Episode 284: Offseason - Foundation, Skills, and Technique (Part 2 - Key Principles and Approaches)
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We continue our three-part series on the off-season, in which we frame the approach to building a foundation of performance, developing skills, and improving technique.
In part 2 of our series, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon discusses his reimagined approach to the off-season and lays out a blueprint for leveraging the months between Q4 and Q1 in a smart and balanced way.
Matt shares key principles and approaches you can leverage this off-season to improve your swim stroke, terrain management on the bike, balance on the run, and more while emerging faster, stronger, and injury-free.
He lays out the various methods and resources that form the basis of Purple Patch programming, coaching, community, and education, with the goal of helping athletes achieve their best year of racing while integrating sport into their busy lives.
“The challenge, of course, is that really focusing on technique and skill acquisition is almost impossible when you're equally training hard, you're in that environment. It's a hard session. You don't have the willpower, focus, and attention to really think about your posture, your form, your skill acquisition, etc. And it becomes even tougher when you've got a looming deadline for a race. When that comes up, all bets are off. All you have hope for is to retain what is already habitual. And that's why these coming months are your golden platform of opportunity. Because you have no deadlines. You have much lower stress training demands, and therefore you have the capacity to focus on your HOW.” - Matt Dixon
Although Matt discusses the approach from a triathlete's perspective (swim, bike, run, strength, and habits), the principles and techniques he covers apply to all endurance athletes and fitness enthusiasts.
Whether striving to reach the podium and finish line or simply aiming to enhance how you perform at work and in life, the principles Matt discusses today apply to anyone seeking to improve their performance.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 07:55 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
08:02 - 09:36 - Matt's News-ings
09:51 - 13:30 - Word of the Week
13:37 - 01:01:11 - The Meat and Potatoes - Episode 284: Offseason - Foundation, Skills, and Technique (Part 2 - Key Principles and Approaches)
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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
Folks, today's show is about the offseason. And that applies to not just folks that are chasing podiums, but also anyone that's looking to improve their performance and how they show up in life. Now, this is the time of the year when we do a lot of foundational work and a lot of skills development, we're going to talk about that in today's show. But one of the elements that's equally important is some planning and some baseline assessments. A key tool that we use at Purple Patch is InsideTracker. By assessing your biometrics and getting a landscape on your current platform of health, we can leverage the expertise and strategies outlined by the team of scientists at InsideTracker, to get a really precise focus on the elements that you need to work on to try and improve your performance-related components. This gives you precision, and it also provides measurable results. Our athletes use it a Purple Patch, but you don't need to be a Purple Patch athlete 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 20 That's Purple Patch Pro two zero, you get 20% off everything at the store. Alright, let's talk about the offseason. Part two, enjoy the show.
Matt Dixon 01:43
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast as ever, your host, Matt Dixon. And well welcome back. This is part two of our three-part series where we're going to be focusing on the offseason, and boy, are we doing things differently this year. Today, what we're going to do is dig in as promised on how we at Purple Patch are going to tackle our offseason for our athletes. Now this might inspire you to join us on your performance journey. But beyond that, it also will probably prove helpful for coaches who are plotting their own athlete’s programs. And also if you're self-coached, and you're looking to draw elements from today's conversation to apply to your own training. Now to frame our offseason, a question that few people asked from last week was how long does this phase of training last? You might remember from last week, and we'll dig into this in the moment, that we talked about having a week or two complete break. And after there this phase of training basically kicks off for the majority of our athletes on October 1, of Q4 of this year, and extends for the next 18 weeks. Now, technically speaking, that's more than an offseason. But we're gonna label the whole phase this year offseason. And in fact, its official title is "offseason: foundation, technique, and skills. And we'll get into more of that later on why we've come up with that very nice saying around this. So the truth is that it's going to extend into our prep as we get into next year proper, but it's important. So mark it down in your calendar, October, November, December, and then into January in half of February, then we start to turn up the dial start to train a little bit more aggressively, and gain all of the benefits from the work that we are going to put in over the coming weeks.
Matt Dixon 03:31
Now the headline news today is that we aren't going to discuss our approach through the lens of a triathlete. In other words, swim, bike, run, strength, and supporting habits. But it's important for you to listen and remember that the very same principles apply to any endurance athlete, and any fitness enthusiast in fact, anyone that's just looking to improve. And so it's very, very easy for you to join the dots over some of the components that we talk about today and just simply apply it to your own journey. Now, before we go on, I should point out that if you didn't listen to last week's show, I encourage you to hit pause on this podcast right now. And go back and listen to that first. And the reason for that is I believe it provides a lot of foundational information that's going to be very, very helpful. We went through last week many of the principles and framing of what this upcoming part of the year should look like for anyone. And to remind you very briefly as a quick snapshot, almost the Cliff Notes, it included the benefits of a completely unstructured break from all performance focus, and that should last somewhere between 10 to 21 days, the critical importance of getting then back onto a structured approach after this break. And that's what a lot of people don't do they go rogue as I call it, relying on a completely untethered random approach. And you know what that delivers? Well, that delivers a little bit of catastrophe related to your performance in the months and even the season ahead. We also dug into how a structured offseason doesn't force the same time commitments and the same expectations of hard work than the normal rest of the year actually delivers for you. And that success in this very important phase of training, at least the first 12, the 18 weeks includes tons of flexibility, a lot of fun, and a lovely word that I like variety. The key principle is that without the looming race coming up right on us, we have the golden platform of opportunity to upgrade our skills and technique. And in other words, you have ahead of you for the coming months, the opportunity, the capacity, to focus on things that are close to impossible to truly give your full attention in the heart of a race season.
Matt Dixon 05:48
So what we're looking for in an offseason is we're looking to drive towards certain elements. Number one, we want physical and mental rejuvenation. And that sounds really important, I want to hone in on that mental and physical rejuvenation. So in other words it's not going to be shackling, it's not going to be suppressing, instead, it's going to allow you to spark a little bit more. But in conjunction with that, we also want to upgrade our skills and our technique across all of the disciplines no matter what your sport is. And then we want to do some really important preparatory work around conditioning, cardiovascular conditioning, your fitness, and tissue resilience so that the body is equipped to take on absorb, and adapt to upcoming looming training, that is going to come in the months ahead. In addition to that, we're looking to focus on strength training, it's important, maybe gaining some positive shifts in body composition is a good time of the year to do it, particularly if you might benefit from that. And you're ready to transition at the end of this phase into very challenging work, but you're really excited, you have good energy, and you're healthy. That's what the offseason is. And that's really important. So what I did today is I broke out six key principles and approaches that are going to make up our approach. It's almost the building blocks. And I decided to dig in to try and reveal a little bit of the components. Now for you Purple Patch athletes who are listening, you're going to gain a little bit of excitement and inspiration, and clarity on what we're doing. If you're not a Purple Patch athlete, you can maybe extract from these lessons and maybe apply them to your own journey. Or it might come and join us of course, and that would be well fantabulous. That's all I have to say. Alrighty, so they drive these principles, all six of them, drive our approach to Q4 and Q1. And it's really important, offseason, foundation, skills and technique. Now before we dig in, Barry, we've got to do something. We've got a little bit of an announcement. We've got a little deal for the folks at home. Let's do Matt's News-ings.
Matt Dixon 08:02
Yes, folks, let's talk about this. It is the winter months are looming. In fact, we've got the autumn months to come. But the key is that you probably don't have races on the calendar. And that means as we talked about last week, you have a golden platform of opportunity for you to focus on improving and developing in ways that you simply don't get the opportunity to when the heat is on around race season. You can rest, and you can take a break from the heavy load. While still leveraging the offseason as the opportunity to make huge dramatic improvements in areas that you might have underperformed over the course of the last year. Whether it's improving your swim stroke, in making sure that you become a master of the craft of bike terrain management skills, or adding speed and power to your run. reimagine what you can do with your offseason and get all the tools that you need to be successful on our tri-squad offseason training block. Use the code Pod 10 That's P-O-D one, zero. So Pod 10. And you're gonna get 10% off your first month of tri-squad. You can see what it's all about. And I promise you, if you invest in yourself, that's why we're giving you a little bit of investment back from ourselves as well, and then you are going to set yourself up for a golden season ahead. Our offer is good just through September 30th so that you can get cracking right when we roll it all out on October the first onwards. Alright folks, With that done, I want to do a little fun word of the week because this is going to spark your imagination. Barry, take it away. It's the word of the week.
Matt Dixon 09:51
Yes, folks, the word of the week this week. Banana Rama, if you're of a certain generation, you're going to know them well. Some say they were more influential than Michael Jackson. But who remembers their classic song with the band Fun Boy Three? Yes, indeed. It Ain't What You Do. It's the Way That You Do It. Now for my English friends, I know that you're getting frustrated because you wanted me to talk about Roy Castle and record breakers and him playing his trumpet and doing exactly the same song in an eloquent way. But I decided to lean on the Bananarama version. Because, come on, how many times in a performance podcast do I get to say Bananarama? If you haven't heard it, we're going to leave the link in the show notes for you. But it does provide a nice segue into the focus of today's discussion. If you want to get faster in any sport, the majority of your attention, your focus, should not be placed on the output. Instead, it should be focused on the process, or for you Yankee poodles -- the process, in other words, the doing your technique, your skills, and your mindset, where you're placing your focus. Those are the things that are important. You can train these elements, you can upgrade them, and they will drive you to better efficiency, amplify results from your hard training, and help you develop a toolkit of skills that you will be equipped to apply across various situations, different terrain, different scenarios so that you can get in whatever sport you're engaged in the best return in terms of speed relative to your effort. It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it. Upgrading your skills delivers a huge return. And in fact, it is an easier improvement curve than building fitness. We all spend so much time focusing on getting fitter getting fitter getting stronger, getting stronger. But the truth is that the gains are pretty incremental on that. They're important, you need a baseline of fitness and strength and resilience, but how you apply that asset, your fitness, and your strength into scenarios gives you the biggest speed yield. So yes, fitness is nonnegotiable, I give you that, don't worry. But if you have the courage to focus on the HOW, that's going to be your route to your results flowing. The challenge, of course, is that really focusing on technique and skill acquisition is almost impossible. When you're equally training hard. You're in that environment, it's a hard session, and you don't have the willpower, focus, and attention to really think about your posture, your form, your skill acquisition, etc. And it becomes even tougher when you've got a looming deadline for a race. When that comes up, all bets are off. All you have hope for is to retain what is already habitual. And that's why these coming months are your golden platform of opportunity. Because you have no deadlines. You have much lower stress training demands, and therefore you have the capacity to focus on your HOW. And that's why I call and say it's time for an upgrade. Listen to our Word of the Week, Bananarama, it ain't what you do. It's the way that you do it. And with that, let's dig into the juicy details of the how. Barry, it is time for the meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 13:37
Yes, folks, the meat and potatoes, offseason. Six principles of how we are leveraging this phase of training at Purple Patch. And we're gonna dig right in. And we're gonna go pretty deep on a couple of these because I really want to try and unpack our coaching approach. And I want you to bear in mind as I talk about these elements that we have completely reimagined this phase of training, but we've done it with purpose. And it isn't about us just building the right workouts. The magic in any program is not really about the workouts, the training sessions are important. But it's how do we effectively educate athletes and empower them to adopt and execute those workouts so that it can result in change? And I mean, positive change, improvement. And there are several components that we need to build this around. Yes, there's the prescription of the absolute training. But there's also how we tutor guide and educate on the execution of that session, how we actually coach and provide feedback and support along the journey, and how we can amplify individuals within the context of a team approach. And our challenge is we're looking to amplify individual performance in a team approach with athletes that are distributed all over the world. So how do we get this done? In order to go through this, we built it around six principles. And we're gonna go through the swim, bike run strength, there's four of them. But there are two other really important principles that build on top of it. Okay? Now, these are going to be the absolute cornerstones that make up our programming, our coaching, our community, and our education. And they will, and I say this with confidence, they will drive our athletes to the best year of racing, and also successfully help them integrate sport into their time-starved lives. And that's what we're looking to do. Purple Patch is not just about trying to help make you faster, it's actually trying to ensure that the journey of sport amplifies how you show up in the rest of your life. We want you to be healthy, and energetic, and ensure that you can show up as a friend, as a father, as a wife, as a husband, whatever it might be. And so that becomes important. And I think today's show is really important to educate you to almost peel back the curtain a little bit so that you understand how we're going about it. Because I think it is the cornerstone of much of our success. And I say this without ego, honestly, so many folks reach out to us on a consistent basis and ask how we managed to gain such widespread, almost exponential performance from our athletes, despite our athletes, training -- reduced training hours, and also navigating incredibly busy lives. And today’s show, the principles, and the start of each journey, which for our athletes will start in October, is a huge part. In fact, I might say this is no news because I talked about this last year. I think this offseason phase of training is the most important part. We have ongoing habits, but I think if you nail this right, you're setting yourself up for success. And you're going to avoid injury risk, desperation training, trying to force the lack of patience and driving, training too hard, that ultimately leads to frustration. And so if you can have a successful offseason, you're going to be successful later on. This year, the reason I'm so excited about this session of this podcast today is because this year is the year that we have decided once again to evolve. And we have a nice saying it Purple Patch yet evolve or die. We are stepping it up. We completely rewrote the script this year. And we have reimagined everything about the Purple Patch offseason. So I thought why not we're going to dive in, we're going to explain the approach and hopefully it's helpful. Now I'm doing it through the lens of our triathletes today, but bear in mind that the same principles apply to all endurance and life performance-minded folks. So just keep that in mind when you listen as you go through today. And whether you're chasing podiums of finish lines or simply trying to improve how you show up across work in life, I promise you it does apply.
Matt Dixon 18:02
And so without further ado, Barry, we're going to kick it off. And we're going to label it principle number one, and that is swim school. Now this is the cornerstone of one element of our triathlon program, swimming. And we are going to corner it off. And we are going to send all of our athletes through swim school. So what does that mean? Well, this is just one discipline of a triathlete's program. But it's also a discipline that is the common weakness for so many triathletes, particularly if they're, what I like to label, adult-onset swimmers. And the truth is that to improve your swim performance, particularly your swim performance in open water, you need three key things. Number one, you need to have the best technique that you can develop. But number two in parallel to it, and you can't break these two things apart, you also need to establish the best level of muscular endurance and cardiovascular fitness that you possibly can through your hard work and your training. And then finally, to be successful in a dynamic environment, you need specific skills that can help you in those highly variable conditions that make up lakes, rivers, oceans, et cetera. So those are the three elements of becoming a better swimmer. But when the heat is on, when you're getting primed for racing, it's almost impossible to work from the ground up on improving your technique and even your skills. So principle number one, principle number three, it's almost impossible. Fitness naturally is the thing that becomes the dominant focus, and that's the same for coaches and for athletes. And the reason for this is perfectly normal. The truth is that no matter how much you improve your technique, you're always going to need muscular endurance and fitness to retain any technique improvements over a long-distance swim. And so we have to lead with the endurance lead with the fitness and then scramble almost as an integrated afterthought to say, hey, focus on your catch focus on your body position, try and integrate some sighting, etc. But it's very, very difficult to wholly focus on that. And for many athletes, they're going to finish that swim, then they're going to go for a run, or maybe they're going to go into a strength session, it's one part of the high-demand environment of training, that you're always trying to juggle and balance with all of the other demands of life.
Matt Dixon 20:34
So with that challenge in mind, now is the time that we can breathe out and say, this is the opportunity for Swim School. And it really is a beacon of a great example of how we're approaching the offseason. Because far away from the deadlines of races, we actually have the opportunity, let me rephrase that, you have the opportunity to improve your swim technique from the ground up. If our role is to help you genuinely improve your swim technique, there would be very little value in saying, well, let's do some technique swims, let's build some lower stress swims with a bunch of drills in them, that's good enough, because it's not good enough. If we truly want you to improve, we have to build a program from the ground up, that is going to include all of the elements that we know, make athletes successful. So the part of that is any athlete is going to benefit from a true and complete understanding of what the focus and targets are. They then are going to up-skill in the specific technique, and then be able to apply that technique in regular swimming sessions. As they're going through that process, which is not immediate and not short-term, they're going to need ongoing feedback, support, and education. And that is what informs our whole approach to this offseason - swim school - as we're affectionately calling it.
Matt Dixon 22:11
So what does that mean? Well, what it means is, that it's going to be led by our resident swim specialist, coach John Stevens, many of you guys have heard him on this very show before. John and I developed a series of very technique-heavy, specific swim sessions built from the ground up for this block of the offseason. And every single one of these sessions is going to be focused on a single element of technique. And that element of technique is going to have a video instruction of the drill so you understand how to do it and a tutorial on the session of what the focus is, and what the outcome is where chasing, it also is going to give a guide on how to actually successfully execute the session. So when you get your swimsuit on, you get your cap and goggles on, you know what you're looking to achieve, and you know how to do the actual session. Now following the execution of the first drill-specific session, we then carry this technique element into the rest of that week's training, so that you can further practice it and apply it even with the regular swimming sessions. And we build each cycle of training into three-week blocks. And what that enables us then in week two, is to introduce a second technical element. We don't ignore that first element, but we introduce a second. And we break that down into a single drill focus, apply it into that session, and then apply drill one and drill two into an applied session later in the week, and finally in the third week, yes, you've guessed it, we get to integrate a third an important element to building up your swim technique. And that third element all feeds into the subsequent sessions of that week, where you have a global technical focus on swimming your improvements. Now you have a three-week cycle. But just going through three weeks isn't enough. We need to repeat that cycle and repeat it again carefully, building up the complexity and the demands. So that by the time you're through three cycles, four cycles, hey, presto, you're really getting the grip of this and the new technical inclusions are starting to become, here's the magic word, habitual. And that's great. So having very specific and targeted sessions all technique-focused, allowing you to apply them and infused with videos, both tutorials on how to do the drills, but also on how to actually execute the session.
Matt Dixon 24:40
That is really important as just the starting building block of your swim school. But the sessions alone won't provide the full technique evolution. We still need to have really in-depth opportunities for education and here's the word feedback. So as a part of our swim school, Little Vertical We're also going to deliver education via John around the fundamental technique and skill acquisitions in swimming. And that's really important almost classroom sessions as we think about that. And then every three weeks at the start of each new cycle, John's gonna host a live Q&A and feedback session. And that's going to allow participating athletes to ask all of the questions, gain individual feedback, and share the journey with their teammates. It's a wonderful dose of camaraderie, feedback, and, of course, a little bit of support and accountability. And this becomes really social and empowering. Because these live and recorded sessions, if you can't attend live, ensure that you get to stay on track and apply the key principles. And it becomes a little bit more of a team approach, even though it's highly personalized. Now beyond all this, if this is really your sore point, if you're really, really challenged with swim technique, you can also upgrade a little bit, you can gain personal feedback, deeper customization into your sessions. And what you should specifically focus on, every single athlete participating has the option to just add a full swim analysis and program to their journey. And that will include individualized video assessment, feedback directly from John, and a tailored approach to their swim school approach. So globally, whether you're going down that track, or you're just joining on the big journey, this is swim school. It's structured, and it's a progressive pathway to improving your swim technique. But it's also designed to ensure that that technique can stick.
Matt Dixon 26:42
Now, of course, through this program, we're going to need to do just enough conditioning work to enable those technique upgrades to stick with you. But it's a really fresh approach to a patient performance build in swimming. And so if you're an athlete right now, and you're thinking, goodness, me, my weak point in my triathlon is swimming, this is the chance, and this one chance won't be applicable later in the year, you can't do it when you're getting ready for racing. This is the chance that you can go and do really different fun sessions, but they're going to actually improve your technique. And then with that new technique, the new swimmer that you will be, then you can dial up the training, you can start to build the conditioning. And I promise you fitness is never the limiter when you're consistent with your training. So that's how we're going to tackle the swim pillar if you want to talk about that. Of course, as a triathlete, you've also got bike, run, and strength.
Matt Dixon 27:43
So let's go to the principal approach number two, and that is what we're going to be labeling bike craft. Ladies and gentlemen, this is where I get to take the lead because I am going to lead this part of the off-season program personally. In other words, if you're going to get involved in this, you're gonna have to deal with me, including all of my expertise, but also my little bit of wit and sarcasm, whether you find it funny or not, we have a reputation for developing some frigging strong cyclists. And there's a reason for that. And it's not because of our magic intervals per se. What I'm going to reveal in bike craft is central to this. As we start to drive into the fall season, most folks are going to be spending the majority of their bike training time this winter inside on a trainer. And that might be due to time efficiency, it might be due to weather conditions, maybe the shorter days, therefore it's less opportunity in that busy time-starved life to get outside on the roads. And so we want to very simply optimize this training time.
Matt Dixon 28:47
And how do we not just improve fitness profiles? But how do we actually make you a better rider, a better rider outside? And the way to do that is not just to chase power gains. But it's actually to educate you and guide you and help you on how you actually ride your bike, your posture, your pedaling terrain management, every skill associated with riding a bike. So what we're doing under the banner of bike craft, is our weekends are going to be left a little bit more free. Because remember what we talked about with the offseason. It's a time for variety and flexibility for play. And so you're going to have lots of opportunity that if you love to go and ride a gravel bike, ride a mountain bike, go out and ride with your buddies, whatever it might be, maybe you want to just go and cross country ski, and then you're going to have lots of opportunity to do that because we want to give you that flexibility. We're also going to give you some weekend trainer base rides that you can implement instead if you are inside due to weather or you're a little bit more time-starve, and so there is going to still be an option for that. We're focusing most of Our technical development in the in-week sessions, and pretty much Bike Craft is going to include two 60-minute sessions a week. Now, these are really, really important. They're trainer-based. And there are three main missions of these workouts.
Matt Dixon 30:14
Number one is to help you understand your strengths and weaknesses as a bike rider. In order to do that, I've got to take you to some higher intensity occasionally. But it's really going to be insightful about where your strengths and weaknesses lay. And therefore you can address them or exploit the strengths, of course. The second is tutorials and skill acquisition, in how you're actually navigating terrain, it's a really important tool so that you can get the best speed return. And we can do this at a moderate to lower intensity, but it's going to be all empowering. And finally, I want over the course of bike craft, for you to actually develop a toolkit that can yield and be applied to help you improve your economy as a bike rider, or ultimately your speed. So that's the mission of design. And what we're doing, the same in parallel as our swim school, is to build it in our regular three-week cycles. week one, week two, week three. So pretty much if we're doing two 60-minute technical focus sessions every single week, there are going to be six workouts that we build all of those principles all those missions into, very simple yeah? In week one, you've got two workouts, in week two, we build on it, the next two workouts, week three. As we rotate those cycles of work, we're going to gradually help you understand yourself as a bike rider, improve your technique and skills, and start to gain a picture of how you apply those skills outside to give you the best speed return to lower your energy costs, et cetera. And that's really important.
Matt Dixon 31:57
Now, what I can't do today, for the sake of time, more than anything, is break down every single element of these six workouts. But I think it is worth me pulling off the shelf a couple, just to give you a little bit of a concept. So I talked about strengths and weaknesses. I talked about Terrain Management. So let me just dig into both of those and give you a little bit of insight into a session around higher intensity understanding strengths and weaknesses and also how we're going to apply a more technical session on Terrain Management. So the first session is going to be short VO2 Max intervals. Remember, we're not really worried about building endurance right now. So it's appropriate at this time of the year to infuse, just once a week or so, some short, high-intensity training. But there's no point in just doing high-intensity training. Why don't we in parallel to that really help you understand where your strengths are, and your weaknesses are? So in a session that I'm highlighting here, I'm going to have you do little 20-second sprints and they're gonna have very little recovery. Now the whole bout of this is only going to last about three minutes, but it is very high-intensity. But when I have you go through and understand, do you do better as a rider, when you're hitting those 20-second, close-to-best-effort intervals when you're hitting them at low cadence or high cadence? Where's your natural strength? Where's your weakness? In addition to that, what sort of power can you generate as a percentage of your critical power, or your FTP if you know that? So can you generate high power, really good, are you a high-octane athlete, or you're a little bit more like me a bit of a diesel athlete? Where I can go for a long time, but I haven't really worked too much on my high intensity. So gaining insights into capacity is also going to give you an indication of your ceiling and where you can apply your focus in subsequent sessions. And as you start to repeat these workouts and you gain this insight onto yourself, you're going to start to work out alright, what path is best for me what tool in the toolbox should I use if I need to get over this little roller and go high? Should I lean into a high cadence or shall I get muscular? Shall I stand or should I stay seated? And it's a really interesting acquisition that's going to start to emerge not in the first session, that's going to be like, goodness me that was hard or that was easy. But as we start to apply it over the weeks, the insights will be for every level of bike rider really empowering because they're going to help you identify your best prioritization and how to leverage your strengths. And that becomes really important.
Matt Dixon 34:50
So there is a part of bike craft where we say, go hit it hard, just for short, high-intensity stuff, but from that yielded an understanding of yourself. But then there's a whole other arm around pure technique and skills. Let me give you another example here with a different session, where the whole priority is we bring intensity down. So it's not overly difficult and demanding so far as a power output. But what we are leveraging here is Terrain Management. How do you, me, outside, variety of terrain, so think about little hills, little dissents, crests, rollers, all of the stuff that you're going to meet in the outside world, and how do you understand how to manage your system stress while riding on a bicycle? So I'm gonna give you an example of how we're going to do this. Let's take a random interval length, 10 minutes in duration. And I'm going to have you ride at a moderate effort, zone three, give or take about 80% of your functional threshold. So this is a very sustainable output, give or take about six or seven out of 10. And what we're looking to do in this specific example, is I'm going to ask you to maintain that effort, that output, that specific power output, but I'm also going to ask you to do that, at a consistent cadence, 85 revolutions per minute, which give or take is where most athletes tend to fall when they're riding on a flat road. So power is not changing very much, cadence is staying the same. Now, this is where we start to leverage the platform that we build our sessions on. Because within our sneaky platform, what I get to do is, I get to simulate a course. And now imagine with your mission, you need to hold it at a constant output, you need to hold it at a constant cadence. But now in that 10 minutes, I'm going to start to throw different grades at you. You're going to have a 1% grade, a little bit like a forced flat, now we're going to pitch it up to 3%. Goodness me the hills gonna get a little steeper, 6%. Now we're gonna come over the top, negative 2%, it's a little bit like a descent, we'll go through the bottom of it, you're going to go up to 4%, 7%. Goodness me that's getting steep. Now, more dissents, and so on, and so on, and so on. Well, you've got highly variable terrain, and yet, I'm going to ask you to hold power even, and cadence, even. The only tool that you have at your disposal, is to start to learn how to use your gears. That is the tool in this particular example that we're talking about. And when you're leveraging your gears appropriately, you can retain control, and even power at a regular 85 rpm. And that's really smooth. So this is a huge educational opportunity to understand how you can leverage gears to manage terrain. And guess what, it's a real challenge. The first time you do it, you'll probably be all over the shop. But I'm going to guide you through on video, whether you're attending live with me whether you're following the on-demand sessions, and I'm going to teach you, okay, let's call it out, here comes a 3% grade, you're going to feel it pull against your platform of your trainer, that smart trainer is going to increase the load, it's going to feel like the rolling resistance of a 4% grade, you're going to shift gears, manage it. Now you're going to crest over the top. And over the weeks, you're going to become a master of it. And it is almost impossible, then to not apply the same principle outside.
Matt Dixon 38:37
Now we're going to do parallel sessions just like this, where we're going to take that same 10-minute interval, that same variety of cadence change. But we're going to up-skill in a different way. Because if I say now, I want you to hold that same module output in that same zone three about 80% of your FTP. But this time, you're going to write it in a single gear, you never change gear. Well, what tool do you have available, you only have two. As the grades come and come up to 3%, 4%, up to 7, steep, coming down 1% negative. In other words, like dissent and so on, you're not allowed to change gears. And yet you have to keep, you have to keep that output the same. The only tool that you have in this teaching moment is your cadence and you can also stand. And by working on these two things in parallel, you start to gain an understanding of the tools that you have in the toolbox. And you think that's not important. If you master this for whatever your physiological steady state output that you can do in racing. If you master these elements, you are going to go and I'm going to double underline this -- significantly faster. And that's the outcome, but you have to really learn it. And the only environment that you're ever gonna learn it is through guidance, coaching, and practicing it when you're not consumed with a looming race.
Matt Dixon 40:17
So the only time you have is now and now is the time that you're going to be on a trainer. So why don't we leverage the platform to do it really effectively? That's what bike craft is. And that just gives you a little bit of insight. Now, these sessions are going to be challenging, but they're not challenging so far as physical demands leave you exhausted. And they're not challenging logistically so far as time. I'm asking for two hours a week. Two hours a week, and we can make you a better bike rider. The good news is the learning curve on these technical sessions is really steep. You're gonna have epiphany after epiphany. Now we do similar sessions to this to help with improving your standing form, help understanding your sustained output, and so many elements. And these sessions are immersive and educational, but just like swimming, the sessions alone are not enough. And so every one of the sessions is actually coached, they are coached by me via video, and you get to attend live if your scheduling allows and that's great and it's a lot of fun. And I give a lot of abuse and feedback because the video platform allows us to go both ways. You see me but I see you as well. Yes, accountability smells and tastes good, doesn't it? But on top of that, you can choose an on-demand version, with an overlay of graphics and further tutorials. Or you can even join one of the replays, a little bit like going to the theater with your buddies but you're going to do a session where you can all talk to each other and immerse yourself and experience following along with my coached session. And that will be a designated time slot in your timezone. And that's really important. That's really good. So that's an amplification of the sessions itself. But then we amplify the impact by doing those same regular live educational sessions for every athlete to come and learn the context, discuss the challenges, how they actually struggled, and how they can overcome it, and get some better and deeper education and feedback from me. Yes, you get to ask me your questions and I'll do my best to answer them with really good insights. The result is an incredibly time-effective way to have a lot of fun, and do something new, but actually improve your skills, your pedal stroke, your technique, your posture, and everything else that is going to yield for you to become a better bike rider. What did I say? Well, it wasn't me that said it, it was Bananarama. It ain't what you do. It's how you do it.
Matt Dixon 42:51
All right. So that's two, we have to talk about running principle number three, the run project. And this one, luckily, is a little more simple, okay. It's a little less complex than swim school and bike craft, but no less important. Mission number one with our run project is to build a platform for tissue health. And we do that by doing really consistent low-stress running. This is unifying across Purple Patch athletes, and we like to at this phase of the year, integrate really consistent easy, what I like to call soul-filling runs really, really frequent. And the good news about this is it doesn't take that much thinking, it's not that challenging. So that's really good. In fact, it's almost a decompression tool of life. It's an easy thing to take along with your fitness, but it's also priming your body for upcoming training. Mission number three, while we're doing this, is to improve your running technique. So we're doing this built around basically two runs a week, short, both very, very easy. And of course, they're integrated into the same three-week cycle. Each of the runs has a specific technical focus, it might be first just thinking about your arm carriage, or your arm swing, then we might talk about your feet and your balance as you're a runner. And finally, we're going to try and integrate how you then gain propulsion. And just like swimming, just like the cycling components, it all builds on each other through this repeatable pattern. And so you're going to have the same video-based tutorials, the same video elements of how to execute the drills appropriately. It's all video-infused because it has to be video-infused if you're truly going to be able to see and understand. And then to support that progression, we'll bring in coach Mike Olzinski, our resident strength and run expert, and he is going to lead regular run-specific education sessions. You're going to get the same feedback and education, you're going to get guidance on running technique and it's a great chance to come together with your other Purple Patch athletes, learn more about technique, and get your individual questions answered.
Matt Dixon 44:52
So you start to realize that in just these three disciplines, you've got a huge amount of really smart technical development in your training, but also a whole bunch of supporting education and opportunities to interact live with the coaching team. It's bountiful. Now the good news is that it's not time demanding. What we've talked about here, if you were going to do every technical swim, bike, and run is about six hours of total work in any given week. So that's where you're going to place the majority of your training time, then you can go out and play and have the other stuff in your year, or in your block of season. Really simple. We have got one more training thing to integrate, though. And it's important. And it's non-negotiable.
Matt Dixon 45:40
Principle number four, let's get strong. Every Purple Patch athlete, including you, including me, is going to commit to at least two strength sessions a week. Now you can do these in person at the Purple Patch center in a small group training environment, or you can do them via video. And it is all led by our strength expert Marcia Robles. Now, these are foundational sessions, that at this block of the year, offseason, are upgraded in our priority. It is a key focus on strength. The reason we do that is because it's fundamental for you to ultimately become a better athlete, but it's also critical for you to improve your health and become a higher-functioning human being. These sessions are focused on movement patterns, joint mobility, better coordination, and balance, all of that just applies to life I think, but also includes your strength, including some heavier load strength training for many athletes. And this is going to be the thing that provides your baseline for power potential in subsequent training. And so this challenge, if you're an athlete, that has historically not included strength training in your performance recipe, it's now, because it's the foundational component. It provides a baseline of improvements in your tissue health, it can have an impact on your body composition when combined with appropriate nutritional approaches. And it has huge performance potential, we all need it. And so every Purple Patch athlete, including me is going to adhere to it. Of course, we're also opening up opportunities for personalization and feedback, including education delivered directly via Marcia. And she too will have in-person opportunities via video, so that you can get your questions answered.
Matt Dixon 47:36
And all of that ends up wrapping up four key principles that we're going to build our offseason around. So you can see it's not time intensive. It's not particularly demanding. The only hard training so far is Oh, my God this hard, is once a week on the bike. Most everything else is pretty low-stress and it's not a huge time commitment. And you can do it all in six, seven, maybe eight hours a week at most. And that's for most athletes, a little bit of capacity that you have to go and spend on the other components of life. But there's more. To truly be effective as a program, we need to build around a couple of other principles.
Matt Dixon 48:18
Now I've danced around this a little bit. But principle number five is education and community. So you'll notice even when I talked about the training sessions, swim, bike run strength, I couldn't help but go into the educational components. And that becomes important because effective training, no matter how well designed the sessions are, is only going to stick when you as an athlete are empowered. And if you understand what the goals of the training are, and you buy into it, and you execute as intended, then you get really effective training. And so this becomes really important because I believe, and we believe as a team, that the offseason time is the time to ramp up opportunities to learn, to up-skill across your life and performance. So throughout this block of work, we're really going to dial up the access to us as a coaching team and our performance experts. And it's not just around the swim, bike run, and strength but it's around everything related to your performance, whatever you need as an individual. So we're going to have ongoing educational opportunities in all aspects of performance: sleep, how you organize your training in life, time management, the purpose behind training sessions, road mapping, how to navigate travel and time zones, and so much more. The Purple Patch coaching team, including myself, of course, is going to host ongoing live and recorded educational sessions that open up access to our wisdom and our guidance across everything related to the training in the program. And it's going to be an opportunity for you to ask us your questions. And I think that's important, but we never ever claim to have all of the answers. And so we're going to draw in from our pool of experts and friends that we have, some real experts in the field, to also contribute to this journey and this program that we're doing. And have targeted education opportunities around components such as physical therapy and injury prevention, hydration from Andy Blow and the team at Precision Hydration, Scott and the team at Fuel-in so that we can talk about how you might approach offseason body composition, and the team at InsideTracker to help us understand the elements around supplements - are they good? how should we think about nutrition related to daily energy? And anything else that might help you become a higher-functioning individual. And for those with loads of time and lots of desire, you will be swimming in educational opportunities.
Matt Dixon 50:54
But if you're more limited, and you feel like this sounds overwhelming, it's okay. Because you're gonna just be able to pick and choose from the curriculum of opportunities and say, These are the ones that are really worthy of my focus and attention. These are the ones that I'm going to put on my calendar. And you can always catch up with those sessions later if you miss sessions because they're all recorded. And they're all available on demand to you. And that's how we deliver our education. But this isn't just top-down education, because that's not really the Purple Patch way. Remember, I talked about the offseason, fun, flexibility, adventure, and variety. And so we need to infuse those components into how we do our offseason program, even with most of our athletes geographically dispersed all over the world. And so what we're doing here is we're leveraging the power of support and accountability of a team approach. So what I mean by this is you are, make no mistake, going to do what's right for you. You're going to do your training, the appropriate for you and you're going to immerse yourself in the education that is most applicable to you. And we can help you filter that of course, but your results will be better if you also add to that the support and the accountability of your teammates, and other Purple Patch athletes, and it's also going to make the journey more fun. The truth is that when engaged athletes. no matter what level of performance they are, they start to engage and lean into community support accountability, which develops an unstoppable performance culture. And I believe that the offseason is the time to really start to enhance and build this because it really primes us as a unit for the year ahead. It doesn't mean massive time commitments, it doesn't mean layering on thick sessions of mud where you just don't have time for anything else. All it's about is just participating and contributing in one way or another. Here are some options -- have a series of water cooler moments via internal community, where you can share the struggles, the lessons, the epiphanies that come from swim school, bike craft, the run project, and strength. And these moments are going to help you amplify your effort. But it's also going to ensure that you don't feel like you're training in a vacuum. Maybe you really struggled with that Terrain Management. But guess what, so did many of your teammates. What can we do about that? How can we do it better next time? In addition to that you can actually train with others live or on the replays. We're also going to have a host of scheduled weekend rides that are going to be lower stress, still coached, but are going to be focused on applying many of the elements of the in-week sessions that you can come to if you want. And those are going to be really fun. We might even have some different playlists. Very social, very fun. You get to choose the tunes, you get to share stories and train with others. And that feeling of connection. That's going to be really enjoyable. But it's also going to be a catalyst for you to improve your health and how you show up across your life. So why don't you leverage community, it's a proven asset to you in improving how you show up. And finally, we're going to give you the opportunity to have beer or coffee with us. Remember the life coach-led sessions provide a really informative arena where perhaps you can get a little bit of motivation, a little bit of inspiration, maybe a little bit of empowerment, and of course, some accountability and course correction if you're straying off course. It's important.
Matt Dixon 54:38
And folks, the last and final principle of the offseason with Purple Patch, is personalization. Remember what I talked about, you need to do what is right for you. We realize that everyone is in a different stage of development, and has different strengths and different weaknesses. And so right now you might think, oh my goodness me, he's just broken down swim bike, run, strength, community engagement. And it just feels like a tidal wave. He's also promised fun variety, flexibility, and greater capacity, how can I do all this? Well, there is a huge scope here for personalization. We don't expect and don't encourage folks to participate in everything here. We want you to have space, we need you to have the capacity, and we want a chance to place your focus and your energy into other aspects of your life. This is the time to do that. In fact, when we designed this, we thought about what success looked like. And we thought, if you're training, your family and friends should pretty much be blissfully unaware that you're still really committed to your training, it should feel different, it should be different. You should have the scope and capacity to participate in other parts of your life. And that's important. And so the key for you, as you step into this journey, is prioritization and focus, placing the emphasis on the aspects that are going to help you and that you're going to find exciting. But we also want to give you scope for deeper personalization. So we're going to set up a suite of individual consultations that will be available so that you can map your own performance recipe and you can do it in conjunction with one of our coaches. Or perhaps you're coming in bored into this offseason, but you've had a late-season race, and maybe you've missed the first section. How do you do it? Well, that's okay, just grab a consultation with one of our coaches. And we'll custom build the back-end so that we can maybe take a step back so that you can take three steps forward on your performance journey. And then you're going to have a suite of options where you can really dig deep into your area of focus or your weakness. We've got the swimming and assessment program, so you can have an individualized program. We have the opportunity for InsideTracker so that you can look at your personal health, and create a performance roadmap so that you can deliver measurable results on those things that help you bring your best self across all endeavors in life. We've got some season planning consultations, you've got personalized fuelling and nutrition programming, with the team of Fuel-in so that you can deliver not just a platform of health, but also improve your body composition. And we have a whole section of in-person services at the center.
Matt Dixon 57:23
You see, we feel like it's important that we've got your back and we work with you. And so remember, double underlined, it's a lot of information today but, less training, more freedom, but absolutely critical for your development as an athlete and a human being. Don't just keep going on your journey. Instead, filter it out, get focus, and develop a foundation for the elements ahead that are going to work. Don't go rogue, don't go random. Because we've already observed the catastrophic performance consequences that happen every season with folks that do this. If you do nothing else ahead, take a break, but then, in short order, commit to the offseason. Commit, because the yield is huge. It is genuinely huge. Whether your own journey, whether with a coach, whether you decide to come with us on the journey, commit. Do it.
Matt Dixon 58:23
The offer is there, and we would love to have you. It's going to be a heck of a lot of fun. And by the New Year, if you go on this journey, you're going to know the meaning behind such famous Dixon-ism quotes. PFM, FAF, fig-jam, smoking jackets. Do you know what they mean? You will? Because they're infused in the programming. What more can you ask? And folks, that is how we're building the program ahead. If you want to chat and reach out to info@purplepatchfitness.com, remember Matt's News-ings We've got a little special offer for you. But next week, what we thought we'd do is ask your questions. We've actually had several questions coming in, feel free to keep them coming. It's going to be focused on the offseason. So we're basically going to do a Q&A session with me around the offseason. And I think that's going to hopefully give you a little bit more context and also help you build your best path ahead. We realize we're not for everyone, but I hope that that was helpful. And if you are a coach, feel free to draw inspiration from what I outlined today. I am going to focus on that and then we are going to dive in. Guys, it's been a pleasure. I hope you have a terrific week. Have fun. We'll see you next time. Take care.
Matt Dixon 59:39
Guys, thanks so much for joining, and thank you for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing. Head to the Purple Patch channel 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. 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 on 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, and keep smiling doing whatever you do. Take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
sessions, offseason, athletes, training, technique, swim, patch, performance, focus, purple, build, improve, elements, life, strength, apply, principles, cadence, bike, important