Episode 250: Back to Basics - Building a Season of Performance
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With the wave of the new year's short-term objectives behind us, it’s time to get serious about the year and season ahead.
Make no mistake, the focus or goal for most of you is to achieve! Whether that be results, PRs, finish lines, or championships, most people we chat with are eager to take their performance to the next level.
To do that, we must first align with the goal and think bigger about the role of fitness and performance in the life of a time-starved athlete. In this episode of the Purple Patch Podcast, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon returns to fundamentals and helps frame an intelligent approach for your athletic journey.
Matt frames the discussion in three parts:
The role of the athletic journey in broader life
(11:55) "The sporting journey is something that can be a little bit of a backbone or a framework for us to organize components around...If you do things successfully, and you get your recipe right...it should be a catalyst for you to improve your health profile. And beyond that, you should actually amplify your energy in the day. And if you have more energy, you're going to have more willpower and focus to actually give to all of the other components of life. And that means better clarity, better decision making, better ability to stay on task -- and that becomes really powerful.
The unique challenges of the time-starved athlete
(17:11) "It's never just about time...when we just label things in a challenge of time, I think that we miss a really important point, and that's that what we're really faced with as a time-starved athlete, is more of a challenge of total stress accumulation...A time-starved athlete has to manage a huge amount of variable stresses in life."
A performance approach for time-starved athletes (the four pillars of performance)
(26:53) "They combine and what they end up creating is your own performance recipe. They are in many ways, your toolkit, your method for you to approach everything around your goals and your performance to Yes, take your performance to the next level, but also to go beyond and think about effective productivity, boosting your health and more."
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 03:06 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
03:14 - 08:32 - Matt's News-ings
08:39 - 48:00 - The Meat and Potatoes - Episode 250: Back to Basics - Building a Season 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 00:21
Hi folks, we are embracing the pillars of performance today, yes, endurance, strength and conditioning, recovery, and of course, nutrition. And collectively, as we go through today's show, it's all about your performance recipe. Because we care about not just making you faster but amplifying your life. And one of the tools that we leverage to amplify that life to ensure that you have the right focus to give you your best return on investment, and ensure that you can create meaningful change is InsideTracker. Because by assessing your biometrics, and leaning into the recommendations and insights from the team of experts, and InsideTracker, you can ensure that you are placing your focus on the components that really matter and will help you in filtering out the distractions and nonsense. You don't need to be a Purple Patch athlete to participate, all you need to do is head to insidetracker.com/purplepatch, and we even give you a handy code, Purple Patch Pro two zero, that's Purple Patch Pro two, zero -- 20 and you can get 20% off everything at the store. Today's show -- well this is from the ground up a fundamental. It is a catalyst for all of the education that we have looming this year. And I think that you're going to enjoy it. And so I'll say this insidetracker.com/purplepatch and also hand in hand -- let's get on with the show.
Matt Dixon 01:56
And welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast as ever, your host, Matt Dixon. Today, we go big. The wave of new year short-term nonsense mostly behind us, let's get serious about the year and season ahead. You -- you're a time-starved athlete. And I am going to encourage you to take on a big challenge, I'm going to tell you to set ambitious goals. But today, what I want to do to ensure that you can be successful on that journey is to return to some of the fundamentals and help you frame an intelligent approach so that you can be successful. Today's show should be a grounding guide for all of the education that we've got coming up over the course of this season. And throughout today, we're going to explore and make sure that we get first aligned on what the role of your athletic journey is. We're going to dive into some of the unique challenges that you face as a time-starved athlete. And ultimately, we're going to reveal and refresh for many of you guys on the actual methodology to ensure that you can be successful as a time-starved athlete. It all sounds to me like required listening, don't you think? I think so. But before we dive in, we do have to do Matt's News-ings.
Matt Dixon 03:14
Yes, it's Matt's News-ings, and Barry, we've got two things to go through today. So I hope that you have your ears pricked up, here we go. Number one, strength training. I remember over the last 10 or 15 years goodness made the amount of heated discussions that I've had with coaches around Is there really any benefit of strength and conditioning for the endurance athlete, well surely that battle is won. It is of course a critical component for every level of athlete or fitness enthusiast that cares about their performance. And so as you, at the early part of this year, begin to consider your 2023 programming, I realize that not everyone is really cut out to be a Purple Patch athlete. Perhaps you really like to self-coach or maybe you already have a great coaching relationship. And I would never want to break that apart. But I will encourage you as you think and plot ahead, to ensure that any program that you participate in, whether you're making it up or not, really does integrate and that word is important, integrate strength and conditioning. But I ask you how can Purple Patch help here. Well, if you're not going to be a Purple Patch athlete, we still have a pretty good solution for you. Because many people don't know this, but we actually have a wonderful standalone strength and conditioning program that is year-round, progressive, and specifically designed for the needs of the time-starved athlete. You can be coached, you can be self-coached, you don't need to be a Purple Patch athlete, but you can participate in our video-based strength and conditioning program. The good news is it's time sensitive because of course you are time-starved. You don't have to go out and get a gym membership, you can do it from almost anywhere and it progresses over the course of the entire season. It's fantastic.
Matt Dixon 04:59
It's video-enabled is well proven, we've been utilizing it and refreshed it and evolved it just for this year, I think it's wonderful. It is the Purple Patch strength program. So if you're interested, and you want to get on the journey, now is the time, all you have to do is head to purplepatchfitness.com. And you can go to the strength tab, and you can find it there. Of course, we're always delighted to help info a purplepatchfitness.com, you can reach out and we'll guide you to the right direction. But the second part is, what about if you do want to come on board with Purple Patch? We have a lot of athletes reaching out right now. And little bit of decision-making around what's the right program for you. Well, before we talk about programs, because we can always help here, I do want if you are considering to join purple Patch, I would like you to first broaden your horizons and goals a little bit. Because ultimately, whether you're going to become a part of our squad program, whether you decide to take on a one-to-one coaching relationship with myself or one of our coaching team, I want to remind you of what our philosophical approach and ultimately tactical approach is by partnering with you as an athlete. We have to first say, Yes, we are going to get results for you. That's our mission. We are ultimately in the results business. So taking your performance to the next level, going faster, getting ready for your events and achieving your goals. That is of course the bread and butter and the bullseye of everything that we do. But as I talked about, why don't you why you're doing that get more, you ultimately have a really big life. And it's awful if you obsess so much about getting faster, and going to the next level if it becomes at the expense of all of the other components of life. Instead, by taking on a sport in journey, I believe it should actually amplify life. You should get healthier. You shouldn't be compromising health, it should improve on your effectiveness and your productivity across life. And ultimately, this is the lens that I look through. Yes, we're going to get you faster, but want to make your life bigger. And I think that's a special component of what it means to be a purple patch athlete.
Matt Dixon 07:09
And so in 2023, I really encourage you to think bigger. One of our taglines for this year is get your drive to your personal best. And that can mean different things for different people. But if you want to set up a call for us, and you want to talk about the programming and find out how we can help I encourage you, it's info@purplepatchfitness.com. It's complimentary and of course, we'll guide you, it's absolutely pressure-free. But I will give you one little carrot as well. You see over the holidays, we did a special promotion, it was very popular. And just on this podcast, nowhere else, it's not on the website, we are going to extend the promotion until January 31. If you sign up for one of our squad programs before January 31, we're going to throw in a coaching consultation. That's a value of about $150. And you're going to have a one-to-one consultation with one of our coaching team to really set the roadmap and the compass ahead so that you can not just leverage the program but ensure that you've got exactly the right focus for you. And so just mention that as you reach out and you start the program. Hey, Matt said I heard it on the show ready before January 31. And with that, Barry, that's Matt's News-ings. We are going to bypass Word of the Week this week because we've got so much juicy stuff. Yes, folks, Barry, it is time, ladies and gentlemen. It is the Meat and Potatoes.
Matt Dixon 08:39
All right, folks, it is the Meat and Potatoes and as I mentioned in Matt's News-ings -- make no mistake, the focus and the goal for most of you is to achieve: results, PRs, finished lines, championships. In fact, the most people that I talked to talk about getting to the next level. Now it is time to focus on a goal and achieve and take my performance into the next level. And that's great. Let's align on that. That's the bullseye. Ultimately, at Purple Patch as an endurance coaching company, that's actually what we are tasked to help you do. And we do that through our programming, of course, hopefully through the show a little bit of education as well. But to kick off the conversation, I think that we should also align on really the role of your athletic journey across broader life. Because ultimately, for most people listening to the show, it's not just about finished lines. It's not only about getting faster. I think, in fact, we should think bigger than that. And we should be looking and seeking to crack a recipe that achieves and delivers more than just getting faster. Let me explain a little bit. I think that if you only take a narrow view and you'd just think about which races am I signing up for. Do I want to qualify? What's my PR in this?
Matt Dixon 10:06
If you only think about your success, in Pass/Fail terms around the quantifiable results that you achieve in the sport of your choice, I think that you're actually limiting yourself. But beyond that, I also think it's the catalyst for many people to extend into potentially harmful mindsets and approaches. I really believe that it is the journey that becomes so invaluable across your life. The events and the goals that you take on, they're great. They're important. They act as a compass. They also deliver a source of fun and pride and satisfaction when you achieve success and that's great. But your greater rewards, the more foundational and lasting rewards emerge from your journey that you take on. I call it your athletic journey. And what I mean by this is, by actually embracing and developing habits, around a framework and structure of this is what I do, whatever this is, whether it's the elite side of sport, whether it's a very driven approach to taking on marathons or triathlons, whether it's just a performance lifestyle in which you're aiming to be a better fitness enthusiasts, it can actually be an incredibly enriching and productive lens to take on life. Because by taking on an endurance or athletic journey, as I like to call it, it actually facilitates, I believe, a framework, a framework in which you can get highly organized around life. And that produces a lot of stability. And that stability becomes really important when you are time-starved, and you've got a lot of chaos and unpredictability. And so the sporting journey is something that can be a little bit of a backbone or a framework for us to organize components around. On top of it, if you do things successfully, and you get your recipe right, but we're going to talk about the methodology to get your recipe right today, it should be a catalyst for you to improving your health profile. And beyond that, you should actually amplify your energy in the day. And if you have more energy, you're going to have more willpower and focus to actually give to all of the other components of life. And that means better clarity, better decision making, better ability to stay on task, and that becomes really powerful.
Matt Dixon 12:36
Beyond all of this, we should also talk about the lessons that come from the athletic journey. You see, life is full of adversity, and so is a journey towards a big goal. When you take on a challenge when you train for something, you are sure to navigate roadblocks go through setbacks, even failures sometimes. But those lessons that emerged from those experiences, absolutely go on to build up your toolbox of life. And that becomes really critical. And suddenly, what we've got beyond just taking your sport to the next level, boosting your FTP, qualifying for X, Y and Z, what we have is a toolbox and a set of components that actually make you a better human being. And that becomes really, really powerful. And so when we talk about in 2023, find your personal best. That means different things for different people. And yes, it can mean I want to win a world championship but isn't just mean that at all. It can mean you being your best. And I think that if we get aligned on that. And then it really is a route or a passage for you to get everything that you want in sport, and more. And so if you're going to take on a challenge, if you're going to create a big hairy goal, if you are going to go on a quest to improve yourself, why don't you make it about more than just the sport, because I promise you it's going to be even more rewarding, even more satisfying, and ultimately, the results are much bigger than you ever could have imagined.
Matt Dixon 14:18
And so with that framework now designed, you're going to boost your effectiveness, your energy, you're going to get lessons from life, and all of this, it might sound utopian to you right now, but all of it is absolutely attainable. If if you do it right. So I encourage people yes, go on, make a big challenge. Last year, we talked about a BHAG a big, hairy, audacious goal. So let's refresh that for this year. Go on. Take it on. Something that's a little scary, daunting. Can you really do that?
Matt Dixon 14:54
But by taking that challenge on, the last thing that you want to do is to create a second job. You don't want to just dump that goal and everything that it takes to be successful on top of an already busy life. Instead, you need to be smart, you need to be pragmatic, you need to integrate all of the components that are required for you to be successful into the habit of life. And that means that you need a healthy dose of accountability. You need to lean on this as a compass and a framework so that you can actually be successful in your training. And you need to lean into this challenge so that you can ultimately grow as a human being. So, folks to summarize, yes, take on a big, hairy, audacious goal, the results are you getting faster, you being successful. But the end result in that goal is not where the biggest reward is going to lie. The biggest reward is everything that's going to come along with the journey. And if you focus on that, and you lean into that, it's going to give you the greatest rewards that you can't even potentially imagine right now. But, what are the challenges? This all sounds lovely, and we can say, rah, rah, rah, let's get ready to go. But what are some of the natural challenges of the time-starved athlete? Well, I think it's important to acknowledge these so that we can build out a methodology and help with this. And the most obvious one, of course, is time.
Matt Dixon 16:23
In fact, for many of the folks that I talked to time, personal time is the most precious commodity. A typical time-starved athlete has a really demanding job, lots of commitments beyond that job with friends, family, kids, etc. And now, they are trying to train for something. But it goes beyond this. It's never just about time, that's something that's tangible, I just simply don't have enough hours in the day or the week. But when we just label things in a challenge of time, I think that we miss a really important point. And that's that what we're really faced with as a time-starved athlete, is more of a challenge of total stress accumulation. Stress and management is the key catalyst for us that we need to navigate. You see a time-starved athlete beyond having this very little precious commodity of not enough time. A time-starved athlete has to manage a huge amount of variable stresses in life. And we can go through them as I just labeled these quick ones, you can probably identify and say yep, yep, yep.
Matt Dixon 17:35
Let's talk about it -- work commitments, deadlines, pressures, managing people being managed by someone, whatever it might be, travel for work potentially, financial stresses that you might have. Family, kids both logistically and emotionally, self-stress, and maybe some of the existential components, where am I at in my life? Where am I going in the future? Goodness, me, I'm almost 50. And it all becomes quite daunting. Some of the environmental stresses that we might have. And that's before we even start to think about elements or stresses that could be used stresses really good promoters. But for most folks that are time-starved, often end up being additional stresses in life, such as sleep recovery, downtime elements under the big banner of nutrition, including fueling and hydration, Goodness me. And it is among all of those stresses, that what you and your coach potentially are tasked with is putting it in a specific training stress, that's what training is a stress, to hopefully achieve growth, adaptation, physiological improvements so that you can go on and be successful. And so your training as a time-starved athlete can only be successful if it builds you up and isn't destructive. And that can only be the case if your total capacity to adapt is on the side of positivity. In other words, effective training is when you apply a training stress and your body is equipped to actually absorb it, respond to it and adapt in a positive way. It'll always adapt but not always positive. And that is the key challenge for you. That's the game that you're playing - hour to hour, day to day, week to week, month to month, season to season. But I want to add one more challenge as well. And that's focus. I could have labeled this willpower as well, but focus because as human beings, all of us individually, we only have so much ability to adapt to physical stresses. And we know this and it's pretty obvious okay too much accumulation both short and long term of total physical load and we will fail to positively adapt. And so therefore we start to get fatigued, we underperform, perhaps we get injured. And perhaps we even get sick really frequently. And that's our ability or inability to adapt to the demand of the stressors from a physical standpoint. But in addition to physical, total load, we also only have so much mental capacity to focus. And that's really important. The best way to highlight this is to go back to prior stressors. Think about what we talked about demands from work, travel, logistics, family, kids, existential crisis, as we go on through the world, on and on and on. And all of these require and demand focus. And now as a time-starved athlete, we are training. And your training program requires some planning, executing of the sessions, managing the sessions, understanding whether to push through or pull back relative to fatigue. And then of course, we've got measuring, assessing, analyzing, perhaps sometimes too much analyzing for those that are data-obsessed. We are absolutely focused across all of the aspects of the non-negotiable components of life and then we are adding training and that creates an additional focus demand. And that's a lot of cognitive load. Now add to all of this we are blitzed, absolutely blitzed with information promises promotions of the next greatest gift to pave the way for our performance promised land, lactate meters, recovery tools, bath mineral salts, I can't even keep count. But put together, the vast majority of these elements end up being distractions, and yet they become greater cognitive load to us.
Matt Dixon 21:54
So I hope that you're starting to see the big picture here. You've not just got a management of stresses conundrum, and trying to integrate the appropriate dose of physical load. But you're also adding a whole bunch of focus. And that is really demanding. And that's the challenge that we face. And for many of us, it feels insurmountable. For others, they just roll into a vortex and they swirl and swirl and swirl into a cycle of sometimes dissatisfaction. Certainly, underperformance, maybe cycles of fatigue and injury, and ultimately low performance, and it becomes really frustrating. And it's unbelievable how many people I see that are wholly committed that quote, love the sport, and yet are walking around fit and fatigued underperforming across both sport and life, not achieving our two components that we want to get, ultimately, even straying into poor physical and even mental health. And so I ask you, when does a good thing become a really unfortunate bad thing? I'm afraid it's the case more commonly than I would hope.
Matt Dixon 23:04
And so what I want to do is get back to basics. I want to build out the fundamentals, I want us to ground ourselves in the methodology. Because this is a performance approach, specifically utilized for the time-starved athlete. Now, it's actually, ironically, the same approach that we would use for a professional athlete. It's just adapted and tailored a little bit different. But I'm talking in terms for you today. And let me kick this off with a statement. Just because you exercise or you train doesn't mean that you're healthy. And I want you to let that sink in for a moment. Just because you are exercising every day, it does not mean that you are healthy. There are plenty of folks that I know that I observe that are committed, they train they exercise daily, and they are woefully underperforming and ultimately not healthy. And I believe that the genesis of this conundrum can be mapped into two parts.
Matt Dixon 24:05
The first is they tend to adopt a really inflexible training approach, where they are trying to adhere to way too many training hours that they can realistically and sustainably execute effectively. That word is really important today. The second is a poor execution of some of the critical supporting habits, many of which we're going to go through today that would make training efforts actually effective, but ultimately become corrosive to your platform of health. So these two main components, trying to do too much training or not supporting the training that you do with really critical habits. Those are catalysts for people that are committed that train that ultimately underperform and perhaps even are not very healthy. And so what we need is a time-starved athlete is an approach that enables you equips you to integrate training into a really busy life, but also conflicts with it. And in addition to that, the program itself will embed all of the supporting habits as a part of that program, not an afterthought, an absolute integrated part.
Matt Dixon 25:15
So as we build out today, I think it's important that that program, if you want to call it that, it has or we can identify four main components of it. And I believe that every single athlete no matter what the level of the experiences, every athlete should embrace all four components, and we call it the four pillars of performance. Now, these pillars are very, very simple. For many of you guys, this is not news, but it's important that we kick off this year as a part of it. Number one, pillar number one is a smart and appropriate endurance training program. We should be moving our body, we should be getting our ticker to be pumping blood a lot. And so endurance training is pillar number one. Accompanying that pillar number two is an integrated strength and conditioning component. So we are also designed to lift heavy things. And those two components make up the exercise or training part of the program. But it isn't the entire program. For you to ultimately be successful, we have to also adopt and adhere to some critical habits under the umbrella of nutrition. And this includes your daily eating, your fueling, during, and most importantly, following your training, and your daily hydration. And then finally, the magic one, because I'm labeled the recovery coach is the fourth pillar, which is recovery, and that includes your sleep. And when we put these together, these four pillars, as we call them at purple patch, they combine and what they end up creating is your own performance recipe. They are in many ways, your toolkit, your method for you to approach everything around your goals and your performance to Yes, take your performance to the next level, but also to go beyond and think about effective productivity, boosting your health and more.
Matt Dixon 27:18
Now how they are built, how they are represented, can be highly personalized. And it really depends on your goals, your own situation. But the truth is that none of them can be underappreciated, ignored, undervalued. They all demand to be successful, equal philosophical value and focus. And that becomes your performance recipe. It's very, very important. So I want to very briefly just highlight how these might work. And I think the best way to do this through a case study, and we're going to talk about a nice gentleman called bill. Now Bill is 47 years of age, he is a time-starved very busy professional with a family. And he has some travel, he coaches his kid's softball team, he seldom has nothing to do. In other words, he doesn't have that much downtime. So what does this program -- what does Bill's recipe look like? Well, let's go pillar by pillar first endurance training. What does this look like for Bill? Well, it's very simple. Prior to adopting this sensible approach, you might call it, Bill would follow a training program. And that training program had relative to the demands in his life, too many training hours. And what he did, as many people do is take those hours, 16 to 20 hours in Bill's old training program, and trying to stuff them and integrating into his already very busy life. And of course, the simple net result or outcome of that was Bill was consistently compromising on elements such as sleep, rest, and downtime. His ambition would be overrun, always with fatigue, often injury, and it's no surprise with that. And so now what Bill does when it comes to the endurance pillar, is he approaches it through the guidance and the instruction of the Purple Patch team from the other side of the coin. What Bill does every year, and on an ongoing basis, repeating it week to week is actually look at things from the other side of the equation. Let's do a thorough an honest assessment of all of his life commitments, including time for sleep and some proper downtime, maybe even the opportunity to actually have a proper meal or sitting down components like that. And emerging from that assessment of really what his life commitments are. Bill has a really nice outline of the realistic training hours that he have. And then what he has is an optimization challenge. These are the hours it's not how do I cram more hours than I actually have. These are my hours and they tend to be 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 hours depending on week to week. For what Bill actually has going on in the rest of his life. And with those hours, then his conundrum, his puzzle is, how do I actually approach the insurance pillar to get the best return on investment on those hours that I can realistically adhere to and adapt to? And as I like to say, life is not a spreadsheet. And so beyond this 8, 9, 10, 11, hours, we also have to realize that Bill's life is not predictable.
Matt Dixon 30:30
There are always things that occur. So the second element under this pillar is he also adopts a dynamic mindset. And this becomes really important, we're not to ensure that any hours that we think that he has, also has a little bit of flex in there, a little bit of ebb and flow that can synchronize with the demands of life. So what this looks like on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis, is any week of training always has a hierarchy. And we tend to identify two to three sessions a week that we focus as key. And those are the ones that are typically the more demanding, and they're also designed to really move the performance needle. And those are great because those are the ones that Bill has to be focused for, that has to be present, wholly engaged, critically important. But the remaining sessions of the week, are what we label supporting. Now, these are really valuable in themselves and certainly in the bigger picture. But they also have the flex component. And what I mean by that is if life flows, and bill gets really busy, maybe he has demands at work, he has to go on a sudden trip, it is the supporting sessions that he can leverage. And he can either remove intensity, scale down a little bit, or if necessary, remove them from the program completely. But what he's retaining here is he has a total hours in each week that he is actually dancing with the rhythm of his life. And depending on what life gives, he might do all of the sessions, if that's what the appropriate capacity is, or he might obviously lever back and reduce the sessions both in intensity or duration, if it so happens, but over the long haul. As he has a higher perspective on the endurance component, he creates the magic word consistency, he gets to maintain specificity, but he has consistency.
Matt Dixon 32:27
And this, this is the central component to having a layering of effective training that ultimately yield success. And I think that that is one of the central components to ensuring that Bill is going to avoid deep fatigue, injury risk, drop of motivation, et cetera. And that is by having the dynamic mindset with a clear hierarchy and a more realistic lens on training. Great. What about strength, which go to the gym and dump on a couple of strength sessions yes? Of course, not Billy's time-starved. And he doesn't have much time. In fact, commuting to a local gym is just so much logistical load that he probably would never do it in the first place. And so we go about the minimalist approach, in his very small home gym that he has with a few little dumbbells, a couple of kettlebells, a yoga mat, and some bands. He does two to three very short strength sessions each week, tend to be 15 to 20 minutes, sometimes 30 minutes if he has capacity. Now, these sessions for Bill are always partnered with an endurance component often a run coming afterwards. Because that's a great way to ultimately kill two birds. So these sessions, of course, integrate a little bit of mobility, a little bit of core and stability, stability, but for bill, and I think this is important, they are not. And I repeat, they are not supplemental. In the reverse of most endurance athlete, these sessions philosophically become the most important. He puts these as the number one non-negotiable of the week. And this is a shift. And the reason that he does this is because in prior years, he always thought of these as a good thing that he should adhere to, but it's supplemental, and of course, as life flowed, they were the first thing to go. So instead now while the Bullseye is endurance, he's actually getting ready for triathlons. We put strength in first and build the endurance around it, even if that means that he does a little bit less endurance activity over any given week. And what that has delivered is an integrated strength and endurance program that ultimately facilitates tissue health improved posture, the achy back from sitting too much on the desk is reduced and gone down. And of course, a performance recipe that's helping him prepare for the rigors and demands of his events.
Matt Dixon 35:06
So that's super. Program over, Yeah. Spreadsheet closed, of course, not so much, because we still have two more pillars to go through. The first is recovery. Now that he has a more dynamic approach to training, Bill no longer -- we've managed to cure him of this illness, he no longer measures his success of training in total amount of hours or miles, it's less of a pass/fail component to measure his training effectiveness. But what he has built by taking this approach is capacity. You see, he's much less now prone to compromise sleep, just so that he needs to sneak that additional training. And this is a really hard process to go through, it takes a little bit of courage Bill was actually a very good boy on this and did a great job. But it does take some courage to shift away from, I could just get up that extra hour and a half earlier, I would build for that, sir, an extra hour and a half from the bike, that's got to be good for me. But by reversing that mindset, and saying no recovery is a part of the program, he successfully broken away from pass/fail more, and saying hang on, sleep is my performance enhancer. And that's a good way to think about it.
Matt Dixon 36:25
So over the last two years, Bill has wholly first committed to sleep, but also learn and adoptive protocols that can improve his sleep quality, and also set up the body for the best energy throughout the day. The last thing I'd say about sleep is that he does actually track his sleep. Some people find this adding emotional toll for him. But actually what it did for Bill was to actually elicit a little bit of a dose of reality, because after about three to four weeks, he thought goodness me, I don't actually get the amount or quality of sleep that I thought I was getting. And also it was a huge educational tool to realize the impact of some of the habits such as eating too close to bedtime, some of the consumption of alcohol that he would have to unwind emotionally, but wind him up physiologically, and he had the impact and the understanding of what these did. So it actually was a promotion of better habit formation. Rather than overall obsession on the day-to-day, I have to get really good quality sleep. And that's a really healthy relationship with sleep tracking globally. So that's the sleep component of recovery. But recovery also goes well beyond just sleep. And the next place that many people jumped to is all all of the gadgets and tools, compression boots, and Thera guns, and all of those lovely tools and gadgets. And I will say Bill was a bit of success with these. But the most important component of recovery, outside of what we're going to talk about nutrition. And what we just talked about was sleep is actually just some downtime. There's a couple of really important components here for Bill every 10 to 14 days, integrating two or three days of much, much lighter exercise and training. And that's been really fruitful in building consistency. And the second component is a real commitment to going very easy in the sessions designated to be thus very, very easy. And that in itself has facilitated really, really good recovery. He's also committed and this was perhaps the bravest thing he did, I think, the toughest thing to implement, but something that has become a really potent catalyst for his long-term mental health and physical enjoyment of the sport. And that's really committed to downtime and resets particularly aligned with family vacations, where he hasn't gone away on family vacations and thought I have to train my behind off instead of actually going a little bit less structured, and not obsessing around either work or his sporting goals and actually just rejuvenating, taking a breather from it all and coming back mentally refreshed. And that's actually been a really good catalyst for Bill, not for everyone but for Bill.
Matt Dixon 39:14
And the final component in his overall recipe has been nutrition as some of the practices around nutrition now, Bill is in no means a monk. He's not obsessive at all. But I would say that under guidance and education, he has implemented a few really important and I would say potent performance approaches to the way that he's eating. So they show isn't about nutrition specifically. So I'm just going to share a couple of the key components without going into the whys and the have use, et cetera. So the first is having a really simple framework of each time that he actually has a meal and dividing his meals into two types of meal one that is really designed to be build a platform of health globally. And one that wish we which we label a bit more of a performance meal. One thats set the map and that performance performance meal would be specifically to facilitate optimize recovery, stress management, or setting up performance in a race or a training session that was looming and upcoming. And so having that simple approach created a really nice guideline very, very simple of how much each plate of food that he would make up will how that plate of food was compromised when it comes to the macronutrients proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and of course, veggies if we think about carbohydrates or starchy carbohydrates, I realized that veggies are carbohydrates too. But vegetables, proteins, starchy carbohydrates, and fats, those components, how much of a ratio on your plate should each one be made up of.
Matt Dixon 40:53
Now, this simple framework has been a wonderful toolkit for him. And it's very, very easy for him to implement, whether it's eating at home, whether it's stopping a cafe for lunch, whether it's a business dinner somewhere in New Mexico, it doesn't matter. It's easy without having an obsession. Now, I should note here, and I want to call this out, because the way that Bill designed this as under a little bit of recommendation for me, but he actually leveraged the guidance in the approach of our partner Fuel In that's been really successful, highly affordable, he was on an app driven approach. And so he was on the program that they call autopilot, very, very simple, very easy, meshes with his training program because we live that integration as well and it really has helped take the guesswork out for him. It's been wonderfully educational. And without shackling him. Without him having a really strict PDF to adhere to, he can actually go anywhere, and he says, hey, I've got a performance meal. This is how many carbs I need. This is how many proteins I need. And that's been really important from a habit creation. Beyond the daily eating habits, a couple of other components that Bill did integrate, as he adopted this methodology was post-workout fueling something that many of you guys know, that I'm absolutely passionate about. And the reason for consuming calories immediately, or at least as close to immediately as possible for on your workouts on one part was around training, recovery and adaptations. The other part of it was to reduce stress hormones and optimize energy throughout the day. And so that's become a really important habit. And I will say that bill actually hasn't been able to believe how simple and effective this is.
Matt Dixon 42:33
And then finally, the one that's almost the cherry on top of it, that I think is not spoken about enough when it comes to daily energy and the platform of health and that's hydration, a very simple evolution in his practices around daily hydration, where he was sporadic around his hydration to actually tactical. Now Bill adopted on my recommendation, precision hydration, consuming 250-milligram tablet in a water bottle three to four times a day. And his self-report was holy cow, I do that in my best American accent, holy cow. I can't believe I worked so hard on all of this stuff. And I've been leaving out what feels like a free 10% boost in productivity and energy. I actually think that's right, it is that massive. by dialing in your daily hydration, you are going to have a stronger immune system, you're going to have a better platform of health, accelerating your adaptation of some training, but more than anything, it absolutely optimizes your daily energy, there is no doubt at all that that absolutely occurs. And when you put all this together as much as it took me five or 10 minutes just to go through that, that is Bill's program. That's how we go about it. So it's a very, very simple notice that we didn't talk about specific intervals or different exercises that we're going to do in strength. It is literally a SMART program from an endurance component that integrate strength that the athlete in this case Bill can adhere to, and also flex within the chaos of life so that he can we've consistency, and layered and layered and layered and layered. That's what facilitates results as long as he's got the courage to have some downtime. prioritizes sleep takes time to rejuvenate and restore his mental capacity and support all with some really simple habits. How you building up your plate at mealtimes Are you post-workout fueling? Are you hydrated or not in life, but in many ways, this is the program and this is the journey that you need to go on as an athlete to learn each of these components, how they worked together and how they best integrate to help you and your needs.
Matt Dixon 45:01
And so it's not a plan. It's almost a performance recipe. And the game then is to commit to this recipe and manage it. And this in itself, is a journey and a challenge. But when you develop this framework, it absolutely provides a structure for any athlete of any level in any enthusiasts to be successful. And it's proven. It's no surprise that every single purple patch program that we do on our site now, and we ever do, is developed around these pillars. In fact, this center that I'm sitting in right now is designed around these pillars of performance, it becomes important. And the reason for that from the bottom of my heart is because I believe this is the catalyst for our success. And that success has been developing some of the best endurance world-class athletes that have been in the history of the sport, but at the same time, it's our ability to support so many timestamped athletes like you, not just achieve, as we talked about at the top your sporting goals, but also improve your stock in life. It's just a perspective. I hope it helps. That's the grounding. Get used to it, the purple patch pillars of performance, I hope that you can apply and adopt in your own performance journey. We'll see you next time. Take care.
Matt Dixon 46:29
Guys, thanks so much for joining. And thank you for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing, head to the Purple Patch channel of YouTube, and you will find it there. And you could subscribe. Of course, I'd like to ask you, if you will subscribe. Also, share it with your friends. And it's really helpful if you leave a nice positive review in the comments. Now any questions that you have, let me know feel free to add a comment and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. And in fact, as we commence this video podcast experience, if you have any feedback at all, as mentioned earlier in the show, we would love your help in helping us to improve, simply email us at info at 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
life, athlete, bill, components, stresses, ultimately, starved, performance, training, patch, journey, important, approach, purple, sessions, program, recovery, sport, integrate, demands