Episode 258: Developing the Youth Athlete - A Perspective from Matt Dixon
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Bear National Team’s Junior Camp, 2023. Photo by Alec Levy-O'Brien.
Who is the greatest athlete of all time? Take your pick. Once you have a name, ask yourself why? Beyond their physical abilities and talent, what sets them apart from the pack? What makes a great athlete?
It’s a question that IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon had the privilege of asking the committed group of young athletes with the BEAR DEVELOPMENT TEAM.
The team is made up of student-athletes, with lofty aspirations of their own, and includes some of the top talent in American Mountain Biking.
With answers like Lebron James, Serena Williams, Michael Phelps, and Lionel Messi, it was clear that each athlete shared a specific set of characteristics and traits that are at the heart of elite sports performance.
Matt believes any athlete can use these trainable traits to achieve their highest level of performance possible.
With many of the young athletes looking to develop into professional riders and find their own success in sport, Matt had the opportunity to speak to the group and share his perspective on what it takes to build a pro career as an endurance athlete.
What emerged from their discussion was a framework that is applicable across many sports and is accessible to everyone, from young and aspiring athletes to parents, coaches, and even seasoned athletes.
In today’s episode of the Purple Patch Podcast, Matt breaks down his presentation to BEAR DEVELOPMENT TEAM and lays out five principles that you as an athlete can deploy and apply today in order to elevate your performance.
"There are very few guarantees in life, but I do guarantee you this -- if you take these principles that we talk through today, and you apply them, I guarantee you that you will progress in your ability to meet your trained potential with your race day performance on an endurance fashion. Because we are after long-term sustained high performance, that's what it means to become a great no matter what, or at least your version of great." - 15:53
We hope the insights gleaned from today's show will help you guide your young athletes or assist you in your own performance journey.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 5:41 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
05:48 - 9:43 - Matt's News-ings
9:51 - 43:40 - The Meat and Potatoes - Episode 258: Developing the Youth Athlete - A Perspective from Matt Dixon
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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 00:24
All right guys, today's show is one that I've got a lot of passion for because it's all about kids and youths developing in sport, and the journey to great performance. And we're going to talk about today's elite and world-class performance. But in any pursuit of performance, it takes having the right focus at the right time on the things that are going to move the performance needle. And one of the tools that we use at Purple Patch to help with that process is InsideTracker. Because by analyzing your biometrics, and drawing from the advice and insights from the team at InsideTracker, you can get precise in your focus, where should you filter out the stuff that are going to become distractions and actually apply focus around your nutrition, maybe any supplements that you might want, so that you can build a platform of health. And the good news is that we leverage it a Purple Patch, but you can too, you don't even need to be a Purple Patch athlete, all you need to do is head to insidetracker.com/purplepatch. And right there we've got a nice sneaky code Purple Patch Pro two zero, that's Purple Patch pro 20. And you get 20%, off everything at the store. All right, it is a cracker. Today, it's one that I'm passionate about. Let's do it. Enjoy the show.
Matt Dixon 01:48
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast as ever, your host Matt Dixon, and I'll tell you about something that happened to me a couple of weeks ago. I was asked to present to the BEAR DEVELOPMENT TEAM. And that team includes many of the top talent in American mountain biking, many of whom have aspirations to develop into becoming professional riders. Now the team itself is founded -- was founded in 2011 in Santa Cruz by a man called Stu Bone, and it had a committed group of 10 riders at the time. And in 2013, Stu was joined by Julia Violich, and Chris Burnham and they joined him -- uh Stu -- at the helm of the team, and together they have built the program into what it is today, and it is certainly an elite development platform. BEAR riders have won multiple national titles and state championships in both mountain road disciplines. And today, it's more than 39 Bear team riders have been invited to race at World Cup and World Championship events with Team USA Cycling in North America and Europe. The current BEAR team, well it has 22 U23, or under 23, riders and 34 Junior riders ranging from ages 14 to 18. And the team has supported student-athletes from 15 different states. It's fantastic. The focus of my talk, why I was asked to present in the team as they had their year kickoff was the fundamentals of what I believe as endurance coach it takes to build a professional career as an endurance athlete. So I wondered when I went into this rather nice house, can I really hold the attention of these teens for 30 to 40 minutes? But what emerged out of that session was a highly engaged and clearly committed group of cyclists. And I've got to say it was a delightful evening. And I found myself as a coach being inspired by the commitment, the hope, the engagement from these great young men and women. And when I finished the evening, and I got back into my car, and drove home, I realized that I wish as a young athlete, that I had received a similar talk. When I was their age, I was a swimmer, I wasn't a mountain biker. But I thought God that would have done me a power of good. And I also realized there's a whole bunch of young swimmers out there, runners, cyclists, triathletes, athletes of many other sports, who might also just benefit right now. And so I thought today, you know what, why don't I take a detour from some of the regular sessions that we do on the show? And why don't I just recast my presentation that I did to the BEAR team and share it with you? And if you're young and aspiring in your sport, I really hope that it's helpful. If you're a parent or a coach, I really encourage you to share today's podcast with those that might benefit. Because I believe that ultimately, the lessons that I go through today are pretty applicable across all sports. And finally, I want to just put a spotlight on my final message that I'm gonna go to today, because well, I think that the five principles that I go through to help build a career are valuable, but that final message that you're gonna hear at the end of today's show, so you've got to listen all the way through. I think that is the critical message for all aspiring athletes to hear, but ultimately, all athletes of all levels and ages. And so I encourage you today, don't tune out halfway through this one. Stay engaged and stay tuned in for that final message. I think it's an important one. So I really hope that you enjoy today and you find it useful. Before we get cracking, we have got a couple of small little nuggets that we want to go through. It's Matt's News-ings.
Matt Dixon 05:48
All right, three things to go through very briefly in today's Matt's News-ings. The first this whole episode -- Kyle is dedicated to you, Kyle Swenson. This is the show that I promised you. And I've got to say it was super to meet with you and share the pool at The Wave in Whitefish, Montana. I hope that you find today's show useful. And I wish you all the best on your journey and encourage you to listen to the day's final message as I said to the other folks and stamp it in your heart. Go Hurricanes. Number two, strength. I want to talk about this and we're going to touch on strength training today. I've been rattling on about our strength program. And we brace -- as we brace for the weather to improve Spring is coming, folks, I foresee so many athletes priming themselves right now to miss out on performance enhancement. Look, you don't need to be a Purple Patch athlete, you certainly don't need to be a triathlete to benefit from our Purple Patch coach strength program. It is video-based and it is designed specifically for the endurance athlete. And I think that it is probably the only program that is both year round, so it integrates into the arc of a sporting journey, but also includes a tailor-made race build, so that it can bring you day by day, week by week into your key events so that you can be successful, and aligning the right strength to do at the right time is critical for any athlete. Whether you're getting ready for an IRONMAN you're trying to qualify to the Boston Marathon, you're priming for a 10k You're getting ready for a big ride across Europe, whatever it might be. And so having the year-round fabric, but also the race build is a big differentiator in this program. If you're interested, you can use this program à la carte, and you can plug it onto your own insurance program. Or of course, it comes embedded into all Purple Patch programming. All you need to do is head to PurplePatchFitness.com, go to the website. And of course, we're happy to chat if needed, you can just reach out for a complimentary conversation info@PurplePatchFitness.com. Of course, if you want more than strength, remember that we have both a super one-to-one program, but I must say that most Purple Patch athletes in terms of total numbers are on one of our squad programs. And last week, I got to meet three brand-new squad athletes. In fact, they're about four to six weeks in so maybe it's not fair to call them brand new. But each of these athletes, when I said how's the program going, their stories were unique. Their levels were different. They were two men, one female athlete, they were very different ages, they had different aspirations and goals. But being four or five weeks in their message to me was the same. And this is the one that made my heart explode. Because in context, their message was effectively this. All three of them came out of one-to-one coach relationships. And what they said to me, all three of them independently, was I've had one-to-one coach relationships and what I'm getting from squad in terms of attention, support, community, and education -- it just explored so much more than any prior program that I've been on. And I think that says it all. And so if you want to join our triathlon, running or riding squad program, check out the website, you know it, PurplePatchFitness.com Or of course reach out for a complimentary call. I've already said that email address info@purplepatchfitness.com and we would be delighted to help you. All right, Barry, you get to bypass word of the week this week because this is a goodie and I want to get into it. I want to smash it. Trying to be all youthful as we're talking to the kids today. It is the meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 09:44
Yes, folks, the meat and potatoes, and all I can say is I am going to do my best. I'm going to try and replicate my talk that I did to the junior development team, the BEAR DEVELOPMENT TEAM. Fantastic group of athletes. And I'm gonna do my best. And the reason I say I'm gonna do my best is because I'm lacking the audience. This was a live audience. I had the engagement. I had the electricity in the room, it was fantastic and empowering. But luckily, I have you. So I'm going to do my best. And I'm going to put myself back in that room. In fact, no, I'm going to put myself in Wembley Arena. And I'm going to stand there and hold the attention of -- okay, I should just stop. Let's get on with this. This is me replicating and recasting this conversation. And the way we kicked it off was like this, a simple question. Who is the greatest athlete across all sports ever? That was the question that I asked. And, of course, very quickly, not lots of names came up, there was Leonel Messi, there was Michael Phelps, Serena Williams, Katie Ledecky, there were lots of athletes that were scoped out. And all of them were great. They have produced high-class world-level performance over multiple years. And all those names, I asked a follow-up question, which is what made them a champion? What were the components that went into them becoming a great champion? And you can imagine that the answers were, well, look at LeBron James, what a physiological beast or Michael Phelps, he looked like he was designed to be aquatic. And that's true physical gifts are a big component of it. But I then went on to tell a story. Because is pure talent, physical gifts, the way we think about it, is that the catalyst, the differentiator, of those athletes, that we labeled as the greats, is that the reason that they became great? So I told a story about a Purple Patch, pro Sarah Piampiano, many of you guys know Sarah Piampiano, and I talked about talent as being the entry point into the arena. Almost.
Matt Dixon 11:14
When Sara reached out to me, she was an aspiring Pro, she had just finished working at Wall Street. She had a collection of mediocre results at the age group level, not too bad. But she really, really wants to be pro. And she came on board, there's a whole story about how we engaged. A fantastic athlete. I actually turned down Sarah to begin and decided that I was too busy to coach her, but she flew to San Francisco, we sat down for a coffee and there was something about her that made me want to take on the project. And I said, Look, I'll coach you, Sarah. But I want you to stay amateur, you might have qualified to be a pro, but I want you to stay amateur for right now. Let's try and win everything in parentheses in the amateur arena. And then as you emerge and I feel like you're ready then you can go to the pro level. And she agreed. And she did very, very well. She had a couple of years of progressively improving performance, and then had the opportunity to go down to Santa Monica to go through a series of assessments at the Red Bull Performance Center. And the guy that was running it there, the lead physiologist Per Lundstam, a fantastic guy and X elite skier, sent her through every type of assessment that you might imagine an elite performer might go through -- strength and mobility, VO2 Max, ramped protocols. And it had created a collective profile in the thin air of world performance where Sarah stacked -- ranked. And I'll never forget the call that Per and I had where he said, "Well, Matt, her engine is not the biggest size. It's -- relative to world-class performance -- regular people yes, big engine, but relative to world class, not so big. Mobility is an issue. She's not really as strong as I would like. Explosiveness isn't quite as good. Her fitness profile is really good because she is an endurance athlete, but it isn't world-class". In fact, on almost every element in the very thin air of world-class performance, Sarah didn't rank that high relative to her peers. And yet, she went on to become one of the most successful IRONMAN professional athletes ever. She was top 10 in the world championships twice, she won multiple IRONMAN events. She was the second fastest American female IRONMAN athlete ever. And so what gives then? Well, beyond the physical gifts, she had just a ticket to get in there, but Sarah had the traits, the set of characteristics and traits that drove her to eke out her highest level of performance possible. From her potential of her physical gifts, she squeezed the proverbial sponge to get everything out of herself.
Matt Dixon 14:57
And those traits, the good news of them is that they are trainable. You can improve all of these traits. And so my goal, as we talk about development, is to provide a framework today and build it around five principles of which you as an athlete can deploy and apply today and in order for that you -- to lead into becoming a better athlete. Five key principles. Because those traits that Sarah showed, better than almost any other athlete I've coached, those traits always express across all of those athletes that we talked about, they all have the same traits. So yes, they're talented, but it is the traits that are the drivers and the greatest predictor of success. In fact, and you're going to hear me say this twice today. There are very few guarantees in life, but I do guarantee you this, if you take these principles that we talk through today, and you apply them, I guarantee you that you will progress in your ability to meet your trained potential with your race day performance on an enduring fashion. Because we are after long-term sustained high performance, that's what it means to become a great no matter what, or at least your version of great.
Matt Dixon 16:22
So principle number one, fasten your seat belt, we've got to go through five of these. Principle number one, I encourage you to establish a performance mindset. What does that mean? Well, there is an old saying that says every overnight success is 10 years in the making. And guess what? It's right. In fact, in triathlon, we are experiencing it right now where there is a paradigm shift of performance, led by two Norwegians on the male side, and they are 10 years in the making. In other words, this is a journey. And you need a performance mindset. And so if you're going to be the best version of yourself that you can, you better start falling in love with the process or let me be American, the process. In other words, outcome goals, like races are super. They're absolutely important. They create an anchor point of the program. They provide a great source of pride and satisfaction when you do well at races. But it's what you do on the daily basis that matters. And the best that I've ever coach absolutely love competing. But their purpose is always built around themselves becoming the best version of the athlete that they possibly can be. And that is what a performance mindset means. So what does this look like in action? Well, at Purple Patch, we love the saying embrace the journey. And the reason that we like that is because we understand that development takes years, not months. But let's pause a moment. What does development actually mean? Because as a young and aspiring athlete, development isn't just about race results, race results are important, but there's a whole scope of areas where you can develop despite race results, or inclusive with those results. Your skills, your technique, your tactic, your performance habits, your teammates, and of course, racing. And so development is a broad concept that can take many, many years. And in fact, as it becomes a journey to become greater anything, a big part of that is built upon the experiences and the wisdom that you develop. As you go through your journey, a champion's journey is going to include failure. You're going to face obstacles, setbacks, adversity. And so I would much rather you, as we think about a performance mindset, think about an internal locus of control. If you as an athlete, can think about yourself and controlling your actions and develop you -- the things that you can control. That's going to develop greater resilience, adaptability, moldability and you are going to get stronger and out of that the race results will flow. And so performance mindset remind you again, it is an internal locus of control, that is how you develop and become the athlete possible. That is principle number one.
Matt Dixon 19:37
Principle number two was -- be savagely smart in training. I want you to be savagely smart in training. What do I mean by that? Well when I was talking to these kids, I asked them, "How fast, if I took you outside right now, how fast could you run a mile". And a couple of cocky young lads stepped up and was like five-minute mile pace. I've already done it, someone else said 5:30. I asked one of the parents and they said 6:30. And I thought that's quite impressive. That's pretty fast running, five-minute mile pace, 5:30 pace. And then I talked to them about a young lad that I got to coach one of the best American runners ever. In fact, one of the best marathon runners in the U.S. ever, Ryan Hall, you might know the name. For a relatively short period, I got to help Ryan emerge out of a state of really chronic overtraining, a little bit of real fatigue, deep fatigue. As we came out of that, I got to write Ryan's program as he went in towards the Boston Marathon.And that was the race if you know anything about running, where Ryan managed to run a two-hour and four-minute marathon. That is pretty fast. In fact, it is the fastest American Marathon running ever. But as we were had a really fruitful and enjoyable coaching relationship, I don't identify as being an elite running coach. But we came together for about for that year. And it really worked for a short period of time. And Ryan said, Hey, what do you come down and why don't we go for a run. And I thought to myself, goodness, me, I run like a donkey dipped in cement. And so I've got to go and run with this guy that's not going five-minute mile pace, and his races is running 4:45 pace for 26.2 marathons. I probably can't do that. So I went along, and Ryan, trotted along next to me, and I went in my lightest running shoes, and I ran next to him. And suddenly Ryan was behind me. And I slowed down. And then I've triggered, what was Ryan doing? He was being savagely smart, in training. What Ryan was doing was sticking to his zone. He was running at the appropriate intensity for the prescription of that day. And that's really important as an athlete to understand, because as you go through the different physiological stages, and they're not black and white, but typically a coach might design five zones. At Purple Patch we have that, starting in Zone One which is very, very easy, all the way up to zone five, which is very high-intensity and demanding. And as you go through each one of the training zones, the reason that we have zones is because each one of the physiological stimuluses that are occurring at each one of those areas play a different role in the fabric of your training. At zone one, it's very, very easy, very conversational two or three out of 10 effort. And the focus or the goal of that training is to improve your recovery, to improve your tissue resilience, if you're running very, very easy, and to improve your economy, your miles per gallon if you're a car. At zone two, which is conversational, maybe a four or five out of 10 that starts to have a greater stimulus on your cardiovascular endurance, as well as your economy. And the nice thing about those lower intensities is you can do a lot of training without accumulation of muscular or physiological fatigue. So in other words, you can sit at those intensities and not negatively impact your next day of training. So that becomes important. Zone three, that's an effort that tends to be strong, but not breathless. It's the first place that you're actually really demanding focus of the athlete. And it's a big stimulus for cardiovascular conditioning. Some racing occurs, depending on your modality, but also you're developing a lot of muscular endurance in there. So zone three is often thought of the gray zone that you don't want to do too much training in. But we do deploy some of that zone three efforts. Now let's move up to zone four, zone five. Zone four is a very strong effort. If you're a runner, this is your 5k or 10k pace, it's a 40k time trial. It's your maximal steady state. In the triathlon cycling world Functional Threshold FTP is often called about this and really what zone four is, is at the tipping point of physiological steady state, where you're accumulating nasty byproducts such as lactate and being able to combust those, anything above zone four is not sustainable for a long period of time. That's why it's called threshold quite often. And then above that is a bunch of other intensities going from very, very demanding for a short period to absolute maximum sprints and we just bucket that into zone five. Other coaches might -- develop it. But the point is that as an athlete, you need to understand what's happening physiologically and adhere to the training. And you need to do it by not just chasing outcomes or outputs, but by understanding the intent and aligning the intended physiological stress with the internal, the internal appreciation of what it feels like, and the output pace or power. And the biggest mistake that athletes make, particularly younger athletes, but actually as we get older we don't always get wiser, is going too hard in the sessions that are designed to be easy. And that creates catastrophe. So many athletes skip the low intensity, and they remain inefficient. They just chase short-term gains and validation from high intensity, but they miss all of the benefits of becoming a more efficient, economical machine, developing muscular endurance, improving our ability to draw from our finite fuel source, which is fat, and become a bigger engine machine. And so that ends up accumulating fatigue, but also reducing the quality of the execution of the harder interval sessions that are important for driving your overall performance levels. And so the second component is become savagely smart. What that looks like in action is, number one, actually have a plan. You need to have a program that is structured and progressive. Number two, though, you need to understand the plan. What does each session look like? What are the key workouts, etc., and then finally, have the courage and I say this, particularly, the courage to follow the plan. And that's why coaching becomes important. We'll talk more about coaching in a little bit. But have a plan, understand your plan, buy into it, and follow the plan. We have our athletes always follow a Sunday special every Sunday, look ahead of the week, look at the sessions, identify the workouts that are most demanding, make sure that you are physically and emotionally most engaged at those and ready to perform, and then have the courage to actually keep the intensity of the easier workouts easy. And that creates consistency. And that's the reward, consistency. And it's not just consistency of training, but a lower risk of injury, higher sustained motivation, bigger adaptations from the training, and ultimately, you go faster. So in other words, by you, being savagely smart in training, and managing your training, yeah you create consistency, that's the magic word, but flowing out of that is you becoming faster. And I think that's why you're doing it. Good.
Matt Dixon 27:36
Principle number three, we've got three more to go. Principle number three, I want you to build a platform of health. We talked a lot about talent and traits. For you to navigate this journey, you are going to have to be strong, you are going to have to be mentally and physically moldable. You are going to have to adapt and course correct. You're going to have to have mental capacity and physiological capacity to continue on this journey for a long time. And it is hard. Otherwise, everyone will be doing it. It's hard and it's demanding. It requires commitment. But in order for you to develop strength and resilience, moldability, adaptability, these great words that anchor around enduring performance, it's not just about being tough. It's not just about showing up to training every day. This is about having a smart plan, understanding the plan, and then following it as we talked about, but then it is about your supporting habits. Sleep hygiene is critical. This is your number one legal performance-enhancing tool you have. It is legal, and it is performance-enhancing. Sleep. Having a cool, dark environment. Getting to sleep at the same time every night. Understanding that majority of your deep sleep occurs between 10 pm and 2 am. That's when you're getting the big yield of adaptations. So go to bed before 10 pm Make sure that you're setting yourself up by not disrupting sleep with too much alcohol, which isn't a issue for many youth athletes, but also making sure that you're removing screens in the last 30 to 60 minutes before so you can set yourself up in that cool dark environment and have a wonderful sleep, it becomes critically important. Treating your food as fuel, not as a reason to try and get to a race weight. Most athletes under-fuel and under-eat relative to training demands, particularly younger athletes, and so treat your food as fuel. This isn't a discussion around nutrition, but having a relationship of eating to fuel your body and training to get you stronger is your best way to find great body composition but also to yield adaptations. Number four, particularly under the nutrition, post-workout fueling. You never do a workout without consuming calories after that workout. Within 30 minutes, protein, carbohydrates, a little bit of fat, pump it up. And finally, hydration during the day. Most youth athletes are pretty good nowadays at hydrating in the sessions. Most youth athletes are pretty terrible at hydrating enough through the rest of their day. A little bit of electrolytes in there helps with nutrient absorption as well as a little bit of the recovery process. But hydrate during the day -- become a camel. That becomes really important. Your platform of health. Principle number three.
Matt Dixon 30:45
Let's progress to principle number four. If you want to be great, become coachable. Let's go back to those great athletes we talked about at the top of the show LeBron James Serena Williams, all of them, Ronaldo, Messi, keep going on, Michael Phelps, all of them not only realize that coaching is important, they demand coaching. The best athletes in any sport, become highly coachable. They are coachable. And the reason that they understand the value of a coach is that a coach brings wisdom, experience, expertise in their field, they have gone on this journey multiple times with many other athletes. And that's the most obvious thing. But also a coach and a great coaching partnership is also someone that can provide perspective, can actually be a great source of support as you go along the journey, and also make you smarter about your own athletic journey. In other words, education. It is very difficult for anyone that is on an endeavor to create world-class performance to get out of the weeds and see the big picture because you are rightfully in the doing in the trenches every day. And so a coach needs to help you pause come up a level course correct when things go off track. Give you perspective when things aren't going well. And you need to actually lean into that. The truth is with coaching, there is much to learn. And as I talked to the kids, unlike your parents, the experts actually do know better. Now in action, I think this is important. Because getting a coach is not Pixy dust, the coach is not going to be the person to make you the athlete. Realize that by being coachable, you are not giving away ownership on your journey. This is your journey. I encourage you to own it. And what I mean by that is when you put coachability into practice, I encourage you to be curious, to understand the intent, to ask questions, to align, to push back, but ultimately, if you have a really fruitful partnership of a coach, you then follow the program. But beyond that, it's not about checking boxes of workouts. It's not about being delivered a plan and saying I'm being a great coach to athletes if I check the box in every session. Instead, you have a role in this partnership. You need to give consistent feedback, you need to ask questions, you need to learn because a big part of coaching is empowerment. But you can only become empowered if you are a sponge and you are learning, you are going on a journey of growth. The one final component around coaching is commit, spend some time finding the right coaches but the best athletes across any sport, the vast majority go through life, from your age as you listen now to all the way through to retirement with maybe having two or three coaches at max. And the truth is that a pinball never traveled the furthest. And so have ownership on your journey. But also create a partnership with a coach where you can navigate through the tough weeks, the tough months, even sometimes the tough seasons and emerge out of it on growth. Coachability, principle number four.
Matt Dixon 34:30
The final principle, nail the basics. I'm going to tell you a story that I've told many times before about an athlete and a human being that I have the greatest respect for, Tim Reid. And Tim was the one that actually first came up with this concept of nail the basics, at least he coined the phrase around it in my coaching. And with Tim I would say when I started coaching Tim he was already an established pro, he was a great athlete, but he did have a propensity to focus on a lot of incremental stuff getting distracted with a lot of the finer components of performance. And at the start of 2016, after some good progression, I asked him to just strip down focus into a few key elements, training consistently going really easy and easy sessions, eating enough calories to support, prioritizing sleep, integrating strength and conditioning, becoming a better artist on the bike with Terrain Management, and tactically improving how he was going about races, as he started to get up to the thinner wedge of world-class performance. And to Tim's great credit, he bought into it, the process was incredibly simple. And it took a lot of bravery from Tim, he is a great world-class athlete, but to actually remove some of the stuff that he loved, that while I thought was a distraction, would each individually potentially lead to incremental gains, which was very trendy at the time, but instead pull it apart and say, I'm going to focus on the boulders, not on the sand. I'm going to nail the basics. And what emerged out of that was great consistency. But what I observed was a greater enjoyment. A simplicity. We removed a lot of the distractions and complexity from the recipe and it enabled Tim just to get down to the pure old-fashioned joy of training, and racing. And he had an incredibly consistent year. And as he arrived at the Ironman 70.3 World Championships in Mooloolaba, Australia, very close to his hometown, he had the opportunity to go and race. And the race strategy for Tim, I was so confident around his physiological preparedness that I really said two simple things to it. This is an opportunity that you'll never have, again to go and race a World Championships, very close to your hometown, with all of Australia supporting you, and the other Australian athletes, all of your family and friends there. And rather than that being a burden, let that be a once in a life opportunity that you don't let bypass you. But more than that I trusted Tim. So I said to Tim I trust you to make smart decisions, go and make smart decisions and ultimately go have fun. Well, Tim wasn't a favorite but over the course of that race, 1.2 miles of swimming 56 miles of biking 13.1 miles of running close to his hometown, the streets absolutely lined with Australian fans, every decision that Tim had to make, he made the right one. And that was in part, a little bit of luck but also liberty and freedom to actually just go with the inner animal. He wasn't overthinking. He just loved racing. And Tim became the Ironman 70.3 world champion, he beat Sebastian Kienle, one of the greats in sports by two seconds, and still one of the pinnacles of his career. But I want to encourage you as I finish this story, that in my final message today, I think it's a message that Tim would endorse more than anyone on this planet, he became world champion. But the final message is the key. But finishing this principle, we'll get to the final message finishing this principle, if you want to become great focus on the -- boulders. There is so much complexity, so many distractions, so many tools, but the first thing you need to do before you start adding stuff is becoming a master of the fundamentals. And if you can become a master of the fundamentals of your recipe, then you build consistency and you improve and then you can strategically add some finer qualities and details, tools, gadgets, different assessments, etc. Nail the basics.
Matt Dixon 38:59
And so it is the long-awaited guys the final message. And I will say those five principles -- If you go and deploy them, you are going to improve as an athlete. But what I'm going to say right now is almost everything.
Matt Dixon 39:19
Because what I'm going to say is, in many ways, all of my beliefs, my passion in development of athletes, my years of expertise, all bundled into one premise, just a few words. Earlier in the show, I said there are no guarantees in life. It's true. And you might have really lofty aspirations and goals as an athlete. You might even want to turn professional one day. But not everyone listening to this show is going to get a world title, or qualify to the Hawaii Ironman World Championships, or go pro, but I do promise you this -- this is one guarantee that when this sporting journey for you is over, I can promise you one thing. And that is by taking on the athletic journey, you are guaranteeing yourself a whole experience of wonderful adventures. You are going to create lasting memories. You will build relationships and friendships that last a lifetime. And the lessons and the skills that you develop by taking on this journey, and it's not an easy one, are going to foster you developing a toolkit that you are going to be able to leverage across any adventure in life. And so yes, the wins are nice. They're great. Fun. That's not what you're going to remember. At the end of the day, you're going to remember the adventures, the memories, and the friendships. I've got a friend that I saw last week his name's Reid, and he won the World Telemark Ski Championships in France in 2001. He's still the only American to win a world championship in Telemark skiing. And you know what he said to me about that experience, he said, I can hardly remember what town that was in. Yeah, I did become a world champion, but I can hardly remember the town or the event even, what I do remember is my friends that I skied with throughout my career. Touché Reid, it is the perfect perspective. And so it all adds up to one simple thing. Give yourself license on this journey, to go and have fun, enjoy it. Don't let it bypass you. So many people get so focused on the outcomes, they forget to really enjoy it. And it limits the outcomes.
Matt Dixon 41:49
And that is it. I thought I would share -- I hope that you enjoyed my little perspective on youth development. And no matter where you're at in your journey, I wish you all the best. I hope that you're smiling from the inside out. And let's get on and have a cracking year. Take care.
Matt Dixon 42:08
Guys, thanks so much for joining. And thank you for listening, I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing. Head to the Purple Patch channel of YouTube, and you will find it there and you could subscribe. Of course, I'd like to ask you, if you will subscribe also share it with your friends. And it's really helpful if you leave a nice positive review in the comments. Now any questions that you have, let me know, feel free to add a comment and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. And in fact, as we commence this video podcast experience, if you have any feedback at all, as mentioned earlier in the show, we would love your help in helping us to improve. Simply email us info@purplepatchfitness.com or leave it in the comments of the show at the Purple Patch page and we will get you dialed in. 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
athletes, coach, performance, journey, running, physiological, tim, race, patch, training, world-class performance, purple, improve, ironman, sport, sessions, intensities, coaching, zone, important