Episode 239: Fixing the Broken Model of Traditional Fitness
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If you are like many fitness enthusiasts, athletes, and those looking to improve their health and fitness while balancing the demands of work, family, and life, you may be struggling with the results.
Maybe you invested in your fitness journey and your body composition or fitness profile is not improving Maybe you're stuck in an injury cycle.
You are not alone. Many people are struggling to find their performance recipe within the framework of today’s traditional fitness model.
The fitness landscape is saturated with gyms, group fitness classes, strength programs, and get-ripped-quick schemes that promise everything under the sun yet usually deliver little in the way of long-term growth.
The stale routines and lack of results of programs that are narrow in scope and broad in guidance only compound the frustration by introducing a blizzard of information and performance-enhancing strategies that deliver nothing more than broken promises of improved body composition, better health, and longevity.
Today, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon outlines a better pathway to success. He introduces a training model that is tailored to your own life, builds on an athletic approach, and offers a simple and proven training method that defies the broken models of traditional fitness.
In this episode Matt covers:
Part One: The Definition of Success - Building a Smart Training Program That Suits YOU
(19:43) "So, control results, broad results across life and health, making sure that you're getting a sense of connection, and of course out of all, a deep sense of satisfaction for a job well done. This is what for me a commitment - that contract with yourself - a commitment to a smart program should be focused on delivering."
Part Two: The Broken Model - 5 Elements that Lead to Random Results and Potential Failure
(30:13) "Traditional fitness is globally designed for everyone. But there is a real case that, quite often that means that, it's not good enough for anyone. And the benefits that yield from this are short-term. But of course, the outcome and the risk is failure or injury."
Part Three: A Performance Model that Works - 7 Elements of a Successful Training Program
(33:27) "So just imagine if right now I could say to you, there's an approach that is absolutely proven effective in producing predictable results, and also helps develop great traits in organization. And underneath it all, it's shown that it improves your health. Wouldn't that be nice? Well, guess what? There is such a model. There really is. And that model is the development of an elite endurance athlete. "
Part Four: The Purple Patch Performance Center - The Model in Action
(57:37) "You've got your work, you've got your home, and you've got the gym. The club. That's your third space. And that becomes really important... By showing up and arriving here, you are fostering not just improvements in sport, but you're becoming a better person. It's actually building up your social network, a real social network."
The goal of today’s episode is to provide you with a framework for training to help balance your goals in sport and fitness with your time-starved life and provide a filter against the performance noise often found in the traditional fitness model.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 03:57 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
04:04 - 07:53 - Matt's News-ings
07:54 - 11:02 - Word of the Week
11:09 - 102:38 - Meat and Potatoes - Episode 239: Fixing the Broken Model of Traditional Fitness
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Full Transcript
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 00:21
Hey, guys, just before we get going, you know that a platform of health is critical for you to thrive across work in life. And as you'll find out in today's show, it isn't something that's best left to chance. In fact, one of my quotes from this episode states that a random approach will always provide random results. And so why don't we get precise? We leverage InsideTracker. By reviewing your biometrics, we gain a complete picture of where we should apply focus. A simple assessment combined with recommendations from the team of experts InsideTracker helps offer and refine in your nutrition supplements and your training. It's a high-performance strategy for everyone. You don't need to be a purple-patch athlete to participate. In fact, all you need to do is head to insidetracker.com/purplepatch. And we even have a sneaky code for Purple Patch pro 20, that's Purple Patch pro two zero, and you get 20% off everything at the store. All right, with that, let's get on with the show. It's a goodie.
Matt Dixon 01:33
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. As ever, your host, Matt Dixon, and this week, we are going to break down many of the issues that we see with the traditional structure of fitness programming, gyms, group fitness classes, exercise and strength classes, you know, all of that stuff. And our real mission is to try and lay out a pathway to actually help fix it. Now, this is a performance podcast. So why are we diving into the murky world of general health and fitness? Well, the truth is that we help many, many folks who don't actually identify as being a training athlete goal driven so far is getting ready for events. Many people that are just looking to gain better body composition, improved energy throughout the day, be able to pay chase their kids around without actually suffering or getting knee niggles. And so this one is for you. It's less about the really obsessive athlete getting ready for the Hawaii IRONMAN. We want to help people perform. And that doesn't matter whether you're training for events or just preparing for life and work. Now, when we have folks come to us that are not identifying as an athlete, so many arrive frustrated, and they're frustrated because they consistently end up hitting plateaus. They have to navigate these repeated cycles of injury, fatigue, so many are bored or lost. Where should they really place their focus? It's not that there's a lack of information out there. They just don't know what information to listen to. The majority are really, really struggling. And it doesn't have to be like this. It's no exaggeration to say that when speaking to friends or neighbors or parents of kids that are back to school and well beyond so many are struggling to find their performance recipe within the framework of traditional fitness. And I believe that's because the traditional fitness model is broken. And so we thought, why don't we dig into it? Why don't we try and outline a slightly smarter approach to success? How can we actually build on what we understand about preparing athletes for events, but adapt and tailor it for all of us everyday folk? And that's our mission. But before we do that, it's going to be a cracker in the meat potatoes. Before we do that, why don't we hop into Matt's News-ings?
Matt Dixon 04:04
Yes, Matt's News-ings, and we've got two quick ones for you today. The first is a last-minute reminder. Thursday, October the 20th, 4 pm til 7 pm at the Purple Patch Performance Center. That is 268 Alabama Street in San Francisco. We are hosting a big grand launch party, everyone is welcome. We are incredibly excited. I think most of you guys know it's been two and a half years since we were ready to open this place. We've been very patient through the pandemic and now we can officially declare it open. And so if you are in the area if you know friends that be in the area, you're welcome to stop by. It's lots of fun, we'll have some food. We'll have adventures through the space. Some wonderful tour guides, much of the Purple Patch team will be there. We'll even have a cool DJ. It should be a lot of fun. You don't need to be a Purple Patch athlete to join. Just show up with your happy merry self and we also have some cracking, raffle opportunities and everybody, every single person, is going to get a little gift and prize from us. So that is October the 20th. It is, if on release date of this podcast, tomorrow. So you might have already missed it. But we'll certainly be sharing lots of images and stories from that event. We're very excited to get going with the center finally.
Matt Dixon 05:21
Secondly, the Hawaii IRONMAN World Championship. This is a good time for you to go back and revisit an episode from a couple of weeks ago, Episode 236. It was all about the evolution at the professional side of triathlon. And in that, I went on to talk about how the ground was moving under our feet. We were literally witnessing a paradigm shift in the performance level of professional triathletes. And I went through the reasons why I believe that was happening. I also predicted that we might see some pretty special performances at last week's Hawaii IRONMAN World Championship. Well, seems like some kind of profit, doesn't it? Because we saw some cracking racing. Let's just talk about a couple of the stats. So firstly, the winner. Okay, 7 hours and 40 minutes, a 2-hour and 34-minute marathon. That is absolutely staggering. But four guys in that event broke the prior course record. Former Purple Patch Pro, Chelsea Sodaro, she ran a 2:51 marathon. That's the second-fastest marathon ever and finished with the second-fastest ever finish time overall at the Hawaii IRONMAN World Championship. And that's all in her second Kona appearance, her very first Kona appearance, and a second IRONMAN globally. Absolutely staggering. We also had poor Mathias Petersen, I think this is the one that maybe trumps up more than anything. He went 8 hours and 6 minutes. Now, just a few years ago that was fast enough to win the event. He finished 16th. Out of the prize money. Out of the prize money. Got nothing for it. It's absolutely staggering. The performance level that we saw across the female athletes and male athletes was a real clear example of exactly what's happening. So if you want to hear my thoughts on what's happening to the pro sport, go back episode 236. I welcome you share with friends. I think it's a really fun episode now that we've seen the events over the year, but particularly last week at the Hawaii IRONMAN, we said it was coming. Well, guess what? It's here. Yes, indeed, the paradigm shift of performance sport. And with that, Barry, I think it's a wonderful time for you to get singing. Yes, bring out the ukulele. Guys, it's time for Word of the Week.
Matt Dixon 07:54
Yes, Word of the Week. And this week, that word is commitment. Who, what we throw that word around quite a bit, don't we? We do indeed. And many fall into the trap of thinking that commitment is aligned with just suffering, something that's going to take a whole bunch of challenges. But for me, what commitment is a contract that you're making with yourself. And it can be yes, a lot of hard work, but can also be really empowering and fun. The key when you make a commitment to evolve to improve your performance, the aspect that's so critical is for you to meet yourself where you are at. And that takes some really objective thinking and a little bit of brutal honesty. But if you commit, particularly commit to doing something right, it can be really liberating. Why? Well, because you're no longer chasing quick fixes. But instead, you're committing to a process or a process if you're American. And it's a journey that is by definition going to require a certain amount of patience. And so, therefore, once you commit, you're actually no longer in a rush. You're not panicked anymore. Instead, you're doing the best thing that you can do, which to understand where you are at that moment and start there. And from that point, your long-term success is going to come from really creating mini-victories. That's the way I like to think about it. If you can be successful from the start with incremental changes, and then you're going to evolve over the long term. Now those first little mini-victories, they likely won't be anywhere near where you need or want to be in the long term. But they accumulate. They stack up over time. And if you do this successfully, what it's really about is creating a sustainable, consistent program. And then in 6 months or 12 months or 2 years’ time, when it all emerges, you're going to come up and look back at where you were, and go, wooh, I can't believe what I've become. And for me, that's the only way for you to find long-term great performance. So Word of the Week this week is commitment. But with that it brings some weight, it is a contract with yourself, that you are going to start where you're at, and build from there and take the long-term lens, because that's the pathway that's going to yield consistency, the magic word in performance. I encourage you not to associate commitment with suffering. Instead, align it with a journey to become the best version of yourself. So good. You probably can't even imagine it right now. It is possible folks. Commitment, our Word of the Week. And with that, let's dig into the Meat and Potatoes.
Matt Dixon 11:09
Yes, folks, it is the Meat and Potatoes. And let me tell you this, traditional fitness is broken. That's what we believe at Purple Patch, it is broken. I see way too many friends struggling with their mission to improve their simple health and fitness, particularly when they're trying to balance the demands of work, family, and life. So many folks that we know are seemingly stuck in this cycle of plateaus, injuries, and frustrations, certainly a lack of results. How many times do I read or hear about the next great thing, something brand new and shiny, but just a few months later, even the most ardent disciples of this new thing, are deserting it in frustration. And so the cycle continues. It's no wonder that so many people end up in frustration. And if it is you, if you're someone right now that's frustrated by your body composition, your fitness profile, the cycle of injuries that maybe you're stuck in, guess what, you're not alone. It's really common. And I believe one of the drivers of this is the structure of how so much of broader fitness is actually delivered. And I think there's a better way. So I want to make my case a little bit today. In order for us to dig into this conversation, I think we should first really determine and define what success is.
Matt Dixon 12:35
Because if we're going to go on and spout off about a smarter approach to fitness, I think it's important for us to first align what our actual mission is. What are we trying to achieve? What outcomes are we chasing? To get there, let's talk struggles. And to do that, I want to tell you a story about a friend Kate, because I think her story is a very typical outline of what I see as the common struggles. Kate's a very busy professional. She's got a good job, she's got two kids, she's time-starved, she's edging into her early 40s. And I would say that she's athletic. She was certainly athletic growing up, she did high school sports. But as many of us are faced with work, travel kids family, well, Kate was left with less time, certainly some lower energy, and not the same easy results that she perhaps achieved a decade or so ago. Now, her food choices as she's edging into her 40s They seem to have greater consequences. Her body composition is starting to move in the wrong direction. She's got greater responsibilities, and she's really struggling on how to manage them. She can't find her recipe or overall performance recipe to deliver the results that seem to come so much easier in earlier parts of her youth. A cycle is that she tries various fitness group classes. Some of them are fun, energizing, and potentially feel like they're high value. And she gets some quick results. She gets a little bit of validation, maybe this is the thing, it's fantastic. But then after two to three months, everything gets a little stale. She gets frustrated, the results dry up, or maybe a niggle strikes, and so she moves on and transitions to something else. Now in addition to this frustration, she also feels pretty scattered and unorganized. Life seems to be happening to her more than Kate actually enabling herself to charge through life. So much of it is out of control and she's just consistently trying to ram exercise in. Now, it's probably all amplified by the sleep disruption experiences, the ebbs, and flows of energy that she has throughout the day. And so she just struggles to get it all in. She doesn't feel a sense of control over her fitness over her health and even broader maybe across her life. And so at the end of this, she's struggling with attendance in classes, showing up and staying consistent with exercise and at the same time, going from one thing to the next, chasing, chasing, chasing. It just feels all quite stale or repetitive and without yielding great results.
Matt Dixon 15:21
Now, if we had a whiteboard, and we grab Kate and say, give me 10 minutes out of your day, let's whiteboard this thing. I want you to brainstorm Kate, what is success that you're chasing? What are you really hoping to achieve in your health and fitness, it would be a big list. You know how I know. Because I actually asked Kate to do just that. And the list was as follows, I'm going to read this out.
Matt Dixon 15:48
The first, I'd love to have better energy throughout the day. Super, we'd all love to have that, super. I want to ensure that I have a direction and a goal. What she's really saying there is purpose but a direction a goal. I want to ensure that my hard work yields results. And I keep improving. Okay, that's sensible, it's very good, I'd like to improve my body composition and then get that under control. And I'd like to have a sense of control and prioritization over a schedule. So some management skills to go through it. And beyond all of that, Kate was really asking and highlighting something that I think is quite interesting. I just love to be a part of something. I'd allow exercise to deliver some form of connection for me, not just something that I know I have to do because it's important for my health. And ultimately, when all is said and done, I want to get a certain amount of pride and satisfaction, I want to feel accomplishment. Well, that's great. And she also wanted me to point out, she didn't have real interest in racing and competing. So many folks or coaches would say great go and enter a 5k. Or maybe you take up triathlon, whatever it might be, but she doesn't want to take that on. She wants to get control and results and improvement in health, but also have a certain sense of pride. And she doesn't feel like she needs to be race driven to get that. And I concur. That's not always something that everybody wants. And I thought her list was fantastic. It might be similar to perhaps one that you might make if I asked you to do exactly the same.
Matt Dixon 17:26
Now what I want to do is I want to take that list, and I want to collate it a little bit and outline it through my words, some of the things that I'm going to sort of redefine or refine a little bit to make it perhaps a little bit more educational and broad. So, these are the things that I heard from Kate. First is a sense of control, a sense of control over her health and fitness, a sense of control over her life. That comes with management and of course, being able to weave the ability to be highly consistent, and without it dominating life. So a sense of control, that's good. A second thing that keeps chasing is predictable results when you're actually going to apply yourself and as our Word of the Week was today, and that’s, place a commitment, a contract with yourself. It's of course viable, that you want to yield results from that. I want to improve. So predictable results. We've got control, and we've got results. And then a broad-reaching seek in improvements, not just in I'm getting fitter, stronger, faster, yes, there's fitness, but also over the course of broader health and her ability to perform as a mum, and a busy executive. And so Kate's really looking for holistic results in energy, body composition, platform of health, and of course, getting a little bit fitter, stronger, and more powerful. And then two more components that I think are important and shouldn't be ignored. Connection, a real sense of belonging. And that becomes really powerful. Because our exercise and fitness should be an opportunity for connection, it should be a social outlet as well. And in fact, if we consistently see that people are more consistent yield better results, and less likely to fall off the wagon when they feel a part of something when they have a sense of accountability. And so I think that that's really smart a sense of connection. And finally, throughout all this should yield for her a sense of pride and accomplishment. Because of course, that's validating and of course, will lead to greater consistency and much higher likelihood of not falling off the wagon as well. So control results, broad results across the life and health, making sure that you're getting a sense of connection and of course out of all, a deep sense of satisfaction for a job well done. This is what for me a commitment, that contract with yourself, a commitment to a smart program should be focused on delivering. And that's what we're looking to do. And that's the starting point. Now in there, we didn't talk about improving V02 Max, improving how many push-ups or pull-ups she can do, making sure that she can go a certain pace over the course of a mile. We weren't talking about performance metrics, success has a broad-reaching impact. And that's what the fitness world should be focused on. That's what the contract that we are making with ourselves should deliver. That's why we talk about becoming the best version of yourself. It's not just about losing pounds on the scale, or getting fitter, faster or more powerful. It's actually yielding a better life for yourself. And that's what we're seeking. And of course, it makes sense that therefore we have to broaden our perspective, and really make sure that we're developing a program that can achieve all of that.
Matt Dixon 21:03
Now, the truth is, as we think about this, there is no quick fix. There are no short-term solutions to achieve these big building blocks that were looking to get done. In fact, what is required, is right back to that Word of the Week, a significant commitment to a program or an approach that is specifically designed to set up these results. It all sounds rather empowering, doesn't it? And it should be. So why doesn't the fitness world tend to deliver this too much? Where does fitness go wrong? Why do I say fitness is broken? Well, I do it to get your attention. But why don't we dig into what I mean behind that a little bit.
Matt Dixon 21:50
I would argue that, in general, the health and fitness world, it's very structure and design is a roadmap that often delivers, despite no intention on the practitioners that are delivering it, but it does indeed end up with a resulting struggle and failure. And here's a list of some examples in which I can expose this a little bit.
Matt Dixon 22:14
The first is, it's a simple fact that almost all traditional fitness is designed with an ala carte approach. And I always say that random delivers random results. The central focus that around the way that most traditional fitness is built is around an individual class or session client experience. It wants to be fun, it wants to be energetic, it wants to be engaging. But very seldom is it about long-term success. And so so much care and attention goes into the actual classroom experience the actual gym experience. And that's really important. We want to make sure that it's fun and energetic. And instructors are really motivational. But it's much trickier and tougher to create a journey out of that. And so if the actual designers of the programming are not thinking long term success, and instead are focused more on an individual session, it makes sense that it's open to actually not creating long-term results. The goal of most fitness programs is to get folks in the door is to make it fun, feel good, and then keep you coming. But there's no journey attached to this. So how can we expect to achieve real success. If we don't actually embrace a process from which any training session lays the groundwork for subsequent sessions, we can't. But that's how traditional fitness is structured.
Matt Dixon 23:57
A second or common issue that we see with traditional fitness is a very narrow focus on the performance lens. If we take an example of a fitness class, that fitness class is there to yield performance in that very narrow field, a 60-minute session in which you're running intervals, or doing step aerobics, or doing some form of strength or pilates. And it's looking to yield performance in that element. But there's very rarely a broader perspective on what it actually takes to move the needle for someone's performance. How to actually shift body composition, how to actually improve energy to throughout the day, how the actual impact of poor sleep or poor nutrition can impact the results and the adaptations that we gain from attending that class. And most of the people that are delivering these sessions might be very, very good experts in their field around this narrow focus but tend to not have great expertise around the broader perspective of greater performance. So what can happen is you might show up to that class, you might commit, you might be really, really consistent. But it doesn't mean you're going to achieve the results that you want, particularly over the long term, because you end up being scattered by showing up at a group fitness class, but then being forced to look elsewhere with often contradictory education and information coming in, and how to navigate your sleep, your stress management, your nutrition, your hydration, and it becomes a really, really polluted, confusing way of going about your fitness and performance. And so the truth is, that I don't believe that an athlete or a fitness enthusiast can be successful, without a broader perspective on what it takes to yield performance. And most traditional fitness is just not set up in that structure.
Matt Dixon 25:58
The third component, which is a major flaw is there is a distinct lack of coaching. A great fitness instructor is a powerful magnet of community. And they are great sources of motivation. They almost choreograph an experience and they are really, really skilled at that. There are some marvelous instructors out there. Their enthusiasm is often high, and they have a wonderful skill, and it is a real skill, to lead a group through a class. And all of that is absolutely unquestioned. I have the greatest respect for people that are able to do that really, really well. But the truth is that very few fitness instructors are real coaches. They don't often have a genuine technical eye. And they're not often equipped with the expertise of progressive training methodology. And so just like the structure of how they built the sessions in the first place, they're wonderful at executing an ala carte experience, but through no fault of their own, they're not able to actually build out a rhythm of training that is structured over many, many weeks, many, many months, and even over many years. So their strength is in creating an experience more than actually guiding someone through a journey of performance. So if we come back to Kate, she's looking for long-term controller success, where she is yielding results over the broad spectrum of life, body composition, health, and of course, energy. And therefore, by just showing up and committing to an ala carte experience, there's a mismatch of alignment of expectations and needs. And this becomes really, really interesting. Now tangentially here, there is something that I think is interesting to this. Because it is true that successful group training and coaching does in fact, require what I call a little Broadway, a little Freddie Mercury. Every time I'm coaching a bike session, I think, here we go, and I just pretend I'm Freddie Mercury. But there's a real serious element to this. This is a skill, and it's important. It's got to be fun. And there's a really important element to this. Because programmatically, if you're the best coach in the world, that doesn't make you a great group coach trainer. And that becomes really important. So the real power that we're looking for here, something that really creates results, is when you have a genuine athletic coaching, tailored to the fitness enthusiasts. And that's a really challenging component, perhaps that's why it's very, very rare in the fitness world. But ultimately, the only way to yield success or deliver success for Kate, and for you the fitness enthusiasts, is to take a longer-term lens, and that means there needs to be programming over the long term.
Matt Dixon 29:02
The fourth element, there's a real risk is that so many group training sessions in the fitness world, are very good for the broader group, but actually not really good for anyone in them. And what do I mean by that? Well, there's that sort of saying, what is it one size fits all, but it suits absolutely no one. You can join any group fitness program. And there's a high likelihood that you might go into an experience and find it way too easy, or almost like the third month in a prisoner of war camp. It can be the broad spectrum because globally, most of the programming is built as the middle of the bell curve. It's very, very hard to customize. And as we talked about in the Word of the Week, meet yourself where you're at. And so many folks show up and that's why injuries emerge so much. Going too hard too early, going way above your pay grade from a fitness level, and diving into heavy commitment and suffering. And all it yields is tissue injury. All it yields is performance plateaus. It's too much for your body to absorb and adapt to. So traditional fitness is globally designed for everyone. But there is a real case that quite often that means that it's not good enough for anyone. And the benefits that yield from this is short-term. But of course, the outcome and the risk is failure or injury. And we don't want that.
Matt Dixon 30:30
Now, there's one more element that I want to highlight around traditional fitness. And I think this is important because so many practitioners don't have a really strongly developed filter and deep understanding of some of the high-performance elements. Traditionally, fitness programming seems particularly prone to well, how do we say it, bogus performance gains - promises that can actually negatively impact performance, or worse than that be damaging to your health. In fact, just in the last month, I can think of two or three examples where I can say more than my eyebrow was raised. The first is two or three friends of mine that are navigating perimenopause, and they were being pushed way too heavily to go into a fasted state. You should restrict calories. There's wonderful energy benefits from actually going in and doing intermittent fasting, which is a potential disaster for their well-being and health. Secondly, we had an endurance athlete that was encouraged to remove all carbohydrates from their diet. That's just outdated. It's outright wrong. That's not the approach. And then a myriad of recommendations that I've heard on gadgets, supplements, and practices, none of which actually have any proven effectiveness across health, sport, life performance. All of them are expensive and ultimately distracting from some more simple practices that will actually yield help. There's a reason that we have a saying Nail the Basics. Absolutely get the fundamentals right, and then look at incremental gains, potentially, if you've got capacity.
Matt Dixon 32:12
Now, these are some of the big flaws, five big flaws that I see. But before I get lots of emails, and horrible messages on social media, from many of the wonderful folks out there, I do want to say this, individually, I have met many, many, many highly impressive and passionate instructors and experts in their fields in the fitness industry. And some of them have a passionate and productive lens on what performance development truly is. There are some great friends and really good experts within that industry. And I am not in any way, dismissing any of those experts. Individually, there are many. What I'm talking about today is more of how the model is structured, traditional fitness tends to generally, I believe, deliver these limitations and roadblocks to the vast majority of people that participate. And that's a whole bunch of people. And so I do think that it's time to evolve the model. And so I want to outline a model that actually works, and is proven to work and we know works. And the good thing is it is a wonderful case study of how to do it.
Matt Dixon 33:27
So just imagine if right now I could say to you, there's an approach that is absolutely proven effective in producing predictable results, and also helps develop great traits in organization. And underneath it all, it's shown that it improves your health. Wouldn't that be nice? Well, guess what? There is such a model. There really is. And that model is the development of an elite endurance athlete.
Matt Dixon 34:00
Now, before you panic, I'm not making the case that you need to become a highly obsessed, dedicated endurance athlete with all of those stereotypes that we all know. I'm sure that you've just got in your head, oh he's sending me into the murky world of elite sport. That's not it. What we're looking to do today is to look at that model, draw the lessons from the model that apply to us and then adapt and tailor it to our own structure in life. And so I'm going to make this really simple. We're just gonna bucket it out in simple terms. We're going to strip the approach down into the most accessible possible. Now, I should say, as I go through this, we're going to make this really accessible, but I'm sure you can appreciate the long-term development of an elite athlete is chaotic, challenging, requires massive passion and commitment from the athlete and all of the team around them and is sure that the athlete is gonna have to navigate lots of adversity and roadblocks. It is never a linear line to performance. But there are some components that are consistent across all elite athletes that we can apply to ourselves in general health and fitness.
Matt Dixon 35:16
Number one, and perhaps the most obvious, the journey is goal driven. Now, these goals are not just racing goals. And I think that's a myth around an elite athlete, so many people think it's goal driven, they're training for a world championship, and they want to win a world championship. That might be a goal. But typically, typically, most elite athletes go well beyond that. In fact, they tend to look inward more for their goals, and particularly their purpose. The greatest elite athletes that I've worked with have a very deep sense of purpose, what they're looking to accomplish. And the thing that really drives them, is trying to be the best version of themselves possible. And that enables complete control. Because while things are going to happen, they can do everything that they can do to become the very best version of themselves, to give them the opportunity of going to win World Championships or whatever the mission might be, but knowing that what they can control is internal. They can't control if some genetic freak comes out and beats them, or someone cheats, or anything else. Yeah, what they can control is them becoming a great version of themselves, and driving that tends to be a deep sense of purpose. And that becomes really important. In fact, an elite athlete typically fosters a compass to guide the programming and direction over the course of not just months, but years. This is what I am trying to become. And that's something that we can all apply to our own lives. In fact, many of us do it all - the whole time. We do it with our family goals, we do it with building a business, or maybe building your team within a business, whatever it might be. But we are by human nature, goal-driven. We just need to apply it to ourselves and our health and fitness, because that creates the framework, the direction, and the compass. And that becomes really important, straight away. What I'm talking about here is a journey. And that's a fundamental difference than creating an massively entertaining ala carte experience.
Matt Dixon 37:34
A second component to this is that every element of training needs to be what I like to say structured and progressive, it links together and builds off each other. There is nothing random about planning for an elite athlete. Now you have to adapt to it and adjust and sometimes the athlete will get sick or maybe get a little injury, or go through bouts of lower motivation, but ultimately, on this path and this journey they're going on, there is structure and there is progression. And in fact, the great elite athletes never create glory and their best self over the course of a single season, it takes multiple seasons. And that means that every season, the athlete goes through different phases of training and once they're done with that season or year, they recycle and start again. And like a snowball rolling throughout the years, that's how the stepping stone approach of progression actually occurs. So if we have structure and direction, and we've got progressive training that builds over the course of the year, but also recycles and builds year on year, shouldn't we actually take that concept and apply it to all of our own health and fitness? Of course, the plan is evolved and adjusted based on the realities of what we're observing and what's going on and what the impact of the execution is, and so many other factors, but there is direction. And that means whatever an athlete is doing this week, is laying some form of platform to progress to the next week, and then progress to the next. And that is how the journey starts to get done. Now that journey is never linear. It's not just more, two more, two more, two more. In fact, you often go through phases where by design, you say, actually moving forward right now is simply not moving backward, we want to absorb let the body stabilize before we shift the stimulus. And as I talk about that, that becomes an important factor as well. There's never too many weeks in a row before we don't switch up the stimulus to the body, and that prevents staleness. So if you go through 6, 8, 10, or 12 weeks of specific types of work, once you're done with that, you shift the focus, it provides a different stressor for the body to have to adapt to. And that is the secret to unlocking plateaus, something that's really frustrating. And we know from Kate's story is very common. 2 or 3 months, not getting much more out of this. Now, it's starting to get a little stale and boring, I'm not improving, what's the next thing? And so you're putting all that behind that decision so that you can link together the train.
Matt Dixon 40:29
A third key component is the performance journey is always holistic. Now we talked about this at Purple Patch as being the pillars of performance. We don't think about the program for a triathlete as being swim, bike, run. That's just the endurance component. We think about it as being the four pillars of performance. Yes, that endurance, but then, with a backbone of strength and conditioning. The second pillar, nutrition, and fueling becomes critically important, and recovery, including sleep, and it is that that becomes the program. We can wrap that all up into the very cute world of something called holistic, really important. A great endurance athlete isn't made from simple sweet sweat and tears. This ain't Rocky Balboa, here. It is an integrated system of all of the elements that go into fostering improvement. And so that becomes important for general health and fitness. Where if we, for example, take a busy executive that is sleeping poorly, eating on the run, navigating too many stressors in life, but still really consistent with exercise, they are probably not going to expect to actually yield great health results, or improve their body composition, because the broader picture is broken. So we need to understand the overall landscape and build a program that integrates into that landscape of life and can enable you to be successful across all of the elements that can help you manage stress, get applications from the training that you do on the structured and progressive journey and feel good doing it. And that becomes really, really important. So we've got three components. We've just talked about the training, being holistic in nature, we need a training program that is structured and progressive. And of course, it's pointing somewhere. That's very, very simple. And of course, important, we want it to be goal driven. But with all of that, before we start to think about 'well this feels overwhelming', 'it feels too much.' There's another dirty secret about coaching elite athletes. And that's the simple fact that the program is typically entirely more simple than you might expect. So many people think about an elite athlete and think about all of the gadgets and machines and toys and equipment. But the lifestyle is actually quite monastic. A great endurance athlete and a great coach aims to reduce, not add, complexity. They want the journey to be as simple and as repeatable as possible. And for 90% of that, it means that success is defined around fundamentals built on designing great habits, that becomes the most important component. We have a saying at Purple Patch, nail the basics. But even if we look at some of the highest-performing athletes in the world, let's use the two Norwegian triathletes that are two of the most recent World Champions, Gustav Iden, and Kristian Blummenfelt. Athletes that are well renowned for adopting a lot of scientific research and gadgets into their training. I guarantee you and promise you from a day-to-day standpoint, they look to strip down to the most basic elements, they can and only apply technology and data to the components that they know will be effective. So they are still very, very simple in their approach their habit driven and that becomes really, really important. Now the basics that's 95% of your success. And then any additions that you might make around supplements, special diets, equipment, evolution or anything that is all considered an addition to a foundation of an incredibly repeatable and simple program.
Matt Dixon 40:30
Okay, super. So that's the broad landscape. We've got three more to get through to really paint the picture of a new model. The first is that any programming must also be adaptive. And that becomes really critical. In fact, we want the athlete to be more autonomous in their nature. But the very best coaches that are wonderful guides of professional athletes, they tend to adapt and respond to the athlete's journey, no different than how your journey must apply to life. And so it's important that with any planning or program that you adhere to, it needs to become a dynamic mindset when you actually apply that program. Because ultimately, if we're going to integrate your health and fitness, with the demands of family, work, and life, it's a living, breathing component. And we need to understand that sometimes you're not going to be able to be quite as consistent as other times. And if life ebbs a little bit, you get to do a little bit more. So an adaptive mindset is really, really important.
Matt Dixon 45:43
Number six, the elite athlete understands that real performance emerges from a platform of health. This becomes important because we think about athletes driving the boundaries, stretching the limits of human performance. But the truth is that great athletes develop really patiently. In fact, what they tend to do is have a keen understanding of where they're at, and meet themselves there and then seek mini-victories. Now, this doesn't mean that they don't challenge themselves and training isn't demanding it is. And fatigue is a part of being an endurance athlete, but they are aiming to build their performance off of a platform of health. They are looking to make their program enduring. In fact, as much as they are chasing greater performance, they are also seeking to reduce the risk of injury because they know that that is frustrating, and is the biggest pause on performance progression. And so when you talk to an elite athlete, they undervalue those big, heroic breakthrough days, they're not actually chasing exceptionalism, and certainly not perfection, because they know that that's not attainable. What they generally Chase is really pretty good, most days, over many, many months. Because if they layer that, they create something. A simple word - consistency. And with consistency of structured and progressive training appropriate for them, over time, they make incremental gains. And they have patience to understand that the journey takes months, even years. And yet at the end of it, that is how they turn around and review their journey and think, haven't I got really, really pretty good? And so it's not about breakthroughs. It's not, no pain, no gain. It's about smart progressive training, showing up that contract with yourself. And that's how we want to try and structure fitness globally, is integrate it into people's lives, make it structured and progressive, and ensure that it is appropriate for the person so that they can be successful, and ultimately, not get broken. Now there's one more to go through. And this one is the surprising one.
Matt Dixon 48:10
Number seven, even the most individual of sports - and those athletes that tend to lean on the more soloist side of training - the most individual sports tend to create cultures of great social connection and sharing. Elite athletes might race as individuals, they might look at their competition, and think, wow, I want to crush her. But typically, they're actually really social, highly supportive, collaborative, they have a sense of purpose that is shared a sense of share of respect of the journey, and they know they're in it for the long term. And so the vast majority of elite athletes are very open and get a great source of community. You think about an IRONMAN triathlete. Most triathletes at the professional level, actually lean into training from each other sharing information, helping each other even though over the course of the year, they're going to be going head to head and racing each other. And that's because they realize that by leaning into each other, you're not just giving away your secrets to someone else where they're going to benefit, but instead you actually benefit equally, if not more. And so by leaning into social connection, it creates accountability. It creates a sense of really shared struggling in many ways, and it amplifies and lifts everyone. And so even in the most individual sports, most elite athletes, incredibly value social connectivity, and that becomes really, really important.
Matt Dixon 49:56
This all adds up to what we always state as elements of a successful program for any athlete or fitness enthusiast. So if that was a lot of words, you can remember this. These are the elements in summary that you should be thinking around fitness, number one, become part of a program that is structured and progressive. That becomes important. Everybody should train because fitness is random, training is structured and progressive. And so you want to have something that ties together. You must almost also consider your supporting habits. Just because you exercise doesn't mean you're healthy. And so, you can't be successful unless you start considering your sleep, your nutrition, your recovery, and of course, your training as a part of an overall program. As you do this, I highly encourage you to seek out a source of accountability. That can be through coaching and mentorship, it can be through training buddies, or becoming a part of a community or group that train with each other. Incredibly powerful, and guess what, it makes it more fun. And that's really good. I would also encourage you to foster a knowledge and understanding of the why behind the approach. You want to go on the journey but if you understand where you're going and what you're looking to achieve, it's going to amplify your adherence to the execution and focus behind the training session itself. And ensure that you get yourself an environment that as you show up to small group training, or small group coaching, or following a program, that you're ensuring that you get feedback and coaching, it becomes important and lean into the social elements show up to group activities, participate even on the online community. Because consistently we see those that lean in, that participate, that get involved, they're the ones that get the most out of it. And they are the ones with the greatest enduring long-term results.
Matt Dixon 52:05
Six simple elements, connectivity, feedback, understanding, a sense of accountability, a holistic mindset, and of course, your backbone, which is the program that is structured and progressive. And if you can get all of those right, and then you start to develop your recipe for you. It isn't easy. It still requires commitment. But I want you to remember what commitment is, just a contract with yourself. But it can be done, and when it is done, when it's done right, over the course of a year or two years, it can literally be life-changing. And so boil things down to the simple and get it done.
Matt Dixon 52:50
So I want to finish the show talking about the Purple Patch Performance Center. And that's because as I was mapping out how traditional fitness was broken, and how we might improve it, I realized that the center itself is a wonderful case study. So the way - the evolved way of thinking about performance is, oh, it's nice, but is it really practical for someone who's not actually chasing the start line of an IRONMAN or looking to finish a marathon? I think we can actually use what we're doing here at the Purple Patch Performance Center as a little bit of a highlight of how I think it can work. And hopefully, it's a model that other boutique gyms or fitness studios or personal trainers, whatever it might do, might actually adopt in their own practice. So what we're going to do is we're only going to focus on the coaching elements that occur in this center, we're going to ignore all of the services, the video production, the fact that it's the home of Purple Patches that company. So we have four main classes or small group coach sessions here. We have small group by bike coaching on trainers, that's obviously indoor. We have small group strength and conditioning. We have circuit classes, which are treadmill and floor base strength classes, as well as using TRX. And we have emerging soon, it's not actually been released quite yet but we have a sort of circuit outdoor circuit strength and conditioning class a little bit broader. You might call it a boot camp, but that's obviously not a word that I would use when I think about it. But we have - so we have four main components. And those components are really easy to think of at the baseline layer of 'oh, it's a gym. They do classes. Wonderful. It's a fitness club.' But it isn't, because the whole center has a roadmap of training focus throughout the year. And it actually mirrors for the majority of it very, very similar to a typical roadmap that we will take an endurance athlete through. And that means when we boil down the multiple levels and we get to any singular session in any of those components that we talked about the treadmill and strength circuits, the small group strength of by workout, every session has a purpose and is a link in the chain throughout the year. And it rolls on. It progresses to the next workout. And on top of this, every single session has the capacity, and this was important for us, to customize the intensity and the training to the individual. That's why it's important not to be big box but small group. So that the coach leading it has the ability to adapt and customize a little bit. Now facilitating these sessions, we have trained coaches, those coaches are to ensure that you execute it or the athlete executes it with proper execution relative to the purpose and the mission of the session, but also can offer feedback and hold you to account. And when we put all that together, you have a journey of training, that becomes really intimate because it's a small group environment with folks that are showing up regularly because they're a part of a journey. And they're getting heavy coaching and feedback. And of course, what that fosters is connection, a little bit of sharing behind the participants. And what emerges and bubbles out of that is this magical thing called community. There's a bit of a healthy dose of tribalism around it, I guess. And this is important, because by the fact that we can actually customize within a group environment, and it's small group coaching. Bizarrely, we have a really broad range of folks that can participate. You can go to a bike class, and you might be sitting right next to a 67-year-old, and on the other side of it an elite athlete. And it's okay because you're doing the right thing for you. And what that does, is it diffuses ego because no one cares who's doing more or who's stronger, all that we care about is you're trying to improve. And that creates a really nurturing supportive environment because folks aren't trying to keep up with each other, they're trying to keep up and improve themselves. And that becomes really important.
Matt Dixon 57:13
Now, that's a great pathway to not only yield athletes success, but also a sense of belonging, and a little bit of a purpose for the athletes showing up. Because the actual facility becomes a part of your life. There's one of the great original gyms in the world, it was called Third Space. You've got your work, you've got your home, and you've got the gym, the club, that's your third space. And that becomes really important. That's actually a very smart name for a fitness club. But this is really an important part. By showing up and arriving here. You are fostering not just improvements in sport, but you're becoming a better person, it's actually building up your social network, a real social network, not one from behind a keyboard. And that becomes really important. And so we believe that this is a great pathway for us to get athletes to have success. For people that are intimidated or fearful, or haven't succeeded on performance journeys to get on the pathway where they can actually build many victories. And over the long term go, I can't believe what's happened.
Matt Dixon 58:29
And it comes back to those same basic elements: An appropriate training program, a consideration of supporting habits, a heavy degree of accountability, making sure that as coaches, we're educating the participants so they understand where they're at in the journey on what they're looking to do, and ensuring that there's heavy feedback and coaching that are infused through it. And then out of all, this sense of belonging, yes, that social connection. And that becomes powerful. So the whole fabric of this center, it's really obvious to those folks that are training for something the athletes, they get it, because they know that that's a part of the process. But the folks that benefit the most potentially, are the really busy executives, the parents, the fitness enthusiasts, the folks that are just looking to achieve across the life. And that's because while it feels like a commitment, they suddenly start to realize that there is an unnoticed broader benefit of the overall approach. And when you get this right when you start to integrate this smarter approach into your life, what ends up happening is you develop beyond the fitness improvements and the body composition changes, you have a framework and you actually get down to simple and actionable, where you have a framework or organization. And it tends to help in effectiveness in broader life. You have a sense of predictability and control. Oh, Kate was after that control. And on top of it, you deliver a filter because you're surrounded by smart people who are all on the same journey as you that are looking to remove so much of that distraction and clutter and confusion and just focus on the stuff that helps you get better. And that's why we always talk at Purple Patch about the journey. Embrace the journey. It's so important not just in your health and fitness, but in your broader life. So we'll never turn our back on that. When you can maintain structure over the long term, yield consistency, you are going to facilitate improvements beyond your health. And that becomes powerful.
Matt Dixon 1:00:47
And so as you venture towards the end of this year, and for the athletes among you still listening, that are maybe finished with your season, realize that this is something that you do double down, restructure, double down on the year ahead, and we can build the platform of performance from here. We'll see you next time.
Matt Dixon 1:01:06
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 info@purplepatchfitness.com or leave it in the comments of the show at the Purple Patch page. And we will get you dialed in.
Matt Dixon 1:02:01
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
fitness, athletes, performance, journey, important, life, yield, training, patch, purple, kate, elite athlete, results, people, elements, creates, body composition, coaching, structure, health