Episode 261: Why Race Distance Training Plans Don't Work for Time-Starved Athletes
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Coaches and athletes love to discuss the importance of specificity in regard to training. While specificity is important to an extent, race-specific training is not always one-size-fits-all.
Unfortunately, many athletes follow a specific plan that ends up not being the optimal plan for their needs and situation.
For time-starved athletes, with competing demands in life and work, integrating a set amount of training hours designed around specific race distance means cramming training into a life already bursting at the seams.
In today’s episode of the Purple Patch Podcast, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon explains how to build a training program that can achieve sustained high performance across a range of distances while fitting into a life with high competing demands.
Matt leverages Purple Patch’s popular tri Squad program to highlight a training structure that fits all levels of athletes under one umbrella.
How can athletes have different race distance goals - from sprint distance and short course to IRONMAN - and all successfully exist under the same program?
Matt answers the question by breaking down the common mistakes athletes make by fitting their lives into a training program rather than creating a program that fits into their lives.
Tri squad is designed specifically for time-starved athletes and it successfully caters to all levels of athletes, and all distances. It is easily personalized to fit different schedules, by integrating video coaching, on-demand sessions, educational support, and guidance from the Purple Patch coaching team and its trusted experts across the performance spectrum.
Through the lens of the tri-squad program, Matt covers a method for landing on specificity while embracing the individual needs and goals of each athlete. It is a training methodology that has enabled countless first-time finishers to enjoy the journey without injury or feeling like the sport is an additional part-time job.
“It's the catalyst for more than 1,000 qualifiers to world championship events. And it's why I believe we are one of the highest performing teams at the USA Olympic Distance Nationals, at the same time, having an average number of hours for a Purple Patch Ironman athlete, only somewhere between 8 and 14. And that is where I believe we stand alone.” - Matt Dixon
This episode is required listening for any time-starved athlete chasing high performance.
We encourage you to reach out to us for more information on how we can support you on your performance journey.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 5:14 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
05:21 - 7:22 - Matt's News-ings
07:37 - 10:03 - Word of the Week
10:10 - 29:11 - The Meat and Potatoes - Episode 261: Why Race Distance Training Plans Don't Work for Time-starved Athletes
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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
You might be time-starved You don't have unlimited training time, but you do have within the context of your life unlimited potential. This requires focus, it includes filtering distractions, but for this InsideTracker can help. We leverage it a Purple Patch to refine the approaches in nutrition, gain insights into an athlete's heart health and improve their performance across Sport and life. Insights and biometrics combined with the expertise of the scientists and other experts at InsideTracker are a winning combination. And you can leverage it too. You do not need to be a Purple Patch athlete, all you need to do is head to insidetracker.com/purplepatch, head to the store, and download the assessment that's right for you. Oh, and you can use this sneaky code as well Purple Patch Pro two, zero, that's Purple Patch pro 20, you get 20% off everything at the store. All right, today's a cracker. So enjoy it. Get on with the show.
Matt Dixon 01:29
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast as ever, your host, Matt Dixon. A couple of weeks ago on this show, I discussed training plans, but not just any old training plans. It was training plans designed for time-starved athletes. And over the course of the episode, I focused on the components that fuel smart design of those programs, and create sustainable success specifically for time-starved athletes. And I hoped it would be helpful and well it seemed to be, we had a really positive response. Over the last couple of weeks, we've had several athletes reach out for help and express interest in our flagship program, the tri-squad program. And over the course of the conversations that we had, there was one conversation that really stuck out with me. Now the athlete's name was John, and I named him John in the way that you might name a character in a crime thriller. In other words, it's not actually his real name. But for the course of this show, we're gonna label him John. And John was very interested in the squad program. And it just so happened that he and I had a conversation about it, it was really positive, and I enjoyed it a lot. But over the course of the discussion, John actually expressed a little bit of confusion, as well as quite a healthy dose of doubt about the program. And his struggle to put it into his words was around the concept of specificity. How can you possibly have athletes of vastly different race goals from sprint all the way up to IRONMAN successfully coexist under the same umbrella and methodology? His direct ask of me was that he wants the right plan for my race goals. I want race specificity. And so backed into a corner I said, "John, thank you." And the reason I thanked him, is because his question enabled me to highlight the very core concept central to our coaching approach with tri-squad. In fact, more than that, it opened up a door of opportunity for me, because it enabled me to showcase I believe one of the prime reasons that over the last decade, plus, we've been able to foster sustained high performance of athletes across a whole range of distances, all of those athletes living a life with a lot of competing demands. And so I said to John, look, buckle up because I'm going to give you my response. But I should preface this, we don't do things in the same way that other programs do. And the reason for that is that I believe most other programs are simply not designed from the ground up or appropriate for time-starved athletes. Now, what I went on to describe to John was a concept that I'm going to repeat today. And that concept is the specificity for time-starved athletes. When you strip it all away, this concept was the thing that has fueled more than 1000 age group qualifies to World Championships, and many of those athletes becoming age group world champions. But perhaps more important to that this is the concept that I believe has enabled so many athletes go on and achieve their own personal goals no matter what they are, but without this sport, becoming a second part-time job. So everything I talked about today is based on peer-reviewed research, a background of our experience and expertise that has been garnered over many, many years, but also a healthy dose of courage. And that is the courage to not follow the herd and just do what everyone else is doing. Today. We're gonna dig in. Now it's quite a short one, but I believe it is required listening if you're a time-starved athlete chasing sustained high performance. Before we do this, I'm gonna dive in and do a little bit about Matt's News-ings.
Matt Dixon 05:21
Yes, folks, it's Matt's News-ings. And we are excited about 2023. We hope that you're excited too. In fact, we also hope that you're excited to partner up with Purple Patch in 2023. And in turn, we are going to commit to you by going all in on your performance journey. Today, we are going to put our money where our mouth is, this is a very special offer for partnership. And let me roll it out right here. This is the first time you're going to hear this, we're going to have two options for you. The first is if you commit to Purple Patch on the tri-squad program for the rest of 2023. And then we are committed to supercharging your season, how we're going to do that? Well, we will include three complimentary one-to-one individual coaching consultations with the Purple Patch coach, which is an additional $600 of value that we are bringing to the table to help you. It's an opportunity for you to really dig into deeper customization frame your best approach to the season, refine your race strategy, or anything else that you need. If you commit upfront 2023, we promise to back you all the way this has incredible value, but also a huge opportunity for you to take your performance to the next level. The second option, we still want to be there for you. If you prefer a little less commitment, you'd like to dance with us and see how it goes. And so if you sign up for the Purple Patch, tri-squad over the course of April on a month-to-month basis, we are still going to step up, join anytime in April, and you will receive one single complimentary coaching consultation with a coach you can use it anytime across the course of the season. And it is a $200 value. Now, this ends at the end of April. This is a special short-term promotion that we're doing just so that we can partner with you as you go on your journey. All right guys, that's it. I think it's time to have a little bit of a dance and sing. Let's do Word of the Week.
Matt Dixon 07:37
Yes, it is word of the week. And the word of the week this week is Puerto Rico. Yes, Puerto Rico. You see today we are on the theme of time-starved specificity. And with that, the Word of the Week is appropriately Puerto Rico. Have I confused you yet? Well, stay tuned because a couple of weeks ago was the Puerto Rico 70.3. That's the Half IRONMAN distance race and amateur athletes from across the globe toe the line for a 1.2-mile swim, a 56-mile bike ride, and day very hot and sweaty and even hilly 13.1 marathon or half marathon I should say. Now within this amateur race, there is a category for amateur athletes who are also carrying the demands of C-level executive work and it's called the Executive Challenge. So these are CEOs and executives that are in their separate category within the amateur field. These are folks are the epitome of the time-starved athlete. Now I should say strip them all down to their speedos and they are just like me and you. But they do represent a really fascinating performance puzzle -- Integrating travel, competing demands, a lot of external stressors. How do we actually yield performance? Well over the course of this category at the Puerto Rico 70.3, there were 25 Executive Challenge athletes. So 25 athletes and Purple Patch had three athletes in this category. We have Pat Romano. We had Michael Southworth, and we had Jordan Ouida and what order did they finish in? First, second, and third. I think that's a podium sweep. Gents, well done. Three fabulous marvelous case studies of time-starved specificity, our topic du jour, and leveraging sport as a way to optimize your health and performance across life, including work. It's nice case studies. And I think a little bit of a validation of our thesis today. And so I raise a glass of precision hydration and say two or three of you. Well done, thanks for representing Purple Patch, you deserve a shout-out, and a great case study in time-starved performance. The Word of the Week this week, Puerto Rico, I've got a fond affection for that race now. All right, Barry, it's time for it. It is the meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 10:10
Yes, folks, it is the meat and potatoes. And let's begin with this word, specificity. Oh, how coaches and athletes love to discuss this word. Training has to be specific. And that's true. To an extent. Unfortunately, many athletes out there follow a quote-specific plan that ends up not being the optimal plan for their needs and situation. This might sound like a little bit of a paradox, but I'm going to explain why I think that today, and I'm gonna leverage tri-squad, our program as a vehicle of this education. Now as we dig into this, I need to ground us in explaining some of the top-level details of our tri-squad program. And I do this with the context that it's impossible for me to educate without providing some learning about the program itself. So let's kick off the meat and potatoes today with me explain how we actually coach athletes.
Matt Dixon 11:13
We actually have our one-to-one coaching program. And that is a classic program of an individual coach having a relationship with one of our coaching team myself for one of our small group of really dedicated and I would say, exceptional coaches. And that program includes unlimited communication with a training program that is designed from the ground up so completely custom customized to your day-to-day basis. And then of course what we like to say life happens. And so the program actually been adjusted depending on what you get done or don't get done if you have Last Minute Travel etc. In other words, we want to ensure that it always syncs with your or the athlete's schedule, and of course their demands. And so that's a more classic program, we're really proud of the quality of what I would label that a little bit more premium and high touch program. We also have tri-squad. Now, this is our more autonomous program is a way to think about that. This is our most popular program at Purple Patch with a group of committed high-performing athletes who receive great education and support as well as personalized training. But don't have a direct one-to-one relationship with a coach. Now in addition to this will be on tri-squad we also have other squad products, we have bike squad and run squad, but our focus today is around tri-squad. So tri squad is designed specifically there's word once again, but specifically for time-starved athletes, and it successfully caters to all levels of athlete all distances, short course to Ironman, and the programming is easily personalized to fit different schedules, hours, et cetera. It also integrates the full video coaching that you've heard me talk about so much both live and on-demand sessions, and is supported with a huge amount of ongoing education and guidance from myself, the Purple Patch coaching team and the experts that we trust across the performance spectrum.
Matt Dixon 13:19
And so while the program is slightly more autonomous by design, and you don't have an individual relationship, many of our athletes that are on the tri squad program continually report back to us that they get more feedback and support than their prior one-to-one coaching relationships. I also find it striking although it is by design, that the easy ability to toggle the duration of any individual workout as well as the number of sessions across the week means that if I just went and opened up to athletes programs on tri squad, I would open it up, and it would come out of the same methodology and approach. But the programs could look very different from each other, it wouldn't be unique to the individual athletes’ needs, situation, and setup.
Matt Dixon 14:07
Now, I should add, if it isn't clear, that tri-squad itself is designed so much more than just a pure training plan. In fact, approaching the tri squad program is just a training plan to help me train for an event would be to miss out on so much of the benefit and value. To maximize tri-squad, the best approach is to absolutely immerse yourself in all of the benefits and the tools that we've developed to help you become smarter about your journey, and ensure that we optimize the return on investment on your training efforts. Because ultimately, just like yourself, we want you to get faster. So this is the context around the program, you have this semi-autonomous, personalized program with a host of great support, and feedback coming from myself and the coaching team and other experts, all wrapped around with a great community of like-minded athletes.
Matt Dixon 15:05
And so with that grounding, now let's come back to John who is really interested but had his doubts. Let's return to his question. How can athletes of vastly different race distance goals from Sprint to Ironman, or successfully exist under the same program? John is training for Ironman, he wants specificity. He wants the magic Ironman plan. And I can appreciate his sentiment. So to respond to his doubts and worries, I'm going to provide my thoughts right here. John, thank you. It's a great question. And I'm glad you asked it, because it enables me to highlight one of the central defining approaches that fuels the Purple Patch approach for the time-starved athlete. Now to answer this question, just give me a little bit of patience here because I need to address the common landscape across endurance coaching.
Matt Dixon 15:59
Now, before I go into this, I want to place a caveat on record here. There are some great coaches out there that are delivering highly personalized and really valuable coaching for time-starved athletes. We're not alone on this. And I have a lot of respect and admiration for all of them. And transparency, though, I haven't seen a broader program that's available right now that tackles this challenge, the time-starved challenge really effectively. It's just my perspective, but I think it's the truth. Okay, so that with the caveat done, let's hold hands and go into the typical approach.
Matt Dixon 16:37
If I look at the way that most coaches and programs go around training endurance athletes, it normally flows a little bit like this, the coach has a methodology or a set of principles around building training programs, and great, they should, they should have their own methodology that super. The coach then goes on and builds a training program set around a utopian time-rich athlete, typically a more advanced or elite athlete, perhaps a pro athlete. And that program might be 20 to 30 hours in most weeks around Ironman training, perhaps 18 to 25 hours in half IRONMAN training, and then 16 to 25 hours depending on for an Olympic distance athlete. So in other words, time rich, and more advanced, there is the magic program, the plan, this is how we do it. The challenge is that time-starved athletes like yourselves, don't have these hours. And so that means if you are a time-starved athlete, you're left with the choice. You either take this magic program suitable for your race distance, and you chase those hours you cram them in, or you take the magic program, and you scale the hours you just reduce the number of hours in a week. Well, we know what cramming does, taking the magic program and forcing it into life. It always and that's bold and double-underlined. It always leads to fatigue, long-term underperformance increased risk and incidence of illness and injury, and of course, motivation, loss, and burnout. So we know that a losing proposition is just taking a program and stuffing it into life.
Matt Dixon 18:22
But let's dissect option two. And that's taking that race-specific plan. So anchored around Ironman training, for example, and simply scaling the number of training hours. Let's talk about this through a case study. Let's talk about John who is training for an IRONMAN so he would be leveraging the Ironman distance program, but he doesn't have 20 to 30 hours over the course of any given week to give to training. In fact, he's got about 12 hours, but he has his IRONMAN plan. That program was designed around an athlete that had unlimited training hours. So he's going to do 20 to 30 hours. But that's his program. And what he's going to do is just scale down the number of hours. So he's going to follow in any given week, about 12 weekly hours of training. And it's super, right? He wins because he's got race-specific training. And he's just gonna dilute the number of hours, but he still has that word specificity. And it's great. Apart from it isn't. And the reason it isn't is because it doesn't work very well. Because in this case study, what John has ended up doing is taking a so-called magical program, and just went about following about 40 or 50%, of that effective IRONMAN plan. And so while it falls under the guise of specificity, it actually isn't specific to what he is, which is a time-starved athlete. And unfortunately, that's the norm. The vast majority of programs that I see out there delivered to time-starved athletes, either asked the athlete to try and adhere to too many training hours relative to the context of their life. And so in other words, those training hours a night effective, leading to burnout, fatigue, underperformance, and everything else, or simply don't produce the training stimulus to yield the best results. Now, this is really, really harsh, but it's true. And it's a rampant problem that I see around the sport. So then the question becomes, what's smarter? What becomes a more effective way to actually train athletes? What you have to do to come to that answer is have the courage. And that's the courage to think about the specific demands and situations of the athlete who is actually being coached. So what we're going to try and do is shift perspective.
Matt Dixon 20:52
Let's think about a time-starved Purple Patch athlete. Typically, a Purple Patch athlete has somewhere between on the low end about six or seven hours a week, up to at the most for our time-starved athletes that's about 16 hours a week. So that's our budget, the average sits across distances, somewhere between 10 and 12 hours, that tends to be where most athletes net out. And so the coaching challenge for these athletes, I believe, is how do we optimize these hours, on average, 10 to 12 hours? How do we optimize these hours? Well, guess what research experience, expertise, developed over the last 15 years tells us something that ends up being really convenient. And that is that for much of the year, not all, but much of the year, no matter what distance of the key races that the athlete is targeting, the broad demands for an athlete that has 10 to 12 hours a week to give to training is pretty much the same. So short course, half IRONMAN, IRONMAN, optimal results emerge from a stimulus for a good chunk of the season. So the specificity that is chased. Remember, that's what John wanted, I want specific training, the specificity emerges not from IRONMAN, or half IRONMAN, or short course racing, but from the pursuit of optimization of training response within a training availability of 10 to 12 hours. And so from this approach, what we get is sustainable training, performance progression, and athletic improvement. But there is a big but to this. And this is really important.
Matt Dixon 22:48
That's not the end of the story. Because what I don't want to do here is paint a picture where we're just throwing a blanket of yup you're a time-starved athlete, and no matter what you're training for, you all need to do the same thing. Because that's not the case. Notice that I said for much of the year. And here's the big caveat here, and it's important to acknowledge. In the final weeks, or months, before your key race, there is a need for some race-specific training. In the last blocks of the training that you would do as an athlete if you're preparing for IRONMAN at one level, half IRONMAN, or short course racing, we do need to train for the specific demands of the events. And so it is from the bedrock of performance gains established over much of the year that an athlete progresses then on to a build approach that brings you day by day, setting up for a great personal performance in the distance of your key races. And so therefore, we have to acknowledge that Johnny preparing for USA nationals and our Olympic distance race requires different sessions in the last cycles of work than Sally who is getting ready for IRONMAN calendar in the same month. And depending on the event, your last 4, 7, 10 plus weeks, we do shift to race-specific distance focus. But the last thing that you need to do, folks, John, is "race-specific" training for the whole of the year, it would actually be performance craziness to make this differentiation for most of the year.
Matt Dixon 24:33
And that is a potently, I repeat potently effective approach. Because what John will get from this and you will get from this is to enjoy the physical and mental benefits than coming on a shared journey all with personalized programming. You get time-specific training to yield your performance gains. But then you get to dial in race readiness with your race build program. And what we get from this is amplifying the support the community elements and the accountability, which is the impact of being a part of tri-squad. And we have all of that without the dilution of race results. In fact, the race results are super. So what emerges from this approach? Yes, it's unique. Yes, it's not like other programs. But it's born out of years of doing this, is we derive from this mindset and approach time-starved specificity at the same time emerging from that race readiness and preparedness. And is that is how we do it. This approach has enabled countless first-time finishers to enjoy the journey without injury, without feeling like the sport is a part-time job. It's the catalyst for more than 1000 qualifiers to world championship events. And it's why I believe we are one of the highest performing teams at USA Olympic Distance Nationals, at the same time, having average number of hours for a Purple Patch Ironman athlete, only somewhere between eight and 14. And that is where I believe we stand alone. So I know that you hear me talk about time-starved athletics. And you talk about getting ready for specificity. Yeah, darn right, specificity. That's what we're chasing specificity for the time-starved athlete, that then yields the opportunity to prepare for the demands of the distance race that you're getting ready for. And that is the differentiator.
Matt Dixon 26:37
So I finished today, the same way that I finished with John, I had a question for John, and I'm going to ask you the same question. Are you ready to commit? Are you ready to partner with Purple Patch, remember our deal, register, and kickstart your journey with a complimentary coaching consultation, or go all in partner up for the whole of the season and we will back you all the way we will supercharge your season with $600 value worth of individual consultations that you can use any way that you want over the course of this season. All you need to do is ping us at info at Purple Patch fitness.com For more information, and you can set up a complimentary call. And no, that's not one of the coaching consultations, a complimentary call to see whether we're a good fit. You can also head to the website register at any time, don't worry, all of the links automagically take care of it. All right guys, just with a perspective, I wish you the best of luck over the course of the season. And I hope you do it with us. Take care.
Matt Dixon 27:39
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 at Purple Patch fitness.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, starved, program, ironman, purple, training, patch, approach, performance, specificity, race, week, tri, john, squad, coaching, coach, specific, hours, little bit