Episode 259: Training for a Time-Starved Athlete
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“I've seen many, many time-starved athletes doing all of their training alone. And ultimately, for one reason or another, the results are often limited.”
- Matt Dixon
Today on the Purple Patch Podcast, Ironman Master Coach Matt Dixon takes a fresh look at how to structure training for a time-starved athlete.
Whether you’re training for an endurance event, either competitively or simply for personal enjoyment, Matt provides a ground-up framework of how to maximize your training approach to be successful.
Matt shares 5 principles to help build your time-starved training plan.
Establishing a mindset that can optimize your training impact.
Life is not a spreadsheet. Life is a living, breathing, dirty, unpredictable thing that we love. It ebbs and it flows. Your life demands and your stresses amplify, and then they settle for a bit. And therefore your approach, your training plan, needs to be able to flow and synchronize and dance with this stark reality. -14:31
Tools to ensure each week of training can be productive, no matter how time-starved you are.
We actually build into the construction of a training program, a little bit of a management tool, that when your energy is good, and when life allows, you can show up, be present and do hugely challenging sessions successfully. -19:13
Why Intensity is an important tool for your approach.
If you are a time-starved athlete, you better lean into getting comfortable, being very uncomfortable, because that is the thing that yields the performance progression.
Key strategies to get the training in without it taking over your life.
For multi-sport athletes, it's a real puzzle for you to fit all of the training sessions into your plan in any given week. And once again, we come back to this and say as a time-starved athlete, I encourage you to think outside of the box. -28:22
How team training can ignite your performance if done correctly.
It's really, really hard to go on this journey alone. And so whether you can create some in-person or even online component to it, the feeling of belonging and team is a huge catalyst for performance.-31:55
Matt’s approach has secured great outcomes for time-starved athletes of all levels. People who, upon adopting the purple patch approach, believed they could never get faster or ever make time to fit in the training needed to hit their goals.
We invite you to listen to the show and join us. If you are a time-starved athlete looking for the right fit, we encourage you to contact us for a complimentary call to see if we can help educate and guide you to your best results.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 4:12 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
04:27 - 8:55 - Word of the Week
8:56 - 39:20 - The Meat and Potatoes - Episode 259: Training for a Time-Starved Athlete
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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
Hey, folks, Matt here. And just before we get going on to it, it's a pretty darn good show today, I think you're going to enjoy it. And we're going to be focusing all around training plans, specifically training plans for time-starved athletes. But how can you take whatever plan that you're implementing, and amplify it, put gasoline on the performance fire? Well, one of the tools that we leverage at Purple Patch is InsideTracker. And the reason for that is it helps get some personalized insight into our platform of health, our stresses, our maybe our deficiencies in areas that we should focus on to not just drive the performance needle, but also build that platform of health that I talk so much about. The good news is that you don't have to be a Purple Patch athlete to leverage all of the insights and recommendations from the team at InsideTracker. All you have to do is head to insidetracker.com/purplepatch. And guess what, use this code Purple Patch pro 20, that's Purple Patch Pro two zero, and you get 20% off everything at the store. If it's good enough for our athletes, I think it's good enough for you. And now we're going to get on with the show. Because if you're time-starved you're gonna want to listen to this because it's to help you amplify your training program success, enjoy.
Matt Dixon 01:45
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. As ever, your host, Matt Dixon. And today well, if you are training for an endurance event, whether it's competitive or simply for joyous completion, today is the show for you. Because we're going to do a fresh look at training plans, particularly training plans for time-starved athletes. That"s our sweet spot, after all, isn't it? What I'm aiming to provide today is a ground-up framework of how you can maximize your training approach in order to help you be successful. Now, next week for you guys that are non-competitive, we're going to expand our perspective a little bit. And we're going to build on this and start to think about performance in broader life, removing competition, and instead, building a framework for you just around health, work, and life performance. But today, of course, it's all about the competitive side in us, training for an event. Now, with all this being said, I don't believe that you can thrive long-term without both parts of the puzzle getting correct. So in other words, we want to think about that platform of health. And at the same time, if you are training for something, you want to get the details of the plan, right. But today, we're gonna go pretty narrow, we're just gonna think about the plan. And so over the course of today's show, you're going to learn a few things. The first is ensuring that you establish the right mindset so that you can optimize your training impact no matter how busy you are. We're also going to dive into the tools that you can use when building each week of your training program so that no matter how busy life is, training can still be productive. In other words, you can establish positive training impacts. We're going to explore why intensity is important. And in fact, it's a critical tool in your success if you're time-starved. And we're going to break out key strategies to get the training in without making the plan itself feel like just a simple monkey on your back. After all, you don't want another part-time job. Finally, we're going to dig into the concept of team. This is a big one because the team can be the thing that is the gasoline on your performance fire if you do it correctly. And so basically five principles for today's show. It should be a good one and it should be lots of fun. But before we dig in, many listeners have said that they miss Barry's voice. And they feel like his artistic expression has really been frozen out by me skipping over it on so many weeks. And so, Barry, I'll give you the stage my friend. Let's do Word of the Week.
Matt Dixon 04:27
All right back by popular demand Word of the Week, and this week, it is ORIGIN, something for me to build on. What are the origins and the roots of the lessons in today's show? Well, it's my failings as a professional athlete because I am a prime example of how to execute a professional triathlon career very, very poorly. I applied to all of the mistakes that I refer to so often in the show. I seldom went easy enough. I under-fueled, I certainly didn't recover well enough, I relied on simple work ethic and toughness. But it all ended up by wrapping up into this recipe that created a young man at the time, now I'm getting on to be a bit of a geezer, but a young man who is incredibly fit, yet fatigued. The outcome for me: chronic fatigue, extreme underperformance, and ultimately, loss of all of my sponsors and the end of a career. It led me into a couple of years of pretty dark times and ultimately forced reflection. But it was those two years of reflection that were actually the catalyst to apply my own experience that I went through, as well as, of course, my backbone of education that I had in clinical physiology, and decided to try things a different way. When I got into coaching, I decided I was going to go against the grain of the times. I was going to focus wholly on athletic health, trying to build consistency. And I aim to leverage the components of recovery strength, and habits in nutrition to try and amplify a consistent positive training effect. So at the pro level, and I was very lucky because I got to coach some very elite athletes, our results were super, and it's something that I'm still very proud of. In fact, I'm really proud of the pros, because of a few reasons. Firstly, we had equal success with male athletes and female athletes. But also, a lot of the Purple Patch pros are part of the Squad, and I'm going to talk about the squad later, but a part of the squad developed over many, many years, going from amateur to world-class. And so I really felt like we had a model, a methodology that worked at the world-class level. And we took that model, and we applied it to serious amateurs. And guess what, the results were just as good. We had more than 1000 athletes qualify to the Hawaii Ironman, we had multiple amateur World Champions, again something that I'm really, really proud of. And then we adapted the methodology again. And we started to try and crack the code around helping time-starved individuals that were not only really ambitious in their sport, but also were having to navigate very, very busy, complex lives, it sounds like you isn't it? And we started to crack the code on that we started to actually enable athletes to integrate the sporting journey into life. And it was successful yet again. And it is from this origin, that today's lessons emerge, the methodology, all inspired by research, scientific validation, pragmatism, and of course, a history of positive results. I'm most proud of how we've secured great outcomes for really, really busy time-starved individuals who, on joining, come into Purple Patch, just thought I could never get faster, maybe I should just try not to slow down. I'm getting a bit older now. And we call bullshit to it and said, let's get you performing. But without it costing you all of the non-negotiable components of life, showing up for your family and friends thriving in the workplace, making sure that you retain and improve your health. And so it is from this origin. As you listen to my five principles today, that I want you to remember, what we're talking about here isn't theory, it isn't a guess. It's 15 years of proving. And it's something that we're really, really passionate about. In fact, you can probably hear it coming across my voice. I believe in what we're talking about today. So I hope as we dig into the meat and potatoes, we can go through five principles that you can take from today's story and apply it into your own journey. And so with that in mind, the word of the week this week is origin. Bear it in mind. And Barry, thank you very much for the singing and the ukulele. Now let's do the meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 08:56
Yes, team, it's the meat and potatoes. And before I dive in, I should offer a little bit of an invitation because if today's lessons inspire you, then I'd love to invite you to partner with myself and Purple Patch to help you come on the journey. Really try and evolve. If you want to learn about Purple Patch, and how we promise long-term results, as I talked about in that origin component of the of the show, feel free to reach out to us very chat info@PurplePatchfitness.com. Because these lessons today are applicable, you can take them and apply but it is so much more impactful if you align with a partner who's got your side, can help you with the perspective, anchored and able, a little bit of course corrections when things ultimately do go off track. Always, always, always, the journey to high performance is never linear. You're always going to have to go over some obstacles on the way and when gonna have your back. And we'll be there with you. info@purplepatchfitness.com. And with that in mind, let's get on because we are in the meat and potatoes here.
Matt Dixon 10:08
All right, so I want to preface today as we go into these components, I want you to remember that there are a few critical components to any training program that we need to add on to if we're actually going to be successful. And these components I'm actually not going to talk about today. So this is important before we just talk about the how-to, I want you to keep this in mind because I think it's very, very important. The first is any training program that you execute, needs to meet you where you're currently at. What do I mean by that? Well, one of the biggest mistakes that I see athletes making is lacking the patience to build a program that is suitable for their current level and then take the time to develop little mini victories, small victories of success that ultimately lead to sustainable high performance. So often, athletes are reactive, they dive into a program. Goodness me, I've got 12 weeks to get ready for my XY and Z race. And they pull on the throttle, and they accelerate too quickly. And that ultimately leads to frustration, fatigue, and quite often injury. And so deep breath out, start your program where you're currently at, we're not going to dig into it today. But I think it's important to bear in mind.
Matt Dixon 11:30
Secondly, any training program that you have, it's not really about the sessions themselves, we're going to dive into some of the sessions today. But any training you do does require adequate recovery. Recovery, as I like to say, is the gasoline on the performance fire. And this isn't about you doing less, it isn't about some hyperbole around balance. Instead, it's actually about being brave enough to integrate recovery, so that you can achieve more, you can accumulate over time, a greater amount of effective training. And that's why we talk about, at Purple Patch, it takes courage to recover.
Matt Dixon 12:11
The third element to think about: fuel your system. Training adaptations results that you want from the hard work that you do require adequate nutrients. Most athletes under-consume relative to train demands. And so as you lay down any training program that you're going to build, and we're going to talk about that today, I want you to also focus on eating plenty of really high-quality food, and particularly post-workout fueling, ensuring that you're getting calories in following every single training session you do no matter how hard or easy that is. And finally, strength is a part of your endurance training. It's also a part of your life performance by the way. We're not going to dive into the details around strength, but I have done so countless times. And so as you think about this today, don't get on the track of if you're a triathlete swim, bike run, or if you're a runner, ooh threshold versus endurance. Make sure that you're considering your strength training. And finally, your best program, the one that's going to give you long-term success -- it isn't pointed to a single race. Instead, it's anchored in long-term performance. And so out of my back pocket, I pull out one more great Purple Patch, quote, embrace the journey. This is all about long-term sustainable performance, five key elements before we dive into five key principles. And with these in mind, here we go. Five principles to build your time-starved training plan.
Matt Dixon 13:47
Number one, and this is the driver of everything, this is the engine, you need to establish the right mindset. If you want to have great race results. And I know that the perspective should be broader than just race results, but even if you are a little athletically narrow-minded, and you just want to win, get the podium qualify whatever -- finish the race, whatever it might be. If you're only thinking about great race outcomes, and then you better give away the notion of chasing and the accumulation of total weekly hours or miles, particularly if you're time-starved. Let me remind you that life is not a spreadsheet. Life is a living, breathing, dirty, unpredictable thing that we love -- It ebbs and it flows. Your life demands and your stresses amplify and then they settle for a bit. And therefore your approach your training plan needs to be able to flow and synchronize and dance with this stark reality. And so, I invite you to set the mindset. Don't try to hit a specific number of training sessions in any given week, instead of taking a static plan that you might download off the interweb, or read in the pages of a book, instead of taking a static plan, and trying to ram it into your busy life, instead I encourage you to tackle your time-starved challenge from the other side of the equation. The first step in this journey is to frame out your non-negotiable life demands. What do I mean by that? Well these your commitments with your family with work, maybe with travel associated with work, and hopefully a little bit of a social life. And you want to map those out in the calendar because those are the immovable blocks that we need to show up for be present and thriving because that's a part of our success. With those calendars in that first step in mind, you then don't jump to training, but instead, start to integrate some calendar time for rest and downtime, as well as sleep. Remember what we talked about earlier in the show, it takes courage to recover. And in fact, the time that you're resting, and integrating positive sleep in terms of quality and quantity, that's when you're yielding all of the adaptations from your hard work and training. And so the second part of the puzzle is to map that out. And then what you have leftover, yes, the dirty leftovers, you have a landscape of the hours that you have available for that week, that you can then build your training program. And really what you're faced with here is something very simple. What you have is an optimization challenge. With these number of hours that I have, me myself not what my neighbor Larry has or my friend who I'm battling to try and beat at the Boston Marathon has at the other side of the country. These are the hours that I have available within the calendar of this week, without compromising key supportive elements sleep and downtime, as well as allowing me to show up for my friends and in the workplace. And you're faced with that optimization challenge. Now that means it takes a little bit of bravery because when we start to layer week on week on week, you might end up some weeks doing a little bit less. On the flip side, though, on other weeks, you might have the opportunity to add a little bit of training. But what occurs when you take this strategy over week upon week upon week, which turns into month upon month upon month, which ultimately hopefully yields into years. In other words, what you're doing as a lifestyle. You are far more likely to build consistency, to yield positive adaptations from the training that you do get to do, and ultimately reduce your risk for illness and injury. And so in other words, when you try and force a plan into life, all that occurs is stress accumulation, emotional and physical. And so this way, you start to build a more dynamic program that is ebbing and flowing with the different stresses of life. And you know what, on top of it, your friends and family are going to thank you. Oh, and there's one more thing as well. You might even enjoy it more. Stamping the performance mindset, that is your most critical management tool and actually going about building a smart training program that integrates into life.
Matt Dixon 18:36
Okay, that's super. But now let's move on to principle number two. Because with your optimization mindset established, you then need to actually execute on optimizing that time that you have. In other words, we want to maximize the training effect with any hours that you might have available. And as I mentioned before, life is unpredictable, as will be your energy and your ability to perform in training. And so, as life is chaotic, and you have different hours available, with the removal of accumulation being a factor, how do we actually build into the construction of a training program, a little bit of a management tool, that when your energy is good, and when life allows, you can show up, be present and do hugely challenging sessions successfully. On the flip side, how can we build a program where maybe life is really stressful, you're really busy, you have less time, but you can still secure progression? Well, it's a very simple way of doing it. What we want to do is start any week of training, building around two to three, no more than three, very key sessions. They are the center point of the week. They tend to be the toughest sessions either through high intensity, over distance endurance, or a combination of both, but these are the workouts that are gonna demand of you to be focused to be present, and hopefully have the best energy and willpower that you can possibly bring to them. Because those sessions are the ones that are going to drive your performance needle, it doesn't mean that they're the only workout of the week that are valuable. But these are the workouts that you need to be able to show up for and perform as best as you possibly can. Beyond these sessions, there's something that's actually really quite powerful in your overall training program as well. Because the rest of that week's training, while it's valuable, it's important, it has just as an important role in the overall fabric of the program. But the supporting workouts as we like to say them, they can actually genuinely be lower stress, and that kicks off something that's really beneficial. So in general terms the supporting workouts on the physiological side, which is great. You get the opportunity to build general endurance, in other words, tissue resilience, cardiovascular conditioning. You also have the opportunity to focus on skill acquisition, or improving posture and technique. And all of those are great, they're valuable. And they are sort of like the Amazon filler around a box, they play play a critical role, but they're not the performance drivers. And so you want to make sure that you're hitting that endurance training. But it goes beyond that. Because the supporting workouts, if you embrace them and do them well, they have an impact of decompression. I absolutely love building every week of training to include some soul-filling sessions, as I like to call it. And those soul-filling sessions, generally a little bit shorter, a little bit lighter in intensity, not so demanding, and actually don't require your presence, your focus -- they're additive, as we talked about tissue resilience, cardiovascular conditioning, but they also create a pressure relief valve. They allow mental decompression of life. And that's really, really important. Because if we take a step back, we all live under high demand. If you are a time-starved, the expectation is that you are engaged, highly focused, and driven across all of the components of work. But if I as a coach, then say, "Great, now go and do your training. And in every training session, I want you to be engaged, highly focused, and driven." Goodness me, you know what I've just dumped on top of you? A part time job. And what's the value in that? We only have so much physical and mental resources. And so instead, how about we look at the supporting sessions, as truly ones that we can be less metric-focused, stay conversational, know that they're having an impact? But finishing those workout, you feel mentally detoxed. And you also have finished a training session that hasn't created physical fatigue that can imprint on your subsequent upcoming really key workout. So that polarization stealing the phrase back, and a prioritization of training, means that not every workout in the week has the same role as each other. And we avoid your training program looking like chicken casserole, each workout may be having great value, but all mixed up into one, it's impossible to filter out the ingredients. And this creates an incredibly empowering tool for you to use. Because if for any reason, on a Wednesday, when you've got a key workout, whether it's logistics, whether it's Johnny soccer, whether you show up with a terrible night's sleep, and you just feel fatigued, you can maybe shift that workout that was key, shift it to the next day where maybe your energy and your capability or time to execute it is better, and drop in a decompressor, a soul-filling -- a supporting workout. And that autonomy helps you as you navigate training in a time-starved life.
Matt Dixon 24:14
All right, let's move on to our third principle. Intensity is your friend. I want you to double-underline that, in fact, you can even bold it. Intensity is your friend. There's a ton of research out there and a lot of advice about the importance of low-intensity training. And guess what? It's right. Now these subjects in these topics, they come in waves, blood lactate testing, oh my goodness me. It's the brand new thing. It's amazing. Well, it was also brand new and amazing with the same protocols 15 years ago, and 15 years before that. Low-intensity training. It's amazing. It's new -- zone one, Zone Two, zone one, zone two, easy conversational, zone one, zone two and great. We are on a major swell right now of it being the hot topic -- low-intensity training. And guess what? The research, the advice, the guidance is right. It's really important. A good amount of our training should be lower intensity. It is an important part of long-term development. And in fact, the more hours that you get to do in a week, the higher amount of those hours should be boringly easy. Very, very low stress. So if we look at a professional athlete that's doing 30 hours a week of training, well, they're going to do a lot of those training hours if they're smart, really pretty low intensity. But if you're time-starved, the big stresses that are your life and work commitments, demand that you think about your training, with a little bit of out-of-the-box thinking.
Matt Dixon 25:54
Ultimately, what you need to do in any given training week is yield a positive training response. And you're likely not training 30 hours a week, at least without massive consequence in both your performance as well as your physiology and health. Instead, if you're training four, five, seven, ten hours a week, I highly recommend that you have a much higher percentage of your weekly training coming from high intensity. Now this is a real secret here. It's a big part of the Purple Patch success. In fact, perhaps our best case study of this is an athlete that I coached for many years, Sami Inkanen. You might have heard of Sami. He's well known for the fact that he trained 10 hours a week on average, and managed to win the amateur title at the Hawaii Ironman. He broke nine hours in the Hawaii Ironman --yeah, that hot, sweaty race -- nine hours, all on a recipe of never going above 10 hours in any training week. Now, how did he do it? Well, it's complex, but I tell you what, it included a heck of a lot of intensity. Not all of it, but a lot of high intensity. Now the recipe out of Sami, his lessons, they apply to everyone who is time-starved. You need to leave yourself room for two to three sessions a week, that are really, really challenging. But the less hours that you have in total across the week, I promise you that a higher ratio of training should be at that higher intensity. If you have only four hours, goodness me, almost all four hours will be boom, hit it hard, because it's the only way you can elicit a training response. And so this is where we start to depart from just the big body of research done on endurance athletes that are training 20 hours a week. And instead, we need to have pragmatism. This is drawing from scientific research and understanding of training adaptations, with just a coach's appreciation of what works. If you are a time-starved athlete, you better lean in to getting comfortable, being very uncomfortable, because that is the thing that yields the performance progression.
Matt Dixon 28:10
And onward we go. Three down two to go. Number four, another little ingredient, I encourage you to pair your training sessions. This one's really simple, but I think it's important. For multi-sport athletes, it's a real puzzle for you to fit all of the training sessions into your plan in any given week. And once again, we come back to this and say as a time-starved athlete, I encourage you to think outside of the box. We tend to do a couple of things to achieve the desired training session load with some tricks. The first is double up. I absolutely love athletes to build in high run frequency if you're a triathlete by sneaking runs into the program. Now there's lots of ways to do this. But let me give you some examples. You're gonna go and hit a key bike workout. Great. Add on to the end, just give yourself a little bit of buffer room where you can do a 5, 10, 15-minute run. Maybe you are successfully committing to strength and conditioning, super. Try and take that neuromuscular conditioning and strengthen it and transfer it into running. Sneak a little bit of a run on the end. Or perhaps you're running to a pool. Okay, great. Double up, do a little bit of a run following. In other words, starting to pair up workouts to think about it as a single session that includes the two disciplines, really, really beneficial and valuable. We also like to pair up and cluster workouts. So many athletes, particularly endurance athletes, are really, really worried about accumulating enough long training sessions. I'm time-starved. I just can't get the miles in. Well, great. Think out the box a little bit -- cluster. What do I mean by cluster? Well, on a typical Saturday, you might not have five hours to go out and say Hey, see ya family, I'm off for five hours, got to get ready for my IRONMAN. Instead, you might need to think out the box and get that resilience and that cardiovascular conditioning in a way that meshes with life demands a little bit more. Because what you might be able to do is maybe a short high-intensity bike trying to work out on a Friday, and then follow up with a race-specific session two to three hours on a Saturday, and maybe come back and either run or do another bike ride on Sunday of 90 minutes on the trainer again, and over the three days, you might actually have an amplifying effect on your muscular and cardiovascular conditioning for the bike. The same goes even for a long run. Athletes that are getting ready for marathons. Goodness me, shouldn't I really go out and do a three-hour run?
Matt Dixon 30:48
Maybe. But how about you accumulate over a Friday morning, Saturday morning, maybe a Saturday afternoon and a Sunday morning -- multiple runs in a row, that over those three days, you build out longer endurance. And you do that with a reduction of risk of injury. There's some out-of-the-box thinking. But I tell you can get a lot of the way to the return of investment in training by releasing some of the classic norms that you think are just set in stone, and instead building a long-term approach of coupling workouts together, or clustering workouts. And it is an incredibly useful tool for all of Purple Patch athletes. So I reckon that it's going to be pretty good for you.
Matt Dixon 31:32
All right, finally, principle number five. If you really want to get the best return on any training program that you're going to build lean into the power of team. I've seen many, many time-starved athletes doing all of their training alone. And ultimately, for one reason or another, the results are often limited. It's really, really hard to go on this journey alone. And so whether you can create some in-person or even online component to it, the feeling of belonging and team is a huge catalyst for performance. It infuses accountability, the support amplifies your individual performance. So even if you're selfishly driving into team, I encourage you to do it. To highlight this point, let me give you a couple of little stories, I want to go back to the Purple Patch squad. So for over a decade, I coached a whole group of elite athletes. And you know what, I never coached 10 to 12 Pros. Instead, I led a pro squad. There's an important differentiator there. I would have an individual coaching relationship with each Pro, they would each be following their own specific program suitable to their needs and their races that they were getting ready for, but we had a culture of performance. We built our whole model of operating and the methodology that was applied, unique to each individual, canvassed all of them. And we did our darndest to create -- create a set of common practices, and also developed a system of support and accountability across all of the athletes. And that fostered a spirit, a sense of belonging, a sense of being a part of something. And that highly, highly individual sport. If you think about our sport, professional triathlon and endurance sport in which you the individual is racing for your own success, this highly individual sport was magnified by our performance culture. And I believe that this was a huge component to us actually creating long enduring success. Because within this system within this performance culture, it fostered individual development, it enabled retention and long-term relationships. And it created the adoption of an approach by some of the newer or younger athletes that were coming in, because the older athletes were already ingrained in the practices and the approaches, and it was easier for them to fall into a system. And so we didn't achieve random great results. Instead, we had a collective high-performance culture. And one of the trends was if, for any reason, one of the pros left Purple Patch, it tends to be the case that their results declined, that over the next year or so they started to struggle a little bit. And that wasn't because I was this great hero or magic coach with the pixie dust, it was anchored I believe around a performance culture. Because by leaving the program, they didn't just lose my workouts, they actually lost the system of support that engraved the beliefs and the actual catalyst to show up and perform. Another component of that at the amateur level was our Purple Patch group training. Our swim program is a great story of this because it amplifies a concept that I talked about earlier in the meat and potatoes, which is ensuring that you meet the program where you are currently at. Every Tuesday and Thursday 5:30 am till 7 am. On one end of the pool, very, very elite swimmers very fast chasing world-class performance. At the other end, noncompetitive newer swimmers. And there were some folks there up to 74 years of age. So we had 22, 23, 24-year-olds, very, very fast (inaudible) going down the lanes all the way to 74-year-olds that were there that were looking to maximize their health, enjoying. The levels were vastly different at the swim program. Performance levels completely different, but every individual was unified in a single component, which is the desire to improve, and every individual is magnified by the collective experience. Because all of the lanes, all of the individuals in the swim program were being coached under the umbrella of an approach, a methodology, but then tailored to the individual needs of each athlete. So every person was doing the right thing for themselves, but their individual outcome is amplified as they, just like the pro squad, felt the unity to support, their own contribution to the group dynamic and ultimately the output. And that is powerful. That's why I believe becoming a part of something, not just following sessions, but building and saying I'm going to lean into community culture and team and I'm going to participate. That can be incredibly positive for everyone else, but magnifying your own performance.
Matt Dixon 36:56
And that folks, is it? That is a framework for you to go out and build your own program. And so I finish it today with one more reminder, I want to say this, as we talked about today, those five principles. This is how we do a Purple Patch, one-to-one coaching. Our tri squad, our bike squad, our run squad -- if you are time-starved and then I would love to invite you to join us because you will become a part of something special. And we will partner with you to educate and guide you on to your best results and ultimately deliver great autonomy. Because without this journey, this sport can feel really challenging and confusing. It can become a monkey off your back and who needs that? Reach out to info@purplepatchfitness.com. We'll set up a call, it will be complimentary, and we'll see if we are a good fit for you. Alright guys, we'll see you next week. Take care.
Matt Dixon 37:48
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'll 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
training, athletes, workout, week, performance, starved, patch, life, sessions, build, purple, stresses, component, training session, individual, support, hours, bit, ultimately, low intensity