Episode 277: Purple Patch Case Study Series - #1 - Matt Lieto and Meredith Kessler
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This month on the Purple Patch Podcast, we're highlighting Purple Patch Performance Case Studies.
We wanted to share practical insights about performance, so we're analyzing real-life examples rather than just theories.
In this episode of the Purple Patch Podcast, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon begins our case study series by examining the performance journeys of two prominent members of the Purple Patch Pro Squad, Matt Lieto and Meredith Kessler.
Matt and Meredith played a crucial role in the success of the Purple Patch Pro Squad and were instrumental in developing the coaching approach that is now central to Purple Patch Fitness.
Matt shares insights on personal performance development based on the experiences of these two world-class triathletes who have excelled in their sport and beyond. Matt discusses their initial performance struggles, his coaching analysis and suggestions, and the results of their new approaches.
The stories of Matt Lieto and Meredith Kessler offer valuable lessons that are relevant to anyone, regardless of their skill level or goals.
Next week's show will feature two current Purple Patch athletes, David Farsai and Chris Hughes, discussing coaching, community, and the key factors that have contributed to their success. Both athletes embody the Purple Patch methodology in practice.
To learn more about the Purple Patch methodology and the evolution of the Purple Patch Pro Squad, Click Here.
Meredith Kessler
Meredith grew up in Columbus, Ohio where she was a 4-sport athlete and was inducted into her high school’s Athletic Hall of Fame. Meredith went on to receive a Division I athletic scholarship at Syracuse University where she participated in field hockey and track. After graduation in 2000, she used her graduation money to purchase her first triathlon bike and entered a full Ironman (2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, 26.2-mile run) two weeks later. From that moment on, she caught the spirit of IRONMAN competition and has not looked back. Since that first Ironman in 2000, Meredith has completed over 60 full Ironman races all over the United States and the world. She is an 11-time full-distance Ironman and 23-time half-distance Ironman champion.
Courtesy: Thomas and Velo Photography
Matt Lieto
Matt Lieto has been involved in the endurance sports community for nearly two decades, but his journey to get there was quite unique. In 1998, Lieto was inspired to pursue a healthier lifestyle after watching his brother compete in the Ironman World Championship. He shed 80 pounds by skateboarding at a local park and since then has spent a significant amount of time as a professional triathlete and cyclist, participating in some of the world's most prestigious races such as the Ironman World Championships and the Unbound 200. Recently, he has been focusing on sharing his expertise by coaching, hosting a podcast, and serving as a lead commentator for Ironman events while making appearances on NBC, Peacock, RedbullTV, and other platforms.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 06:03 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
06:10 - 09:46 - Matt's News-ings
09:54 - 52:03 - The Meat and Potatoes - Episode 277: Purple Patch Case Study Series - #1 - Matt Lieto and Meredith Kessler
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Full Transcript
Matt Dixon 00:03
I'm Matt Dixon and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. The mission of Purple Patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential. Through the lens of athletic potential, you reach your human potential. The purpose of this podcast is to help time-starved people everywhere integrate sport into life. Well, guys, today's show is the kickoff to the month of August, where we're investigating some case studies, some performance case studies. And a key ingredient to performance that we leverage is InsideTracker. Now, it's not the ingredient, it's not the magic solution. It's not the sprinkle of fairy dust that's going to make all of your dreams come true. But it is a really valuable tool in the big puzzle to enable you to define your focus where you're going to place your emphasis across the performance spectrum, and also deliver measurable results. So you can keep track of your progress, and adopt the right habits for you. The way that we do it, investigate by taking a look inside assessing your biometrics, and then combining it with the advice and recommendations of the team of scientists and experts InsideTracker. And when we do that, we can place the right focus on the things that are going to move the performance needle. Now we leverage it across our Purple Patch athlete population, but you don't need to be a member of Purple Patch to get involved. All you need to do is head to insidetracker.com/purplepatch that's insidetracker.com/purplepatch. And we have a sneaky code for you Purple Patch Pro two zero, that's Purple Patch Pro 20. And it will get you 20% off everything at the store. All right, today we're talking about two members of the Purple Patch pro squad, they are our first two case studies and they are going to be very informative, full of lessons, and also a little bit of fun, take care. And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast as ever, your host, Matt Dixon, and August marks the month guys, the Purple Patch performance case studies, something pretty fun. We thought yes, it would be fun, but also valuable to look beyond the theory and get into some of the real-life applied science of performance. And so in this very first edition, we're going to go back and we're going to kick it all off by discussing a couple of Purple Patch pros. Now as I mentioned last week, we've got a brand new released webpage that recounts the whole journey and all of the lessons over more than 15 years of guiding some of the very best athletes to the highest level of performance. They were collectively one of the most successful pro squads in the history of the sport. The Purple Patch pro squad, achieved in honesty more than I could ever have imagined. And they really drove the approach, a lot of the methodology that still fuels Purple Patch coaching to this day. Now the title is this page is purplepatchfitness.com/our-methodology. Now I'll put the link in the show notes, you can also find it under the Education tab of the Purple Patch fitness.com website. And I really encourage you to go and visit. It's a really fun place to immerse yourself, but also to appreciate some of the powerful performance lessons around components such as how our methodology came into place, the importance of team, all within the aspects of the most individual of sports, and how our pro sport and our pro athletes inform performance across all aspects of life whatever arena that you're looking to improve your performance. And there is much more packed into that, I think that you're gonna get inspired. So enjoy that webpage, I highly encourage you. But today, what I thought we'd do is we want to go over the next few episodes where we're really gonna break down some case studies. And today I'm going to go through two short case studies. And they are stories from the Purple Patch quad. Now I've chosen these stories because I feel like they directly applied to many of you the Purple Patch audience. In other words, the lessons out of their journey, even though it's in pursuit of world-class performance, it's very easy to adapt the lessons and apply them to whatever arena you're looking to improve in. So each story is really packed full of its standalone set of lessons. And I hope that you are smart enough to draw those lessons to your own journey. Now I'm not going to go through the whole landscape of the whole of the month ahead. But what I will do is give a brief preview of next week's show. We're going to welcome not one but two current Purple Patch athletes to the show. David Farsai is an athlete I coach individually and then we'll also be welcoming Purple Patch squaddie Chris Hughes or as I like to say, Chris Oooze who is enjoying a wonderful breakout season. These two gentlemen are going to be discussing coaching, the importance of community for them, and some of the key aspects of their individual success. And individually and collectively, both of them, are absolutely prime examples of the Purple Patch methodology in action. We talk so much about trying to educate you about the principles, the theory. But I think it's really helpful if you can understand the application. And rather than me saying, "This is what it should be", actually ask two of the athletes that are living in it, the living application of the Purple Patch methodology to hopefully try and help you along your journey. So it's going to be a lot of fun. But this week, we're going to kick it off with a world-class performance. Two stories and the good news is that you probably haven't heard these stories before. I've talked a lot about the Purple Patch pros over the course of the history of this show. But I bet you haven't heard these stories yet. It's all about personal performance, evolution. But Barry, we're going to do it. First of all, let's do a very quick Matt's News-ings. Yes, folks, it is Matt's News-ings. Let me tell you something, folks, we love to see athletes achieve their sporting goals. Excelling, racing better than they ever thought it was possible. But what makes us even more excited, is when these athletes achieve these results without negatively impacting their work and family life. In fact, they achieve great sporting results in parallel. And as a product of taking on the sporting journey, improving health, thriving in the workplace, and showing up the best version of themselves to family and friends. And that is what really gets us going. And to be honest, that is what it means to be a Purple Patch athlete, be your best in sport and life. And we do this via the Purple Patch methodology. In fact, our flagship program, the Purple Patch Squad is the only program in the world specifically designed for time-starved athletes. All of your training is designed from the ground up to optimize results within a life of competing demands. It has ultra-flexible programming to enable you to easily manage through the ebbs and flows of a very busy life. And you get huge support and coaching along the way from the entire Purple Patch coaching team. In fact, we're just getting ready to introduce even more coaching opportunities, more frequent coaching consultations with individual athletes are available if you need them. You're also going to have very regular coffee with coaches as we call it, deep dives every couple of weeks where you can come on live. Or you can ask your questions in advance and have a nice roundtable discussion, detailing the main focus of the training, how to execute as well as anything that you want to know in performance. It's all about training, executing that training well, and getting effectively coached all within an environment of supportive high accountability with like-minded individuals. This is all-inclusive of our real-live two-way video coaching to empower you and amplify your results. We think it's pretty special. And it is driven forward by folks like you a like-minded community of athletes that provide support accountability and a sense of belonging. And we're going to talk about team in our case studies today, I want you to bear it in mind. But ladies and gentlemen, this is pro squad, it is different and it is different by design. It is the only program that is specifically demand to cater to your needs a life that you have great competing demands. So I'm going to ask you this, are you coming on board? Because it's not for everyone, I'll tell you that much. There are a whole bunch of folk that probably don't fit into the Purple Patch mode. But if you are listening or watching this show, and then by definition, you're a fan, and you're accessible, and you have it that one small step to get involved on a deeper level. And we'd love to have you. If you want to navigate through competing demands and still excel, this is the program that is designed specifically to you. And look, don't take my word for it. Reach out for a complimentary call. If you want to find out more, we'll have a conversation with you. And we're gonna see, honestly, if you're a good fit for us and we're a good fit for you. All you need to do is head to info@Purple Patch fitness.com. All right, Barry, let's get on with the show. That's the meat and potatoes primed up for us. We've done our duties now let's do it. Ladies and gentlemen, we're talking about the pro squad. It is the meat and potatoes. Yes, folks, it is the meat and potatoes. We are doing performance case studies. But I'm going to off script a little bit here just to get us going, because you hear me talk a lot on this show about our video coaching, about our from-the-ground-up training that is designed for the needs of the time-starved athlete. And we're very proud of the results that we achieved. And we're really proud of how we help people thrive across life while achieving those results. Well, I'm going to give you a little bit of a heads-up about what we're going to do towards the end of this year. And no Purple Patch athlete even knows this yet. We haven't introduced this concept yet. But it's gonna be very, very special, it's going to kick off in October. And that tends to be the time of the year, where for any athlete as their season starts to end, it feels like a little bit of no man's land. They start to really have a desire to take a break, there may be a little bit sick of the rigors of training. At the same time they understand the importance of consistency, and preparing the body and you've heard me on the show talk about it a lot. What we've decided to do is completely redesign our full programming. And we are going to, across the scope of triathlon and extending into our other programs, we are going to achieve multiple elements that are a very different way to approach what many people call offseason. We're going to label it at the heart of it "bike school". Our video coaching is going to be educational to help you actually improve on the principles of how to become a better bike rider with a lot of lower-stress exercise and training, all structured, but really tutorial. And this is all done by two-way video. We're also in parallel that going to have swim school, from the ground up swim sessions, as well as ongoing education and opportunity to have video assessments so that you can have a lower stress approach to your training, but be able to improve technically in your swimming. And the same is going to apply for your running, we're going to have a project on running and we're going to have it focused, where it feels like it's an easy task to actually execute, but you're going to improve a runner, as a runner, and a driver behind it is the strength. It is the time from the ground up that all of us should be committed to strength training, right in the offseason so that then you have the platform leading on to the following season. And we're going to execute all of this without it feeling like the same demand, the same commitment, and the same compromise that you have to make across other aspects of your life. And to super fuel this, we're going to double down on education, live opportunity with our suite of experts, almost everyone that we know is an expert across field, and all of our Purple Patch coaches, everyone is getting to get involved to give you consistent opportunity for you to ask your questions around season planning, around preparation. But this is going to be exclusive to Purple Patch athletes. So that's what's coming in the Purple Patch programming. It is only going to be available for our athletes. But what I do want to do to help you the audience, if you're not a Purple Patch athlete, is trying to extend our education out of that programming, and give some of it to you guys as well. And so we're going to try and parallel some of the education that we go through, some of the technical assessments that we go through, and apply and impart the knowledge so that if you can't, for any reason, become a part of Purple Patch, at least we can try and help you on your own performance journey. So just before we dive into this meat and potatoes, I wanted to give you that very brief overview, there's gonna be a lot of information coming over the next few weeks, you're gonna probably get a little bit tired of me talking about it. But my mission is to really try and help accelerate your performance journey. You don't need to be a triathlete to take advantage of this, but we are going to build it around our triathlon programming. Okay, with that, let's get on with the meat and potatoes, we're already into it. I've hijacked the meat and potatoes so let's get going. It is two case studies. Now, as we go through case studies at the Purple Patch podcast, we always do it in the same structure. It's proven, it's accessible. And I really like it as a framework to try and help deliver the message and the lessons across. I'm always going to talk about the profile of the athlete. Some of the challenges that we address that we highlighted as we're going along the performance journey, what the diagnosis of that challenge and some of the interventions that we put into place, and then of course, we want to go to outcomes, because we want to be able to measure both qualitative and quantitative, whether our intervention on the challenge was successful. And that format - profile challenge diagnosis and intervention and then the outcome and results - that's going to help draw a thread for you then to maybe try and apply some of the lessons as you go through. Super. Now, to optimize the impact of today's lessons, a reminder that you really should review the webpage, because we're talking about pro athletes today. And so if you head to purplepatchfitness.com, head up to the Education tab and feel free to share this with the world by the way, you can post it on social media if you're enjoying it, and the title under the Education tab is Our Methodology. It's also linked in the show notes if you want the direct link, and then it is very simple purplepatchfitness.com/our-methodology, okay? It's an important web page and it choreographs our whole story from my struggles as a pro all the way through up to present day. And there's a lot of rich lessons over the course of this history. The two pros that I want to highlight today are off of that webpage, Matt Lieto and Meredith Kessler. I chose a male and a female, fantastic. Now each of these professional athletes and two athletes that I have great respect for, of course, I got to coach for a very long time for both of them, each are going to offer a different performance lesson or even performance lessons, I should say, that can apply to any arena in life. And so we're going to kick off with Matt first. And the only reason for that is chronologically he was earlier as a Purple Patch athlete, he came on board in front of Meredith so I thought fair's fair, I'm gonna talk about Matt first. So let's first go through profile. All right, so Matt Lieto was one of the founding members of the Purple Patch pro squad. The very first pro that I coached was a woman called Tyler Stewart, who won the amateur title at the Hawaii Ironman twice and then went on and we made the decision for her to go and race professionally, and was great. And in the early couple of years of coaching pros, I really felt like I was coaching individuals. So each athlete treated mutually exclusively with no real team concept. But after two or three years of coaching, elite athletes, elite amateurs, and professional athletes, I started to adopt more of a team mindset. So Matt was really one of the founding members when we started to mold into the Purple Patch pro squad. And that in itself had a host of non-negotiable commitments that all members had to adhere to. And we talked about that in last week's show, if you want to go back and listen to that. A part of Matt that I think is important when we think about the fabric of the history of the pro squad is that he was truly instrumental in developing the culture, the accountability, and the support of being a part of a high-performance team. Matt was selfless in spirit and he had a huge imprint and legacy in Purple Patch as an organization. Now as an athlete, he secured multiple Ironman and half Ironman professional podiums. So he was successful in his own right. And he also went on to secure a really successful career in media and commentary at major Ironman events. So Matt was absolutely instrumental. As a diagnosis, when Matt joined the team, I think safe to say that he was struggling individually. And I think a part of that, as I reflect now was a little bit of existing in the performance shadow of his older brother, who was highly successful. Chris Lieto, who was also a Purple Patch athlete, of course, that we helped guide towards second at the Hawaii Ironman World Championship. But he also had a little bit of a lack of belief in himself as an athlete. He was athletic. He grew up as a kid who was obese and has a great story. If you go back in history, you can actually find a fantastic podcast that I did with Matt, many seasons ago now. But he grew up obese. He lost all the weight and was inspired by his older brother when he was sweating a lot at the Hawaii Ironman World Championship and decided underneath all of those layers, he decided to take on his own athletic journey. And he also found he had a huge engine. But what I was faced with for a coach was a kid really at the time, that had a distinct lack of personal belief in himself and it was amplified because he'd really never cracked the personal recipe for a great performance at the Ironman distance. And he was often undone by the run leg. He had pretty good swim, close to front pack. He was a very strong bike rider that he developed over his time here to becoming really one of the stronger bikers out in the professional circuit, but really, really struggled in the run. And so my challenge for an individual living in the shadow of his older brother, a distinct lack of belief, and a performance struggle on the run. And so my challenge as a coach was how could I develop belief and confidence in Matt, and at the same time deliver a strategy, a training and racing strategy that was going to enable him to be a catalyst of securing a great run performance at the Ironman distance. Now, for me as a coach, when I stood back, the two were related. In other words, the solution here, the diagnostic solution was, it wasn't just in the training. Matt couldn't just replicate the behavior and strategies of other athletes, I couldn't just dump a plan for him say, there it is, the training plan is the key to unlock everything. Because without belief, without a certain amount of freedom, he always raced somewhat shackled, somewhat challenged, worried about failure, almost a fear of failure, without unlocking that, it didn't matter what the training intervention was going to be, we probably weren't going to get to the results that we want it. So we move on to the intervention with Matt. It's a really interesting case study for many of the listeners on today's show, because many folk, most athletes, tend to chase the details. What do I need to do that small thing do I need to turn to unlock everything? But sometimes, the solution arrives from a much broader perspective, coming back and up a level to something that's very grounding. And when I reflect on Matt Lieto, and I mean this sincerely, I cannot overstate the impact that he had at Purple Patch. He was, I think, the culture driver. And as he joined and helped developed the pro squad, in unison with the other members, and myself as the guide, he ended up setting many of the standards. And those standards proved to be incredibly important. respect for each other, as teammates, a sense of a role of mentorship to younger athletes that were progressing, the spirit of lifting each other up, even when you are close competitors on the race course, rather than making it competitive in training, lifting each other up, helping one another, a sense of professionalism, looking to do things that were right, and perhaps most importantly, developing a tone of what we labeled "Serious With a Wink". And that was important because we were, and he was, deadly serious about performance. But we tried to help Matt be himself. And we allowed, and he allowed himself, to encourage others to have fun along the journey. And it sounds so basic, but why don't we work our tails off, hold ourselves to account to do the little details, but have a whole bunch of fun doing it, and laugh and sing and support each other? And it helped drive us toward a purpose. And from my perspective, as his coach, what emerged from that liberation, for lack of a better phrase, was a sense of purpose that started to emerge from Matt that went beyond himself. The best way that I could help Matt help himself was to get his purpose to go beyond himself. And so I asked Matt to lead, to set the standards, and to lift others up. And he leant into that role. And he became what I would label the ultimate teammate. Now, that role, that ultimate teammate, it didn't solve his running. So that was the second half of the challenge here. We hadn't solved his run. But what we could do is define purpose, and help Matt get from outside of himself and help other people and it was the very best route to help himself, but what about that run? How do we crack or aim to crack his run performance? He would swim well ride really hard and explode off the run. Well, guess what? You know how we cracked it? Walk breaks. Yes, walking. Now, nowadays, walk breaks are almost an accepted, and I say almost, almost an accepted strategy in longer distance triathlon and ultra running events. But at this time, in the late 2000 naught into 2010, walking was absolutely poo-pooed. It was culturally, almost universally dismissed as complete performance madness. In fact, the most common thing, the greatest advice that you would hear folks of all levels say, is get onto the run and the only thing you can't do is walk, it doesn't matter what your run looks like, just don't walk. And here was a world-class athlete and I was coaching him to say, "I want you to walk in an Ironman every mile", yes, 25 walk breaks over the course of a 26.2-mile run. And my mission for this, for this intervention was to try and keep him running with the best form he could create. And the best speed return from that form, in the later stages of the marathon. And I believed if he could do that be running well, or at least as well, as well, as Matt can run, as in the back end of the race, he was going to get to the best ultimate outcome, and the investment of 25 intervals of 15 to 20 seconds of walking over the course of an entire marathon, that was going to be a healthy investment to give a better overall net speed. Now, this was seen as madness. And Matt was highly hesitant, particularly as I hadn't let him do any runs longer than two hours, we'd run almost daily, a lot of it's short, a lot of it frequent, but we hadn't done much run speed or big run duration in single sessions. So he thought, how am I going to get faster than my, at pro standards, rather pedestrian three hours and 20-minute Ironman run that he'd done up to that stage, particularly when his race looming was Ironman Canada, and that had a relatively challenging run course. And on the day, it was very challenging, very, very windy, very, very hot. So we have two main interventions that we went through, give Matt purpose and make him a leader. And then on the run side, we integrated walk breaks. So let's talk about both as the outcomes and how it helped in his performance lesson. So from the first aspect, I would say that the team and the community aspect of that team, the buy-in. What occurred is a framework of operations in many ways. And it defined a very specific role - leadership - and that really helped with purpose. And the outcome of that was a diminished personal worry, and a disassociation of self-worth with racing results. In fact, for Matt, ME was converted to WE. And that's really powerful because everything is easier when you do it as a part of a team. Everything gets better. And he was instrumental in that leadership role. Now, what did this look like? I talked about him as being the ultimate teammate. Well, let's go back to the early years of the development of someone like Jesse Thomas, a very young pro, relatively naive. Jesse Thomas and I say this honestly, Jesse Thomas would not have been Jesse Thomas, and achieved what he achieved without Matt Lieto. Without the mentorship, the guidance, the professionalism, the accountability that he delivered, and a great source of mischief maybe, fun for sure. He set the professional standards for young athletes such as Sarah Piampiano, Andrew Yoder, Meredith Kessler, James Cotter, Kevin Collington, and more. And from a racing mindset that started to have a knock-on positive effect in his racing, for all distances, because he started to arrive not worried about outcomes, but driven by purpose. WE, not ME. He had a smile, not just on the outside, but on the inside. And as a coach, I could feel that. He seemed excited and open to possibilities. He raced in a fearless approach. And he started to shift from being maybe in the front group to always in the front group at the swimming and maybe hanging on to the bike to always driving the pace on the bike racing from the front. That's not conservative and full of fear, that's fearless. But what about that run? Remember, I asked Matt to walk 15 to 20 seconds, every single mile. The race was Ironman Canada, he arrived with the fearless mindset. Me? Nah, WE. He went through the swim close to the front or in the front pack and got off the bike he was second or third off the bike and he was in the hunt. And he had the run to go, now by far, always will be, the run was Matt's weakest leg but typically, we will be knocking down the places hoping to stay quote in the money in the top 10. He began side by side with another pro, right there running in second and third place, and third and fourth place, Agwood coming right behind them. And they ran the first mile together in lockstep. And at the first aid station, as the pro, the competitor ran through, Matt slowed, boom walking. He refueled and he rehydrated. The competitor, he was confused. And over the course of mile two, Matt slowly built back in, shoulder to shoulder for the last few 100 meters. They're running together again. The Pro looked across. We got to aid station two, Matt slows to a walk, refueled, and rehydrated. The Pro was flummoxed. And so the pattern continued, run for a mile, walk 10, 15, 20 seconds. And slowly over the course of the event, the first half marathon goes through, they were still in lockstep, by the end of each mile side by side running, relatively the same pace, Matt was just running a little bit quicker, but taking those walk breaks. Remember what I talked about investing early, now the lightning-fast runner went blasting past into second place, they were now running for third and fourth. There was another runner coming behind. They look into rhythm, mile 17, mile 18, walk break, walk break. Slowly, the form of the other pro starts to decline. They get to mile 20. Well, do you know Matt's fastest miles of the whole race? You've guessed it, miles 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, and 26. Of course, the last six miles the fastest, the outcome, a sub-three-hour marathon for the first time. And his finish? Yes, he got third, he dropped the competition. Most importantly, it was a personal breakthrough. And he achieved this because he had the courage to do things differently, to think outside of the box and apply a strategy to fix a personal challenge, not just going look at what everyone else does. But what's the right thing to do for me? Because there's no rules in this case about walking or running. You just need to get to A to B as fast as you possibly can. What works for you? Now driving all of this, these tactics, the training plan that we don't need to go into today, but driving this, what was fueling him was his role as a leader and the team. The team concept was important because Matt had become a part of something. And finally, he allowed himself to enjoy it, to have fun. So I'll tell you this, is this case study what a man, what a great story of someone that not only achieved personal success but by doing so managed to facilitate a runway, a pathway, for so many other pros, pros that had great results, in honesty, better the results than what Matt achieved. Some world-class athletes that we talked about. And they went through a system, a set of approaches that was laid down by him. And that's really important, because not a Purple Patch Pro that achieved the greatest accolades, but one that was responsible for fueling so much of the Purple Patch squad success. All right, that's case study number one. So let's move on to our second case study. And it is Meredith Kessler. All right. So that's our first case study. Let's move on to the next one, Meredith Kessler will keep with the same format, Ladies and gentlemen. First, let's go with the profile. All right. So when I met Meredith, goodness, me she had managed to complete one Ironman. And I want to bear this in mind, her first Ironman a finishing time, somewhere around 13 hours. It might have been slower than that, actually. And she was for a long time the proud owner of the worst training plan I had ever seen in my life. There was a lot of miles an absolutely zero intensity. In fact, I couldn't see how she could be consistent with it with the other components that she had into life and we'll talk about that in a second. But I tell you what, if Meredith was one thing, she was gritty and she was tough. She also was time-starved because she was working, when I met her, full time at the Royal Bank of Canada RBC. Now here are her results by the end of her career, and I've got to say they are quite stunning. Multiple time US national Ironman, and Ironman 70.3 champion, multiple top 10 finishes at the Hawaii Ironman World Championship, a podium third place finish at the ITU long course World Championship, a five-time repeat winner of Ironman New Zealand, that's the second oldest race in the Ironman calendar. It's legendary down there, you win it five times. That's quite stunning. And overall, she managed to secure 11, Ironman victories and 23, that's 23, Half Ironman championships. She was voted the top US female triathlete ever. And her first Ironman took her 13 hours. What a profile. Now, diagnosis, let's talk about this. Meredith's story is a prime story, or a great example of optimization. It really was the optimization challenge. And the reason I say that is for the initial years of her pro career, she chased world class performance, but she was also working full time at RBC. Now she was actually ironically, one of several Purple Patch pros who faced a similar challenge. Tyler Stewart, our first Purple Patch pro she owned her own business, it was a dog washing and grooming business as well as boarding, very, very busy. If you ever tried opening a coffee shop, opening a dog boarding, and washing very, very demanding. Meredith Kessler RBC Capital, Jesse Thomas started picky bars as a pro, and develop that all the way through to Acquisition, the energy bar company that many of you guys will be familiar with. And so this was just one example of a pro athlete chasing world-class performance, while also showing up in professional life. Does that sound familiar to you? Now, as a coach these examples, Meredith being the prime example, were really the catalyst for me to try and find the solution for the time-starved athlete. So we talked about these lessons applying to everyday folk, most of us that are living a life of great competing demands, this was the start of it. This is where I had to have a healthy dose of pragmatism and be savage around optimization. So Meredith was a pro, in fact, a really good pro, but she was also highly time-starved. So my challenge as a coach was to build results, and compete through that optimization mindset. So I took the Elite Pro book, if you want to call it that, and threw it out. We had to be creative. How could we help Meredith shine in sports and also shine across life? So let's talk about the intervention. How do we go about it? This could be a standalone show in itself. But I want to give you the highlights today with the intervention. And let me preface it with this. Athletes always want to know, what are the training sessions. What are the magic training sessions that the pros execute, that I can do that are going to bring me success? But let me tell you once again, that's not where the secret lies. And it certainly wasn't the secret, in Meredith's case. Yeah, we believe in our training methodology. And it's important. But my role was really to try and help Meredith create sustained high performance. And so that was really about taking all of the necessary components, and organizing them into the appropriate performance mindset if you're going to title it that, to create a set of practices and strategies that will drive performance across all areas, not just in sport, in Meredith's case, and then build a program in that framework and that program had to be dynamic. In other words, it had to have enough flex in it, that it could live and breathe with the unpredictable nature of life. And so that really was one of the very first cases in which I had to have an optimization approach and create a training program that had a tremendous amount of flex in it. In fact, it was one of the original cases of how I titled Life is not a Spreadsheet. Because if I just delivered a spreadsheet to an athlete like Meredith, even though she was chasing world-class performance, it was destined for failure. And so let's break these down. The performance mindset and some of the strategies. When you have too many competing demands, and certainly Meredith was an example of this, you have to prioritize, you actually have to develop a set of practices that are driving towards a magic word, effectiveness. There are always 25 things you could focus on. But what are the five things that are going to move the performance needle? And you have to go through that process. At the highest level when you're thinking about season planning, and what you're going to get accomplished, on a weekly level, when you're organizing your week, as well as on a daily level and making decisions, what's going to give me the best yield today, for the purpose of this session, being one great example. And our most precious commodity that we had, in Meredith's case was time. She was really restricted on time, she was working full time, she was really engaged in her community. And she was trying to be a professional athlete in a really demanding sport. So the super fuel of this is developing strategies and tools that can help create real effectiveness. And the super fuel was one word, pragmatism. It's not utopian it's pragmatism. How can we build the very best athlete within the context of the framework of her life demands? And that's what we had. So in Meredith's case, we tried to create a smart performance mindset. And the first part of this, the most important part, I would say, is that we really saw a magic word, consistency, we were the anti-heroic. Now, the way we think about that is doing something every day, and ensuring that we're always moving forward by doing something every day. But we're not defining any single session as the huge session to move the performance needle, we had some very demanding days and priority days. But our whole recipe was to make smart decisions along the day, that Meredith could stay systemically energetic and healthy. And from a muscular-skeletal standpoint, we could avoid injury. And so we took the long lens of this accumulation of work over many, many weeks, and many, many months, so that we can create sustainable performance. Whenever we compress things, we try to rush things we try to accelerate. That was when challenges were likely to occur. So the magic word from the performance mindset is every single day just a little bit better. Do it better, make smart decisions, so that we can weave -- what was it berry? Consistency. That was the huge component. What we did with that as well, was that when we built any single week of training, we never chased the total accumulation of training hours. And this was an important mindset, our barometer of success is not how much we're doing. It's how well we can execute the appropriate amount of training within the context of life. So what we had to do, there was a few things, we had to first build our key sessions every week. What are the two to three really challenging sessions? And those are the ones that we're going to protect. The second thing we had to do from a performance mindset is say, Okay, where's the Amazon filling to this? When you get a box from Amazon, you get your special thing that you've ordered, it's full of supporting little filler, yeah, to protect what you're getting. Those were the supporting workouts. And those supplemental hours for Meredith were really important to be soul-filling, lower stress really, really easy. And we had to set up a mindset for that. And we constantly had to be really important with a mindset of defining success. And together, we had an agreement that our success is not measured in sporting results. Our measure of success is three-pronged. Am I getting better as an athlete? Am I showing up in the workplace? And am I showing up how Meredith wanted to for her family and for her community? And those are the three elements, those are the measures of success. And if we did that successfully, we believe she could become the best athlete that she could be. And the results hopefully, would just lay out in a positive sense. How many times did she win half -- like 23? How many Ironman 11? Yeah. We were chasing, becoming a concept that we talked about before. So what about the strategies? Because there are a set of strategies and practices that she deployed to help organize all of this. The first was how we built a training program. We always started and I've talked about this on the show before, but it's important. We started with the training program as the last thing. We didn't build life around the training, we integrated training into life, what's the landscape of the commitments that you have with your family, with your community with work? Great. Now, how much time do we have leftover? Now, we can build a training program within that context. And that's why the accumulation of training hours could never be a barometer of success, because otherwise, we're trying to cheat the system. And that would involve cheating fueling, cheating recovery, cheating sleep, which we felt were going to be performance limiters and accelerators of sickness and injury. And so building your training program from an integration approach. The Sunday Special was absolutely critical. A little bit of time 15 to 30 minutes every Sunday to plot out the week. What are my meetings that I have at work? What do I need to prioritize? What do I need to get accomplished for work for commitment? How often and when am I going to sleep? What's my fueling look like? And then where am I going to place my training sessions? And if you remember, I talked about the dynamic side of the training program, we had those two to three really key workouts, we had to integrate those sessions into the days that were most appropriate and where we felt like Meredith Woods was best equipped to show up physically and emotionally. And then the Amazon pack filler, the supporting workouts that had their role they could build around it. And when we combine the performance mindset, with strategies like that, the flexible program integrated into life, taking the long haul, it created consistency, and it created sustainability. And with that, then we gave the body an opportunity to adapt and get stronger and fitter, etc. But Meredith also showed up to races incredibly fit, because we had the long-term progression of really consistent effective training, but fresh and excited, and free to go and race. And so the result of this, well, I could just say all look at her bio, I just talked about it, the results were great. But that wasn't what we were measuring success in. Remember, three-pronged, Meredith thrived in the workplace. And that's important, she continued to evolve at the workplace, was a valued member of RBC, she absolutely wholly invested in her community. In fact, she did more than most any other Purple Patch Pro I could ever remember, for others, selfless in that regard. And then she went on to build the professional triathlon career on top of that firm base. And that, for me, is great success. In fact, what it really is, is a masterclass in executive function. It's embracing the journey, handling adversity, and making smart decisions so that you can get sustained performance. And the truth in this, the big lesson that I want you to take away is that when you take on a sporting journey, it doesn't need to be for professional sport. But when you take on a sporting journey, realize that your brain doesn't know what context is it. So it can adapt and apply lessons that you get through the sporting journey, and deploy in any arena. And that's where the power becomes. So you can sure train and deploy the strategies and then extend them into other arenas. And that's fantastic. I also want you to take the lesson today that your success in sport, in life in work is often less about the details. It's important to be detailed focus, it's important to do things, right. How you chop carrots is how you do everything in life. But to make that component effective, you've got to establish a suite of strategies and practices that can drive you forward. And you've got to hold the appropriate mindset and the long-term vision. And that is how you create a catalyst, a vortex of success. It's so important to develop the mindset, the practices, and the strategies that will enable you to drive to effectiveness and ultimately make smarter decisions for yourself. And so this is a prime example of creating world-class performance. Now, I think we can all learn from the pros, we love them. They're our beacon of inspiration. They're a lot of fun to watch. They're incredible athletes, but also a suite of wonderful performance lessons. Over the coming weeks, I'm going to share more stories with you. But as a reminder next week when we go to two current Purple Patch athletes. We're gonna go to the amateur field, and these aren't elite amateurs that can do better than any of us ever imagine, these are very busy time-starved athletes that are looking to show up to their family, be great leaders in the workplace, but also trying to achieve success in the sporting arena. David, Chris we look forward to having you. You are great stories of personal performance evolution. For everyone else. I hope it was fun and you enjoyed the show. We'll speak to you and see you next time. Take care. 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
performance, meredith, matt, athlete, patch, purple, coaching, ironman, pro, talk, great, race, life, training, mindset, case studies, achieved, lessons, journey, strategies