Episode 283: Off-Season - Foundation, Skills, and Technique (Part 1 - Framing Purpose and Approach)
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After a long season of training, most athletes are ready for a well-deserved break, yet they also recognize that training during the off-season is imperative for success in the coming season.
So how do you strike the right balance so you get the rest and recovery you need without losing progress and risk stalling your performance next season?
As part of our three-part series on everything off-season, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon answers all your questions on how to approach the off-season to set yourself up for success.
In part one of our in-depth series, Matt frames the importance of the off-season in developing consistency to achieve predictable and long-lasting results. He also illustrates the mindset and practices needed to help you recharge, train effectively, and upgrade your skills and techniques.
"Offseason is a part of the year to focus on things that you simply cannot practically focus on during peak phases of training. And of course, peak phases of racing, if you do that. If I had to sum up the offseason, I would label it as fun, flexible, and absolutely critical for anyone on any sort of performance journey in any arena." - Matt Dixon
Over the coming shows, we will dig into the key ingredients and framework we apply when building off-season training for Purple Patch Athletes. We are also dedicating an entire show to answering your questions about the off-season.
Click here to send Matt a quick voice message, and he will answer your questions in Part 3 of the series.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 08:18 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
08:25 - 10:04 - Matt's News-ings
10:19 - 13:41 - Word of the Week
13:49 - 49:02 - The Meat and Potatoes - Episode 283: Off-season - Foundation, Skills, and Technique (Part 1 - Framing Purpose and Approach)
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Full Transcript
SPEAKERS
Matt Dixon
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
One of the sayings we have at Purple Patch is ‘Nail the basics.’ Now, it's important, under the banner of that wonderful saying, for athletes to absolutely nail their fundamental habits and approaches that are going to yield the best return on investment in their efforts, that we understand what those basics are. One of the tools that we use to refine our focus and to ensure that each athlete and each person that we're helping is focusing on the right elements is InsideTracker. And that's because by taking a look inside at biometrics and combining it with the advice and expertise from the team at InsideTracker, we can get some precise focus on the elements that are actually going to provide the performance yield for every single person. The good news about this is you don't need to be a Purple Patch athlete to take advantage of InsideTracker. All you need to do is head to insidetracker.com/purplepatch, that's insidetracker.com/purplepatch, and you can use this sneaky code Purple Patch Pro 20, that's Purple Patch Pro two zero, which will give you 20% off everything at the store. Now today, we're going to talk about offseason or in Purple Patch language what we like to call postseason. But hey, we're gonna go with the masses and call it offseason for the sake of this show. And that is a time to reset and redefine your chapter and where you want to go. I highly recommend right now that this is the time that taking a look inside and getting some precise focus around your biometrics is going to help you on your performance journey. Of course, we are always here to help you. All you need to do is reach out to info@purplepatchfitness.com. And we can give you advice on the best program for you to utilize under your circumstances. But for now, all I say InsideTracker, it's a goodie, and enjoy today's show, Take care.
singer 02:19
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast as ever, Your host, Matt Dixon, and folks, we are holding hands and we are marching towards the fourth quarter of this year. The fourth quarter designates for us as a coaching team what we like to call the postseason. Now most of the athletes out there most of the coaches out there are going to refer to it as offseason. I've always had a slightly uncomfortable relationship with that word, but we're going to go with the masses for the sake of the show, offseason. And this year, we have completely entirely reimagined our offseason. Now, this all began with a question. How do we, as a team of coaches at Purple Patch deliver a block of training for our athletes that we know plays a critical role in long-term development and also in ensuring that they're going to get the best results possible, while also achieving the flexibility and the break from the rigors of hard work that is essential in the months leading up to their races that most of our athletes have just completed. Now, offseason, to me is a little bit like the physics principle of Schrödinger's cat. If you don't know what that means, it's basically summed up as two things can be true at the same time. Firstly, you understandably want and deserve a big break following a long season of training and racing. At the same time, you need to carry on training because this part of the year, the months ahead of you play an absolutely undeniably critical role in fostering big results for next season. So here we find ourselves. It's the cat dead or alive? Do you need to take a complete break or do you need to keep marching forward? Both things are true at the same time. In quantum mechanics, that thought experiment, Schrödinger's cat. Well, I won't bore you with the details, but it is the fact that two opposing things can be true at the same time, and in many ways that's offseason. Whether you're a competitive athlete or simply a committed individual, trying to feel better, and live better, a commitment to improving performance does require occasional resets. You do need to take a physical and mental break. And at the same time, consistency is the single most crucial component to predictable and enduring results. But guess what? And it might not surprise you, but we've come up with an answer with our approach this year. Over the coming three shows, what I want to do is try and help you on your journey as you move towards the winter months, at least the winter months in the northern hemisphere. I want to share an approach for you, in which you can set up your best Q4 and Q1 of this year. You're going to recharge, you're going to refresh, but you're also going to emerge physically primed to train effectively, and have successfully over the course of that phase, not just recharged yourself, but invested in yourself at the same time. And you're going to emerge from this block of work with upgraded skills, and improved technique, whatever your focus and priorities are. I think it sounds pretty compelling, don't you? Well, what we're gonna do is we're gonna spend three shows on this, this is how important is. And today, we're going to kick it off by framing the role and importance of what we are going to hold hands and call offseason. I want you to establish the right mindset and the right practices. Because I want two things at once. I want you to recharge mentally and physically and I want you to progress. Can you really do those things in conjunction at the same time? Well, we can. Now in the coming two weeks, I'm going to dig into the key ingredients and framework that we are actually applying to this challenge when building our training for Purple Patch athletes. So hopefully you can lift and draw from that either if you're a coach of your own athletes, or of course, if you're self-coached in one way. And then finally the final show on this. We're going to dedicate an entire episode to answering your questions all around the offseason. Now it goes without saying that means that right now, we've got two weeks before that Q & A show. And so feel free, I highly encourage you to ask me your questions. I'm going to aim to integrate as many of your questions as possible into that episode. How do you ask? Well, there are a couple of routes for you. Number one, simply email us at info@purplepatchfitness.com. Just let them know you've got a question on the offseason for me, it's for the podcast and my team will send along your question. I do just please ask, do add your first name, and maybe your location that's very, very helpful. Gives me a little bit of context. Thank you. You can also head to the podcast page on the website and you can actually leave us a voicemail and we will play your voicemail if you give us your first name there. Remember, leave your first name, just head there you can very simply add a voicemail with any question you want all pertaining to the offseason. Okay, that's super. And if finally, none of those methods work well ping us on socials. We're happy to hit you up on the Instagramables, or your Facebooks, or even your Twitter. What's that called nowadays? X? I don't even know. But that is what we're doing over the next three weeks. And hopefully, this week is going to set our grounding. It should be a lot of fun. On with the show. But right before we dive into the meat and potatoes, I've got a couple of little bullet versions of both Word of the Week. And, Barry, right now Matt's News-ings.
Matt Dixon 08:25
Yes, folks, Matt's News-ings. Over the coming three weeks, as I mentioned, we are going to dig deep into the upcoming offseason. Or if you want the full title in Purple Patch language. This year, we're going to label it Offseason: Foundation, Skills, and Technique that's going to give you a little bit of a teaser of what's coming. Offseason: Foundation, Skills, and Technique. Now it's no surprise that the news-ings this week therefore is around you becoming a part of the Purple Patch team on your own performance journey. I believe that this is the perfect time for you to invest in yourself. Now you can join us by participating in one of our squad programs All are infused with the components that we're going to reveal today and over the coming weeks. Or of course if you want a more personalized individual program, you can become one of our one-to-one coached athletes. And that is where you're going to get highly customized and one-to-one, education and support from one of our team at the Purple Patch coaching staff. Very good. Now here's the deal, reach out directly and we can have a chat. We can see if Purple Patch is a good fit and what program is right for you. Of course, it's free of charge. We would never think of charging you for that. We can work out if you're a fit. We can understand your goals and needs and we can help you decide on the best program for us. All right, ping us at info@purplepatchfitness.com as ever and we will set that up. But I told you it's gonna be bullet versions. That's Matt's News-ings But I do want to get on with Barry, it tickles my tummy when I get to say it. Yes, it's time for Word of the Week.
Matt Dixon 10:18
Oh, Barry, you are still a maestro of the ukulele, thank you very much for that introduction always tickles my tummy. The word of the week, this week guys, elevator pitch. Well, the kids are back at school and if your experience is anything like our family, this return to school also means various school events - back-to-school nights, meet and greets, various social engagements - and last week, I was at one such event. And of course, I got asked the inevitable question. So what do you do for work? My answer is, that my wife Kelli and I own and operate a coaching company. Oh, interesting, what type of coaching? This is where things started to get a little more complicated because a decade or so ago, it would have been very simple for me, I would have answered, I coach professional and amateur triathletes. You know, the Ironman? Have you heard of the Ironman, those crazy folks? Yes, I help them perform. And then well, normally, people would run for the hills. And I had a very nice glass of wine by myself. But nowadays, things have evolved at Purple Patch. Because yes, we still coach Ironman triathletes. But what it means to be a Purple Patch athlete, over the last few years has really radically evolved. Because we could add to the list time-starved endurance athletes of now many different sports, people who are simply seeking to feel and perform better. And even leadership teams at major organizations that are looking to establish sustained high performance in the workplace, driving a performance culture and improving results across their organization. And so this year, I found myself giving a slightly different answer. Yes, we have a coaching organization and what we do is we enable people to do the things that they like and help them do those things well. And then I found myself pausing and reflecting. And I thought, yeah, that's it. We enable people to do the things that they like and help them do those things well - wins, podiums, finish lines, energy, bringing your best self to anything. We try and ensure that folks show up, like you, firing on all cylinders. And for once, this question, and the conversation made me smile. I might even say that that's my very, very short elevator pitch. What we try and do ultimately, is bring a Purple Patch to your life with more predictability, and more frequency. And we have those purple patches last longer. That's what we love to do as an organization. And that's what it means to be a Purple Patch athlete. And so whether you're just a fan or an athlete of ours, I hope you buy into the ethos. Find your Purple Patch, it is a magical component. And that is our Word of the Week - Elevator Pitch. So Barry, without further ado, we're going to talk about Offseason: Foundation, Skills, Technique. It's time for The Meat and Potatoes us.
Matt Dixon 13:49
All right, folks, we're getting ready for the meat and potatoes. But I just want to sneak in one quick little message before we get going. If you like what you hear today, if it resonates with you, and if you want to transform your offseason, why don't you come and train with us? You're gonna get everything you need to reset and recharge while also getting the structure you need to become an absolute assassin of performance next year. Highly flexible training that leaves you room for non-tri activities, holiday time, or focusing on powerful technical work across your swim, bike, and run sessions. Of course, we've even got a special block of strength training and very heavy lifting, all under the banner of safety of course, to help you improve your strength and tissue resilience for the season to come. On top of it all, tons of community and a lot of fun. And of course, you get to hang out with me and the rest of the Purple Patch coaches. We are going to do you a goodie today. You can use this code P O D 10. That's POD 10 (one, zero) POD 10. You get 10% off your first month of tri-squad so you can see what it's all about and we even lessen the blow. The offer is good through September 30. So it aligns with our offseason program that we're doing. And you can get rolling right away in October and I promise you, you're gonna love it. Alright, let's talk about your offseason Purple Patch or otherwise, this is going to be educational and fun. Cheers.
Matt Dixon 15:18
It's a scary thought, guys, the holidays are coming. We just finished summer. But here it comes Halloween, Thanksgiving in the US of course, Christmas, Hanukkah, all of the stuff. It is starting to have that wind-up of the year. And things just get really busy. The days get shorter, they get colder, they get darker, and fitness and the performance journey tend to take a backseat. And of course for endurance athletes, well, this is starting to move into that part of the year where their season finishes. If you're a competitive athlete, race season is almost over for many folks. And of course, understandably, first thing when they, an athlete, finishes their race season, the first thing that typical thought that comes up is I need a break. Goodness me. I just need to be done with this. And you know what? That's smart. It's even appropriate because focus should provide effectiveness, but constant focus, relentless focus without any reprieve is just going to produce clutter. And so a break is smart and appropriate. And whether you're focusing on race performance, or life performance, or both, turning your back on structure, and giving yourself a nice break is beneficial. In fact, I would argue it's absolutely mandatory. But, and this is really important, I want you to listen to this, a complete break, untethered to any performance lens whatsoever, should not last that long. In fact, I'm going to give you a window, a complete untethered break shouldn't last more than somewhere between 10 days and 21 days, or let's just round it out, just over a week to maybe three weeks at max. And what that means is after a week or two of glorious randomness, maybe a little bit of indulgence, you then find yourself on a platform, not just any platform, a golden platform. And that golden platform as you stand there after that little untethered, unstructured, complete break of rejuvenation without any thought on race goals, training, obsession around performance, whatever it might be, That platform reeks of one thing, you look up, and you see, opportunity. This, when you're there on that platform, the golden platform of opportunity, this is the offseason. Whether an athlete, whether chasing health, chasing life, chasing work performance, or offseason, it fits under everybody's mandate, as a golden platform of performance opportunity, if done right. Because offseason, as we like to call it in the athletic lens, is a part of the year to focus on things that you simply cannot practically focus on during peak phases of training. And of course, peak phases of racing, if you do that. If I had to sum up the offseason, I would label it as fun, flexible, and absolutely critical for anyone on any sort of performance journey in any arena. Let's do that. Again. I would sum up the offseason as fun, flexible, and absolutely critical for anyone on a performance journey. And so what that requires me to do is define it. Because while we can extend this concept to performance in any arena, I think that it's easiest to understand in the crucible of the sporting journey. And so I'm going to frame today's discussion around an athlete. But what I invite you to do as I now start to lead into the definition of the offseason, if you're not a competing athlete, I want you to extract the lessons and easily join the dots to your own performance journey. Okay, that's just my little simple ask for you.
Matt Dixon 19:46
Alright, so let's talk about the offseason. All righty. Let's think about it. Let's define it. An athlete races your last big event of the year, the race is over, great. After that time, you enjoy that week or two of decompression, downtime, little bit of reflection in there. And that's wonderful. And then after that, remember that golden platform of opportunity that we talked about? That is when you will commence your offseason. Now this phase of training, I want to be careful because as soon as people think about training, particularly if you haven't dialed in your performance recipe quite yet, that can feel dark gloomy overbearing, and highly committed. But as you're gonna find out today, it doesn't need to be meh. So I'm still gonna stick to the right language. This phase of training offseason is important and it's going to last, listen here, 12 to 18 weeks, three to four months of duration. Three to four months, that's a lot. And it is important, important, in one way, in the fact that these months of training should be like any other phase of training, structured and progressive. That's the heartbeat of everything for a successful athlete who wants to avoid injury and wants to make sure that gains improvements to avoid plateaus, et cetera, structured and progressive training. Okay? And that means that in the course of an offseason lasting at least 12 weeks, maybe 15 weeks, stretch into even 18 weeks. If it's structured and progressive, what's going to happen in the first five weeks of your offseason is going to evolve and look pretty different by the time you're at weeks 12, 13, 14 up to 18 weeks. Okay, so this ain't all smoking jackets with the pipe and the slippers on and the velvet pajamas, sitting by the fire, drinking brandy over the course of the next three to four months. This is important work. But we want to have two things exist at the same time. We want to have rejuvenation, mental rejuvenation, and physical rejuvenation, and we want to have progression.
Matt Dixon 22:14
Now, let's discuss the pushback. Okay, the typical pushback because we cannot dig into the details of the offseason, without me addressing the very common and understandable hesitancy and pushback from athletes that declare themselves unable or unwilling to recommit to structure at this time. Let's remember when I said around the offseason, I called it a platform of opportunity. The truth is, that many athletes at this time of the year, are so desperate to turn their back on the sport that they're training for, at the end of their race season because ultimately, for the months prior leading to their big races, they've actually failed to really nail the performance recipe throughout those weeks of training. And so in other words, they haven't successfully integrated sport into life as they've been preparing for their races. And this is amplified if you're time-starved. If you've got a very busy professional, you've maybe got family and friend commitments, whatever it might be, if the sport is a little bit of the monkey off your back, and you haven't quite dialed in your recipe, and then you're going to experience amplified sensations and pull from the other constituents of your life to say that doesn't fit, you need to take a break, or I'm tired, I just need to turn my back on the sport. And what this leads to then, is, unfortunately, many athletes getting stuck in what I would call an ineffective seasonal cycle approach. So that's a huge break of, Oh, my goodness, may I'm exhausted, I need to go and focus on my family, I need to focus on my work, I just can't do training right now. I just need my life back. And they fall into randomness for many, many months. And it's all down to the fatigue, and not focusing on the other areas of life over the prior months leading into key races. And so randomness ensues. And once they've got past the holidays, they burst into the new year and they think here we go again, I'm now going to launch myself back into ambitious training because ultimately I'm behind the eight ball I haven't done much for the last three months and I haven't done any structure, so I need to get cracking. Let's bring out the bullwhip, let's get cracking again. And of course, what occurs there is athletes naturally overcorrect a little bit. And they tend to throw their emphasis, their focus, into training. And they do too much training too quickly relative to life demands because they're playing catch up. I'm behind the eight ball, my events are coming up, etc. And they go through that race season often interrupted with a lot of compromises around some of the performance habits, maybe a little bit of tension in the family structure because they're playing catch up. And of course, they finished that next season once again, physically and mentally exhausted. And of course, what happens then? I just need a break from the sport and the cycle continues. And it continues year on year or until they quit. And they quit because the feeling is that the sport is just simply too consuming and maybe even too selfish relative to other life demands. A platform of opportunity, folks. You are actually empowered to break this mold, to fix this cycle. And if and only if, at this time, and I'm afraid it can't occur other times of the year, if at this time you invest in yourself and you dare evolve from your prior approach, that takes bravery and a little bit of smarts, a little bit of bravery, a whole bunch of courage, but you need to change. We need behavior change and a shift in your approach. Invest in yourself to free up liberate and break that cycle that ultimately is not a cycle that's going to lead to long-lasting performance improvements.
Matt Dixon 26:34
So what I want to do is cement your thinking, You have likely heard me say in prior shows, that consistency is the magic word of performance. I've also said, the offseason is the most important part of the year if you want huge breakthroughs. So here we are, both of those ring true, the next three months ahead, are absolutely critical. If you get it right, to lay the bedrock, and the platform for you to become the best version of yourself, whatever that means for you. And on top of it, for you to be yourself in parallel, you need to be consistent. And so under no circumstances can taking a complete break from unstructured training with no organization and going random, that has never been beneficial for anyone. These two concepts, consistency and the power of the offseason go hand in hand. And I promise you that if you get the coming months, right, then you are well placed for the following season to apply a more balanced approach that can actually be built in a more patient manner and can have a positive foundation, all produced and well learned through a structured offseason. But then, perhaps in the months going into next year, with your races looming, you don't dial up the temperature on your training focus quite as much as in prior years, you actually get to integrate it into life a little bit more and continue on with training that is sustainable, that fits into life that still provide you with scope, to focus on family, friends work, etc. and enables you to actually commit to proper sleep, proper eating habits. It doesn't feel like a monkey on the back. It feels like it synchronizes together, it dances, it's a ballet. But that approach only really comes out of consistency through the offseason. And so I believe that this is really the catalyst of how people find harmony. And also realize the benefits of not just improving in sports and getting the results that you want in a sporting arena. But absolutely reaping the benefits around health and how you show up in other key arenas in life. Consistency. And so it starts now or at least now-ish whenever your last race is, take a break. 10 days, 2 weeks, turn your back on it, recharge, but then build a successful offseason. And so let me be clear. You absolutely at a time appropriately, typically, for athletes right after the last race, you do need that break, you should have that break. In fact, I demand as a coach that you take that break. But you also need an offseason. The key is how you do the offseason. The good news on that part is that an effective offseason shouldn't feel nearly as demanding as the rest of the year of training. In fact, it should be a catalyst for you to unlock plenty of scope for high flexibility, a lot of fun and differentiated activity, and lots of opportunities for you that are simply not viable into the rest of the year. So this shouldn't be as committed, certainly not on a time front, certainly not as a mental engagement, so far as getting things right, and certainly not in how hard the work is. And yet it's absolutely critical. It's a non-negotiable from a performance standpoint. So I hope that you start to join the dots here. If you want your performance journey to improve, it doesn't commence in the coming months by resetting and going rogue. Instead, it starts with an investment in yourself upfront. And then you can be liberated for the next nine months. If you just stay on the wagon and do it right over the next three months. And then you earn the next nine months that should feel much more sustainable and get you better results. And I can promise you this thing, if you commit with me, if all of us here as a part of the Purple Patch team, all of our athletes, you guys listening at home if we all commit to doing this together, I promise you that every single one of us that does it outside of freak accidents, rogue illnesses, changes in life that are uncontrollable, if we all do the things that are under our control, we will all feel better, perform better, and have much better results in any arena. That's what my promise is. That's how important this is. This is the golden key. This is like opening up the chocolate bar and finding the golden ticket. It doesn't happen very often. And so I hope that crystallizes how important this is. But remember, this is far from a call to just keep training hard. In fact, it's a call to not just keep training hard. You're successful offseason includes a radical shift in where your priorities are around sports. And it actually changes how you approach every single week of your training and performance journey. And so what I want to do today is break down what that looks like from a component standpoint.
Matt Dixon 32:36
You finish your last race of the year as an athlete, it's maybe a time for rejuvenation, and you’re recommitting after a break of 10 to 21 days. You're holding hands with me, and we're going into the offseason. What are the components? Let's break it down as that big headline news today. My first suggestion, if you are a competing athlete, absolutely forget your competitive and racing mindset. Don't even think about your goals. Instead, expand your mindset a little bit. We're not talking about racing, finish lines getting faster here. Instead, we're just going to open it up and say this is a phase of preparation. So my mantra for offseason is always let's first build the athlete in very broad global terms. And then you get to in the months following offseason, go and build the triathlete - now insert the runner, the cyclist, the rower, whatever - whatever your arena is. But the first concept is to build the athlete, build the human being - high functioning, strong, resilient, great habits, unskilled in technique and every other skill that you have, and build that globally. And then focus the lens on getting ready to prepare you for your events and races. And so in other words, what that means in the offseason is we're thinking about building a nice platform of overall strength, high health, quality nutrition, good synchronization and movement patterns, a really nice platform of tissue resilience so that you could go and ultimately, go and do anything, anything that you want to do, I want to climb that mountain, I want to ride across America, I want to run to wherever it doesn't matter what it is, you could go and do anything. We're not training you for Ironman, training you to try and qualify to Boston, training you to get ready for your first 5k, None of that. We're training you to be a high-functioning individual first, that's what the offseason is. Okay? And while you're doing that, what you're actually really doing is preparing your body. From a physiological standpoint or musculoskeletal standpoint, you're building your body and preparing it for the very challenging work that is going to lie ahead so that you can be more resilient, and more able to adapt and absorb the training. So if you're a triathlete, you're gonna prepare the body for the upcoming looming very, very challenging swim, bike, and run workouts that are necessary and prerequisites for you to be successful for your goals. Fantastic. But it doesn't need to be that hard right now. It doesn't need to be demanding. It doesn't need to be wholly specific. But while we bring down the overall demands from a work standpoint, and we train a little bit less, and we don't have those looming races that are sitting there a little bit like a vise coming closer and closer goodness me it's an unavoidable juggernaut lurching towards us, we don't have any of that. What it does is liberate us and it liberates us to focus on the things that are just really challenging to actually apply our willpower and our mindset to and that's improving how we do our sports. In other words, improving our skills, and our technique. And these are things that we simply can't over-focus on when we're in the heat of race season. So this is the only time that we remove the race demands, we lower the physical component of really, really hard training. And it's relatively easy but now we have the mental fortitude, the capacity to actually say, let's think about improving my swim technique, how I ride my bicycle, how I actually stand and out of the saddle, how I run up and downhill, what my postures like, et cetera. In other words, upgrading my skills in technique is an opportunity.
Matt Dixon 37:13
And so when I think about that, from a practical applied standpoint, I always think about the offseason, if it's done right, as a little bit like a jigsaw puzzle, and here are your pieces of the puzzle. You've got a break, more time to spend focusing time and energy with my family, my friends, and other areas of life. So that's one of the jigsaw pieces is just capacity elsewhere, energy flowing elsewhere. Okay, that's an important piece of the jigsaw puzzle. The second part of it is a more flexible approach, where you actually get some opportunity to go and do some other fun things that don't necessarily fall under the guise of specificity. So if you were a triathlete, you might include hiking, skiing, gravel, riding, or whatever floats your boat. But that's another jigsaw puzzle that fits into the overall recipe of the offseason.
Matt Dixon 38:13
And then you've got from the ground up strength and conditioning, a very central part of the offseason if you've never done it before, now is the darn time to start that. And it should be continued all the way through your next year. But when we think about strength, it is just that pure strength, I want to get you stronger, strong like bull, as we like to say. But also improving joint mobility, how you balance your flexibility, how you actually coordinate your movements, really, really important for a high functioning human being no matter what your sport focus is. And then as I suggested, absolutely upgrade your technique in the essential sports that you love. From a triathlon perspective, swim, bike, and run, this is the time to focus on your technique. And on top of the technique, though, is skills. And that might include Terrain Management, standing out of the saddle cornering the bicycle, running downhill, how to improve your sighting for open water swimming, all of the things that make up beyond technique, your actual skills of application. And it's really, really hard to upgrade your technique and your skills when you've got looming race plans, because your attention is going to get pulled away naturally to fitness, to race execution, all those things. And underneath all of that, high flexibility, lots of time with your family of friends, a little bit of fun and flexibility, upgrading in skills, upgrading in technique, all of those pieces of the jigsaw start to work together to make up, make up a wonderful offseason. And that leads us to a complete jigsaw puzzle of offseason with two main components, just two more pieces of the puzzle.
Matt Dixon 40:08
The first is to do just enough physical training that produces baseline fitness and healthy tissue resilience that is going to result in you being primed, primed, and mentally excited to go on and meet the demands of the hard work that is looming, because there's no easy way to establish great personal performance, you need to invest in yourself, you need to train hard, but you will be ready to do it if you've done just enough, not too much, but just enough regular training. And the final piece, the golden piece of your jigsaw puzzle is foundational habits that you lay down in the areas that promote well-being. Things like sleep, and good nutrition habits. And when you get that right, it makes up the offseason. And the good news is, it doesn't feel overwhelming. It leaves you with plenty of capacity for the other components of life but you're still progressing. All of these pieces, you have to have all of these pieces to appreciate that randomness, unstructured, is a recipe for disaster, personally for you. It doesn't make any difference to me, for you, it's a personal recipe for disaster. But when you have these building blocks - fun, flexibility, time for others, upgrading your skills and technique, a focus on strength, just enough training to keep it ticking along and get you primed up. And a little focus on some of the supporting habits, then, then what it builds is a magic word. It builds performance progression. And it also leaves you over the coming months with something that everyone wants to hear -- capacity. You're going to have capacity, capacity for other things.
Matt Dixon 41:58
The important part when you do this well is you shouldn't be you don't have to be as committed in terms of hours, you don't have to stare down in the mirror and have as much hard effort over the coming months. It's not necessary or appropriate. You should feel like if you get your offseason right, you have time left over. You shouldn't feel the same time challenges that emerge from your commitment over the rest of the year. And in fact, if you're doing it right, your family and friends should hardly notice your commitment to the sport, your commitment to longevity, your commitment to investing in yourself to become better at whatever is important to you, it shouldn't have an impact on others. And in addition, it shouldn't take a huge mental toll. In fact, what it really should do is rejuvenate you, and equip you to be better, that's when you get it right. And I tell you what it will and here's my promise, it will, If you join me in this, it will leave you more confident and excited about your race goals. It's actually going to prevent you from burning out. It's going to break the mold of plateaus. And it's going to ultimately create that platform of success for you. I'm gonna let that soak in. If you don't go rudderless, if you invest in yourself, but you make sure that you go -- All right now, it's a radical shift in mindset. It's a vast difference to the rest of the year. These next three months are absolutely critical but I want to give myself capacity, I also want to build the platform.
Matt Dixon 43:49
If you do that, what you're doing is refusing to quit on yourself. Instead, what you're doing is investing in yourself. And if you do that, I can promise you it's going to set you up for success. Now what I'm going to do next week is going to get pretty granular and I thought the best way to do it is to use our coaching methodology, as an example and a case study, and you can pull from it. Now you might be inspired to get involved and participate after that. That's great. But you might be listening to this as a coach, and maybe you can draw on it for your own athletes. But next week, I'm going to get really detailed, about how we at Purple Patch are going to integrate all of those pieces of the jigsaw around off-season. So how are we going to make sure that people get the mental break, make sure that they can build capacity, ensure that they can invest in their family, friends, and their work on other components, ensure that we can have fun freedom, go and hike and do all the stuff that we'd like to do, and have a cracking time at the holidays without feeling that athlete guilt. How we're going to do that and also up-grade athletes, get them better, improve their skills, get them strong, and set them up for a magical year of results. 2023 has been some of our best results ever at Purple Patch. We've qualified more athletes for World Championships, and we've got more newcomers across their first finish line across all distances of racing. But that's not enough. We want them to be better in 2024. And it starts right now ensuring that we don't overdo it, that we do facilitate some capacity for our athletes. But also, we need to, it's our responsibility, set them up for success.
Matt Dixon 45:42
So next week, I'm going to break down a typical week approach, how we actually break down day by day what the workouts look like. I'm going to show you some very specific sessions, swims, bike rides, runs, and the meaning behind them. Not just some random sessions, but why we're building them at this stage of the year the way that we are. And I'm even going to share where we're going to be placing our athlete's minds and their approaches over the course of the offseason. And if you're listening as a Purple Patch athlete, this is going to be brand new for you. Because we've torn the book up. We've completely recreated it. This is brand new in Q4. It's never been done like this as we're going to do it. And so I'm desperate to share and by the end of next week, I believe that you should have a very clear path for your performance journey ahead. And I really hope that it's going to empower you and excite you. And then we're going to finish up as I said with the third episode. So that's in two weeks’ time from today, that we're going to wrap it up with your questions. So feel free to ensure that you ping me with any questions that you have right now, maybe I'll answer some of them next week, but by episode number three, in the offseason, I'm going to just dedicate the whole show to you guys, the listeners, and your questions. It's always a useful educational tool. And remember, if you have a question, reach out, We just ask for your first name, and hopefully your location. Info@purplepatchfitness.com. You can also leave me a nice voicemail. If you know where I live, you can even pop around, and bring me a nice Pilsner, nonalcoholic, please. And we'll have a chat and you can ask your question live. Alright guys, until then, you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna see you next time. Take care.
Matt Dixon 47:31
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 on YouTube, and you will find it there and you can 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 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@Purple Patch fitness.com or leave it in the comments of the show at the Purple Patch page and we will get you dialed in. We'd love constructive feedback. We are in a growth mindset as we like to call it. And so feel free to share with your friends. But as I said, Let's build this together. Let's make it something special. It's really fun. We're really trying hard to make it a special experience and we want to welcome you into the Purple Patch community. With that, I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun, keep smiling, and do whatever you do. Take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
offseason, athletes, training, break, performance, patch, focus, week, purple, year, sport, race, months, improving, technique, life, absolutely, triathlete, invest, call