Episode 222: Filtering the Noise - Navigating the Landscape of High Performance Education
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Some expert advice and information can be confusing, contradictory, and at times even corrosive to your performance and health.
If you are reading this, it’s likely because you share a common thread with many athletes, which is the desire to improve your athletic and personal potential.
Dedicating yourself to learning and applying best practices and methods for achieving enduring health and high performance seems straightforward enough.
Unfortunately, the challenge many people face is being able to filter through the blizzard of information and advice from performance experts and coaches.
With health gurus, high-performance nutritionists, endurance coaches, life coaches, and an ever-growing list of specialists in related fields, all with seemingly sound theories and approaches, how do you know who to listen to? How do you differentiate a gimmick from good advice?
It can be confusing and frustrating to cut through all the contradictions and rival theories, but with a solid guiding principle in your approach to education, you can use the wealth of knowledge to your benefit and determine which advice should be taken to heart and which should be taken with a grain of salt.
Today Matt will highlight:
The challenge of taking well-intentioned advice from performance experts and coaches.
(31:02) “You can be learning and be inspired from a host of experts in fields, but at the same time, from those very same experts, you can fall into traps of quick fixes, instant gratifications, and ultimately culdesacs of performance failure.”
The key voices and their differences, and how to build your personal filter for this type of education.
(19:58) “I think one of the first steps to this is understanding who you are listening to, and what challenge they are trying to solve. And then the key component is take that information, filter it and apply it to your own goals, your own situation, and ultimately yourself.”
Creating a framework for approaching advice across health and performance and how to plot the best path for your performance journey.
(31:35) “I would encourage you to think in terms of long term, not interventions. That's just a globally smart way to approach performance.”
(32:49) “Nothing of long-term value is going to come from some radical short-term intervention.”
The goal of today’s conversation is to provide you with clarity on how to approach advice and education and how to apply it within the context of your body, your journey, and your situation.
Episode Timestamps
0:00-09:37 Introduction and Matt's Personal Picks
Free Webinar - Nail Your IRONMAN 70.3 and IRONMAN Race in 8-14 Hours Per Week
Training Camp - 2022 St.George Triathlon Camp
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Purple Patch Website and Newsletter
9:50- The Meat and Potatoes - Navigating the Information Landscape: How to meet, greet and filter performance education
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Full Transcript
Matt Dixon 0:00
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 0:20
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. As ever, your host, Matt Dixon. The desire to improve. I would say that this is the common thread for all of the listeners of the show, and also the Purple Patch athlete. And that's really positive because our mission as an organization is to educate and empower all human beings to reach their athletic potential. And it's through the lens that via athletic potential, you reach human potential. Yes, we bring life to athletes and athletes to life. But it's also a challenge that many face, and that is how to navigate the myriad of education advice from performance experts and coaches with so much of it feeling contradictory, or confusing. At first, you're told that carbs are king, and then keto diets are the magic elixir. You hear the power of intermittent fasting, but in the same breath are told cautionary tales of how fasting can destroy your performance in health. You're sold on the power of cold therapy, while another respected expert might promote the value of heat and sauna treatments. On one side, there are a host of experts in broader health, longevity, life performance, and on the other are the coaches and performance experts that are mostly focused around sport. And what ends up happening is that it becomes a minefield, a minefield of confusion, all stirred up with a little healthy mix of quackery in there as well, just to make it even tougher for us all. And so as a performance chasing enthusiast, how do you reconcile all of this seemingly contradictory education and advice? Who do you listen to? Well today, what I aim to do is paint the landscape for you and, coming out of that, provide a framework to empower you to meet, greet and filter performance education. It isn't a battle of right and wrong, but some context might be helpful so that you can read listen and watch all of the experts out there and make sure that you are taking that information and distilling it in the right way for your goals, your situation and who you are. Welcome to the murky world of health performance and high-performance coaching.
Matt Dixon 2:42
In today's show, we're going to try and check off three things. The first is to highlight the challenge that so many face when adopting well-intentioned advice from performance experts and coaches. The second is want to make sure that we outline the key voices and differences so that you can start to develop your own personal filter to this type of education. And finally, perhaps most importantly, emerge on the applied side. Plot a framework for you to approach education and advice across the aspects of health and performance to enable you to plot your own best path forward on whatever your performance journey is. Before we get going, I want to point out that the mission of Purple Patch is to empower and educate all human beings to reach their athletic potential. And to help us do this as a team, we've partnered with InsideTracker. Because their team over there has equal passion for helping folks, just like you, improve, achieve your goals, and also, keep doing what you love to do over the long term. If you want to find out more how we work together so that we can collectively accelerate your performance, head to insidetracker.com/purplepatch. And while you're there, use the code purplepatchpro20 for 20% of everything at the store. Alright, let's get on with the show. Let's dive into my newest little segment that I really like, Matt's Newsings.
Matt Dixon 4:14
Yes, to kick off Matt's Newsing...What's new? I am. That's what. Yes, indeed, mark your little calendars, June the 15th. Because I am hosting a very special event. It's all about training for an Ironman in 12 hours a week, or maybe a half Ironman in eight hours a week. Many would say it's not possible. But we've got quite a few data points. In fact, over 750 Amateur World Championship qualifications, in fact, to prove otherwise. Now most of these athletes of all qualified within the context of being very, very busy having time-starved lives, as we like to call it. And all of them have done it without compromising their health, and have advanced their performance across work and life. And I think that is two thumbs up. You can train to a level of high performance without sacrificing your schedule your sanity, your sleep, or your soul. That's a lot of S's in there, isn't it? On June 15th. Join us for a free webinar. We're going to walk you through the strategies and tactics to enable you to train for an Ironman 70.3, that's a half Ironman in old money, or an Ironman in fewer hours, while also performing better on race day, and thriving across all aspects of your busy life. Across the webinar, well if you attend, you will learn why the traditional high volume Ironman training approach is the wrong path for most amateur triathletes, and how to embrace a little bit of what we labeled the optimization challenge, leveraging a pragmatic and sustainable approach to training that enables you to thrive across sport and life. All of this is going to be really informative, but on top of it, if you attend live you can participate in a nice Q & A session with me. Yes, it is your chance to ask me any question that you want around your planning, your training, whatever it might be. Now, if you sign up today, even if you can't attend live, and that's good because we realized that we have listeners across multiple time zones, you should register and you get a free recording of the session. So if you can't attend live, hey, you don't miss anything. In addition, all of the registrants are going to receive a special blueprint I'm putting together so that you can start to plot your own effective training and life management skills all designed by me. It's gonna be fun. It's on June the 15th. Details are in the show notes. Or of course, you can reach out to us and we will register you info@purplepatchfitness.com. Secondly, this is another goodie, we've got two of these newsings today, and this is a cracker. I am incredibly excited to announce, we have got a new addition. A new addition to our legendary immersive training camp experiences. Yes, in September, we launch a brand new camp. We are going to be hosted at the Red Hills Resort in St. George, Utah, it is an absolutely ideal location for any athlete that's got a full race or two, including, of course, the upcoming Hawaii Ironman, and the Ironman 70.3 World Championships which are going to be located in St. George itself. But of course, you don't need to be a world championship qualifier, both in terms of attending the camp or of course getting a lot out of the St. George venue. Any races that you have on the circuit, or if you're just interested in improving your performance, it's a fantastic opportunity. I will say these camps are very special, even if I do say so myself. And I want to make sure that we put out there, that they are not only for Purple Patch athletes. We of course attract a lot of our own athletes, but you do not have to be a Purple Patch athlete to attend. And we ensure as a coaching team, that we take great care to ensure that you get a really immersive experience of education, skill acquisition, and of course, high-value training for every level of athlete. You can be self-coached, you can be led by someone outside of the Purple Patch ecosystem. And of course, we would collaborate with your coach if that is the case. Throughout the whole session, we integrate full video analysis, precision hydration sweat testing, so that you can dial in your fueling and hydration strategy for your races, and some customized training for each person to ensure that you are challenged but most importantly, successful. We have a massively high coach to athlete ratio. What I mean by that is that we typically have a coach to every two to three athletes, and so it really does create an experience like no other. If you're interested, head to purplepatchfitness.com. These camps, I will say, I will warn you, they do fill very, very quickly. And we are posting this live today. We only have 15 spots for campers. That means there should be about five coaches there, I'm guessing, so register. Or if you want to talk about this at all, feel free to reach out info@purplepatchfitness.com, and of course, we're happy to have a conversation with you. All right, that's a pretty meaty Matt's Newsings today. So what I'm going to do is bypass our Word of the Week. Barry gets yet another week off the little ukulele and we're going to dive right into the juicy parts. Ladies and gentlemen, let's do it. We have arrived at that time. And it is indeed time for the meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 9:50
Yes, it is the meat and potatoes. Let's start with this. Look. You've got your longevity experts. You've got your health gurus, you've got your high-performance nutritionists. You've got your endurance coaches. It goes on and on. And every one of them has got a platform, and all of them are equipped to deliver sound advice. Unfortunately, the result of you the recipient of all of this information is it can be really confusing. A lot of the advice can be contradictory. And in fact, unfortunately, some of the stuff out there can be corrosive to your performance and health. And at the heart of all this, this information overload is you. And there is no getting away from the fact that ultimately the onus is on you so that you can try over the course of your performance journey to start to develop a filter that enables you to absorb this information, but ultimately work out what's appropriate, or what you can disregard, so that you can help your body, your journey, your situation, etc. And so today, I'm going to try and help a little bit. We're going to dig in. I actually thought it might be nice to recount a true story, a story of an athlete that I work with, and her name is Ingrid. Now, Ingrid, I would label as being both kind of the athlete and the health nut. Now this is going to sort of reveal itself as we go through the day. But it's like, hang on, aren't all athletes healthy and aren't health nuts tend to be athletes. Well, not always and in fact, there are kind of two different pathways here. But stay with me on this. We're going to label Ingrid identifying as an athlete and really dedicated to her own health. And I think it's a little bit of a cautionary tale for people. She's in her early 40s. And for really the whole of her life, at least through since being, a sort of early teen, she is what we might identify as a life-long athlete. She has run marathons, she's finished multi-day riding tours through Europe, she loves cross country skiing, she's even done a few Ironman triathlons. And really, she's inspiring to her friends, she's up for anything. She's highly ambitious. Through her 20s and 30s, she was seemingly indestructible. And as she transitioned towards her late 30s, she became increasingly interested in almost amplifying her life performance. She wanted to shift her body composition for the positive, but she also wanted to start to think about longevity, enjoying the journey as long as she could maximizing energy in the day, all of the things that are understandable and inspiring to many people. And so Ingrid began to read and listen to a really broad spectrum of performance experts. Now her library of listening included almost two parallel paths. And we can filter these into a couple of sort of main camps. The first was information education, podcasts, et cetera, anchoring more around sports performance. So training methodology, sports nutrition, strength, especially for female athletes, she was really fascinated by that. And we might throw some names in there, there was Purple Patch, there was Stacey Sims, Steve Magnus, the nutritional revolution, and on and on and on, and a lot of experts that were really anchored around what you might say sports performance. Now, the other type of content that she consumed include the host of experts and advisors in what we might label the broader realm of longevity, life performance, even hacking. Some of her favorites included Peter Attia, David Sinclair, Andrew Huberman, and many on from there. And she was a passionate consumer. She greedily listened to the tails and advice, so that she could take, her quote and favorite saying that I really dislike but, I want to take my performance to the next level. Well, over the months into the years, she kept training really hard for events, but she started to dabble in almost every additional claimed performance booster that she could try. Each thing was the next best thing she shifted her diet to plant-based, and tried fasting, then transitioned to Keto. She started to integrate cold water therapy, she had a cabinet of supplements so that it could help her brain and body performance. She was simply bouncing from one thing to another, in search of sustained energy, and improved performance. She was by definition obsessed, I would say almost shackled by it, and what happened slowly over the months, almost into the year, she began to struggle. Ingrid's energy was up and down. Her running performance was starting to decline. Her indestructible appetite for challenge absolutely waned, and her frustrations grew. She searched for answers, started to go to all sorts of doctors to try and find those answers. And first, it was her thyroid and her blood panel. Perhaps she needed to go through some form of elimination diet. Was she gluten intolerant? Perhaps it was just a symptom of overtraining. And soon confusion started to refine itself. She became directionless, and it led her to dive more and more into just trying to find THE answer. The problem was that as she searched, all she heard was more contradiction. She was trying to be an athlete, and she was trying to feel better in life, but ultimately, she was failing in both. What the heck was happening here?
Matt Dixon 15:27
Should we blame the advice and education from the endurance sports experts? Or should we dismiss the insights from the longevity and health experts and just say no, that's quackery. All it. That's all rubbish. I don't think so. And this isn't about right or wrong here. The truth is that many experts' content education that she was absorbing had some merit. The problem that Ingrid was missing was nuance. She was missing context of her own situation. She was failing to put the blizzard of information into context for her and her situation. She never stopped to ask, is this good for me? Does it fit with my needs, and my life? Ultimately, Ingrid's passion led her into a dark, dark hole of poor life performance, from which now she is slowly emerging. And you won't be surprised to know that that climb out didn't come with the addition of anything. Instead, it started to emerge from the removal of so many fringe distractions. She actually started to rebuild through basic habits and fundamental truths that she ultimately adhered to, and is now progressing back to health and ultimately, hopefully, to higher performance in sport. Now, Ingrid's story is not unique. And to some degree, it's the most common challenge that we see folks facing, chasing more and more quick fixes and promises of a whole nother level of sports or life performance and following guidance that might actually be valuable for someone or some subset, some group, but is actually the worst possible thing for them and their needs. And so, that was the catalyst for me thinking, I need to try and help here. I need to try and provide a little perspective and provide a framework for you.
Matt Dixon 17:23
So let's go through it. We're gonna go through three sections here. And the first one is the performance education challenge. Let's talk about the landscape of health and performance. Look, let's face it, we are in a situation now where there is information like we have never had before. Goodie, you say. And yeah, to some degree, good. My son Baxter knows more about the world and more about history than I ever knew at his age. He has more context, he has more empathy, because of the influx of information. But in addition to this, we're giving voice, with this access to provide information, we're giving voice to doctors, medical experts, coaches, and unfortunately, quacks who have mostly got a mission to inform and guide you to improve performance. So this should be a good thing. But unfortunately, there's some big challenges. And the big challenges of this information, even this podcast to some degree, is the lack of nuance, the contradictions, the tribalism that it can create some of the confusion, even the quackery that always bubbles below the surface. Let's look at some examples of this. I remember last year, I opened a publication that was focused on triathlon. And in the same issue, I read two different articles. The title of one was Carbs Are King. The title of the other was, or at least the byline, Becoming a Fat-Fueled Athlete. Now, this confused me. And I'm sure it would you. And if that can happen in an endurance sports publication, what happens when we broaden the vision to more global health and performance? Let's think about another one: intermittent fasting. Is that a good thing? Well, I can stop talking right now and do a simple Google search and within five minutes can come back with hordes of articles, all promoting the power and the benefits of intermittent fasting. At the same time, I can come back with the same number, highlighting the red flags of such practice, and how it can be harmful and an absolute waste of time. It's a minefield of information, or a blizzard of bullshit, as I like to call it. But in that blizzard of bullshit is also a whole host of sound advice. And it's all mixed together. And you, the passionate athlete or enthusiast, are tasked with trying to find the right insights and information so that you can actually incrementally improve your performance. So I think one of the first steps to this is understanding who you are listening to, and what challenge they are trying to solve. And then the key component is take that information, filter it and apply it to your own goals, your own situation, and ultimately yourself.
Matt Dixon 20:15
And so with that for part two, let's just have a little review of the voices that are out there. Now, we're not going to go through everybody, and there are many other experts and other quacks across both of these areas, but I'm gonna give you some appreciation of that. Because the landscape will begin to start to paint the picture of how the worlds both crossover in almost a Venn diagram, and support each other and yet at the same time create an explosion of confusion. So on one arm, we have sports performance. And most listeners of this show, think about sports performance. Now under there, we can talk about strength and conditioning, endurance training, nutrition, recovery, psychology, mindset, many, many other things. But the anchored goal and mission tends to be built around athletic readiness and improvement, not professional athletes, but just global people achieving their goals in sports, and most of the principles of the education that flows in this arm as I identify it, are around training for performance gains, improving your performance metrics, and ultimately getting the race results that you want. So we can summarize that as really the primary focus orbing around improvement in your training and racing results. Now, the really smart people, the most valuable experts across this field, they're always going to anchor their counseling advice within the context of broader life, they're not going to try and provide advice that will compromise your health or the ability performing work and show up as the best version of yourself. But ultimately, the framework of their advice is tailored for folks who are in the most likelihood are following some form of training plan, a goal-driven, often around events, and not only need to focus on habits such as nutrition, recovery, and sleep to perform in life, but also to achieve sporting gains. Now, the context here is the assumption is the listener is training for something. So, therefore, hence, in quotations, gets identified as an "athlete." Now, I should say tangentially, as I outline this, that I fall into the camp of viewing every person as an athlete, and I believe that every people, all of us, will thrive in life and health by adopting the mindset of an athlete and applying the principles to their own life. And so that can be the case, if they're desk-bound, they never aspire to be on the start line of any event. But by taking the principles of an athletic mindset, you can ultimately thrive in health and life. But that whole topic and discussion is not the premise of today's show. So we're not going to go there. What I'm doing is just painting the landscape. Now we've got a whole other arm of what we could still label as performance education. And this expertise is a landscape that is actually really quite different. Even though it's related. There are experts, as some of them, I want to point out incredibly accomplished, inspiring, and very interesting, who deliver education that is focused on what I see as a more parallel set of goals. It might be focusing more on longevity, or improving your performance in daily life, and mostly in that around your well being your mental health, your energy, and ability to focus on process information. And perhaps there's an exploration into the yet to be mainstream or fully understood practices and things like nutrition, which we know is the topic is always evolving, recovery, global performance that enhances function, beyond what we ever know, it sounds really inspirational and utopian, but there's a real passion for that out there. And ultimately, these experts are really interested in understanding the power of the brain and the body it commands so that you can ultimately unlock greater human potential. Now, we don't separate these there really is a strong Venn diagram that crosses over both of these arms, but we should still think of them as distinct because, under this arm, we can include a slew of neuroscientists, medical doctors, longevity doctors, as well as unfortunately, and I think this is a part of the challenge, more than a few gurus and hacks. Anyone that calls himself a guru, or a life hacker, you can kind of turn your back on them. But let's not be too cruel. In this murky world, we are bombarded with an explosion of new and reportedly cutting-edge methods for self-improvement. There are new ways of eating, or not eating, as it turns out.The power of very specific methods in how you breathe, supplementation, cold heat, and light exposure. The list absolutely goes on. And guess what? Some even much of this education is really interesting and actually quite exciting. And there are elements that are potentially highly beneficial for some of the groups within our population. Now, there's an ever-increasing divide in evangelism that occurs across this field of experts. And that evangelism and a lot of the education, it starts to splinter and divide, particularly around the other arm that we talk about the more sports focus coaches and experts. So on one arm, we have evangelism starting to occur - This is the catalyst. This is the thing. We've struck gold. - And on the other hand, a lot of sports-focused coaches and experts, they just dismiss disregard, often with a caustic tongue, and it starts yapping across at each other. And what is really missing in all of this is a little bit of opportunity in some context. You see, the important thing for someone that is more athletic in nature, really training for an event, is they must step back, you must step back, if you are training for an event, and realize that down our second arm of expertise - the neuroscientists, medical doctors, longevity doctors - that are talking about new ways of eating and breathing and everything else, in general terms, most of these experts are not really tailoring their research or advice towards athletes. They tend to trend much more towards normal folks intrigued by longevity or self-improvement, or populations who are seeking interventions to help with their issues, such as folks that are challenged with weight loss or energy management or many other things. You see their advice tends to be anchored around the middle of the bell curve. And that middle of the bell curve is folks that are seeking longevity of life. Now, what we're talking about here is, is the middle of the bell curve amongst performance chasing people, but it is more general, they are intrigued, but not focused on athletes and sports performance. So I think you can start to see that in this world. We have overlap and crossover. But it is actually at that intersection, that a whole bunch of problems and Ingrid's problem from our story earlier, really start to emerge. And so without trying to persuade you of right and wrong, because I don't want to get into Oh, this is my opinion on X or Y too much. I'll paint a couple of examples that I commonly see. Let's talk about intermittent fasting. Now I'm not going to place a steak in today's show about intermittent fasting and whether it has any merits or is simply a fact. All I will say is this, it's really interesting. We owe it to ourselves to explore and understand its potential benefits in the broader population. It is seemingly quite a powerful tool, perhaps a lifestyle management tool for some folk. And perhaps the reason for that is it can provide structure and rigor around some lifestyle choices and eating habits. But if you are listening and thinking intermittent fasting, and you're a perimenopausal female athlete training for a marathon, I simply can't imagine anything worse than committing to a morning regime of running, training, and perhaps strength work, while maintaining an eating window of for five or six hours a day that only started at noon. It would just lead to catastrophe. Now, we're not going to dig into details of the whys behind that, but not only will the long-term application or outcome of this combination, sounds really challenging emotionally, it will be a leader towards a decline in performance, but also a potential health catastrophe. That is a prime example of someone mixing worlds and advice without nuance to them.
Matt Dixon 29:13
How about a second one? How about a diet that is very, very low in carbohydrates. And perhaps the mission behind that is so that they can become more effective in fat utilization. Now this one gets a lot of noise in the endurance community. And yet, if you looked at the vast majority of elite athletes, the upper elite level of the sport, very few have or really do successfully adopt low carbohydrate eating or caloric restriction for long-term performance. Just because it gets attention doesn't really mean there's actual adoption at the higher levels of the sport. But it's murky, it's not as simple as that. We shouldn't just disregard it. Because that type of diet can and pretty much is terrifically beneficial for someone that is perhaps pre-diabetic, overweight, but at the same time, that diet could lead to potential disaster for a high carb-burning athlete that is preparing for the Tour de France or an Ironman or something like that. And so here we are, though we arrived where we have training athletes going out for a five or six-hour ride and then refueling with a diet of salad and nuts and they are chasing fat-adaptation but simply put, they are struggling in fact failing to supply the body with enough replenishment of its energy demands. And then they are stuck wondering why their performance is plummeting and their mental energy is low, and their injuries begin to rear their very ugly heads. Now, do we tend as a group, as a population, to eat too many starchy carbohydrates and sugars? Yes. Do athletes need to consume a whole bunch of starchy carbohydrates and, in context, sugars? Yes. Goodness me, it's confusing, isn't it? So you can see how you can be learning and be inspired from a host of experts in fields, but at the same time, from those very same experts, you can fall into traps of quick fixes, instant gratifications, and ultimately culdesacs of performance failure. And so what we want to do to finish the show is start to build some advice and a framework for you to actually lean into this type of education, but actually get something out of it.
Matt Dixon 31:26
So let's start with this first, to begin our launch our final section, part three. Let me start with a guiding principle. I would encourage you to think in terms of long-term, not interventions. That's just a globally smart way to approach performance. Think about it as long term. That's why we love the phrase, embrace the journey. Don't think about it. In terms of interventions. That goes across both life performance and sports performance. I would run away, I would absolutely avoid short-term fixes. If you see things like: 30 days to X or detox for Y. Just ran away. It's not going to provide any positive long-term solution for you. Instead, I would lean into, still with our guiding principle, lifestyle changes, habit creation. There is a reason that almost any expert across any field continually shouts, the simple truth that improved performance changes occur really gradually and out of a recipe of consistency. That is the magic word. And so whatever your endeavor is, it has to actually fit with your life. It shouldn't restrict your life. It's not a penal colony. Nothing of long-term value is going to come from some radical short-term intervention. And so to give you a prime example. A three day fast while you're only drinking water, even if there might be some theoretical and cutting edge scientific benefits, I would absolutely urge against everyone doing that, because the consequences and the risks are way greater, unless you're well in the context of getting everything else right.
Matt Dixon 33:19
And that leads me to principle number two: Get your basics right first. There is one of the primary sayings that we have at Purple Patch. Nail the basics. Your performance is always built on a strong platform of habits. And you will be amazed at how the very highest performance folks across all sports and life, work, tend to build their success for baseline of simplicity. for endurance athletes, it's training smart for you in your life. That's why we say performance within context, you should prioritize sleep, make sure that you get downtime, you get to step away a little bit, eat plenty, don't drink too much alcohol, and then rinse and repeat. Now you're here. And you see so many fringe interventions.
Matt Dixon 34:09
But the truth is that 95% of your performance is going to be built on a platform of really simple, somewhat mundane, repeatable habits. So you can shift your lens. Instead of seeking some magic elixir, or some theoretical salt and pepper of performance gains, instead, commit your focus to building a lifestyle around really repeatable basic health habits. And then guess what happens, your health improves, and off of that platform of health, your performance improves, if you get these basics absolutely established, and then after that, you want to go and jump into a freezing ocean or even a cryotherapy chamber, because you believe it's life-changing, hey go for it. That's great. I've got nothing against a bit of experimentation. There's no harm done with that stuff, and maybe a little bit of benefit, but do it on a baseline of really good habits. Okay, so we've got our journey first. We've got our basics second.
Matt Dixon 35:11
Third, what are your red flags? Because we're building a framework of how to approach this education. So we have to understand stuff that goes ***WARNING***. No. Disregard. So here are some things. Number one, tribalism. Anyone that is being really dogmatic, that is being really driven. "That is bad. I am not open. This is the answer. Trust me". It's evangelical in mind. The tribalism is a real challenge. The second point is actually that evangelism. Having a very closed mindset. Someone giving you, or claiming to provide, the promise, the secret. So tribalism and evangelism go hand in hand, and they are your red flags. Thirdly, keep a keen eye out for what I'm labeling packaged goods, something that is old, that's been around for a long while that is now being repackaged as a miracle cure. There's actually a really good example of this right now in endurance sports. Zone Two. What is this new thing? Low-intensity training at a conversational effort? Yes, you can get there through blood lactate testing, or heart rate assessments, or whatever it might be, but that sounds incredible. What's it going to give me? Performance like you've never heard before. Yes, it's been around since the beginning of time. And it's really important. Packaged goods. Everyone's saying, surely we need to do more Zone Two. You already are. Fourth, a big red flag, something that promise instant gratification. Do a three-day fast, boom. It's going to be the power journey. Yeah, you might actually feel great after that, by the way, but in three weeks' time, it's had a negative effect. And finally, the final red flag, an amplified focus on exogenous sources, so that you can actually gain performance. In other words, too much of a focus on supplements, particularly if they're expert sells such supplements, ***WARNING*** red flag. All right.
Matt Dixon 37:25
So your first three to the framework, you want to have a guiding principle. And that's embrace the journey, you want to have a platform of basics. You want to know your red flags. We talked about tribalism, evangelism, packaged goods, instant gratification, exogenous sources, being a big red flag. Them that are peddling the supplements. The next one, I think is more down to you. I really encourage you to ensure that you don't make your performance in sport or life, your identity. Unless you are a professional athlete, everything else, any amateur, even an elite amateur, do not make your performance, your identity. It is a part of your health, your happiness, your productivity. And all of that will emerge from elements that come way beyond really strict diet control or some magic potions. Now we have a saying, this is one that you can draw from today and you can use it again, just make sure that I get credit, please, but it is a wonderful one, "everything in moderation, including excess". In other words, it comes back to, seek sustainable habits. Know your non-negotiables. Know the things that are really important to you. I'm going to, most days, I'm going to really prioritize sleep. I want to move my body every day. I want to make sure I feed my social life. I want to give myself enough downtime. I'm going to have a host of positive eating habits, not puritanical eating habits, but positive eating habits. And ultimately know what makes you happy and then build around that. But it's going to be, ultimately in the long term, really hard and not that much fun if it's all about restriction and elimination and depriving yourself from the stuff that you really like. Everything in moderation, including excess.
Matt Dixon 39:16
Okay, just a couple more things to go through. The next one is ensuring that you are finding performance experts delivering education that are appropriate for you and your situation. And so I think it's worth a little pause and thinking, hang on, what am I trying to achieve here? What are my goals? Is it athletic? Is it longevity? Is it maybe navigating perimenopause or menopause? Do I want to get more energy in the day? And who are the experts in these fields? And really, really, really try to do a good job of filtering the noise. Be a little bit discerning on this. And the way to filter it is if you start to listen to people and they have huge claims with big stakes in the ground. We come back to our evangelism yeah? Tribalism, anchors around that. Because if they are driving a big stake into the ground, it usually means the ground that they're standing on is a little bit shaky. I also want to highlight those with really godlike claims and weigh out their approaches. Anyone with heavy marketing scams, "oh get x y z months free, get 50% off 30 days to get to your beach body." You really want to avoid these type of people. You also want to avoid Ben Greenfield. Yes, I said it.
Matt Dixon 40:35
Okay. And finally, one final component. Realize that just because something gains noise, is getting a lot of attention, getting a lot of traction, particularly in social media, it doesn't mean that the most successful people in your life in your passion are actually deploying and utilizing it. And that's a really, really common thing. And so just because it gets a lot of noise, you have to be careful and you have to really think about who you're listening to.
Matt Dixon 41:07
My final tidbit, it's very simple, and it's not new. You've heard this before. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. If it sounds a little fringy, it's fake. If you take on some evangelical habit in the pursuit of some powerful life changing performance gain, guess what, I'm going to see you next year, when you're embracing the next season's gimmick. And so I encourage you to develop your filter, be strong of mind and build around the basics. And then you earn the performance the right way, you get to enjoy life, you establish the best possibility of longevity, and guess what folks, what we're doing here, it ain't Star Trek. It's actually more simple than that. I hope that helps. That's in context. I hope you enjoy it. And I hope that I'm not gonna lose too many listeners because I say, aye don't listen to me. But make sure you only listen to me if it's going to be helpful to your performance. Alright, guys, lots of fun. We'll see you next time. Take care
Matt Dixon 42:21
Thanks so much for listening. This has been the Purple Patch podcast. If you like what you hear, I would 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
coaching, purple patch, nutrition, habits, performance, success, triathlon, athlete, ironman, training, performance, journey, experts, life, education, training, sports, tribalism, advice, health, context, coaches, longevity