Episode 300: So You Want To Qualify for the IRONMAN World Championships – Matt’s 10 Essential Tips
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Over the last two decades, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon has coached athletes of all levels, from world-class to beginners. One of the most common aspirations he hears from athletes is the desire to compete at the Ironman World Championship. However, what does it take to qualify for this prestigious event? Is there a secret to success?
As it happens, Purple Patch Fitness has significant knowledge and experience with the Ironman World Championships. We have achieved over 15 top-10 finishes at the championship and have helped nearly 1500 Purple Patch athletes qualify for the event. Some of these athletes have even won amateur and age group titles. As a result, we have a wealth of experience and expertise when it comes to the Ironman World Championship.
In this week’s episode of the Purple Patch Podcast Matt wants to help set you up for success in your journey toward qualifying for the Ironman World Championships. Drawing from over two decades of coaching experience, Matt distills his lessons into ten essential tips to help you qualify for the Ironman World Championships.
There is no guarantee of success in sports, but following these tips can significantly increase your chances of achieving it. It's not just about the workouts or the structure of your training weeks. Instead, it's about adopting key elements that are always a part of a successful athlete's journey, regardless of their event or end goal.
We encourage you to try out these tips and see where they take you on your journey towards the Ironman World Championships.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 03:58 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
03:59 - 7:05 - Word of the Week
07:12 - 40:27 - The Meat and Potatoes - Episode 300: So You Want To Qualify for the IRONMAN World Championships - Matt’s 10 Essential Tips
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Full Transcript
Matt Dixon 00:00
I'm Matt Dixon and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. The mission of Purple Patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential. Through the lens of athletic potential, you reach your human potential. The purpose of this podcast is to help time-starved people everywhere integrate sport into life.
Matt Dixon 00:24
I think you look terrific, at least on the outside. But what's going on on the outside is not really what drives your performance. No matter what arena you're chasing, better improvements in life, it's really important about what's going on inside. It's very difficult to understand what's going on with your physiology, especially across all of the aspects that drive our performance. Well, a tool that we leverage at Purple Patch is InsideTracker. By assessing your biometrics and combining it with the advice and expertise from the team of scientists and experts at InsideTracker, we get some really precise focus areas to filter out the stuff that will become distractions and instead dial in the habits and the interventions that are going to help you perform across all aspects of longevity and performance. Things like your cognitive health, your strengths, inflammation, heart health, and everything that builds up to you becoming a high-performing machine. InsideTracker assesses it and gives you an action plan with simple actions that you can take so that you can go on and improve. And it's very, very simple. All you need to do is head to insidetracker.com/purplepatch and use this special code Purple Patch Pro 20, that's Purple Patch Pro two zero, it gives you 20% off everything at the store. I leverage it with my athletes, and you can too. You don't need to be a Purple Patch athlete. But what you do need to care about is improvement for 2024. And that's what we're here to help you with. All right, enjoy the show.
Matt Dixon 02:08
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast as ever, your host Matt Dixon, and today I am recording on the shores of the waters that host the swim at the Hawaii Ironman World Championship. You might hear some birds chirping, and maybe a little bit of the crashing waves. It's some pretty big surf out there. This is an iconic venue and a race that provides the platform and inspiration that has developed triathlon into a global sport. And over the last 20 years of coaching athletes from world-class to newcomers. One of the most common goals and objectives that I hear from athletes is the desire to toe the line at the Ironman World Championship. But what does it take to get there? Really? Is there a secret to success and qualification? Well, it turns out that we know quite a bit about the Ironman World Championships, you know having a Purple Patch athlete almost win the whole damn thing. Chris Lieto, is just two minutes away, ah, two minutes of life, but just two minutes away from the overall win in 2009. As well as having more than 15 professional top 10 finishes at the event, also had successfully qualified, almost 1500 Purple Patch athletes to qualify for world championship events. And a few of them have gone on to win amateur and age group titles. So we've got a little bit of history around the Ironman World Championship. So if you want to embrace your journey, set yourself up for success. What I decided to do is pull together my more than two decades of coaching lessons and try and distill them into a nice, tidy package. We're going to label the mats 10 essential tips to qualify for the Ironman World Championships. So I hope you enjoy it. But just before we get going, while we're here, you're going to listen to the banjo. Let's do word of the week, Barry.
Matt Dixon 04:14
Yes, folks, it is the Word of the Week. And this week it is an experiment. So today, we're going to outline 10 essential tips for you to qualify for the Ironman World Championships. And at the end of it, you might be inspired. And you might think you know what? I want these guys I want Purple Patch. Maybe I want Matt, or a Purple Patch guide, or a coach to guide me to take me there to partner with me on the lesson. Or maybe you should hire a different coach to take you on that journey. But there's something that's going to be important for you to be successful. And that's the willingness to experiment, to evolve. You see hiring me or a Purple Patch coach is becoming a part of our squat program, we have expertise and we can help you on the journey and hiring another coach, I hope they have expertise and they can help you. However many athletes enter a coaching relationship with a fixed mindset. This is what works for me. And this is how I'm going to get there. And I just want you to deliver that. And so if you enter any coaching relationship, and you have a preconceived notion of what's going to be successful for you, and you're effectively just asking the coach or the coaching company, to coach in that way, you're never going to be successful. Instead, you need to have a mindset of growth, you need to be open. That doesn't mean you need to blindly trust your coach, us. But you do need to have a willingness to experiment, give it a crack, maybe give it six months, and say, Alright, I'm gonna go in. But in doing this, I know that things are going to be different things are going to change, and I'm going to have to do things that maybe I haven't thought of before, or perhaps I just don't even feel they're appropriate. But I'm going to go in and lean. Because when you take on a coaching relationship, you need to be an active participant, but you also need to be open to doing things you've never thought of before. And so when you lean in all the way, jump off the cliff, follow the recommendations, the sessions as prescribed, the mindset, and then training it as an experiment you see whether it's effective. Of course, we're pretty confident that we can work with you and help you but no matter. A coaching relationship is only going to flourish if the athlete is willing and open to evolve and shift their mindset. And that is why when it is around this episode, qualification, there's going to be some change and evolution that's necessary. And it's why the word of the week this week is experiment. All right. With that, Barry, let's do the meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 07:12
Alright, folks, the meat and potatoes, what does it take to qualify? Well, I thought long and hard about this. And you're probably not going to be surprised that there's going to be very little about the workouts, the magic key ingredient that unlocks everything. It's not going to be about the framing of your training weeks. But almost every athlete has been successful in qualifying and then establishing a great performance at the Ironman World Championships, and the Ironman 70.3 World Championships. These key elements that we're going to outline have almost always been a part of their journey. And there are 10 of them. So there are 10 things that if you adopt, I think it never guarantees because there is no guarantee is the beauty of sport. But it massively increases your opportunity and likelihood of success. 10 simple things, share with them, play with them, embrace them, and see where it takes you on the journey. So we're going to go one to 10 in order and I'm going to talk around each one.
Matt Dixon 08:24
Number one. The first step is to establish the mindset and ensure that you embrace the journey. So it's mindset and journey. Goodness, may we're going to start pretty high level here. But the mindset I think is important, particularly for a time-starved athlete is to realize what this has as a role in your broader life. If you're going to be successful, it's not going to be short-term, it's going to be a long-term journey to get you ready. And so integrating your training, that word is important - Integrating your training, into life and understanding the role that this sport has in the bigger context of your life is going to empower you to release some of the shackles on the pressure and enable you to enjoy the journey. And when you enjoy a journey, it's going to be much more likely that that journey is going to be fruitful. So let's think about that in context. The first one of the real rewards that you get from embracing a journey towards a qualification - which will provide a great amount of pride, satisfaction, and everything else - One of the biggest rewards is that by taking on this journey, if you do your performance recipe, right, it is going to help you show up daily. That's key. It's going to help you show up daily and whatever is important to you whether you're a parent, your leader, an employee, whatever it is, you're going to show up daily, the best version of yourself. And I think that's important. I'm doing this to help myself be better. Yeah, I want to qualify. But that's key. It's also going to help you with longevity, ensuring that you're setting yourself up for the best quality of life for the decades ahead. And we want to keep that in mind. Because that informs the context of how this journey towards qualification fits within the bigger picture. And it's going to help you make smart decisions to help you build a platform of health and everything else. And so if we understand the big picture, and we put it into its place within the scope of life, and it's important, it's going to help you establish control and a positive relationship rather than it be something that owns you. Okay, outside of extremely gifted, really talented athletes that just naturally, just got born with a huge engine, or someone that's come across an established a seasoned in a parallel and related sport, someone from an elite rowing experience or coming from professional cycling, the vast majority of people aiming for qualification, should not be thinking about this in terms of a 20-week project, or even really a one year project. Successful qualification typically emerges from years of consistency, developing physical readiness, and establishing a platform of health, with limited interruption at least forced interruption. And so in other words, making the sport a lifestyle gives you the very best opportunity for you to qualify. And so anything else fails to get anywhere near this first point. This is the master - establish the mindset, the perspective embrace the journey, and allow it to fuel your performance lifestyle, and you've got an opportunity to be successful. Boom, number one.
Matt Dixon 12:05
Number two, the second principle, the second magic step is your magical training secret. Cool. Here it is. Matt Dixon is just about to release the secret that's gonna crack the code, what's the workout? What's the supplement? What's the piece of equipment? It's none of that. Here's the key. If you want to be successful in qualification, your success will never be defined by a workout. It will never be defined as hitting a big week of training. Success towards qualification is not measured in the number of hours that you can try and hit in any given week. It is the hours that you can accumulate over a year or more. And for those hours to be effective, and consistent, you better appreciate, embrace, and have the courage to go easy on the easy days. The sessions are not designed to be hard. Endurance bike rides, easy soul-filling running, technical swims, the athletes that lock in, to going easy on the easy days, then can show up, lift their game, have control, and weave together a roadmap of great consistency over not many weeks, not many months, but over years to qualification. I would say is one of the key components to go easy on the easy days. If you want to qualify, you'd better get good at going easy. Magic. Tip number two.
Matt Dixon 14:00
All right, magic. Tip number three. I want you to build athleticism before you build an economy. There is a lot of stuff out there around building the engine, building our foundation first, long, slow miles, just develop the aerobic capacity. And don't get me wrong. The miles are important. Consistency over time is critical. It's not a short-term fix. But I see what saw so many athletes failing to develop the key tools that are going to ultimately make them successful. They are just really, really fit. But ultimately, they're slow. They have low speed and low power potential. They can't create tension on the chain. They can't run uphill very strong and ultimately, they have a lack of athleticism and on their mental side, they don't have any tools in the toolbox to ultimately suffer and manage stress. And so when I think about developing long-term consistency for a time-starved athlete, I want to build speed, power, athleticism, and movement, and strength. And yes, I want to do it at the right time over each year, some longer miles. And yes, we get to develop the engine with that easier training that we talked about in point number two. But don't think that just the engine is going to be your limiter. It's not. Build the athlete, then build the triathlete. It is an inverse pyramid. And it's counter to much of what you're going to read but in my experience, it helps time-starved athletes get there and stay there, and when they then over time build the engine, they have the capacity and the toolkit to get them through not just the terrain, but the suffering that's going to come.
Matt Dixon 16:08
All right, moving on. Tip number four. What is the magic one? We're gonna call this nail the basics, absolutely nail and master your fundamentals. Now, these are no different than the Purple Patch, pro squad athletes. For more than a decade, we have led one of the most successful groups of professional Ironman athletes in the history of the sport to be frank. And these pros took everything they could focus on, and filtered it down deliberately, with intention, to some very basic practices and habits. And these were non-negotiable, every one of them, if they wanted to be a Purple Patch pro had to adopt them, I'm going to give you four right now. Number one, you need to support your training with enough fuel. In other words, eating enough calories to support your training. It's one of the number one weaknesses of most athlete programs of all levels, accidentally, non-emotionally, many athletes fail to support their training demands with enough calories to support them. So that's number one. Number two is sleep, there are a couple of really important things. But protecting your biggest performance enhancement tool that you have that can maximize adaptations from your hard work that can leverage and allow consistency throughout many, many weeks and months can enable you to integrate this training into life and enable it to catapult better energy and stability of energy throughout the day. Sleep is it. And what's the number one thing? Well, we care about duration, obviously, seven, eight hours plus, we care about quality, setting up the environment. But the latest research shows the most important thing you can do is go to bed at the same time every night, making sure that you're not wildly variable in your bedtime, between about a 30-minute window somewhere for me around 845 to 930 Almost every night, that's when I go to bed. That's the approach that you should approach. So number two of this is sleep. Number three, hydrate daily, It is important critical component three liters every day, and then the fluids that you're consuming during your exercise and training baseline of three liters every day, kick it off with a liter of fluid in the morning. And then throughout the rest of the day. And then number four, what was my prior point go easy on the easy, really, really important component.
Matt Dixon 18:40
Tip number five, it brings us to the top of the mountain halfway through 'so you want to qualify' Okay, this is it. Number five is very simple. get coached. Okay, now I say this as a coach. So I'm gonna refine it a little bit, get coached in the important stuff, the stuff that's going to help you get there. So this is not just about the workouts, there is no magic plan. If you take all of the qualifiers throughout all of the years, and we looked at their training plans, it would be a blizzard of different programs with vastly different approaches. The truth is there are lots of ways to get there through the workouts and the building of a training plan. Instead, when you want coaching, expertise, and wisdom is around advice and guidance on how to integrate training into your life and manage your training with the competing demands of life. You want to have a sounding board, someone, a group of people, a group of coaches, a single coach that can ensure that you can retain perspective when you're right there in the weeds that can help you course correct when you stray off course because this is a journey that's going to include roadblocks and setbacks and even some failures and having a partner to help you along the journey with wisdom and expertise is important. You also want the coach to be your filter. When you go on this journey, there are a million things you could focus on and add to your recipe and into your training, whether it's approaches in nutrition, supplements, equipment, training methodology, the list goes on. And you want someone who can research, understand, have expertise, and filter out the noise and the distractions to get you to build a master of the things that are appropriate for you, and free you up from thinking and the other stuff. A coach should also help you get your best speed from the fitness you have. Not just to deliver the workouts. But how do you go fast? A coach or a program should help you develop those skills, and understand what they are so that you can become more autonomous. Ultimately, you can manage your program because remember, having a coach is not relinquishing control, you're not just saying, tell me how to do it, you're leaning into expertise and wisdom to empower you to do it. And that's a key component. And finally, I believe a coach should help you develop a positive and not paralyzing relationship with your metrics and your training. That's what coaching is. It's not the workouts, that's great. That's important. That's a part of it. But everything I talked about there, that's what the wisdom of the program coaching does and delivers. And for almost every successful person that's gone from one level to catapulted to the next level, which for most people is a requirement to qualify, typically, the best investment they make is coaching. Think about that. The best investment they make is not a brand new bike, no new pair of compression socks, not investing in a brand new cold plunge in your backyard or coaching. It is that - now I realize I'm saying this as a coach, but it is valuable and important.
Matt Dixon 22:08
Number six, and our tips to qualify. So you want to qualify - these are Matt's top 10 tips, and we are on number six, choose your races carefully to benefit you. Very simple, you want to consider the terrain. Now most people have a preferred terrain relative to their peers. This isn't about trying to get to the first fastest split. You don't qualify by having a faster time you qualify relative to where you come to your peers. And so where do you deliver your strengths? I am a strength-driven athlete. I'm heavier, but I do well on hilly courses, and a lot of variety, I can't stand dead flat running dead flat bike riding. So I wouldn't choose to go and race in Florida, or Texas, I might go and do one of those races for the experience, there's nothing wrong with the races, but for me, if I was on a quest to qualify, I would choose something different. It also helps that I live in the San Francisco Bay Area where all of our home terrain is up, down, up, down, I don't get an opportunity to ride flat. That might be the inverse, you might do very, very well on flat courses. And so choose that type of course. So you want to consider the terrain and how close is it relative to your strength in your home environment of training, you want to think about environment. For me, I love cool, cold. I just do not like all the humidity and heat. But some people excel in it. So understand that. One of the tricks that you can do in this is go back do a little homework, and look at prior race results. What did it take to be successful? How many people are in the age groups? How many people qualified out of each age group? What were the top 3, 4, 5 finishers? What does that do relative to you, as an athlete start to be pragmatic and logical about it, but filter it because by choosing the race that has the best spots, the best terrain, the best environment for you, the best opportunity in your age group to qualify, it's setting yourself up for success. Don't grease the road and make it slippery by choosing a race that is ill-fitting to you pretty simple.
Matt Dixon 24:26
Tip number seven, think out of the box for running. I know, bike for show and run for dough. That's what it's all about. But the truth is that the people who qualify relative to swim, bike, and run tend to have very good run performances. Now I love athletes to be very swim fit and do well on the swim. I like to build the training around the bike because a strong cyclist can make up a lot of time. But ultimately you still need to be able to run relative to your best potential there very, very well. And that's important but, there is a misconception about what it takes to run well off the bike in an Ironman distance or a half Ironman distance race. It's not the same as a standalone half marathon or a marathon. We've learned over time that for most people, there are a few little ingredients to build your running resiliency and performance off of the bike for time-starved athletes, and they're almost universal, so I'm going to share them here. Number one, for most people, the frequency of running is better than a few quick picks every week. So many people build their programs and run two to three times a week, and they're big sessions. I like to have athletes run almost every day. A lot of those sessions are easy, and very short but running frequency from both a motor programming standpoint, connecting brain to muscle, and a tissue resiliency to build up the protective mechanisms against injury. And the muscular endurance frequency is more empowering a more of a catalyst for success than just the big runs, number one. Number two, some long-running is fine. But it's not the most important session. Most athletes build their Ironman or half-Ironman training around the long run, I think it's physiologically the least relevant and least important. Now, I realize you want to become familiar with running long, you want to build confidence. And so inject long running into the program. If you can do a lot of it on the trail it has less of a negative impact. So soft surface is better. But even if it's on the road or tarmac, it's great, some long-running is fine, but realize that it's mostly an emotional and confidence component. You can get the same physiological development from a cardiovascular and muscular endurance standpoint, from frequency as you can from long-running. So yes, includes some long-running. But it doesn't need to be every week. And it doesn't need to be a core component. The third component is integrating walk breaks into your training and racing. Almost every amateur athlete benefits from a running split standpoint if they integrate walking into their racing period. Now what's the right time to walk? What's the right duration of running between walks? It's highly individual and it's also different relative to terrain. A few tips - you never walk going downhill, big speed penalty, run downhill, but you can walk - before you panic, before you are forced to - you want to walk consistently through your running section of the race so that you get to the best running split. And we have seen over 20 years that when athletes embrace this, they run faster overall. So their splits are faster. And it is almost everyone, 90% of athletes integrate walk breaks into training to yield the same physiological benefits but without the lag and the risk of injury, but also integrate it into racing. Critical component.
Matt Dixon 28:32
Alright, folks, we are seven down which means we've got three to go on the top 10 tips for Matt to qualify to World Championships. Number eight, leaning to the power of cluster sessions. What are cluster sessions? So this is a key tool that I love to leverage for time-starved athletes. We always think about a week of training as - Monday is your swim, Tuesday is a bike with a run-off, Wednesday is your run, Thursday is strength with a little bit of bike riding, Friday is a swim, whatever it might be. But if we come up a level, as we start to get towards a race, we can get a lot more bang for our buck, if we think about training for the demands of an Ironman or a half Ironman by clustering workouts together. So this might be a few different types of things. Let me give you some examples. Frequently, we're going to cluster three days in a row of big riding hits. So let's just call it Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, you might do a big trainer workout on a Friday with a little runoff just to build some tissue resilience. We might do a huge over-distance, ride. And so we're going to plan that in the calendar, make sure that our family are all in engagement. You go and do that big over-distance ride, you add a little bit of runoff because we always want to integrate a little bit of tissue resilience. And then we come back again on Sunday, and you hit another 2, 3, 4-hour ride, whatever time you have available with again, a little bit of a run in the end, hopefully at race pace layered on to the fatigue that you've accumulated. So now we're not thinking about what this session we're doing. But what's the body of work we're building over three days, and you get to accumulate a lot of riding resilience? Now, this is certainly not every week, this is done once, twice, three times in the final three months leading into a race. But that cluster-type riding - a really powerful tool. You can do a similar thing in running. Quite often, we like to go on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, where we accumulate a marathon worth of running spread over three days, a lot of high-quality running a lot of it at or above the race pace that you intend to run it, all of it integrated walk breaks. A Friday run off of a bike ride, perhaps, Saturday a double run - one in the morning one in the afternoon, Sunday, coming back and doing a pacing run on fatigue. You accumulate building confidence throughout race distance over three days but without all of the negative risk and injury-creation events. And so cluster running is also a powerful tool. And then finally, a tool that can be leveraged over any given week, splitting runs. Rather than talking about it, I'm going to go and run three hours because I know that my marathon is going to take me about four hours, I need to do three hours. Instead, break it apart, build the cardiovascular conditioning, build the muscular endurance, but do it with better quality and higher form than you would on a standalone, it's less risky, and you get all the yield. So maybe you'll go an hour and a half to an hour 45 in the morning, you go 45 at night. Really, powerful, a much better way to go about it. So we wrap all of those types of sort of blocks of workouts into what we call cluster sessions. And that's a key component to help people take the next level in their Ironman performance and take them on the journey to qualification.
Matt Dixon 32:05
All right, so we're almost there. Number nine, ladies and gentlemen, so you want to qualify number nine, these are very simple and important. Don't go it alone. People who qualify tend to not be solo artists. Now they're out there, they're outliers. But most people lean into community support and team. When people train with others, in person or remotely by the way, if we have video-based training, like we do at Purple Patch, but when they train with others, they tend to do better. Several mechanisms impact this. It's a depressurizing effect, where as soon as we start to feel it's not just about us, but we're a part of something, it actually, and research shows this, it makes us feel more comfortable. It removes some of the pressure, it creates a little bit of freedom. It's also more fun. But you also get to leverage some of the wisdom and expertise and you can draw some of the appropriate lessons from others. Now remember that what is good for them might not be good for you. Hence why you want to get a really good coach. But others can help perspective help you course, correct, keep you sane. And so when you get to share the journey with others, it's not just more fun, it's more enriching, it boosts the enjoyment of the process, it drives your individual performance levels, and everybody is the same. And so you might get that going on a solo journey. But if you're doing everything alone in a box, there is a limit relative to if you find a way to lean in. That's why at Purple Patch, we encourage people to come and do the live bike sessions where you can do them from your garage, or wherever you're doing it on the bike trainer, but you're on video, you feel connected. Get engaged with the community, and share your stories, because when you share, you're not just getting something from it, you're giving something to others, and it's gonna lift us all. The people who are engaged at Purple Patch are the ones who are the most successful, stick with the sport for the longest time, and have the most enjoyment and they're also the people who are the best. Our best athletes engaged in the community period, our best athletes, and we had this without Purple Patch pros. And so I encourage you to take the same approach.
Matt Dixon 34:31
Goodness me. And that leaves us to number 10. We are nine in you are nine-tenths of the way to qualification. What is number 10? Well, it's something they haven't talked about yet. And it's a core training component. If you want to qualify here's number 10. Value your strength training as much as your endurance. The first thing that everyone does, oh my goodness may need to qualify. Am I going to be fit enough, swim, bike, run swim, bike, run, swim, bike, run, swim, bike run? And that's important. Strength is your performance tool, resilience, holding posture, being able to manage and retain form under duress, and fatigue strength training. It's not just good for your health. It doesn't just reduce the risk of all the major illnesses. It doesn't just make you smarter by improving your cognitive health. Yes, that's peer-reviewed and researched. Yes, that's true. It's also a performance enhancer. And so your strength training, if you want to qualify, in my mind, is non-negotiable and I left it for number 10. So I can bang my fists on my chair and say do strength. Put it into your program, never let it die. swim, bike, run strength. That's how you become the best triathlete. That's how you're qualified.
Matt Dixon 35:55
All righty. Bye, Barry. Can I do one more? Can I sneak in a bonus number 11 mate? Thank you very much. Number 11. One more. Alright, it's a little tongue in cheek I know. But if you want to qualify, join Purple Patch. There you go. I had to get it in, didn't I? Come on, you gotta let me have it. Take the guesswork out, It's more fun along the way and after all, we know how to do it. I wonder if there is any coaching company that has supported so many athletes to world championship events. Since 2008, here are some stats for you, our annual average has been 40 Plus athletes to the Hawaii Ironman World Championships. I'm pretty proud of that. More than 40 athletes on average every year qualify for the Hawaii Ironman World Championships, which is now split between of course, Nice and Hawaii. In 2023, we had 65 athletes head to Nice and Kona. They split the races, there was a greater qualification. So this wasn't just some magical year that we had, there was a greater opportunity for people to qualify. So we did qualify, and it was about the same ratio as we would expect 65 athletes qualified and had the opportunity to head to those races. For half of Ironman, it's about 100 athletes we qualify annually. That's pretty good going. That's pretty good going, we know what we want to do. And so come and join us if you'd like to go on the journey. But I do want to put a little bit of caution. Because joining any coaching company is never going to be the Willy Wonka golden ticket. Success in a coaching relationship requires any athlete to break a fixed mindset. I'm not saying you have to blindly trust us, you don't. But you are going to need to be willing to go on a journey and maybe the word experiment on yourself a little bit. It's what we talked about in the Word of the Week. You joined for qualification, but it's gonna require you to evolve your current approach. You're gonna need to try different things. So if you join us, or any coaching company with a fixed mindset, and you arrive saying, this is how I want to be coached, you're probably not going to be successful. So save your money, go enjoy your running - going to and I wish you the best of luck. But if qualification is your goal, then be open, go on both feet, try new things, lean on the expertise in the wisdom, and know, remember, it ain't just about the workouts. It's about all of the things I talked about in getting coached, part of the best steps.
Matt Dixon 38:27
So, folks, I hope you excel. I hope you love the journey. You go on it, you embrace it. And by doing so you become a better version of yourself. You show up every day you grow and develop as a human being, you do something healthy, it enriches your life and at the end of the day, you also get to come here to Hawaii, and play in the surf. Alright, take care, guys. I wish you the best of luck. See you next time.
Matt Dixon 38:55
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 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, 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. Email us info at Purple Patch fitness.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. So feel free to share with your friends but as I said let's build this together. Let's make it so I'm so special. It's really fun. We're trying hard to make it a special experience. And we want to welcome you into the Purple Patch community. With that, I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun, keep smiling, doing whatever you do. Take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
athletes, qualify, coach, training, journey, race, patch, workouts, qualification, important, people, purple, run, running, day, number, sport, performance, week, successful