Episode 256: There Is No Easy Way, But You Can Do It: Building the Mindset To Thrive in Sport (and Life)
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In today’s episode of the Purple Patch Podcast, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon takes us back to the core values of Purple Patch Fitness to help provide perspective on framing your performance mindset.
The simple fact is, anything worthwhile is inherently difficult. The road to Kona is riddled with adversity. As is spearheading the drive for your team or company’s success. Most of the time, that’s part of the fun. The challenge is the game.
The goal always requires commitment, consistency, and hard work, but as time-starved athletes, you are faced with an optimization challenge. Where do you make the time for family, work, and training? How do you fit the performance journey into your already crowded schedule?
There are many approaches that pitch the “less is more” mindset or “the easy way to (insert goal here).” But there is no shortcut, quick fix, or expert trick. Some approaches promise to help you find harmony and balance, but they miss the mark of your specific challenges and what you are trying to achieve.
“Trying to hide from friction or challenge, and seeking some utopian magic pathway that's bathed in balance, it's nonsense.” (20:25)
Whether you are a time-starved athlete or a busy executive, the foundation Matt lays out will help you apply focus around the strategies and practices that can help you improve performance and develop the capacity to achieve long-term success.
“I'm not trying to diminish the challenge. Instead, what I'm doing is developing you and equipping you with tools to be able to respond to any challenge.” (28:06)
Using the lens of the athlete and the executive, Matt explains how to leverage proven tactics and approaches to maximize the return on your hard work to deliver long-term sustainable performance in sport and life.
Additional Education From Today's Episode
High-Intensity Training Linked to Reduced Risk of Cancer and Recurrence
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 3:10 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
03:19 - 5:21 - Matt's News-ings
05:36 - 10:20 - Word of the Week
10:27 - 30:11 - The Meat and Potatoes - Episode 256: There Is No Easy Way, But You Can Do It: Building the Mindset To Thrive in Sport (and Life)
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Full Transcript
Matt Dixon 00:03
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 00:25
Just before we get going with the show, I'm gonna explain -- at Purple Patch, we leverage the insights and recommendations from the team at InsideTracker. By assessing biometrics and allowing focus on the aspects that directly lead to improved health, energy, focus, and performance in sport. This is not a shortcut, and that's important. And that's why? because there is no shortcut. Your success in health and sports rely on developing great performance strategies and practices. But the insights recommendations that we get from InsideTracker allow a little bit of clarity, allow us to actually focus on the things that are going to yield change and improvements. It is an opportunity in addition to all of that, to create a platform of measurable results for your efforts. And this is powerful. And so when you combine InsideTracker with your own approach and program, all on the journey to performance, that is when you can amplify results. And I recommend you embrace it too, we have, it's very easy. All you have to do is head to insidetracker.com/purplepatch, and you can enter the code PurplePatchPro 20. And very generously, you get 20% off everything at the store. Now, this is a good one today. So I hope you enjoy the show.
Matt Dixon 01:41
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast as ever, your host, Matt Dixon. And today, I hope is a show that you will remember, if you're motivated, and you're driven, and you are a time-starved athlete who is seeking performance gains, then I believe that the message today provides the framework for you to view and approach every part of your performance puzzle. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the message, let it come out of today's show is central to how you should listen to all of the other education that we put out at Purple Patch. Sounds pretty important aye? Even compelling. And it is. And the truth is, it doesn't matter whether you're a podium-chasing athlete, you're a very busy executive trying to integrate sport into life just so that you can thrive in a high demanding and high-pressure work environment. Or perhaps you're a newbie, transitioning from sedentary towards the athletic journey. It doesn't matter how you approach this performance journey. The key today is grounding. It's important. I promise you that today's message is for you. But before we get into it, let's do a little bit of fun. We're going to talk about some research let's do Matt's News-ing.
Matt Dixon 03:19
Yes, Matt's News-ings, and not always is it just heavy promotion of Purple Patch programs. Of course, I want to highlight a couple of bits of research that I found interesting. And so I thought I would share with you. It actually all orbs around high-intensity training. The first was a piece of research that was anchored around high-intensity training related to cancer risk. This is very interesting, a research team out of Tel Aviv performed a longitudinal study 20 years over the course of 3,000 participants. And the most interesting finding out of it, that there was a 72% reduction in cancer risk for those who consistently adhere to higher-intensity training. And quite randomly in the same week, I also saw another piece of research that came out from a team of researchers in China. And they observed an interesting anti-aging effect on the cells of our skin when participants in their research study adhere to high-intensity exercise. That's pretty interesting, isn't it? I'm going to leave the notes and the links to the research pieces in the show notes if you're interested to go and find out more. Now, that'll do for our news today. I thought that was quite interesting, although I do want to say that the invitation is always open. If you enjoy today's show, and you want to apply some of the lessons that we talk about, feel free to reach out to us directly for a complimentary call. We help time-starved athletes thrive by applying the Purple Patch method that we outline today. And so quite simply, we get results. We do a good job with it. We're very proud of it and we want to see you shine. And so if you want to have a conversation with us -- complimentary -- just email us at info@PurplePatch fitness.com and we will set up a call. No pressure, just find out whether we're good fit for you. And we can help you on your performance journey. All right now with that, let's let Barry out of his creative cage. It's been a couple of weeks, but we are going to do Word of the Week.
Matt Dixon 05:36
And Word of the Week this week is High Intensity, I sort of led you there with the research, didn't you? We're going to come back to high-intensity training. Now we're going to define high-intensity training for the pursuit of this Word of the Week as shorter intervals, probably no more than a couple of minutes at length and above your maximal steady state output in whatever endeavor that you're doing. And so your maximal steady state is often referred to as threshold. It gets to that place that it is very, very hard to hold conversation. It is breathless. That's what we're talking about with high intensity, very strong effort. And there's a lot of conversation or discussion or even a little bit of promotion out there right now about the value of low intensity. So very, very easy and conversational work for endurance athletes. And it's true. In fact, we get inundated right now with the power of this brand new zone one and zone two training. Guess what, it's not very new. And the truth is that that type of training is beneficial, it absolutely has a role. And any athlete no matter how time-starved or time-rich needs to have a certain ratio of their weekly training hours contributed to performing at a low low-intensity effort. That's all very true. And in fact, if we add to that, it's also -- you'll probably remember me sign this on many occasions -- a massive mistake for athletes of all levels to make their easy, prescribe low-stress training, too difficult. In fact, that is one of the most common mistakes that we see. But let's pause a moment and let's focus on you. You the time-starved athlete, this is a real theme of today time-starved athlete as it is always across the show. You are, reality check here, you are playing a different game than many athletes, especially the more professional and elite athletes in the game. If a professional triathlete, so let's just use this for an example, was training 20, 25, 30, 35 hours a week at some times the hours that they're putting in, by definition, a very high percentage of their training should be at suitably low low intensity effect, you're probably only going to, quote hit an athlete, we do really hard work a couple of times a week. That's how it builds. So a high ratio of their total hours are low intensity, by definition, because they're doing a lot of hours. But if we just simply shrink that model, and apply the same ratio to you, the time-starved athlete, but by definition just doesn't have as many hours in the week to train, then the outcome of that is just going to be a much lower physiological stimulus, and ultimately going to hit less of return on investment of the hours done. And so the way that we see it, and have shown over a lot of time is that by reducing your training hours, there needs to be an optimization mindset. In order for you the Time-starved athlete to excel, we need to actually apply a greater ratio of high-intensity work. If you're training 6 hours, 8 hours, 10, maybe even 12 hours, by definition, you need a higher percentage of those hours to be high intensity. And so that is the thing that creates the greatest return on investment. It is the biggest stimulus you can gain for your limited available time. And ultimately, we have shown that the net gains by taking this approach are greater. And so if volume shrinks, in order to get to training load, we have to lean into higher intensity more. And this has been the very backbone of the Purple Patch results that we've achieved over the last 15 years. We've got more than 1,000 time-starved athletes to represent Purple Patch at World championship events. And they didn't do it by rigidly sticking just to zone one and zone two all day. Embrace the optimization approach. Don't be afraid of a little bit of intensity in your training. It's only going to help you go faster. And now, as we learned earlier, the research also says that it's going to keep your younger, you're going to have a protective effect against cancer. Good times all around. All right, Barry laid us out, this is a good day-to-day. It's short, it's sweet, but it's powerful. Let's do The Meat and Potatoes.
Matt Dixon 10:27
All right, guys, The Meat and Potatoes. This is pretty short, pretty direct today. What's the title, maybe it should be -- There is No Easy Way or something along those lines. But I think what comes out today is something that's very important. And to set the stage for our key message as we come out of today, I want to begin with a little bit of a reflective story. Now, you might have heard this before, but I think it's going to be helpful in the context of today's show. After the absolute self-induced destruction of my promising professional triathlon career, many moons ago now, all set up by chronic overtraining, under-eating, ignoring recovery and sleep, and being very, very poor at self-managing myself, I decided to start coaching athletes. Hey, those that can't do end up teaching don't they? And I was determined to go about my coaching in what was really labeled an evolved approach, relative to the common practices at the time. In fact, so was born, the Purple Patch methodology, those four pillars that we talk about so much on the show. And the big approach or the overall global approach was to really go on a mission to yield long-term performance gains. And it was all about providing absolute equal focus and value to the four main pillars: endurance, strength, nutrition, and recovery. They combine to collectively make up the program, as we call it. Now, this was surprisingly really different than the norms of the time in which the obsession was really about more, more, more. How many hours could you chase, and elements such as strength training, nutrition, recovery, they tended to be ignored or relegated to afterthoughts or even actually viewed as signs of weakness. And so we were going against the grain a little bit, but little me with my own personal experiences a background of clinical physiology, and already a pretty extensive coaching experience in swimming, I thought, "You know what, it's time for me to back up and go about things in the way that I believe things that should be done. I wish I had of done it as an athlete." But the good news is, as a coach I ended up being a little bit better than I was as an athlete. And our results were really, really good. Interestingly, the results are really good across level of athlete and gender of athlete. And we began to see some really positive long-term development and progression, we started to see high consistency for athletes, a better-reported enjoyment, improved health, lower injury rates, therefore, it created great consistency. And when I reflect now, I was really proud of some of the great coaching relationships that were built and emerge from those years. And it was all anchored, I think, out of the culture of let's get a platform of health, let's try and dial in low injury and vibrancy. And it became really, really fun. And the results emerged from it. In fact, most of the results from the Purple Patch Pro Squad were directly derived from that performance culture that we built. So at this time, I decided, You know what, I want to share this, it feels like we're onto something and I began writing about our methods. And the focus of a lot of the writings was really anchored around that word stress. And I talked a lot about stress, both in training, but also stresses in the rest of our life. And I really wanted to do this as an encouragement for athletes and coaches to ultimately embrace recovery in their program. That was the big thing. Now, it might seem strange now 15 years later, but this was really controversial at the time. In fact, very quickly after just a few articles, I was labeled the recovery coach, and the claim by those that gave me that label was that I was just a quack. I was selling quick fixes, shortcuts, fake promises, and trying to sell myself as some kind of performance shaman who could sprinkle pixie dust on your efforts and create performance magic. I was younger at the time and this label really frustrated me. These folks are not reading what I'm writing. They're not listening. This isn't the message, it isn't a quick fix, they've got it all wrong. Of course, over time I kind of lent into that title, I really enjoy it and like it now. I embrace the label and ultimately, I let the results of what we were doing, just do our talking for us. But so often, I come back to those early years. And today, I thought, I want to try again, I want to set our performance mindset. Because when we talk about today, it applies to athletes 100%. But it also applies to executives and leadership teams. And we're gonna get to that a little later. In fact, it applies to anyone who cares about improving their performance.
Matt Dixon 15:51
And so what I want to do is start with a simple truth. Whatever you're chasing, there is no easy way. There is no easy way. All of us have got our own buckets of stresses, logistics, and demands, it can feel different and be different for each one of us. Our recipe of total accumulation of stresses is really different. And even what stresses Jill might be really different than what stresses Robert. But ultimately, we all face challenge and stress, we've got a lot of logistics, a lot of commitments, and a lot of challenges that we must all navigate. And each of us are going to have to face and handle a lot of adversity along our life and our performance journey. It's just going to happen, we are going to experience failures and setbacks. And in fact, any worthwhile goal that you take on is going to require a lot of commitment, a lot of consistent hard work. And so that's why I tell you, whatever you're chasing, there is no -- easy way. If you're a first-time athlete, and you decide to sign up and go and try to complete an IRONMAN, it ain't gonna be easy. And if you're young and entrepreneurial, and you decide to start a business, it's really really difficult to develop that business and build it into a successful organization. And if you're a runner that decides, you know what, I'm going to turn it up, I want to try and get a qualification to the Boston Marathon, it ain't gonna be easy. Crikey, if you're a parent, it's a big responsibility. And it ain't easy. And so anything of worth is a challenge. It's not going to be easy. And all of these examples are aligned in the absolute requirement for commitment and hard work. There's no getting around that. Success will not come easy, and that is okay. Because that's what makes things worthwhile. And so it is from this truth, where we talk about there being no easy way that I see some things that frankly, just rubbed me the wrong way. If the focus is around life performance, or company culture and performance, and then the likelihood is when you seek education, counseling guidance, or you're trying to improve in there, you're going to be bombarded with, "work on your wellness." "Let's find balance." "There is a way to create utopian harmony where everything just gets easier." Or if you're an athlete, you're just driven and hit with approaches and tools and gadgets that are promising shortcuts to success, or encouraging you to take a less is more mindset. And I think that these approaches, these promises, while they're typically delivered with absolute best intentions, I think they actually missed the mark a little bit of what the game is here. If you're performance driven.
Matt Dixon 19:11
In fact, it reminds me of how people receive my message many years ago about recovery. I wasn't highlighting a less is more mindset when I talked about recovery. I wasn't promising an easier path to get to success. I wasn't trying to pave the jungle for you. There is no way of me making things easier. There is no easy way. The truth is that your best tactics to set up long-term sustainable performance is by adopting a set of strategies and practices that result in you improving your strength, becoming more moldable and highly adaptable. If you're gonna go into a gym, there's no long-term benefit of me saying, "Hey, Robbie, that's okay, let's not make this difficult, I'm going to remove all of the heavyweights that you're trying to lift." Well, removing the struggle reduces the opportunity for your muscles to adapt. And that is how I view when I listen to people call for balance, and better wellness, and shortcuts to success in endurance performance. Trying to hide from friction or challenge, and seeking some utopian magic pathway that's bathed in balance, it's nonsense. There is no easy way, and therefore, at Purple Patch, we don't try to pave the jungle. This is why we talk to our athletes about a comprehensive performance program, or sometimes finding your recipe. What we don't talk about is just the training plan. In other words, a plan that's written on a spreadsheet or some calendar that is basically comprised of a bunch of prescribed training sessions, because that's not where the solutions lie. If you want to be successful, we need to think about things more holistically. And it's equally why when we're working with busy executives on leadership teams, we really encourage them to develop strategies and habits that can improve performance and function on the elements of their role, or in their business that are actually under their control. Because the whole program, the whole approach is about developing your capacity. It's about achieving high performance over the long term. And the only way that you can achieve that is by finding a recipe that improves your capacity, that allows you to reduce your fragility, become stronger, and ultimately more adaptable. And I think that's pretty cool. Let me just finish by putting these things into the applied lens in the most basic terms, I'm going to give you two examples.
Matt Dixon 22:06
Let's talk about the athlete first. The magic is never in the training plan. It's not found in the workouts, despite the fact that that's where our eyeballs go. That's where all of the focus and intention is. That's not where the magic is. It's important, but it ain't the magic. That's why we often say (expletive) the plan. Come on, give me a beep Barry, come on. (expletive) the plan. Thank you very much. Not to be dismissive about the workouts, but to try and enable you to develop a focus on building an approach that actually helps you athletically. So in other words, we want an athlete to train in a structured and progressive manner that enables them to create the magic word of performance: consistency. And then they can allow adaptations to occur through that training because it's effective training. And as a driver of capacity, then improve their health and energy on a daily basis by adopting some really simple habits around how they eat, how they hydrate, how they rest and recover, how they sleep. And that becomes really important. And beyond it all, a mindset and set of practices that will help foster greater self-management skills, so that the athlete is able to navigate challenges, adversity, and setbacks. And if we get this, right, it's educational, it's practical in habit creation, and the plan and the workouts well, they're important, but they're not the answer. And when we get the recipe, right, the results flow from it. And that becomes really a mindset. And so everything we're doing with helping an athlete isn't about trying to check a box on a training plan, but it's trying to up-skill and develop capacity so that you can become greater in your mold-ability and your adaptability. And that's how sports performance flows.
Matt Dixon 24:20
And what about an executive, someone who's concerned with improving how they perform in the workplace? Well, the challenge is really similar. It's the same model. And the same method it's just adapted and applied to executive needs. As an executive, you need to show up and lead. You need to have high focus, great clarity, a great ability to have smart decision making. You need to consistently be energetic, you need to show up and show up. And then ultimately on top of this, you need to be equipped to face and overcome challenges, many of which are going to be out of your control. So what can you do? Well, it turns out, you can do a whole heck of a lot. And when you think about your role and company performance, you can break it down and consider many elements that you can control. You can control your effort, where you place your focus, what decisions you're making, how you get to approach setbacks and challenge. But in addition to that, we need to acknowledge that there are some elements that are out of your control, you don't really have great sway over the economy, a looming pandemic, gas prices, what your competition does. And so as a leader, it can be really demanding and stressful to maintain high performance, to keep showing up. But it turns out, you do have some control. And you should focus on the elements that you can control. And to bolster your energy, your decision making your clarity. You can integrate the performance model. You can build performance habits, and deploy strategies and practices that are going to lead to a greater platform of health and energy and vibrancy and ultimately capacity, you can actually leverage and improve your mental and physical capacity to process information, and to stay making good decisions when the going gets tough. And ultimately, you start to build control over all of those elements that are in your control. And that becomes great, you get to bring better energy have better clarity. And in fact, this greater capacity can enable you to not just sustain the bad day-to-day components of your role, but respond to the elements that are out of control, even sometimes see them coming, and be able to have a greater capability to steer your team and your organization around those obstacles.
Matt Dixon 26:55
And these two examples strike at the heart of the Purple Patch approach. It isn't about less is more in your training program. When we think about working with time-starved athletes, or very busy executives, it isn't about less is more. It's not about finding great wellness or balance in your role as a leader. This is about unmistakable, high performance. Leveraging proven tactics and approaches that will absolutely maximize a positive return on your required hard work, so that you can deliver long-term sustainable performance. And so when you listen to this show, and I encourage you to focus on sleep, or I yell that "it takes courage to recover," or I asked you to integrate good habits around daily hydration or post-workout fueling, this isn't so that I can deliver some life hack to you. It's not so I hope that I make things easier. In fact, it doesn't remove the challenge, the performance challenge, because I'm not trying to reduce the struggle. I'm not trying to diminish the challenge. Instead, what I'm doing is developing you and equipping you with tools to be able to respond to any challenge. To thrive, no matter what the adversity is, and that is sustainable long-term performance. And that is why I say I ain't trying to pave the jungle. That's the spirit and the mindset of Purple Patch. Look, set your lens on that, and build your approach under this umbrella. I hope it helps, see you next time.
Matt Dixon 28:39
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, performance, patch, easy, approach, purple, training, fact, ultimately, starved, recovery, challenge, improve, focus, coaching, results, stresses, mindset, ai, capacity