Episode 267: Case Studies - Performance Successes and Cautionary Tales
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In this week’s episode of the Purple Patch Podcast, we focus on athletes like you. Ironman Master coach Matt Dixon puts a spotlight on four case studies anchored in performance.
Matt breaks down the lessons we can learn from those who have excelled in their performance journey as well as those who were less fortunate and serve as cautionary tales about the pitfalls on the way to improved performance.
All of the case studies are real athletes that either Purple Patch or Matt has trained.
We look at the training process through the lens of a former rugby player reigniting his fire for fitness by finishing marathons and committing to his performance journey.
This is a great story of integration of sport into your life, not just to develop a pride and satisfaction from the outcome, but about becoming a better version of yourself. And having the rewards be the journey itself throughout the daily routine. - Matt Dixon
We also delve into the athletic mindset by following the mini-victories of an athlete emerging from massive injury to achieve great personal success.
Through the stories of an athlete with aspirations of going pro, suffering from a lack of patience for the process, and a committed triathlete falling into performance decline, Matt illustrates some of the common elements that can derail a performance journey and ultimately steal joy away from the sport.
There's no shortcut. There's no easy way. It takes patience, it takes commitment and it takes developing your strengths and your race craft so that when you step up -- it is still always going to be a huge seismic step up to be pro -- but you can be ready emotionally, physically, and from a race craft standpoint. And that takes real guidance, structure, and long-term planning. - Matt Dixon
All four stories, from the negative to the inspiring, provide perspective on the coaching process and how to focus on building performance, rather than focusing on outcomes so that you can become the person and athlete you want to be.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 04:15 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
04:23 - 52:23 - The Meat and Potatoes - Episode 267: Case Studies - Performance Successes and Cautionary Tales
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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
Creating a platform of sustained high performance is no easy task. It requires commitment, as well as finding a recipe that enables you to create consistency, integration of training into life commitments, and of course, breaking through plateaus so that you can achieve sustainable results. At Purple Patch, our athletes tend to leverage InsideTracker to amplify their results of the hard work they put it in. By assessing biometrics and following the recommendation and advice from the team of experts at InsideTracker they, and you, can expect to dial in your focus and get trackable results in your platform of health. So whether your goal is a world championship, or just simply better energy throughout the day, InsideTracker can become a valuable tool in your performance toolkit. Now, a special note this week, also something brand new for InsideTracker. And women, I think you should listen to this one because it's an important one around your health. In InsideTracker's ongoing effort to stay on the cutting edge of personal health and analysis and guidance, it is now live with three new women's health biomarkers: progesterone, estradiol, and TSH, that's thyroid stimulating hormone. And guys, you are not left out of the equation either you will now receive TSH as a part of your blood profile and packet of information. The good news is that you don't need to be a Purple Patch athlete to take advantage of both the new little hormone markers, but also on top of it, everything else that comes with InsideTracker already. All you need to do is head to insidetracker.com/purplepatch and enter the code PurplePatchPro20, that's Purple Patch Pro two zero, you get 20% off everything at the store. All right, this week, we're talking about you. Yes, it's a week of case studies. Enjoy the show.
Matt Dixon 02:18
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast as ever, your host, Matt Dixon. And this week, I thought we would spend a little time talking about you. Well, at least some folks like you, because it is time for our periodic little show that we do around case studies anchored in performance. And I thought for this show this time, we would do something a little bit different. I've got four case studies to go through. And two of them are going to be about performance success. What we can learn from folks that have done a great job in their performance journey. But equally, I'm going to outline two cautionary tales, some athletes that maybe weren't so successful that we can pick apart and draw some conclusions and apply some of the lessons so that we don't fall into the same pitfalls as these unfortunate athletes have done. Now, I hope that my cautionary tales have evolved and got much stronger, but I thought it might be helpful.
Matt Dixon 03:17
So you're gonna get to learn from some of the negative but also the inspiring, and each with key lessons. Now these key lessons, what I've decided to do this week is bubble them up before we go into the case study itself. This is what you're going to learn so that it can really paint the picture and you can keep your ears open and you can make sure that you draw the lessons from the words that we talk about the case studies. Now these are real athletes that I or Purple Patch have worked with. We're going to discuss rugby players finishing marathons, committed triathletes falling into performance decline, an elite amateurs journey towards a pro athlete career, and athletes emerging from massive injury to great personal success. And so it sounds like we've got plenty to chew on. So what we're going to do this week, we're going to skip Matt's News-ings. We're going to skip word of the week and we're going to hold hands and Barry, we are going to as a team because it's always better as a team, we are going to go right into the meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 04:23
All right, yes, meat and potatoes time. Let's kick these off gang: Case Studies. And truth is, I always prefer the good news before the bad. And so we're going to start with a story of performance success. This one is really tugging at my heartstrings. I'm very very proud of this. This is all about Ben. Case study Ben and I'm going to label Ben an old rugby player. Ben is also an executive and he is now in transition to becoming a marathon enthusiast and I think this is a case study of just doing things right. Although, there was a little bit of adversity along the way. Now I want to highlight Ben's story, as I think that you can draw a lot from this case study. As I listen, I encourage you to draw on the threads of some of the components. Number one, the value and the benefit of committing to a journey in both training and performance. Ben really gets a lot out of this. The importance of an integrated approach of sport into life, to pave the path of consistency for yourself, and hence, the pathway towards great improvement. And finally, the undeniable power and value of embracing multi-sport in order to train for running. So it's good fun one here, let's first kick off with Ben's profile. So Ben is based in London, very busy executive, trains internationally, almost every week. He is a father and a husband, and a father of a young child. So very young, got the anarchy, the whirlwind of life as he goes through. His sporting background, well, various sports, but you would label him as a recovering rugby player, who, in many ways lost a commitment to fitness generally, as life and work became more and more demanding. It's a story that we see a lot. And Ben came to me originally about 18 months ago, and he was a picture of struggle, he didn't really have any vibrancy and the energy, had relatively low motivation for work, and even extending into life a little bit. And all the while was having to navigate very high demands with limited management opportunity, travel, kids work, and much, much more. And when he came to me, Ben, knew that fitness and health were valuable, important components to maybe improve his state of being and how he would show up to his family to his kid to work, et cetera, but it really failed to get the ball rolling alone. And so what we have to do to tell Ben's story is break his journey into two parts. And the first one was not really a success. So let's call part one his first go around. And the truth is that it just didn't go that well. I want to talk about this and break it down, maybe a little bit of the why. So when Ben first came to me, and again, that was about 18 months ago, he found himself with an incredible amount of competing demands. But at the same time, I would say that he was untethered. And so while he believed, and trusted that fitness and the supporting habits around it better, sleep better, eating better hydration, etc, would really help facilitate improvement, he really struggled to adhere. And I think a part of it was that he was just in a place that he didn't have capacity, cognitive, mental logistical capacity to really commit to change. And change is really difficult, even if it is a positive thing that you are changing. And so he was hesitant, he was hesitant to take on a real goal, that big hairy goal or audacious goal is I always like to point out, and after a few months of a few kickstarts, a little bit of working together, there was a blunt truth. And that's that, that Ben had really joined my coaching, seeking the fix, but wasn't quite ready or able, in a way maybe to embrace the shift and the change that was necessary. And so while he believed he wasn't just in the place, the timing wasn't right, that he could really commit. And so Ben retreated. And sometimes that's the last we hear of these characters we don't see anymore. And, while it wasn't the time, and I very much enjoyed working with Ben, it was one of the few times that I felt frustrated that I hadn't managed to facilitate the pathway ahead and the recipe if you want to call it that, for Ben to actually flourish. And so I thought, well, that might be the end of the chapter. But the good news is for our case, study at least, and of course, for Ben and I's coaching relationship, there is part two to this journey. Because Ben returned about a year later, six months ago, and this time he was ready. Now he had a few months away, he calibrated, he realized that he missed some of the structure that we had at least managed to implement. And he decided that this time, it was time and he arrived and said I have registered for the London Marathon. That is my big goal. Now me as a coach, I was skeptical, at least to begin. He was a guy that would registered for a marathon six months away, and up to this point had never been able to run consistently without getting injured, had few of the supporting habits that I felt unnecessary to pave consistency, and hadn't been able to in previous attempts find a recipe that could facilitate that consistency. So while I loved his enthusiasm, and I wanted to back my athletes, at the same time, I realized and was pragmatic enough to say, hey, this journey is not going to be easy. But me being me, loving his enthusiasm and of course, the fact that he returned and wanted to give it another go, I held hands and said, Ben, let's do it.
Matt Dixon 10:26
And so what were the challenges for Ben? Well, I think the biggest challenge was ensuring that we could start to build a recipe where it could retain health - muscular health, so in other words, avoiding injury - but at the same time, also, overall platform of health, vibrancy, and energy, that it didn't detract from all of his other commitments, both with family and of course, with work. And so retaining health was the first challenge that we had to take on.
Matt Dixon 10:55
The second, it was, it was a truth that Ben had to shift body composition for the positive. And he had to do this while he was training. And that's always a challenging component. Many people actually make the mistake of training for resilience while also trying to reduce body weight, which I felt was a contributing factor to his injury. So how do we get there by fueling the training, retaining health, preparing for a marathon but also having body composition, evolution in the positive? So that was a second challenge that we faced.
Matt Dixon 11:31
I also realized from previous experience that retaining motivation and progression for someone under so many demands - work, family, international travel, travel every week, it's just not an easy task. And ultimately, if we were successful, I needed to also ensure that those demands that are important and non-negotiable, they didn't suffer. So we can go on a journey towards training for a marathon, while now in compromise in how we showed up in the workplace. In fact, if we got this recipe, right, we should be able to get Ben marathon ready but also help improve how he showed up in the other areas, his life. It is important. But you might say sometimes it's utopian. And so the approach that we laid out was one that was seeped into Ps. I said, Ben, we need patience and pragmatism. And add to that, you're going to need some out-of-the-box thinking on how we're going to go about this. In fact, I told Ben, you are not going to be able to download this program or approach, enabling you to get ready. And in fact, all your buddies that you're doing this with, none of them will be doing the same approach. It's all going to be radically different. It's nonclassical. And that might along the way, I'm just going to warn you right now, it might twist your mind a little bit. So step one, we said we are not going to think even though it's six months away, we are not going to think about the marathon. For the first three months, we're going to put it under the umbrella, that Ben we are going to start to develop the athlete. So in other words, for the first half of the program leading into the marathon, we are not even consider training for the marathon. Instead, we want to build consistency, so that you can be doing something every day, and ensure that we are getting progression. And then we are going to build up all of the muscular-skeletal tissue resilience so that you can then accelerate and train for the specific demands of your race in the back half of the program.
Matt Dixon 13:44
So what did that look like? Well, number one, strength training, very important twice a week, key strength components, a lot of stability work, a lot of core work, some old fashioned strength work as well. We also infused strength-based training on the cardiovascular side. We did a lot of hill-based walking, yes, walking. Training for a marathon in six months time, hill-based walking. Something in which we could improve tissue resilience without a risk of injury. And putting against a grade, it was a wonderful way to do it.
Matt Dixon 14:19
Wrapping around that we then started to do a high-frequency running approach. Now, every single run that Ben did for the first three months was low intensity, so conversational, and it included walk breaks, and typically they were relatively short, but we did many of them over the week. We started with three to four, we went to five to six, we went to six even some weeks seven times a week that we were running, but some of these runs were five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, maybe 20 minutes in duration, the longest run for the first few months 40 or 50 minutes, but we were hitting with frequency.
Matt Dixon 14:59
The third component habit creation, we needed to build out really strong robust habits that were going to support the current progression in training, but also the readiness to absorb as we started to throttle up the training and start to get marathon ready. So we prioritize sleep. We integrated the habit of post-workout fueling, we've talked a lot about last show -- really, really important. Daily hydration, which for Ben was an absolute game changer. I'm vibrant. I've got energy, I'm not hungry. Yes, daily hydration really simple. We also asked Ben not to eat too close to bedtime. So try and improve his sleep quality. And the key thing for him particularly with work, travel, and business dinners, remove or at least radically reduce alcohol during the week. So that started to have a virtuous circle effect. He was improving fitness, he was starting to get better energized, he was rejuvenating more. And then the only place that we infused any intensity was in multi-sport disciplines. We leverage the rowing ergometer and the peloton bike - short, high-intensity. Occasionally, when we were lucky with travel, we would also integrate a little bit of swimming because Ben really likes swimming. And it's a great 90% of your weight and displaced exercise where you can hit a whole bunch of intensity and be really successful. So that was the recipe. We went through that we progressed. And then on the second part of the journey, we started to integrate a little bit more marathon readiness, but we didn't just go for over-distance running. We maintained frequency, we throttled up the higher intensity work for cardiovascular stress and muscular endurance with big gear, low cadence or slow pedaling work on the bike, very, very demanding, and a lot of short, high-intensity training on the rowing ergometer and on the peloton, bike. And then to get the muscular resilience necessary to go and do a marathon. We started to do some cluster running. Maybe a moderately long run on Saturday morning, a sneaky one before dinner, Saturday night. Saturday, Sunday runs. Sometimes Friday, Saturday, Sunday cluster runs where he would build up close to a marathon distance, but over the course of three days. And that started to gradually build resilience.
Matt Dixon 17:31
Now, what was the result of all this while over the course of the journey? Ben was never injured once. He had great consistency. Throughout the whole program, he integrated walk breaks into every single session that he did. The first step or the first litmus test of our success was the Brighton half marathon. And in the course of this, much to the chagrin of the folks around him, he integrated walk breaks throughout. And in the last 5k of that half marathon, he was passing many, many people, even passed the guy who questioned his walk breaks early suggesting rugby players aren't really built for running are they? But pass him he went. He arrived to the London Marathon injury free. And the day before the race itself. We spoke and he was nervous. But you know what? Ben already knew he had won. Do you know why he had won the results and the outcomes weren't out yet? He hadn't crossed the finish line. But it was about what Ben was becoming. Because he had loved the journey. The journey and training and the lifestyle had created so many rewards. He felt better than he ever had. And he was showing up present and focused of work and family. And most importantly, he was enjoying it. So did he finish the marathon? You bet he did. Four hours and 30 minutes. An incredible performance for a first-time marathon of this old rugged rugby player. And guess what he walked more than 20 times during the course of that race. And in the last 10k of the London Marathon, he was passing people and feeding off that sensation. And his pace was even throughout. You know the best thing about all of this. He's already registered for a half marathon in five weeks time. Why not? He said, Why don't we go and do it. And after that, there's a new challenge ahead. What is it gonna be? A faster marathon? Maybe something with the three in front of it, a trail running race, something different? Who knows? It's Ben's journey. But now we know what is possible. Commit when you're ready, but then follow through. Take a really patient path. Give yourself enough of a runway to build the athlete first. Build consistency over many, many months instead of heroic efforts in single days. And if you want to go as fast as possible as you can in your running, you'd better start embrace walking. And never, ever forget the power of integrating other sports into your performance recipe. It truly works. This is a great story of integration of sport into your life, not just to develop a pride and satisfaction from the outcome, but about becoming a better version of yourself. And having the rewards be the journey itself throughout the daily routine. Ben, your kick us off to a really nice start.
Matt Dixon 20:40
But ladies and gentlemen, now I'm afraid I have to turn to a tail of caution. Oh, Sofia, yes, Sofia you are case study number two. Now the lessons of this case study include an unfortunate failure to adapt a training approach. As Sophia was aging maturing, the body was starting to evolve and what worked before wasn't appropriate for what should Sophia need. Now. It's also highlighting some of the perils of leaning into expertise in coaching, but ultimately failing to embrace the expertise and coaching, leading to even less growth than you're getting before. And the stark truth slowing down with age is often as much to do with really poor habits and training than it is to do in natural biology. You don't have to slow down at the rate that maybe you are. So why don't we dig in? Here's Sofia, and she is I should preface this, a fantastic person. And she allowed me to talk about her case because she's trying to come out the other side of this now. But Sofia had been an endurance athlete when she came to Purple Patch for the last 25 years and she was, to put it in a box, highly committed. She views herself first as a runner, but also a triathlete. And throughout the course of her 20s and 30s, she had a lot of success, a lot of podiums, or qualifications to this, that, and the other. And she was one of those athletes that just loved the training. She embraced the miles. And yes, she did piles of miles, a lot of training. And throughout all of that, she was highly controlled, and restricted in her eating. She never committed to strength training and she believed she just didn't need it. She was getting validation, she was getting results. And a lot of this training was just going out there and having one of those smash fests, goodness me, I don't like that phrase. A broad lack of variance, so most of the intensity was moderately strong to strong, and she much preferred to just chase mileage and hours over creating a really polarized program whatsoever.
Matt Dixon 23:00
Well in Sofia's case, as it is with all of us, because you cannot beat physiology, ladies and gentleman, all good things must come to an end. And so what started to happen over the last few years was a drop-off, a drop-off in speed and power on the bike. She became less fluid on the run, her mechanics were starting to decline mostly originating from poor posture and really stiff hips. And from the ages of about 40, up through till 45, Sofia started to see experience a significant drop off in overall speed across both her half marathon, marathon, half Ironman and Ironman performance. Yes, she was a committed athlete. And of course, what happened to passion? Well, it started to really get into a rut, because she started to realize that her running the thing that was her heartbeat was in real decline. And so she came to Purple Patch for help.
Matt Dixon 23:00
The first question I asked Sofia was, Do you think that you're able to evolve? Do you think you can actually change? And the reason I asked this is because for an athlete that is so deeply ingrained in an approach that has delivered positive results, perhaps not likely being the optimal program in the first place, but it did deliver results, despite that program. It's very, very difficult to actually have the courage, that's a good word, the courage to evolve. And you think, might think, well, she's struggling, she's had a few years and so yeah, of course she would. But no, change is hard. Even when that change is positive. And it's coming from the outside. This is what you need to do to improve. Most people when they are rooted in behaviors and habits and a part of their identity is what they do, it's very, very difficult, but Sofia insisted that she could do it. So here was the approach that we outlined.
Matt Dixon 25:03
The first part of it was a complete repositioning of the training program, where we had strength as the central priority of any given week of training, twice a week, very important, sometimes three times a week, that became really important. Other supplemental sessions of mobility, particularly focused around the low back, the hips, the thoracic area, to really try and get the movement patterns going back. So strength and everything under that umbrella was the central part of the program prescription. We also increased the percentage of our training hours that were done really, really easy. We want to be highly conversational, almost boringly easy Sofia. But to support that, we are going to identify two to three workouts a week that you can have at it, but not just go have it, go and do some really high intensity, some short, high interval sessions, that are going to be very, very challenging. And the one part that Sofia didn't like, though, was a total reduction of hours in the week of training. That became necessary so that we could allow the strength training to take hold. Now, in support of that, the plan was then to make some considerable shifts in eating habits with a greater focus of supporting the training load with a higher number of calories and a greater amount of protein. And integrate Sophia into training groups, into some community side of stuff so that we could develop a system, if you want to call it that, of accountability support, maybe a repositioning of the sport as not been quite so serious, and a bit more fun and adventurous. Which I felt would lead ultimately, to better racing results and outcomes.
Matt Dixon 26:49
So that was the overall program plan. But the first thing that we did was start deliberately with something that was directly under our control on a day-to-day basis, which was the training component, then we were going to get to the eating habits in support, just a few changes that we made to start but not an overall of eating, and then bring in the groups. Well, the unfortunate truth is that Sofia's actions failed her, and she had great intentions, but in order to evolve, Sofia resisted almost on all levels. And and I chuckle there, but it's not something to really laugh at, because it's a real challenge. It was a real struggle. And I had a tremendous amount of empathy. And in many ways, it was a, you label it a coaching failure because it's not all on the athlete, I didn't -- I wasn't able to set up the environment, or layout the plan in a way that Sofia could access and activate it. And so consistently, Sofia found herself adding hours of training, going too strong on the easier workout. So pushing on on those sessions that I really designated to be light. She maintained the intervals on the hard work that was fine, because it was hard work, and so it created validation. The one change that she made, which was critical, is the short, high high-intensity stuff, the
Matt Dixon 28:18
30, 45, 60-second stuff, she thought, well, that's not long enough. And so I'm going to do 4, 5, 6-minute intervals. And after all, she said to me, as long as I'm going hard, it's good enough, yeah? Well, maybe but not really, because we're losing some specificity of what we're driving at -- a conversation for another day.
Matt Dixon 28:38
Now, she absolutely absolutely resisted any mention of team groups dynamics, getting involved with other athletes, and we hardly managed to shift any behaviors in eating. So after just three months, she quit. She was frustrated, and just said to me, it's not working. Well, of course, it wasn't because she wasn't implementing the changes. And this is a really unfortunate situation now make no mistakes Sofia is a lovely person, I've got the highest regard. And the challenge here though, the cautionary tale is that it's frustrating for a coach and sad to see decline accelerate, performance decline accelerate, when it doesn't have to. But when sport is identity, it's really tough to evolve the approach.
Matt Dixon 29:33
And so Sofia is not alone in this. Many athletes face this. But the truth about Sofia's situation is if she had the courage to pause and to truly adapt and evolve, and actually lean into ju--, not just listening to advice, but activating that advice. I believe that she could still flourish. And so if you're listening today, you might be listening and perhaps you're experiencing performance decline. Maybe you're an experienced athlete, that slowly over time as you're hitting the hills on the bike, you're just choosing a lighter gear, or you're integrating more walk breaks going uphill, or your pace is dropping, overall, the power is starting to evaporate, no matter, the fact that you're still committed to the sport. Maybe just maybe, in fact, probably, what you need to do is pause and go back to the drawing board, and draw some of the elements, the wisdom, the experience, the race craft, and all of that stuff, and bring them into the new version of yourself, but radically improve or evolve your whole approach to training. Because the truth is that every athlete goes through life cycles, and what worked, when you were 20 or 30, is not going to be the same thing that is going to be the best program for you now. It doesn't mean your program was necessarily bad, it might have achieved results, but when you're 40, 50, 60, or above, it's likely not gonna be the approach that works for you now. But to evolve that, it takes courage, it takes coachability and it takes a ton of bravery and activation of things that are going to take you outside of your comfort zone. But if you can do it, you don't just get to enjoy sport, further on from here, you get to keep improving because you can improve into your 40s, into your 50s, and even beyond, you can become better. That's our cautionary tale for case study number two.
Matt Dixon 31:47
Case study number three, because I want to finish on a high, let's move on to another cautionary tale. And this one's pretty short and sweet, but I think it's important because we have a lot of folks that enjoy the show that are very, very serious about the sport and often have aspirations to become a professional or at least a very elite amateur. So this is a lesson in smart development, a strategic plan, and the importance of confidence in yourself, belief, coachability, and a love of the process. Now this is about an athlete, Dina.
Matt Dixon 32:24
Dina was 24 years old when we talk about this case study. And she was a triathlete in which she was a very strong runner, a good biker, and relative to the field, and certainly relative to the more elite in the sport, a weaker swimmer. And that's important as a part of this case study that we're going to go through. Dina loves the sport. In fact, one of her big inspirations, her role model, her sporting hero, is Lucy Charles, a fantastic British athlete. She has been second at the Hawaii Ironman multiple times. She has been a world champion, and she is just an absolutely fantastic athlete. And it's understandable that Dina would be inspired by her. So let's go through just to give you a little bit of a reference point of Dina's age group results relative to a range of some of the more successful pros in the sport. Let's talk about half Ironman or Ironman 70.3 distance. So Dina's swim, give or take, is somewhere between depending on the course is typically somewhere around 30 to 32 minutes for a half Ironman swim. The top pros are coming out of the water 22, 23, 24 minutes. So there's a bit of a delta there in the swim. I talked about that being a little bit more of a weak point. In her bike, she's pretty strong bike rider, most half-Ironman courses, somewhere between two hours and 20 on a very fast course but upwards towards two hours and 40 minutes on a more hilly and challenging course. Most of the pros are seeing somewhere between two hours and 10 to two hours and 20 minutes on most courses, sometimes creeping out a little bit slow on the very, very challenging courses. And then her run she has a very strong runner. She has an hour and 20 minutes to an hour and 25 depending on the course and the environment. But the top pros, well, running on the fastest end, we just experience a 1:13 off the bike, but you would say somewhere between 1:15 to 1:20. And so there or thereabouts, 3, 4, 5 minutes behind over the course of a half marathon. So make no mistake her, Dina is a very very strong amateur athlete with a weak swim relative. That's the big point that's important. So, over the course of the season, Dina qualified for her professional license, and she was very, very eager to take that license. I want to go pro. I want to have that proverbial P on the calf. And I'm going to learn it and develop from the inside. I'm gonna see what the standard is and I want to go forth. I'm bored with amateur racing, I keep winning, I don't know who I'm racing against because of the setup. And so I want to go and challenge myself against the best in the world.
Matt Dixon 35:12
Well, my question for her was, what do you want out of the sport? Do you want to go and challenge yourself and compete against pros? Or do you want to become a really successful professional athlete? Her answer was the second, I want to become a highly successful Pro. That is my ultimate goal, I want to be Lucy Charles. And that's great. That's a fantastic dream. And so under that context, my advice was very simple. Currently, you are not ready to compete at that level. And a big part of that challenge, Dina, is the fact that your swim is much weaker. And that has a challenge, because it brings you out of the water, many, many minutes behind, and you're gonna be surrounded by either no one, or a bunch of athletes that tend to be at the rear of the field, the sport has evolved a lot, and it's very, very challenging. So then you're going to hit the bike, and you're going to be losing just a little bit more ground to where you're going to hit the run and you're going to be in no man's land. And no matter how good your run is, you are going to be an afterthought, you're not going to get to be challenged by those pros, because they're going to be minutes ahead of you.
Matt Dixon 36:36
Now add to this, that what is required to be a truly exceptional Pro, is not just the training that you need to do. It's also all of the supporting habits. And if you want to get to that level, it means that you have to prioritize sleep, you have to scale down some of the social commitments, you have to prioritize a strategic approach to eating. Prehab, Rehab, strength and conditioning, and everything else that goes into a professional athlete. And with her current full-time job, Dina just simply didn't have the life structure to facilitate even 50% of that. So we can't just throw training hours at the situation. And unfortunately, right now, she wasn't quite ready. And so the advice was, stay amateur. Try and, quote, win everything by developing your swimming, greatly improve your biking to a weapon, and then get yourself where you can be much closer to quote the race to have which then you can take the step up and try and evolve on the inside. Very, very similar to the journey and the approach that we took with Sarah Piampiano one of the most successful American professional Ironman athletes in the history of the sport, Meredith Kessler, Jesse Thomas, the list goes on.
Matt Dixon 38:00
Dina didn't like the advice. And so she decided to leave Purple Patch and she found her a coach who told her that she could do it. And you know what? That's okay. And I really hoped, I really hoped that Dina would prove me wrong, that she could do it from the inside. But the truth is, I've never, ever seen any young professional athlete start with a situation like I've just outlined and move on to be successful. And so one year later, she's out of the sport. She's done. She's not an amateur that's thriving and getting a whole bunch of validation, confidence and pride, and satisfaction. She's done. And she's done with a little bit of bitterness. Bitterness at the sport itself. Lower performances within her amateur journey took her to much less confidence, much less enjoyment, and ultimately, just done. And that's the story. That's what happens at the huge seismic step up that occurs with going from very good amateur to elite, world-class professional sports. It's very challenging.
Matt Dixon 39:18
And so the lesson from this is that it's so important, if you are aspirational, if you do really want to take on a journey to become a professional athlete, there's no shortcut. There's no easy way. It takes patience. It takes commitment and it takes developing your strengths and your race craft so that when you step up, it is still always going to be a huge seismic step up to be pro, but you can be ready emotionally, physically, and from a race craft standpoint. And that takes real guidance, structure, and long-term planning. And so that's just a cautionary tale for folks that are looking to be a successful professional athlete.
Matt Dixon 40:05
So let's finish the show. With the final component. We're going to go to case study number four. This is about Mia, and Mia provides a wonderful set of lessons around longtime gains of a journey of sport, the importance of building mini victories in your training, and focusing on the important boulders under your control rather than get distracted by all of the noise out there. So let's talk about Mia.
Matt Dixon 40:33
Mia is 43 years of age and she is still recovering, we might label, from massive trauma. She had a bike accident about three years ago from an impact with a car. I know that's not the most enjoyable things to talk about on the show but it happens. And over about 18 months, she went through some pretty extensive rehabilitation, and Mia had a goal to return to racing. And so year one she got back into the training, recovery, and recuperation was up there, let's do this. And Mia's approach, which was understandable, was gradually build up the volume, start to integrate intervals back into it, some intensity in your training, and go and replicate towards a program that Mia was doing pre-accident, because pre-accident she was having a lot of success. Now, fitness emerged but progression was slow. Consistently, Mia had setbacks, setbacks with niggles and injuries, and little indirect components that ultimately flowed from the accident itself, a lot of it around the ribs and the spine, the pillar of the body. And so after about a year of this, Mia found herself frustrated, and ultimately fearful that she would just never get back to the level. She had developed a almost Pass/Fail mindset in the races as she came back. And so she started to force, force, force, race-specific training way too early in the program, where her body wasn't ready to absorb that type of training yet. So the issue with Mia was her prior program might have been suitable for a general triathlete. It was good program, but it simply wasn't fit for purpose when you try and apply that program to an athlete now who is coming back from major injuries. Because the prior program was just based around swim, bike, run - a typical triathlon program. A lot of volume, but a low focus on strength, stability, movement patterns. Way too much race specificity, not enough specificity for Mia's situation, as was her reality at the time.
Matt Dixon 42:48
And so we decided to go about things in a radically evolved way. So what was the approach? Well, let's say this in a way that you'll remember it. Cover your kid's ears. Mia, fuck periodization, screw your FTP, dump the miles accumulation, and throw away your whoop band. Here is what we're going to do. We are going to go radically different and we are going to go through three components. We are going to build strong Mia. Then we are going to build fit Mia. Then finally we're going to go fast Mia. So, strong Mia, starting last November through til March 31, so over the course of about five months, we are going to prioritize the program over the bullseye being strength. Not swim bike and run, the bullseye is strength. And we're going to focus on movement patterns, on stability, on balance, and on strength. That is going to be the priority of the program to begin phase one, strong Mia.
Matt Dixon 44:03
Of course, in addition to the strength Mia wants to be a triathlete again, so we can't ignore the other stuff. So running. We went frequent and easy a pattern over the course of another case study we didn't do any intensity, all easy. The mission: tissue resilience, movement patterns, biomechanics, very, very calm, and easy. The third element of part one or strong Mia was her riding. We wanted to build back confidence, familiarity of control over the bicycle, and frankly a love of bike riding. So relatively low hours, but a lot of strength-based riding. Gravel riding, a lot of fun, a lot of freedom, a lot of road biking, encouraging Mia when she felt good just to do some higher intensity on the bike. Push up the hill a little bit, put it into a bigger gear. So I wanted Mia to really develop a love of biking again, and also while going through that really mastering bike control, and that would enable her over time to go on to the next phase of training with a master of control so that her focus could be external. And that really helped break through some of the post-traumatic stress. That's almost a whole show on itself but it was really a love of bike riding, and we weren't chasing miles. And so finally, where do we get the intensity from where we got the intensity through some of the swimming that we did, and also some of the trainer-based bike. So we did two sessions a week on the trainer, very, very high intensity, all of the outside riding fun, and intensity when you wanted to enjoy. So low volume, higher intensity, swim and bike, run frequency, and then strength been the pillar of it. And it was very simple. She was doing about a third, and then progressing to about a half of her typical training hours on a weekly basis.
Matt Dixon 46:05
In addition to that, we really started to dial in her supporting habits. So we talked about fueling the body, really building up trying to optimize protein synthesis. She was consuming about one gram of protein for every pound of body weight on a daily basis. She was prioritizing, sleep and showing that she was getting really good sleep quality, and at least eight hours of sleep every single night, but the biggest component here was what was driving the program. Stripping out some of the complexity and keeping it simple. Mia had wanted to get back to racing and get back to her former self. And so she was chasing race-specific training and chasing race results.
Matt Dixon 46:50
I said to Mia, let's remove all of that. Let's not worry about outcomes right now. Let's think about what you want to become. Here's your goal for this year. Your goal for this year is to finish the season, of which we will go and do events, but you want to finish this season and you want to be able to remove the cloak that is on you, and it is that cloak of the experience of the accident, and you want to take it off you and looking forward to next year, you want to be able to confidently go and do whatever the F you want. That is success. That's what you want to become. And if you focus on the becoming, my assumption, my belief, is that the results will flow and your outcomes will be better. So sleep well, fuel well, focus on strength first. And as a part of this, that's where we're at in the story so far.
Matt Dixon 47:54
She's done a great job. Mia has committed to strength. She has gone and played on the bicycle. She's kept her running really pretty easy. She's mastered her bike control. She's fueling really well, she's happier. She's enjoying the process. She's not worried about outcomes. And we're five months in. Oh, she has raced by the way. I forgot to say that part. Yeah, she has raced. She has raced a half Ironman in fact. We didn't train for it, at least not specifically, because it was right in the middle of that project. The strong Mia project. But it's important, go and race. Because you know what Mia got from that race? She got a little bit of insight. Where am I at relative to old Mia? How did I do? How's the journey going? I've been asking for mini-victories, but why don't we just go and get back to doing what you love? Because it's okay folks to race. Racing is fun. And it's okay to race even if you're not specifically ready, and you're not targeting that race. So we came up to race day. And I asked Mia what's your race plan gonna be? She said, "Woah, I don't feel ready for this. I mean, I'm not I haven't been training for a half Ironman." Here was her race plan. Go and swim your swim. Then I want you to go and ride your bike incredibly strong. Just go bike race it. She thought I was bonkers. And I said now let's see how you run off that. How does it actually go? Well, she had a terrific performance. One her best Half-Ironman performances. She was second in her age group. A total surprise to Mia, but not to the coach.
Matt Dixon 49:46
When she came to a training camp in April, just a couple of weeks ago, a huge improvement in consistency, better output across all disciplines in the camp relative to last year, and a loop that took her 50 minutes over the course of the bike, and yes, we did multiple of them, 42 minutes this year. Now we hold hands, we look forward, because it's time to do part two and part three, fit Jenna's coming, she's already fit. Fast, Jenna is going to emerge, she's already fast. And we are going to evolve and build the athlete, but ultimately, we're not going to get all obsessive. We're not going to worry about outcomes. We're going to think about becoming the person and the athlete that you want to be.
Matt Dixon 50:32
So I hope that that's insightful. I hope that those gives you a little bit of perspective on the coaching process. And I hope that you can draw some of the lessons and apply them to your own journey. Next week, we're back to regular programming. But I tell you what, that was a lot of fun. I hope you enjoyed, and we will see you next time. Take care.
Matt Dixon 50:52
Guys, thanks so much for joining. And thank you for listening, I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing. Head to the Purple Patch channel of YouTube, and you will find it there and you could subscribe. Of course, I'd like to ask you, if you will subscribe, also share it with your friends. And it's really helpful if you leave a nice positive review in the comments. Now any questions that you have, let me know feel free to add a comment and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. And in fact, as we commence this video podcast experience, if you have any feedback at all, as mentioned earlier in the show, we would love your help in helping us to improve. Simply email us at info@purplepatchfitness.com or leave it in the comments of the show at the Purple Patch page and we will get you dialed in. We'd love constructive feedback. We are in a growth mindset as we like to call it. And so feel free to share with your friends, but as I said, let's build this together. Let's make it something special. It's really fun. We're really trying hard to make it a special experience. And we want to welcome you into the Purple Patch community. With that, I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun, keep smiling, doing whatever you do. Take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Mia, training, ben, athlete, Sofia, marathon, run, program, sport, Dina, bike, journey, week, started, race, build, performance, strength, important, evolve