Episode 242: Deep Recovery – Post-Race Assessment and Recharging for a Magical Year of Performance
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While every performance journey requires commitment and hard work, the thing that sets enduringly good athletes apart from the rest is the dedication and time they put into establishing great fundamental habits around recovery.
Postseason recovery doesn’t just mean it is time to lay on the couch, jump in an ice bath, or strap on recovery boots. Getting recovery right is key to avoiding underperformance or injury and instead achieving a sustainable performance in both sport and life.
As the holidays loom and you settle into the postseason, it is important to engage in the preparatory phase of training that is so critical to facilitate future success, yet so many people fail to execute correctly.
In this episode of the purple patch podcast, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon revisits the subject of recovery and frames it as a bridge between the end of the race season and improved performance in the coming year.
Matt breaks down your recovery toolkit to see what works, what’s important, and what to avoid to ensure you fully recharge your battery, emotionally, physically, and socially to pave the way for enduring results and growth next season and beyond.
In today's show we will go through:
Recovery in the Context of Your Performance Journey
(08:11) "On one side, you've got to work darn hard, consistently. On the other side, you need rejuvenation, to create acceleration in adaptations in growth in all of the outcomes that you're looking for."
The Components of Proper Recovery
(13:01) "This is about recharging your social connectivity to family, friends, the society that you live in, having an emotional and mental recharge so that we can gain full motivation, clarity, and purpose looking ahead, and physical rejuvenation, both from a systemic or hormonal standpoint as well as a musculoskeletal standpoint. "
A Case Study of Post-Race Assessment - Recovery and Transition Into the Postseason
(24:01) "Our first goal is recharge our batteries. The second goal is to have some really honest and objective reflection, and assessment of what happened over the course of this last season"
(42:51) "So the process of reflection, and some smart structured months, is, I believe, a non negotiable for performance. But unfortunately, most athletes miss out on this, they take one of the two most common paths. And I promise you when you do that, completely disengage, or just have a quick break and obsessively dive back in problems nearly always lay ahead."
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 03:26 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
03:34 - 44:18 - The Meat and Potatoes - Episode 242: Deep Recovery – Post-Race Assessment and Recharging for a Magical Year of Performance
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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 00:29
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast as ever, your host, Matt Dixon. And guess what? They call me the recovery coach, what do they say? No pain, no gain. When the going gets tough, harden the (clears throat) up. Common sayings that accompany the age-old stereotype of what it actually takes to excel in endurance sports. And yes, your journey to excellence absolutely requires commitment. It's not easy to truly excel, you've got to get tough, that's true. But this for me is really seldom the differentiator. Most athletes that I know are really committed, are pretty tough, they'll handle adversity. But when I observe the very best athletes, the folks that are enduringly good, the champions, the ability to manage the work ethic, the commitment, the prerequisite toughness, that's all there. But the differentiator are the great habits around recovery. One of my favorite words, as a performance coach. Now, this isn't embracing recovery for a shortcut. It's not some kind of hack. But instead, it's actually a route a pathway for you to amplify your effectiveness as an athlete. So today, I thought we would revisit recovery. But we're actually going to discuss something that I'm going to label deep recovery. This doesn't mean it's time for you to lay on the couch, jumping in an ice bath strap on recovery boots. Now I want to dissect recovery within the context of where we find ourselves now, at least if you're in the Northern Hemisphere. The looming holidays, a break between racing seasons, setting up a year of super performance next year. So if you get your deep recovery right, then you can break open performance rewards for all of the commitment and hard work that it's going to take for you to be great.
Matt Dixon 02:30
And so in today's show, we're going to go through three things mainly, firstly, I want to put recovery in context of your performance journey globally. The second part is I want to actually break apart recovery as a concept into the different components that I see as a coach helping athletes. And finally, I thought we would take a really successful athlete and do a case study on them. And it's going to be a case study of what that athlete went through post-race, following great success in one of his Ironman races, and then how he navigated into recovery and transitioning to what we call postseason. All of that is in today's show. And guess what, we are going to bypass Matt's News-ings. You're not going to have to deal with any of my promotions. And I've given Barry the week off because once again, those pesky calluses, they're back on his fingers. And he's not a fan of the ukulele over the last few weeks. Instead, what we're going to do guys is jump right in. Come swim with me, we're going to talk about recovery. It is the meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 03:34
Yes, folks, it is the meat and potatoes. And before we dive right in, let's identify what our mission is today, I think we've got two main missions that we want to get through. The first is before you get charging into next year, you might have lofty ambitions, you might have big heavy goals, but before you get cracking, I want to ensure that you're set with a pathway that you can fully recharge your battery. That you actually get recharged. And that's one important component that we have to get right if you're going to be successful over the course of the coming year. The second component is I want to ensure that we leave today with you having real clarity around a process to go through of how to manage not just a little bit of a break between seasons and not just a successful offseason (or as we talk about that's actually as you know it dead, and we talked about that a couple of weeks ago) but actually at the end of your last major event of the year. How should you go about reviewing, reflecting, and really assessing what you could have done better and what you did great so that you can look ahead and make a really smart strategic plan for yourself because there is, believe it or not, a part of your recovery process. And so we want to think about reflection and assessment so that it paves the way for you to be sensible over the course of your postseason and also at the same time enjoy showed that you are fully recharged. That's what we're looking to do and get accomplished today.
Matt Dixon 05:04
Now we want to do three main things. And part one of this, in our three main things is to frame recovery. If we're going to talk about it, we have to understand it. And we have to understand it within the context of your performance journey. All right, so let's take a step back. And as we talked about in the introduction, let's think about what it requires for performance. Doesn't matter what your endeavor is. High Performance requires commitment, dedication, a little bit of sacrifice, you might say, and certainly anything of value is going to require meeting stresses and consistent hard work. If you want to build a successful business, it's not going to be easy for you. If you're committed to a partnership or a marriage, it's going to require investment. And if you want to qualify to the Boston Marathon, maybe the Hawaii Ironman - become a world champion, whatever it is, I promise you, there is no easy shortcut to this. It takes hard work and commitment. In fact, I would say that anything of high value in your life, you are going to be met with stressors, challenge, adversity. And so you have to have drive, you have to be committed. And I would even say that the higher that the meaning the importance to you, where you place value on whatever you're chasing, it typically means the longer the journey is to actually create enduring success. And this means as you start your performance journey, or move on with it, it is a requirement that you create sustainability in the effort. Enduring performance doesn't come with a series of sprints. Instead, it is the proverbial metaphorical marathon. And so, with this in mind, I think it's important for us to acknowledge the effort that you put in what we talked about the hard work, the sacrifice, the commitment, it wants to be effective. It wants to be sustainable, it wants to be targeted because you're looking for a return on investment on the effort that you put in. It's not just about working hard, plenty of people can sacrifice and work hard. It's about doing the right work effectively throughout your journey. Now, as committed as you must be, and as hard as you must work, recovery, that word recovery, is going to be the catalyst that enables you to yield the performance gains. It's absolutely central to your success that you put in. What does this really mean? Well, recovery, provides systemic, musculoskeletal, emotional, and even social rejuvenation. And with this rejuvenation, the body and mind can repair, grow and adapt. We always talk about the words resiliency, adaptability, you chase stronger, fitter, more powerful, faster, and that's great. But all of these concepts emerge from a focus on recovery. On one side, you've got to work darn hard, consistently. On the other side, you need rejuvenation, to create acceleration in adaptations in growth in all of the outcomes that you're looking for. And this isn't just in sport, this goes across life, your work, your health, everything. And so if we're holding hands on this, I think is important if we're going to unpack, especially as I am labeled the recovery coach, that needs to dig in a little bit further. We've talked a lot before about stress and stressors. And in fact, last year, I talked about stress as a concept. And in that episode, we'll put it in the show notes for you. But I outlined everything that we chase is going to require us facing stressors. In fact, rather than looking for us to run away from stress, hide from stress, the greats, the people that actually create enduring performance, embrace stress, they don't like it, it might be uncomfortable, but they realize it is a part of a catalyst for growth. We're not chasing comfort here. We're chasing growth and improvement. So while stress is critical for growth, we also discussed in the episode, how an accumulation of too many stressors without recovery can actually lead to erosion, maladaptation, underperformance, collapse, across our health, across our performance in sport, across our capacity to have motivation to continue to build businesses, whatever it might be. And so yes, it's true. As I outlined in that episode, the highest performers absolutely embrace stressors because they realize that it's not about being comfortable. It's about chasing growth. But equal to that, champions embrace recovery and rejuvenation. And that is the thing. When you get that recipe right, you are in a place that you can create enduring results. And this is logical. Because you think about it. It's a word that I've been talking about a lot lately, capacity. What's your capacity as an athlete as a human being, whether it's athletics, whether it's learning, whether it's building a business, no matter what it is, success requires hard work and commitment. And anything worth chasing is going to require that. And we always deliberately, as humans, performance-driven, nudge up against our capacity.
Matt Dixon 10:43
Let's just dive into that a little bit, because an elite athlete, of course, pushes against mostly physiological capacity. And it's all anchored in training load, how much training load in terms of number of training hours and the intensity of those hours can that athlete continue to absorb and adapt from a systemic standpoint, as well as from a musculoskeletal standpoint. And that's the game of an elite athlete. An amateur athlete does exactly the same thing, but they must do it within the context of the accumulation of all of the other stresses from work and life. And that can be demanding. And so we push, we lean into stressors, we chase adaptations, but we must recover. We must find capacity-improving capabilities. We must yield adaptations. And so at the end of the day, this goes well beyond a little bit of foam rolling, some stretching, a lovely massage, sitting in a hot tub or cryotherapy chamber, whatever your modality might be. And in fact, at the end of a racing season, for an athlete, it goes much deeper than that.
Matt Dixon 11:55
And so for part two, what I thought we would do is categorize how I think about recovery. And there are two major categories. When I think about an athlete or a person looking to lean into recovery, to force adaptations, growth, recharge your battery, and the missions that we want to achieve from today's show. So the two main categories for recovery, a very simple. The first is what we might label deep recovery or deep rejuvenation. And I'm going to get into that in a little bit. The second is your recovery habits and tactics. So let me explain both to you. Let's talk about deep recovery because that's going to be the focus of today's show. I want you to think about this as spring cleaning. So it's a really deep clean. From an athlete's standpoint, the process here is really about recharging yourself. And it starts at the end of your last major race. Now when I talk about recharging, it's not just stepping away from the sport and having a break. This is about recharging your social connectivity to family, friends, the society that you live in, having an emotional and mental recharge so that we can gain full motivation, clarity, and purpose looking ahead, and physical rejuvenation, both from a systemic or hormonal standpoint as well as a musculoskeletal standpoint. And a part of that process is about looking back. When we finish our last race we need to assess was it good? Was it bad? What could I have done better? What did I improve on? How did I thrive and where are my strengths, so that we can then look forward and make a strategic plan ahead? And that's a part of the recovery. But on top of it, there's the more physical component of before we dive into the future, and you just charge back into the obsessive commitment and hard work that we talk about, is a prerequisite for your performance, ensuring that you have a block of time. And we're going to break this apart but a block of time that you continue the recovery process. We will recharge the battery in every way that we talked about social, mental, physical, etc. So that when you step forward and turn back on for motivation for structure, and you start hard driving again, you're in a position that you are placed to do so effectively, and achieve great results over the course of the whole of the next season. So that's an athletic standpoint. And that's obviously going to be our focus and how we talk about it today.
Matt Dixon 14:31
But beyond sport, deep rejuvenation and recuperation is really important for everybody. And we could really talk about this in terms of stepping away from your challenge. And so if you were a small business owner or an entrepreneur, or hard-charging and really working on whatever your vocation is, there are natural segways that we have this holidays vacations, little bit of breaks taking a sabbatical if you're so lucky. But program breaks in your focus. And these breaks are really, really important. They're undervalued, they're undervalued by corporate companies, typically, they're also undervalued by us as human beings. But the program breaks that enable us to actively step away and turn off from the challenge. And that becomes really important because that provides space. It allows perspective, some context, and some rejuvenation in everything that we talked about, in the same way as the athlete wants. That mental refresh becomes really, really important for all of us, no matter what we're chasing, if we're looking for enduring performance, and it's gonna enable our actions and our effort over the long term to be more effective. And of course, that is the catalyst to creating ultimately, your best performance no matter what you're chasing. So that's the big umbrella concept of deep recovery, the spring clean, as we like to call it. But there's everything else on the other side of recovery category to that I just label rate, your recovery habits, your tactics.
Matt Dixon 16:13
So what do I mean by this? Well, this is what most people will dive into as an athlete when you talk about recovery. And we're not going to dive into it too much today. And the reason for that is because we're going to do a whole show in the new year just about recovery and tactics when it's a little bit more timely for most of the audience. But let's consider this just for a moment. So that we can put it aside and say, Okay, I'm not thinking about this, we can consider the second category of recovery as a set of habits or interventions or tools that we leverage as athletes or human beings on an ongoing basis, so that we can retain vibrancy, health, absorb training. And I like to categorize these into three main areas. The first is sport, the second is lifestyle. The third is modalities. So let me explain that. The sport recovery, that's really around how a coach or how an athlete builds their training. And it should integrate not just banging your head every single day against a brick wall. But it should integrate easier training sessions where the sole purpose is rejuvenation and recovery. Little blocks of multiple days in a row when we allow the body to settle and absorb some of the hard work that we've just done. Or, of course, extended blocks of recovery when we really need to freshen up. In other words, this is programmed recovery into your broader training plan. And it's very simple, becomes critical. And that's actually I should just note, that's something that's really challenging for highly motivated and committed athletes to get right. As I talked about before, most athletes go too hard in the sessions that are prescribed to be easy. So therefore they are under recovering under the category of sports recovery.
Matt Dixon 18:06
Okay, well, what about lifestyle recovery? That gets more broad, but more no less important. This is components such as your recovery from post-workout fueling, consuming calories immediately following any training session, your broader daily eating habits and nutrition plan, how you approach hydration, to ensure that you can facilitate optimal recovery, absorption of nutrients, daily cellular health. How about sleep, both in terms of quality and quantity, and your naps really, really important. And a whole host of other lifestyle-focused Approaches, those become really important. And then finally, we have modalities. Everything that you can be sold. Isn't that wonderful? foam rolling, mobility, stretching, ice, heat therapy, massage, bodywork, massage, guns, everything that falls under those sorts of modalities that we talked about. Now, I'm not going to break these apart today and say this one is more important than the next. Many of you guys might have listened to that already and heard my very strong opinions of getting the fundamentals right first. But all we need to do for today's show, is understand that sort of source of recovery, our daily habits, and tactics, and we're going to put it aside, we're going to revisit that in a few weeks. What I want to focus on is deep recovery for an athlete, the process you go through from when you finish your last major event of the year, all the way through to when you say alright, x in the calendar, it's back on, I'm going back to hard work, and I want to be fully recharged for that. Because that's going to be the fundamental set of actions that you should take to facilitate long-term success and huge performance gains next year. And so there's a lot to discuss And we're gonna dive into it, the spring clean, deep rejuvenation.
Matt Dixon 20:05
Let's dive into part three, the final section of today's show. Now my mate Peter, he's a lovely guy, but he loves deep rejuvenation and recovery. In fact, I would argue that he seemingly builds his life around recovery. But that's not really a performance lifestyle, is it, Peter? That's what we call laziness. And so, when we talk about recovery, as I mentioned earlier in the show, there is no shortcut here, there is no hack. Recovery doesn't make life or the pursuit or athletics easy. Now, my mate Peter might disagree, he loves deep rejuvenation, he built his whole life around it. But that's not really a performance lifestyle. He's not going to be successful. But we must acknowledge that when charging, whether it's an athlete or an entrepreneur, it's really important that we integrate blocks of deeper rejuvenation. And that's what I want to break apart. And the best route to do it is to talk about a performance athlete, someone that I'm very proud of. And I'm going to leverage a case study today. Now I'm sure that you're going to be able, while we're talking about it in an athletic sense, if you're not a committed training, athlete training for something, it's not going to be very difficult for you to join the dots into whatever endeavor you're chasing in your own circumstances. But our case study today is a guy named Angus, and he is a committed endurance athlete. In fact, he just finished his last major event, which was an Ironman. It was his focus of his season, and by all accounts, it was a great day. And while he was relieved when he finished his race, he was also equally really excited for next season, what happens next, he wants to take it to the next level, he remains focused and committed at the same time. And he's already got a whole season of planned races culminating in the same event, the very same Ironman next year, with a goal of radical improvement. Apples to Apples. I want to be a different athlete next year. And all of that is super. But in order for Angus to step forward, to achieve success to be sitting in the same place this time next year, and look back and say, Wow, I nailed it. It's important that he must embrace deep rejuvenation first, he needs to actually pause, sit with his emotions, reflect a little bit, and plan ahead. And then he must strategically, integrating some really important training that we label postseason, to set himself up. And that is part of deep rejuvenation as well. So it becomes really, really important. I want to break this apart for you. Now, as I do this, we're talking about someone that has had success. What I'll try and do as we navigate through this is imagine a different athlete and unnamed athlete who perhaps has had a tougher race, and is full of frustration, maybe a bit of bitterness and anger. So in other words, win lose or draw, I want to try and paint a picture of how you might think about approaching deep rejuvenation.
Matt Dixon 23:12
Okay, let's talk about it. Let's first identify goals. What are we looking to achieve? Well, the first thing is very obvious, because I've already outlined it, and that's to recharge your batteries. And to break that apart more. That's emotionally. So you need to reengage with motivation, physical rejuvenation, both your muscles, your musculoskeletal system, as well as systemic, your whole overall ecosystem of health and, of course, social connections, something that people really underserve and undervalue. But as committed athletes, sometimes the social engagement reaching out to family friends, having a broader perspective, there's more to life than just this tunnel vision of can I achieve an accelerated Ironman like I met like Angus did. It's important that we reconnect socially. Okay, so that's our first goal is recharge our batteries. The second goal is to have some really honest and objective reflection and assessment of what happened over the course of this last season. And, of course, over the key races, and for many athletes, that's the last race of the season. What went well, because we need to get clarity on this. We need to understand why you're doing this in the first place. What's your purpose? What's your goal? And out of that process, you can start to identify what do I want to achieve over the next year, but also, how am I going to do it? What are the things that I need to leave behind and not focus on so much? What are the areas that I need to introduce or double down on and really start to thrive? How should I actually structure my training and my overall approach in the year ahead for me to move my performance needle? So it's not just about turning off emotionally, there's a whole process that I think we have to go through as a part of the rejuvenation processes we navigate. And then finally, we need to enter out of the initial break. That season break as it's traditionally called, the assessment, the clarity, the planning ahead. And we need to take our next step into a really important block of training, that we label at Purple Patch postseason, but it's really the preparatory phase of training. And I can't overstate how important those weeks and months sometimes are to facilitate your future success. In fact, I would say it is the biggest pre-determining factor of long-term enduring success is ensuring that you have multiple weeks or months of what we call a proper postseason to recharge those batteries that we talk about, and take the appropriate steps. Most athletes fail to get it right. So let's dig in. Let's talk about Angus.
Matt Dixon 25:58
He finishes his Ironman, it was a success. So what happens now? Well, let me tell you what happens with most athletes. And this is unfortunate. But at the end of the season, most amateur athletes take one of two most common routes. The first is athlete A, where they take a quick break 7, 10, 14 days, and then they return, it's back on and they are focused, committed, their training at the same intensity and focus level as they do in the rest of the year. I'm an athlete, I'm driving forward. I've got big ambition next year. And that's a very typical approach that many people take. And they'll say, Yeah, I had a season break as a week, it was 10 days. But now it's back on Buster, let's do it. The second type of athlete that's really common, is complete disengagement for many, many weeks, sometimes months. And they are often these athletes that are finishing their last race of the year. And they've got immense relief that it's over, in part because their training approach has been too high relative to the context of their life. And it's felt like a monkey on their back. And finally, ah, they've got freedom to go and engage in the other parts of their life. And so they just completely turn their back on the sport on training and their performance journey for weeks, if not months. And then, of course, those weeks or months go by and they reengage, but the unfortunate component is their re-engaging, back close to ground zero. And they are not prepared systemically for a musculoskeletal standpoint, or from a baseline fitness standpoint, to absorb the training. They get in a pinch, they start rushing and accelerate. And of course, over multiple seasons, these are the athletes that fail to improve. In other words, they plateau or they are perpetually injured. And so those are the two most common journeys but not Angus because there's an elite performance athletes. Neither of the past that I outlined, of course, are preferable. Now knowing that we've got someone here that is exceptional in Angus, he does it right. And let me explain. The first is following the Ironman, we had a very brief catch-up, well done high fives, glass of wine, all the good stuff, a little chat with me post-race yet went well, I felt good, really stable. But it was a really short debrief around what went well and what didn't go well. But then we just stepped away. And after the first day or two, we moved into what I would label a real post-race block of work. And so for Angus, his post race, emotions were really positive. Yeah, had a really good day. But even if it was really good, or on the other side, if Angus had have had a DNF, or a really frustrating day and underperformed, the critical component outside of that initial just few words will 20-minute conversation with himself with me as his coach, the key is I think not to over-analyze, in the first 24, 48, 72 hours. Let it breathe. Instead, just enjoy the moment a little bit, engage and focus on the blocks of work, whether it's a week, whether it's 10 days, whatever it might be for Angus, a few days where it's just about celebration. For someone with a tough race, it might be being upset, feeling frustrated, maybe an element of regret. But for Angus, it was important not to just charge forward and really, really start planning what did I do well, I wanna repeat this, etc. For someone that's had a more negative experience in racing, it's not to try and fix the problem in the first days after the race. Don't seek solutions. It's absolutely impossible. Whether you're on cloud nine, or whether you're feeling like you're in hells ditch. You cannot be objective and analyze straightaway. And so instead, just let it be, let life flow a little bit. Just be with the moment. And in fact, that's a wonderful time when we talk to athletes about, it's important to turn your back on the sport a little bit. It's not that long, it's seven days, 10 days, 14 days, certainly no more than 21 days. And that stretching it. Typically somewhere between 10 and 14 days that you just turn your back on the sport. You're a human being. And I really love athletes, depending on how introverted they are, et cetera, but really connect with other people in the broader spectrum of life reengage with friends, not just your athletic friends, but friends across all of life. And take your mind off the challenge, give yourself space, don't fix anything that went wrong, don't build on stuff that was really successful. Now, Angus, he's a really social guy. So that's not difficult for him. But I actually think it's really healthy for all of us to embrace life, family, friends, enjoying the moment. And whether it's 24 hours, 72 hours a week, it doesn't matter. Allow yourself to just feel. Be a little bit of objective, just sit in the swim in the pond of the emotions that you feel. And I know that there can be a broad spectrum of emotions here. Frustration, annoyance, celebration, ecstasy, even in Angus's case, and that's okay. Because post-race, a major event, particularly if you've been training for it, and really dedicated for it, it can be the highest high that you've had, but the deepest frustration ever, and there isn't an appropriate emotion there. It's just a feeling. And it's good for you to just be with those feelings. Don't try and escape or hide from them, but allow yourself to swim in them a little bit. It's almost a little bit grieving, or celebratory, over the course of a few days. And this is really, really difficult. Sometimes athletes don't have capacity or time practically. But for most amateur athletes, you should be able to 9 times out of 10, just be there and sit with it for a while. Because you'll realize, as you go through that process, that initial phase of rejuvenation, it's going to stabilize. And whether it's a single day, whether it's a week, whether it's 10 days, it's really important. And it's healthy because it is then that you can pause, come up a level to 3000 feet or so out of the weeds, and have a little bit of perspective. And it is then that I really like no different than Baxter, my 10-year-old having to look back over the course of the last term that he did at school and reflect. What did I do well? What could I improve? Where were my strengths? What are my weaknesses? What worked with my program and coaching? Where do I need to evolve that? And I like athletes to do this under two main areas.
Matt Dixon 33:05
The first is a broader perspective, the season. How did I do? How did I improve if yourself a little bit of an assessment objectively around your training, your habits, your performance, readiness, your coaching, whether you consistent or not. And with a little space between that last event, win lose or draw. And when you actually turn back and look with reflection, that's gonna yield a little bit more objectivity. You can also then actually look at your last major event with more clarity because you're in an objective place. Now for Angus that was going through the swim the bike, the run his transitions, which I'm not sure if he was hair drying, or blow drying his hair or not, but they took pretty long time. But either way, he's reflecting on his experiences that he went through in that race. And the same thing - What was great? What did I do well? What are my opportunities for growth and improvement? And you can take your time, but it doesn't need to be an exhaustive two-week process. In fact, I like athletes to journal it, get an old-fashioned pen and paper, and map it out. It's super. And when you've done that, having that little pause, that little, turning your back on it engaging with other people, having a little bit of fun, not continuing on the treadmill of your performance journey is going to enable you to feel. To understand, to gain some objectivity. And then when you turn back to the performance journey, you have a better chance for clarity. You've actually enabled yourself to go beyond the emotion and that becomes really powerful. Now, as a coach, if I'm navigating this process with the athlete, I think it's more powerful if I'm not providing the answers, and the athlete is leading. And so I should be there. It's my role to support to try and help provide perspective. But I don't want to provide the answer. And so quite often, I'll have athletes, after a little bit of time, have a point of reflection. And quite often they arrive to have a deeper discussion with me. And they've already come to the analysis. And quite often it's really objective, but seldom is it objective, if we do it in the immediate aftermath of the end of the season, or immediately post major race. So that becomes important. So that is a critical part of what we could label deep recovery because it's a part of the healing is part of the planning. And it is then as you emerge from that, that then coach and athlete, or athlete if they're building their own program, can make decisions on the path ahead. They're in the right headspace. They're more connected socially. They've started the process of rejuvenation and recharging the battery. And we'll come back to that in a second. They felt the emotions, it's very real. There's no judgment on that. They've gone through self-reflection. And now they can go through and start to be strategic of why am I doing this? What am I looking to achieve? What constitutes success? And how should we get there? Now, in another episode, we talked about the cycle of performance journey. And this is the fourth component of that infinity loop. And we're gonna put that up and include it in the show notes, it's worth listening to that episode as well. But this is the critical stage of deep rejuvenation, re-engagement, and redefining of mission. And it becomes really, really important. Because out of that, we have clarity- coach and athlete - of what's next ahead in the year, what are we going to build on? What do we need to improve? And it's objective and real. And that becomes in fact, startlingly simple. It can all be done over the first week or two. And we can label that as our season break. At the end of the break, we've got clarity, and we start to really plan, super, great. But that's not the total deep recovery or deep rejuvenation. Remember our goals. And this whole process. Deep rejuvenation is at the end of a season, athletically, to first recharge our batteries socially, emotionally, and physically, super. We also want to prepare our bodies for the hard work ahead. Well, all we've done so far is turn our back on the sport that's good connect socially, a little bit of immediate restoration. And we've done some self-reflection and some planning, but it's only been 7, 10, 14, up to 21 days. And that's not a deep spring clean. And it's certainly not preparatory from a physical standpoint of what we need to do that is prerequisite for us to really thrive, which is to work our tails off effectively over the course of the coming year. So with that in mind, as mentioned with the two common paths that athletes take, you don't want to disengage for too long. But also in equal measure. You don't want an obsessive quick return to hard work and hard labor. And so this is where we start to fall into what many folks call offseason. But if you listen to the episode a few weeks ago, offseason as we know it is dead. But this is still conceptually following your season break. We want to continue our process of deep rejuvenation while preparing for the hard work ahead. And at Purple Patch, that's what we label postseason. That's how we call it, it's after season and it is preparatory. It doesn't matter what the label is, just know that there are multiple weeks, up to even a couple of months, where we are engaging a block work that is primarily preparatory in nature. By definition, what that means is we're not chasing huge endurance, huge fitness gains, fitter, stronger, faster. We are preparing our bodies to be ready to go on that journey. And at the same time, we're continuing on an ongoing basis, the ability to recharge and improve. And by definition, as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, that means that you're going to have less total training hours in any given week of training because we want to increase our capacity. There's going to be greater flexibility in your program and opportunity for you to go and add new things, try different activities, get outside and play and have some fun, even if that means for an obsessive runner that you're doing some cross country skiing or snowshoeing. It's all great. There's capacity and flexibility in that. And I highly encourage people to embed in community, engage socially have more fun. But as a backbone of that freedom, that flexibility, and a lower cognitive load and physical load that we're engaging in, there's also a backbone of specificity. A few sessions that are going to be highly focused. And those sessions are going to be anchored around technical improvements, baseline fitness, strengthen conditioning so that we can build up the chassis, that becomes important, and some other elements that can ultimately improve our tissue resiliency, to help us be primed to become the best adaptation machines possible when we turn it back on. And that's really fun. Because you've got less cognitive load, it's less of a stressor on your life, you've got more capacity to be engaged in other components,
Matt Dixon 40:51
It's certainly less physical strain. It's actually pretty fun, pretty simple. But it's critical. And this is the phase that connects. When we talk about deep rejuvenation, this is the direct connection to postseason. This is what it is. postseason is preparatory, but it's also a phase that it needs to facilitate the big recharge. And that's what we get out of it. And this is what Angus has done well. We have a mission for 2023. and that emerged from reflection, had a bit of fun, had a bit of social connection, paused, look back, not everything he did was perfect, but we have clarity and objectively redefined our purpose and what we're looking to achieve. And he isn't right now, while he's quote back to training, he's not doing it with his eyebrows touching in a scowl. He's not obsessive. He's not bumping against his weekly capacity, he's actually got a whole bunch of freedom. And his success. And your success is when you arrive in January, and you get to turn it back on, you are recharged. You have been socially connected, and of course, the holidays can really, really help with that, because you've got now license freedom, and in fact, direction to go and engage socially around the holidays. You should be emotionally and mentally motivated because you've got the clarity, you've got direction and purpose and that really helps, but also you've allowed yourself to mentally recharge from the focus. You've got a clearer perspective. And you've got a platform of some specific work that is going to set you up as an adaptation-ready, resilient athlete who is primed to absorb to the work ahead. And that becomes great. So the process of reflection, and some smart structured months, is, I believe, a non-negotiable for performance. But unfortunately, most athletes miss out on this. They take one of the two most common paths. And I promise you when you do that, completely disengage, or just have a quick break and obsessively dive back in problems nearly always lay ahead. And so with this process, what we're labeling deep rejuvenation and recovery, we create an approach very simply, that sets you up for enduring success, long-term development a year ahead. That is better than you could possibly imagine. And so from the recovery coach, I hope that you can see it's not about black or white, it's not about on or off with obsession. It's more nuanced than that. Following your major event, breathe, feel, and then reflect. And once you're reflected, you're in a place that you can plan. And following that, then allowing your body, your mind your soul, not just driving forward back into the grind, but a smart preparatory phase of training, and it's going to make all the difference. A well-known coach often said hurry slowly. With this, what I'm talking about today, in part is what they were talking about. I hope that helps. We'll see you next week. Take care.
Matt Dixon 44:18
Guys, thanks so much for joining. And thank you for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing. Head to the Purple Patch channel of YouTube, and you will find it there and you could subscribe. Of course, I'd like to ask you, if you will subscribe, also share it with your friends and it's really helpful if you leave a nice positive review in the comments. Now any questions that you have, let me know. Feel free to add a comment and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. And in fact, as we commence this video podcast experience, if you have any feedback at all, as mentioned earlier in the show, we would love your help in helping us to improve. Simply email us at info@purplepatchfitness.com or leave it in the comments of the show at the Purple Patch page and we will get you dialed in. We'd love constructive feedback. We are in a growth mindset as we like to call it. And so feel free to share with your friends. But as I said, let's build this together. Let's make it something special. It's really fun. We're really trying hard to make it a special experience. And we want to welcome you into the Purple Patch community. With that, I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun, keep smiling, doing whatever you do. Take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
athlete, recovery, recharge, important, performance, rejuvenation, angus, bit, season, race, training, chasing, deep, postseason, capacity, committed, journey, days, life, coach