ironman, but you can't excell on 12 hours a week, I laugh because the average hours, what did I say eight to 12 hours a week for a Purple Patch athlete. And yet we've qualified more than 300 athletes in the Hawaii Ironman. We've had multiple Ironman World Champions in Hawaii, World Champions. And most of those athletes have trained 10, 12, 14 hours a week. Now they're physically gifted. And it's not about everybody qualifying to the Hawaii Ironman. It's not about even athletes getting onto the podium. It's not about becoming amateur world champions. What it's about is you finding the right recipe for yourself that in context of your life so that you can stay healthy, achieve your goals, and go as fast as you possibly can with the training availability that you have. And you only get there by taking an optimized approach. That's my stand. It will always be my stand. I hope it helps. And we will see you next time.
Matt Dixon 51:28
Thanks so much for listening. This has been the Purple Patch Podcast. If you like what you hear, we'd really appreciate it if you share with your friends, and even go the extra mile and head over to Apple podcast -subscribe, rate and review the show. The Apple podcast link is in the show notes. Your support and positive reviews go a huge way in increasing our visibility and also the exposure to time-starved people everywhere who want to integrate sport into life and ultimately thrive. Don't forget you can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Cheers
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
training, athlete, samiinkinen, life, hours, coaching, purplepatch, habits, performance, amateur, success, triathlon, ironman, time-starved