Episode 313: Free Speed - Practical Strategies for Getting Faster
Follow the Purple Patch Podcast at:
APPLE PODCASTS - SPOTIFY- AMAZON MUSIC - GOOGLE PODCASTS - YOUTUBE
Welcome to the Purple Patch podcast with IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon.
In this week's episode, Matt shares valuable insights into how athletes can improve their speed without spending more time, money, or energy than they already have. Matt believes that instead of relying solely on metrics and data, you can achieve "free speed", or "Smart Speed" as he calls it, by thinking outside the box and focusing on elements that maximize your overall performance.
He covers various strategies that can help athletes improve their speed in all three disciplines of triathlon - swim, bike, and run. From counting strokes in the swim to taking walk breaks in the run, Matt's tips are practical, effective, and easy to apply.
Whether a beginner or an experienced athlete, you'll find valuable takeaways in this two-part series.
Part two of our Free Speed series will explore advanced topics like race craft, mindset, and energy management. So stay tuned!
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 07:32 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
07:40 - 13:25 - Coach's Corner
13:33 - 26:35 - The Meat and Potatoes - Episode 313: Free Speed - Practical Strategies for Getting Faster
27:34 - 28:55 - Purple Patch Program Information
28:56 - 39:20 - Free Speed Cont.
39:22 - 40:45 - Purple Patch Program Information
40:46- 52:47 - Free Speed Cont.
Purple Patch and Episode Resources
Purple Patch Video Podcast and More
FREE LIVE WEBINAR - Breakthrough Performance Strategies for Hard & Hilly Triathlon Courses 2.0
Sighting Tips for Open Water Swimming
Amplify your approach to nutrition with Purple Patch and Fuelin
2024 Purple Patch Performance Camps - SIGN UP NOW for our Napa Valley and South Carolina Training Camps
We've reimagined indoor cycling - Find out more about Purple Patch Bike Live & On-Demand
Come try the Purple Patch Tri-Squad
More on Purple Patch Bike Live & On-Demand
Get a Free Taste of Purple Patch Strength
ORDER NOW - 2024 PURPLE PATCH APPAREL
Everything you need to know about the Purple Patch Methodology
Join the Purple Patch Team
The Purple Patch Center is Open - Learn More and Schedule a Visit
Purple Patch Coaching Consultation
Learn more about our Tri Squad Program
This episode is sponsored by our collaboration with INSIDE TRACKER. Inside Tracker and Purple Patch- Receive 20% off their services with code: PURPLEPATCHPRO20
Ask Matt Anything - Leave a voicemail question for Matt
Learn more about Purple Patch Squad High-Performance Training Program
Join Run Squad - Increase your running performance through our progressive, multi-sport approach to running
Learn more about Purple Patch Fully Customized 1:1 Coaching
Learn more about Purple Patch Strength Programming
Stay Up-to-Date with Purple Patch News and Events
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 sports into their lives.
Matt Dixon 00:24
In today's show, we're talking about going faster, no matter what your fitness level or training preparation, and how to get more out of that fitness for speed returns—the extra sauce, as I like to call it. But let's talk about the physical for a moment first. Make no mistake, we want you to be as fit and prepared as possible. We want you to be physiologically firing on all cylinders, and that's where InsideTracker comes in—a great tool to help us get to that point. Take a look inside assessing your biometrics and receive a personal action plan for where to focus and where you should place your effort to develop a great platform for health and, of course, performance readiness. It's very, very simple. You don't need to be a Purple Patch; coached athletes take advantage. Just head to insidetracker.com/purple patch. And there's a sneaky code: Purple Patch Pro 20. That's Purple Patch Pro 2 Zero. You get 20% off everything at the store. This is a hugely beneficial and powerful tool to help you in your journey of not only race results but also longevity, health, and daily performance. All right, enjoy the show.
Matt Dixon 01:32
You choose your race, you train you prepare, you do everything you can to build your fitness to be ready. But goodness me it's a hard it's a tough and it's a hilly course, that's not a reason to be afraid. On May 17 9am Pacific, I'm hosting a webinar to help you unlock your best speed, no matter what your physical preparation is. And it turns out that there's real science and a little bit of art to actually help you on that journey. We're going to go through all of the concepts to understand help you understand how to distribute your effort over really challenging courses. To unlock your best speed returns, we'll go through swim, bike and run. But beyond the concepts, I want to make sure that you can apply those concepts. So under every element, you're gonna leave with some practical advice and steps that will translate to faster speed. This was our most popular webinar that we did last year. And this year, we've got brand new information that are going to help you get even faster. Yes, this is version 2.0. I hope that you can attend live. But even if you can't register, and we'll make sure that we send you the information so that you can go faster without any more fitness.
Matt Dixon 02:49
I promise I'm going to introduce the show and welcome you all in one quick moment. But I do want to add one very important note: if you're interested in becoming a part of the Purple Patch team, we have a very rare spot opening up on our coaching roster. Now to be a Purple Patch coach. It's not a hobby; it's a career. It is about becoming a part of a team, where you are vested in helping people achieve the results that they want, both in sport and in broader life. The ideal candidate—well, you're probably really immersed in the Purple Patch methodology. I guess that you're an avid listener to this show. You're a little bit seasoned; you've got some great experience within the sport of triathlon and beyond, and you certainly understand how to coach people with some proven results. But more than anything, you've got great ambition; you've got all of the traits that we look for collaboration, communication, and passion for helping people evolve and improve. If you're interested, the job is on the website, PurplePatchFitness.com; head to the careers page; or you can reach out to us at info@PurplePatchFitness.com. This occurs every few years at most, and we take a very long time to integrate anyone into the team to ensure that you are ready to be a part of the Purple Patch coaching team. And it's a wonderful opportunity for the person who seriously wants to get involved and be a part of a cracking team. I love our team. Alrighty, let's get on with the show, but if you're interested, or if you know anyone who would, this is the best place that I'm going to be able to source the right next candidate. Thanks for listening, and enjoy the show today.
Matt Dixon 04:40
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. As ever, your host is Matt Dixon, and today, we're going to go fast, guys. Today is one for the triathletes and the endurance athletes. Free speed is the title of this. You've heard it all before. Is there something such as free speed? Well, it turns out, yeah, there kind of is, although it's very well-earned, so let me tell you that. Today is all about how you should think outside the box and maximize your performance without getting even a little bit fitter than you are now. So in that sense, it's kind of free. Perhaps we should label it SmartSpeed rather than FreeSpeed. I'm going to break it down into sections so that I can hopefully help you get faster. Now this is part one today, and we're going to focus on swimming, biking, and running, the three disciplines of triathlon. In part two, which's coming up very soon, we're going to discuss elements such as race craft, energy management, and your mindset—all absolutely important components to you going faster. But let's just keep it to the three core disciplines to get going. Now, before we get going on a little bit of a note, you're going to notice a few things that are a little bit different today. This is a brand new episode, and if you're a regular listener, you're going to see that we've shifted things around a little bit. You see, we've decided to restructure the show to ensure that we can get more relevant education to you quickly. It's focused even more on education so that we can maximize its value for you. In other words, we're going to give you more of what you want. And so we're not going to integrate and have a big section on Matt's News-ings; we're going to go pretty much straight to the meat and potatoes, apart from a new section first, which is about what's going on. And so what are the elements that we see in either news, performance literature, research, or maybe what we're doing at Purple Patch to help our athletes so that you can utilize that in your journey? And so that's a front part of education, then we'll dive into the meat and potatoes. What you will notice today is that we do have a couple of little intersections of 30 seconds—let's call them acts—just talking about Purple Patch, little breaks in education. And that's so that we can keep this show free for you or highly accessible so that we can have it. So, we don't take on a massive amount of endorsements; we say no to a lot of people so that we can make this very educational. But of course, the most important thing that I need to do as a business owner is at least tell you about our offerings. So give me 30 seconds of your time, a couple of moments through the meat and potatoes, and we can keep this as close to ad-free as we possibly can. All right, with that, I haven't got a name for this section yet, but what I'm going to call it, and maybe this will stick, is Coach's Corner. Let's do Coach's Corner.
Matt Dixon 07:40
Yep, Coach's Corner, a free, all-encompassing component of what's going on this week, is what I'm seeing as a coach, and what I thought we would do to kick this off is take a little bit of a peek behind the curtain around what's going on with the training progression at Purple Patch. What are we doing with our athletes right now, as we are merging into Q2, the second quarter? We're about a month into this right now. But how has our work shifted? Well, we've got a lot of things going on at the moment. Because we've gone through a couple of phases of preparation, we've done a lot of power and speed work. And now suddenly, we're starting to see this divergence of focus for athletes, early-season races, the sun coming out, at least in the northern hemisphere, temperatures warming up, and people getting outside more. And ultimately, people's focus is ramping up; in other words, it's getting serious right now. So we have a whole bunch of stuff to start with. And in general, if we throw a blanket over it, the overall focus is that we are looking to chase speed right now. So, in other words, it's time to convert our athletes to serious fitness and speed. And so what that means from a training component is that recently, we did a whole bunch of work on preparation, getting the body ready to be able to absorb and adapt some very hard training. We also did some very, very short, high-intensity work. And we did a ton of it. That was to build our physiological capacity and our ability to recruit maximal fibers to generate the best power, whether you're talking about running or riding. And so that was a real focus. But we weren't focusing on resilience, developing general core endurance, or being able to have a maximal steady state at a higher operational level. That's all coming, those of the central fitness drivers, and a lot of that work is occurring just under and above what we call our threshold, our maximal steady state. And that's timely because we're syncing this effort with the improving weather. And so therefore, we start to place a greater emphasis on going outside, building some longer hours within the context of life, and getting some additional outside writing and components. And so with that, while we're building central physiology, we're also starting to get very race-specific around skills, starting to integrate some components that athletes are going to utilize in their racing. You're going to hear about it in Terrain Management today on the bicycle, and on the run a little bit, we're going to think about citing in swimming some of the elements to start to develop and improve athletes’ race craft. So that's what the focus is, whether you're being coached individually by a Purple Patch coach or as a part of our tri-squad program. So that's our emphasis right now. I'd love to hear what your emphasis is. Have you spent the miles just at the old school building base? Or are you in sync with how we're doing it, Purple Patch? The key is that in the coming months, we will dial it up a little bit. And so what becomes important for us are all of the supporting elements. I'm going to talk about that next week a little bit. But some of those elements help athletes manage the training program within the context of life and make sure that it's not dissolving their ability to show up in the other components of life. So we have a lot of emphasis on education around that; more will come on that next week. The second thing in Coach's Corner is that it is Mental Health Month this week. And to celebrate this a little bit, although it seems funny to me to say celebrate mental health month. But to dive a little bit deeper, maybe, I encourage you to go back to last week's show. If you gave it a listen, give it another listen. That was the interview that we did with Ben Cooper. I felt it was an incredible story around the importance of fitness and the power of sport to help Ben and anyone struggling with navigating any sort of mental health challenge emerge in life. It's a great ingredient that Ben leveraged to overcome his mental health challenges and ultimately, in my perspective as his coach, evolved into a high-performance human being, so if you missed it, absolutely go back. I see that as one of the shows of the year for me so far. And I think it's unmissable, and I'd love to hear what you think about it. Ben's story is also an endorsement of a wealth of research out there showing that it's linked to improved mental health and the reversal of symptoms of depression as a byproduct of adopting and committing to regular exercise and health practices. And that includes strength training as much as it does cardiovascular conditioning. Now, this isn't medical advice. If you're struggling with mental health, I encourage you to follow the guidelines of your primary care doctor or whoever is overseeing your care. But with this, we do know that exercise is healthy, and research displays that there is a positive impact on improving people's mental health. And so I encourage you to aim to adopt that daily practice, if nothing else, for a supportive and additive aspect to your journey and to improve your health. I believe that movement, strength, and other habits should be integral to almost every person who is facing mental health challenges. It is medicine for a better life. And with that, that'll do for Coach's Corner. This week, we are going to transition Barry to speed, and this week we're going to talk about triathlon specifically—how do you get faster? Barry, it is the meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 13:33
Yes, folks, the meat and potatoes Let's kick off with a nice story about a man called Gary. Gary is committed. He trains hard; he hits every single session. He uploads his heart rate, his power, his GPS, his sleep, and his readiness score. He loves to analyze his progression, showing and navigating through his total training load, his fitness calculations, his monthly miles, and the hours of training that he does, and let me tell you, he is fit. And yet, his race results never really mirror the fitness curve data. He feels like he's turned over every single stone. Well, Gary, let me hold your hand and guide you into a new field of stones that you can begin to turn over. And these stones that you turn over will reveal just how much faster, without improving any of those fitness metrics or spending any more money, you can get. And, I mean, much faster. What a find, folks! What a wonderful field for Gary to navigate into. No more fitness, and yet more speed to gain. Goodness me. With these epiphanies, Gary can now go podium hunting, and you can too. And I want to dig in and reveal my thoughts. In part one, I'm going to go through the three disciplines of triathlon: swim, bike, and run. We're going to break this into three distinct sections and build out the show. In part two, we're going to dig into some more race-craft, mindset, energy management, and components like that. For today's show, swim, bike, and run. How can you leverage the elements that we're going to talk about today to go faster without being fitter?
Matt Dixon 15:25
Part one is the swim. Make no mistake, swim performance is anchored in two core components. Number one, technique number two, swim fitness, and resilience. There is no shortcut to performance. But what else can you do to go faster, especially as a triathlete? There are three actionable tactics that we can break down. The first thing we think of when we're thinking about racing in open water is swimming in a straight line. Now this is a simple race craft, but truly committing to building open water swim skills of sighting mechanics, applied sighting skills, where he uses those mechanics to sight and angle in the right direction, and then developing open water awareness, it's central. And so, how do we do this? How can we get as fit as we possibly can in a swimming pool and transfer it, where there can be the smallest delta possible to our actual open water swim speed? Well, the first element is learning some of the core mechanics when you're swimming in a pool. Fundamentally, you learn how to sight correctly without disrupting your core swimming mechanics. This sounds simple, but the vast majority of people don't do it. They swim up and down a pool in a controlled environment. And suddenly they find themselves on race day, and they don't understand how to sight while holding the rhythm. Now in the show notes today, I'm going to link to a really helpful video to show you some of the mechanics that I like to leverage for improved sighting and swimming mechanics. But you can take that video, you can take the concepts, and it won't happen automatically; you need to invest and integrate it into your training. Where is the best place to practice this? In a swimming pool, throughout warmup, building into some pretty main sets, and integrating into your working very, very hard in the main meat potatoes of workouts, do it with sighting. You are in open water swimming; it's not just about how fast you can go in the pool; it's about how fast you can go in a pool with proper mechanics that will apply to open water where you're racing. Then, if possible, apply them in an open-water environment so that you can build familiarity, you can integrate them into variable conditions, and improve. And over time, using the landscape around you, using even the sun as it's moving in the sky, and developing awareness around you, you become better at swimming in a straight line. And that is so much faster relative to your state of fitness. Take any GPS of any age group swimmer, and it's going to look like they oscillate between swimming to Egypt and swimming back to New York. Instead of that, swim in a straight line. Like the crow flies. That's the way to get there, but it doesn't happen by accident.
Matt Dixon 18:50
The second element of swimming components where you can yield better speed return for your fitness is to truly understand that it starts to develop some of the core technical swim stroke elements for open water. Let's take a step back. Pool swimming is in a highly structured, controlled environment. Outside of some splashing across the lane from other swimmers, you have a lovely surface that has a little wall on either side, called a lane line. You've got a fixed-length pool, and often you've got lights or a roof overhead to help you get swimming in a straight line in a nice environment. Now many of you probably take some lessons, or maybe you go on to YouTube and search for proper swim stroke, particularly if you're an adult-onset swimmer. And you follow the guidelines, and you practice the drills, and you start to improve your technical swim stroke. But the truth is that the vast majority of those YouTube videos or swim instructions that you get from the private lessons that you invest in are helping you develop techniques that are geared towards the tranquil environment of a swimming pool. And the demands of a regular swim meet that lasts more than 20 seconds up to five minutes or so unless we add 1500 to the mix. Now let's compare that to what you're doing in a triathlon. You're swimming for longer durations—400 meters, 800 meters, and 1500 meters—all the way up to almost 4000 meters of swimming in an environment that is dirty, dynamic, chaotic, and variable. And you're doing it with hundreds of your friends. And so developing the right stroke for you is not about trying to mimic as closely as you can what Michael Phelps does. It's just not applicable to you. That's the equivalent of taking a sprinter. 100-meter sprinter Oh, I don't know. Who's that geezer from Jamaica? Can you remember his name? He's pretty fast at the 100 and 200; yeah, it's like trying to run like him. But that doesn't apply to you. It's not appropriate. Instead, you want to take care to develop the right stroke for you and then start to apply it in open water. Now, improving your technique—yes, that's fantastic—but ensure that you improve it for yourself around your open water. So what's the best route for you to do this? That sounds great conceptually, but how do you get there? Well, the best path—let's be clear—is that you can source a local coach next to you who is wholly equipped and truly understands the demands of open water. And they are out there. They are dotted around the country and the world and understand you as a triathlete and your dynamic nature. And they're not going to try and pigeonhole you down into developing techniques that might be good for a swimming pool but aren't good for the challenge that you're facing. And so if you can source that, it's a wonderful investment to make.
Matt Dixon 22:15
A second option is to leverage a coach remotely via video. So we have John Stevens, who is fantastic. John was a Division I collegiate swimmer. So he knows a lot about pool swimming, but he's also a huge, I would say, global resource in open water. He also happens to be a great technician; he's a really good coach at helping people deliver and improve technique, much, much better than I am. I have to be clear on this. And so at the Purple Patch swim program, we have huge results with people improving by getting personalized feedback via video assessment, some specific drills that are going to be useful for them, as well as specific workouts that they should integrate into their training to help develop those aspects so that then they're going to be able to go and leverage it in open water for better speed returns. And that end-to-end cycle is really important. Now, of course, at the end of that assessment and program is another consultation with John to ensure that the actual changes are sticking; otherwise, they evaporate. It's very, very difficult. And so you can. I'll give you details in the show notes of that program, and I'm not telling you this to be sales in any way. But this is a real challenge for adult-onset swimmers. I need to get better at something technically, and then you invest your time, your money, and your effort into improving your technique. It's really unfortunate, but you're just on the wrong track. You might be improving technically, but not actually for the specific demands. And so, to get free speed, you want to have a shifted track. And if you can find a local resource, that's tremendous—someone in person who understands open water—but that's pretty difficult. And so another option might be to lean into someone like John Stevens, who has an end-to-end program that can help you get there via video. So that's the premise on that. Absolutely key.
Matt Dixon 24:20
So we've got two elements in swimming so far. We have, number one, swimming in a straight line. Number two, start to develop your open-water-specific swim stroke. Number three is something that we can all do—a race-specific trick for you. And that is to count your strokes. When you're swimming in open water, it can feel like you're just on one long treadmill. And it's understandable that many amateurs just allow their minds to stray. And so let's break the mold on this. Because as soon as you lose focus and you start to get, for lack of a better phrase, bored in your open water swim, you start to just apply a little less tension, you start to drop the effort, and even though your fitness and muscular endurance are there, you just move into this blah mode. When is this going to be over? Let's put the SIM behind my ear so I can get on with the bike. And that's common because you don't have walls to push off; you're not breaking them up. So instead, you need a tool that's going to keep you present, focused, engaged, and driving water that you're holding backward to create propulsion. The best tool for that, I find, is stroke counting. It keeps you systemically involved and focused, ensuring that you're taking action to do the best you can with your trained endurance.
Matt Dixon 25:49
So how do you do that? Well, the truth is that you want to prevent decline. And so you move into a rhythm of stroke counts and patterns; there is no rule. What works for you is the thing that works. And so, just by way of an example, you might do 50 swim strokes, right, left, right, left—1—2—3—4 every time one arm moves backward, whether it's right or left; it's a stroke count. And maybe you do 50 stroke counts where you're on. And in that 50, you're wholly presenting your driving water behind you, and it's a little interval. And then you might go 10 or 15 strokes, where you use it to try and reset the connection. You just go smooth, you lower the breathing, you lower the heart rate, and maybe just lengthen the stroke a little bit. And then you go back on 50 strokes, driving water back every stroke, right, left, right, left, it's an opportunity than in the little gap 10, or 15 strokes between to reset your timing and connections so that then when you start to apply pressure again and you start with the new 50 Count, you're applying the best propulsion with the most streamlined vessel possible. Now it might end up being 100 strokes on 20 off; it might be 200 strokes on 50 off; there's no real rhythm; that is the magic ingredient; it's the thing that you can do that is easiest for you to integrate. And I promise you, it's the best path for speed return that you can get relative to whatever fitness you have. Combine all these three, and you're going to get more from your fitness; you're going to go faster in your swim.
Matt Dixon 27:34
Today, we're talking about going faster, and to go fast, you still need every session that you train to count. Tri-squad is the only program that is specifically designed from the ground up for time-starved athletes like you. I've been coaching this for 20 years; I wrote a book specifically on the topic. And since that time, we've continued to evolve and grow our programming. Every single one of our 1500 world championship qualifiers is time-starved. Most of them are very, very busy with their professional lives, as well as their families and everything else. And yet, we maximize the output from every single session; they all count. You have three steps to get on the program and join us: first, head to Purple Patch Fitness.com/Squad. Take a look at the program. You can be on the program within minutes, literally registered, get on a program, and then we will set up a personal call to get you navigated and ensure that you have a wonderful experience. And we are so confident you're going to love the program. Of course, as ever, as a third step, if you don't love it, you're going to get your money back within the first 30 days; it's a full 30-day money-back guarantee. If you have any questions or if you want to reach out for a free, complimentary consultation, email info@purplepatchfitness.com. Let's get back on with the show.
Matt Dixon 28:56
Part two: the bike. I think this is the best opportunity to gain speed. So what are the elements that you can do? No matter how fit you get on the bike, no matter how nice your bike is, or how much money you spend on it, How do you get the most speed? Well, the first element is the big one; we can't bypass this: terrain management. If you aim to stick to one power throughout your race in a very narrow range, you are leaving speed on the table. And if you stick to one cadencing range, so just one leg speed all the way through, you're leaving speed on the table. If you want to get the biggest yield of speed relative to your trained potential, your heart rate, your power, and your cadence should vary. Here are the steps to help you with this: Now, this is in-person video-based coaching. I can't do it all on this show. But I can give you some actionable steps. Number one, and this is the important one. Where are your eyes? Where are you placing your focus? If you want to get the best speed return, your eyes should not be constantly on your metrics and meters. You want to have your eyes on the road. So you want to be looking at the terrain. And so that you can plan, you can feel the grade changes, and you can respond. And as you're coming up on hills as the grade goes up as gravity is working against you, your effort and your power should creep up a little bit. That's normal. And as you're cresting, as the grade starts to dissipate, that hill or little grade this was going up starts to get flatter towards downhill. You should always be building speed. Now, this isn't a bang. This is a smooth build of speed, and you use increasing leg speed and increasing effort for a bit—just 4, 5, 6, 7 seconds worth—and add in gears as the grade dissipates. It's a simple rule. Whenever you're going uphill, as it crests and the grade dissipates, you need to go faster. So we've done two so far. Number one, as the grade builds up and gravity works a hint against you, you should be putting in more effort, and your power should go up. As you're creating, you should be building speed smoothly. And then on the downhills, you should be continuing to build speed, but that's the place where you're not chasing power. And so if somebody was looking to average give or take 200 watts throughout a race, they wouldn't be distributing 200 watts. On the hills over the crests and the downhills, you would see high variability; it would be higher, a little bit higher, and as you're going up a grade, it will be considerably higher just for a sort of snapshot as you go over the crests. And it will probably be under that average, as you've built speed and chase. There's a lot of physics behind that. But it's a feeling; it's a flow.
Matt Dixon 31:09
But I tell you, the only way that you can do this is through experience—going out and playing and coaching. That's how you're going to improve this; you're never going to get it out on the metrics. And that's why we have so much success when a person comes to a training camp with us. Because we can help them understand why, we can do some one-on-one coaching in an applied setting so that they can actually, and this word is important, feel it. Another element that you can do from anywhere in the world is train on a platform that simulates that. And if you combine it with some real feedback and coaching, it becomes powerful. Now, that's what we do at Purple Patch. And I'll just tell you the truth here: I don't own any stock in this; I don't get any referrals or anything like that, but it is the platform that we use at Purple Patch that is accessible outside of Purple Patch coaching, and that's velocity. That is the only program on the market that simulates genuine real-world conditions around this terrain. And I'll tell you something when you feel it on that platform, and if you amplify that with real coaching with people that you understand, a two-way video, and how we do it in Purple Patch, it's, Ahhh, this is it. Because this is—and I can't overemphasize this too—and I am telling you the truth—what I'm talking about with Terrain Management on the bike—if you're a triathlete, by a country mile, this is your biggest opportunity. I hate the phrase game changer. This is a game-changer. It is a direct speed gain. It doesn't matter how strong you are, what your FTP is, how resilient you are, or how many miles you've covered; if you're not working on mastering terrain management, you're never going to optimize your speed potential. And so you can do this; you can do it with some real in-person coaching and going out and playing and feeling the terrain change; you can do it by leveraging a platform that at least gets you 90% of the way there on the concepts and then going outside and making it real. This is credibly important. And so, terrain management is key number one.
Matt Dixon 34:54
The second building block, no matter what your fitness is, is to ride the environment. So we've talked about terrain, hills, crests of hills, going downhill—all important. The second element that happens in almost any race is the environment. So let's talk about this. If you're riding and you have a headwind—in other words, you're riding into the wind—it's more difficult; you tend to go a little bit slower. And so what should you do as a rider to help you get through that section of road as well as give the biggest speed return? Well, there are a couple of components that are important here. And these are simple to remember, but they're really important for you. The first is that if you are measuring your power when you've got a wind against you, a headwind, your power should be higher. It's very similar in concept to if you're going up a grade, okay, you got something—a force pushing against you—and it's physiologically a little bit easier to generate power. So if we're using our 200 Watts average, I would expect to see with a headwind, depending on how strong it is, 210, 215, 220, 225, even 230, so you're getting up there at 10 or 15%, even up to 20% more output to apply a force against the thing that's going against you. And that is a good investment in effort. Okay, because it's going to give you incrementally a bigger speed return when you've got a force against you. Imagine you're going 17 miles an hour; if you put in that extra effort and go 19 miles an hour, that's an extra two miles an hour. So that's important too. The second component is that I lean counterintuitively into writing a slightly bigger gear. And so rather than spinning on the bike, oh, this is hard spinning, spinning spinning, you want to put it into a pretty big gear and utilize what we call strength endurance on the lower end of the range of your cadence. Now, this isn't a huge delta, but you might—if you naturally sit at 80 or 85 revolutions per minute, depending on the strength of the wind—be at 70, 75, or 78 RPM, so a bit more tension on the chain—that's allowing constant tension, which is important. The third component is that you want to make yourself slippery. So whether you're in a time trial position or a row position, you want to try and reduce your cross-sectional area so that you can reduce drag. Because the wind is forced against you, it slows. So you don't want to be sitting out there. You don't want to have your head higher, looking through the middle of your eyeball. You want to get sneaky, quiet, and small while staying supple so that you can reduce drag. That's going to give you, relative to whatever power you can get out, the best speed return. How about you've got another section of road and you have a tailwind? What physics portrays is that the faster we go, the faster and faster and faster we get. For every little half a mile an hour of speed gain, we need to incrementally add exponentially more power, more and more power, to get incremental speed gains. Alrighty. So what that tells us is that chasing power is not smart when you've got a tailwind; instead, just enjoy the ride. So don't chase your average power. If you're riding along and the environment is quiet and you look down and see really low power, you've probably got a tailwind. And so, in that case, you can add a little bit of gear. So add a bit more tension, drift your cadence a little bit higher, and just maintain easy tension on the chain. And if you're going fast without that much input, well, lucky you, because it ain't about who generates the most power; it's who goes fastest. And so that's an opportunity to remember to manage your resources, keep the calories going in, but keep the bike flowing—really important stuff. And that is how, no matter how fit, you are unprepared. That's how you can think about getting free speed on the bike.
Matt Dixon 39:22
At Purple Patch, we talk about terrain management and how to navigate variable terrain and the environment to get the biggest speed return possible. With Purple Patch's live and on-demand coaching platform, we work on this every single week; it's integrated into your training, and we, including me, coach you through it. You will improve. These are concepts that can only become habits when you work on them when you're given feedback, and when you do them right. And this is why we've invested so much time, energy, and money into our video coaching platform. No matter what training level you get to, whatever your fitness is, this training maximizes your speed. You're going to get more of any fitness that you have. This is the special sauce. And it is integrated into all of our programs, if a one-to-one coach, into all of our squad programs. And of course, for athletes who are self-coached or coached elsewhere, you can just leverage our stand-alone bike program. Head to the website and check it out. There are three steps to making you faster. Number one: info@purplepatchfitness.com. Reach out to us. We can set up a complimentary consultation and get you on the right program that serves your needs. And as ever, we stand behind all of our coaching; there is a 30-day money-back guarantee. So what's the risk? Why not just get faster? Back to the show.
Matt Dixon 40:46
Part three, the runner-up, is part of the race in which prior mistakes in pacing, fueling, and hydration are all revealed, and they are revealed via, quite often, performance decline if you've done it wrong. But let's assume that you're good to go. How do you optimize speed return in the run discipline? Well, the first is often counterintuitive because it's all about walking. For too long, walking in a triathlon was reserved as an act of desperation, almost failure; people only took walk breaks when they were forced to. But I encourage you to shift your lens because this can become a tool in your arsenal to help you go faster. Let's break it down a little bit. The biggest limiter for most athletes is mechanical and muscular fatigue. And you might have experienced this: your heart and lungs are willing; they're good to go, but the legs just won't follow orders. It's a horrible feeling. But you can get ahead of this by adding short walk breaks right in the early stages of your race. These breaks can serve as a nice mental and physical reset. And they're a chance for you every time to restart kickoff. Really good form once again. And what that means is that the running that you do is executed and done with really good form, the best form that you can do, and of course, optimal speed return out of that form. Now, this tactical approach takes a pragmatic lens and a little bit of bravery, but when you execute it right, it tends to lead to much faster and more controlled running off the bike. We educate, guide, and coach all Purple Patch athletes to do this. I recently had an athlete who ran two hours and 36 minutes in the New York Marathon, an amateur, by integrating six walk breaks into that race. Think about that: just over two and a half hours and he was walking; he looked pretty different compared to the rest of the elite amateurs. But I think this is a big part of our success across the broader scope of our athletes, how we've managed to get so many personal breakthroughs and qualifications to world championship events, by taking the running, which is often when fatigue shows up and where performance declines, and taking a pragmatic lens. Because for most amateur athletes, you don't have to run fast to have a magical running performance; you just have to run well consistently throughout your race. And so walk breaks shift your lens; it's not about desperation; it's not about saving them until you have to. It's about purposeful integration, right from the start of the discipline. So that in the latter stages, you're still running, and you're still running relative to your fitness as fast as you possibly can. And that's how, boom, you get the best optimal breakthrough possible.
Matt Dixon 43:59
The second element in running Terrain Management is valuable. And this is the next layer to this: the smart management of terrain. And of course, we discussed this extensively on the bike. But it still occurs throughout the running leg as well; the difference in running is that you have fewer gears. And so let's break through and break apart how to deploy smart terrain management on the run. So because you don't have gears, this is about system management and speed return. That's what we're talking about. An element of this links into the walk breaks that were talked about—how do you distribute walk breaks throughout a run? So, we're going to get into that. But let's first talk about terrain. So for the first flat run, you run at your own pace, with an effort that is right for the course that you're doing. So that's very simple. What about when the road pitches up and you're going against the grade, against the hill? Well, that's where you want to build your effort. So, you never just run hard; you build in your effort, and your effort and heart rate will go up, but you'll want to be very, very managed in that. And so consistency with good form is better as you're going up hills. And the steeper it gets, the more likely it is that you're going to start to integrate walking or more walking. I'll come back to that in a second. When you go downhill, that's the element that you should be chasing: speed. But that doesn't mean you're running hard. All you're doing is standing tall, leaning forward a little bit, and allowing gravity to become your friend. And so where you should be carrying speed is on the downhill. Running uphill, you're moderating your effort, but we should expect your heart rate to go up a little bit. So that's a simple distribution of work throughout the terrain. But the really important component is where you combine the two. So when you are going uphill, the speed penalty for walking is minimal. And as the grade gets steeper, it's more and more minimal. If you want to make sense of that sort of thing—very poor English there—but the speed penalty of you taking a walk break is almost nothing. And so if you are going to integrate walk breaks and you're on a variable-terrain course going uphill, that's the time that you want to integrate it. Simply put, on the reverse of this, when you're going downhill, even if it's a shallow ground downhill grade, taking a walk break, when you're running downhill, the speed penalty is huge. And so simply put, never walk when you're going downhill; run the downhills, distribute work, and manage on the flats, with incrementally sensible walk breaks, and if necessary, if you're coming up to a hill, save the walk break, keep running, and then integrate a walk break when you're going against the grade because that's how you're starting to be smart about layering strategies of walk breaks throughout variable terrain. That's why I never asked an athlete to run for 10 minutes and walk for one, or run for six minutes and walk for 15 seconds. It doesn't make sense to do that. You can use it as a loose framework, but you always need to make sure that you're walking at moments when you can do something useful—that's an aid station or your actual speed penalty is minimal, and that's going uphill, very simply put, and I hope that helps. That's a really important component. So the only question I have for you is: are you brave enough to do that on your run?
Matt Dixon 47:54
And that's it, folks. With your swim, bike, and run, there is more to optimize your race results and leverage free speed, but that is going to be packed into part two of this show. We're going to dig into energy management, your mindset, as well as some more race craft. But before I leave you, I thought what we'd do was reflect and summarize. And so, Barry, here is our key summary and takeaways. Number one, success requires a shift in your mindset—the old-school way of just getting the best speed return relative to how it used to be done. That's not enough anymore. To race your fastest, you simply cannot rely on a spreadsheet, and the data isn't going to tell you that. And you can't assume that just getting fitter is going to drive your optimal speed. This is the next level. This is the amplifier, the extra sauce, that we're talking about. In the swim, we broke it down. Number one: learn how to see. Number two: apply it in an open-water environment and ensure that your technique is primed for an open-water environment. And number three, stay focused. And we discuss how to ensure that you don't get lazy or distracted and drift away, but instead stay mission-focused by leveraging stroke count. On the bike, I want you to fit. I want you to be fit. And I also love data-driven progression and readiness, and I want your best speed. So in the bike session, it was all about getting your fitness to work for you to deliver speed. So we talked about having eyes up the road; you want to be engaged, to push the effort up the hills a little bit—not absurdly hard but an investment of work—building speed over the crests, and so at Purple Patch, we have a very simple rule: when the grade dissipates and then the speed increases, go with the flow and carry speed downhill. In other words, we're avoiding power changes. This naturally produces variance of cadence, variance of power, and variance of heart rate, and that's a good thing. The body loves that. But most importantly, the top lock at the end of the race loves it. And then we went into the run. Remember, we talked about shifting the mindset on walk breaks? They are tools for speed; they're not signs of weakness or desperation. We talked about an athlete that I had running two hours and 36 minutes in the New York Marathon with six to eight walk breaks integrated into that performance. We also talked about the need to never walk downhill, a simple rule to abide by and to also choose to walk before your form declines, whether you're on the flats or whether you're on the hills when the speed penalty is low. And so, that is how you crack it. I hope that helps. If you have any questions at all about what we discussed on the show, or if you need any support, if you're interested in getting involved in some of the Purple Patch programming, you can reach me at the email address info@purplepatchfitness.com. We'll provide some insight into some of the education and coaching that we provide at Purple Patch. We would love to get you involved. All right. See you next time! Have a great week.
Matt Dixon 51:15
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. Of course, I'd like to ask you if you will subscribe and share it with your friends. And it's really helpful if you leave a nice positive review in the comments. If you have any questions, let me know. Feel free to add a comment, and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. 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 trying hard to make it a special experience, and we want to welcome you into the Purple Patch community. With that, I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun, keep smiling, and do whatever you do. Take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
speed, patch, faster, purple, swim, integrate, fitness, improve, stroke, walk, athletes, bike, breaks, power, race, swimming, program, part, coach, coaching