Episode 322: Shifting Focus for Mature Athletes
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Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast! This week, we're exploring the topic of mature athletes. These athletes are just as ambitious and goal-driven as younger ones, but they often have a deeper and more meaningful purpose beyond winning races and setting personal records.
We received a great question from a podcast listener who has participated in triathlons for over 20 years. Despite still being ambitious, she now has three kids and is seeking advice on how to approach the sport from a new perspective and adjust her training. This is a common challenge for many athletes, not just in triathlon.
We've dedicated a whole show to addressing this question and hopefully, we provide helpful guidance for any mature athlete looking to optimize their mindset, strategy, and training for performance gains. The episode is divided into three parts. The first part discusses "perspective" and building a new relationship with sports. It provides context for understanding how to adjust your approach to sports and how it may differ from your younger and more competitive years.
Part two delves into training practices. What may have worked for you in your 20s as an athlete may not be as helpful for you now. We outline the key elements of training that mature athletes should focus on to achieve the best return on investment.
In part three, we discuss habits all athletes should adopt to support training, with a special emphasis on habits of amplified importance for mature athletes seeking to stay healthy and competitive for years to come.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 03:13 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
03:14 - 07:44 - Coach’s Corner
07:45 - 21:49 - The Meat & Potatoes - Part 1- Perspective
21:51 - 22:58 - Purple Patch Promo 1
23:01 - 35:11 - PART 2 - Training
35:12 - 36:19 - Purple Patch Promo 2
36:21 - 46:44 - PART 3 - Habits
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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 their lives.
Matt Dixon 00:22
I'm no spring chicken. You might even call me a mature athlete, and yet, I'm still trying to keep up with my younger self, and perhaps more importantly, I've got a quest to set myself up for the best quality of life that I can have for the decades in front of me. One of the tools that I leveraged to try and help me filter out the noise and distractions and instead place my emphasis on the boulders—the things that are going to yield performance gains for me—is sidetracked. By taking a look inside, assessing my biometrics, and then combining them with the advice and recommendations from the team of scientists inside the tracker, I get everything that I want, the right things to prioritize, and quantifiable results to ensure that I stay on track. And guess what? You can leverage it; all you need to do is head to insidetracker.com/purplepatch. Use the code purplepatchpro-20. You're going to get a hefty discount off everything at the store; we use it across the purple patch ecosystem, but you don't need to be a purple patch athlete to take advantage. It's a wonderful tool. It's a great system. It works for everybody who is seeking to improve across all arenas of life. All right, we are talking about mature athletes today. So enjoy the show.
Matt Dixon 01:47
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast as ever, your host, Matt Dixon, and today we're going to talk about mature athletes. Yes, no less ambitious, certainly goal-driven, perhaps with even a broader and deeper, and some might say, more meaningful purpose than many of the younger athletes that are just solely focused on podiums and PRs. This week, I received a great question from a Canadian podcast listener who's been doing triathlons for more than 20 years, like my introduction, she's still ambitious; now she's got three kids, and Claire is seeking advice on how to establish an evolved perspective on the sport and develop a new relationship. As well as, of course, seeking recommendations on how to evolve training. Now this is such a common challenge and situation; it doesn't need to be specific to triathlon, but so much so that I thought, You know what? It's a great question. Why don't we build a whole show around it? And so, Claire, if you're listening today, I'm going to answer your question, but I'm also going to go a little bit beyond. I'm going to try to build a portfolio of helpful guidance for any mature athlete. After all, I'm one nowadays to try and implement the right mindset, strategy, and training to yield performance gains. It's all in the meat and potatoes. But first, why don't we do a little Coach's Corner?
Matt Dixon 03:13
Yes, Coach's Corner, and last week, that's where I want to look back to last week's show; we dug into the mindset of an elite athlete. The Olympics are coming up, so it is time to dig into some of these world-class athletes. After the show, I got a lot of surprising emails, perhaps from listeners around one particular area, and that's the fact that I made the observation, I would say, that high performers tend to be highly coachable. And it seemed to ignite a little bit of surprise for many of you guys. There seems to be a perception that many of the greats if we want to call them, are more likely to kind of go it alone. But the truth is that it's seldom the case. And so I wanted to provide a little bit of additional context in this week's Coaches Corner around the greats, the champions. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about great leaders or great athletes. You see, the truth is, it's really difficult to rise to the top; you are going to be met with an arduous journey that promises setbacks and obstacles, and that journey is multitudes harder if you try and go alone. It's worth remembering that an elite athlete is taking this journey for the very first time. It's their sport; they've got a great deal of talent, I'm sure, but they've never gone on the journey. And so they might be committed, tough, and genetically gifted, but they've never lived a world-class journey. It's also worth remembering that it's almost impossible for anyone—all of us—to dive deep into the daily actions that are necessary while at the same time being able to retain the required perspective to respond to different situations and make some smart, long-term strategic decisions. And finally, as this journey is so personal to the athletes themselves, after all, it's theirs. It's important to them. It's incredibly tough to remove much of the emotion when deciding on the best course of action or how to respond to the various setbacks and challenges. And so this is where really good coaching comes in because a great coach is someone who can act as a sounding board and, in partnership with your journey, has wisdom and expertise. After all, they have helped others, somewhat or quite like yourself or the athlete, go through journeys that are very, very similar to that of that of that elite athlete. Therefore, as the athlete is seeking advice and wisdom and drawing from prior expertise, in other words, the coach has kind of lived multiple journeys. It's the athlete's first journey. And then, a coach can also more easily remove emotions and see the big picture. And so with this, for coaching to be effective, the athlete brings their best collaboration, communication, and ability to provide and receive feedback, and that's what I was talking about last week: great athletes and great leaders tend to be highly coachable because they're externally focused to help with a partnership to go on the journey that they're taking for the first time. But to make that relationship truly effective, the athlete has to have a mindset of collaboration. They've got to be able to communicate. They must be able to provide and receive feedback. And when we get this right, based on my observation over the past 20 years, this is when the real magic starts to occur. Now, of course, as I alluded to, this situation. It doesn't just occur within sport, but I hope, as it relates to elite athletes, when you get to watch the Olympic athletes over the coming weeks, this added context helps. Now, the focus of today is that we're talking about mature athletes, so we're going to cut Coach's Corner there. We're going to go right to it because, Barry, I'm starving and I am ready for the meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 07:45
Yes, folks, the meat and potatoes. And once again, it's fun. I'm enjoying these. We're going to build today's main education in response to a question that we recently received. Last week, we did it around the elite and Olympic mindset of athletes. This week, it's more about the mature athlete. And I thought, Why not? Let's do this. We're on a roll here. So let's go with the flow. And I want to try to build much of the education around the stuff that you guys want to hear. And so here we are once again this week, doing a little bit of a modified Q and A. One question, one answer, with me adding a little bit of additional context around this. So this is from a long-time pod listener from Canada, Claire. And Claire, thank you very much for writing in. I'm sorry it took me two weeks to get back to you outside of the initial email, but here it is today. This show is for you, and I hope that it's helpful. For the rest of the listeners, here we go. Here is Claire's question that she asked: She said, Hello from Canada, and thank you for your podcast. I love your perspective on integrating sports into life. My question is this: I've been racing as an amateur triathlete for many years. I did my first triathlon when I was 20 years old, and now I'm just about to turn 42. I haven't raced every single year because I had three babies at that time, but my total time in the sport is nearly 22 years. Fantastic stuff. Great longevity. Clare. I never really expected myself to grow older in this sport, but I love it so much that I want to keep doing it, as long as my body will hold up. Do you guys have any ideas of how to shift your focus as you start to get older and slower, in parentheses, so that you're less focused on the outcomes and the times and more focused on goals that are still motivating and achievable as you age in the sport? How do you keep getting joy from doing triathlons when you just keep getting slower? Well, it's a great question, and it's a challenge that many people face, of course, and I would say that a good portion of incoming Purple Patch athletes are in very, very similar situations to you, Claire, and it's great. I'll never forget a good friend of mine now, Joe, who came to me when he was 49 years old, and he said, I'm almost 50. I guess my game is just trying to not slow down too much. And I said, F that, let's make you faster. And he did his fastest half of Iron Man at the age of 56 years of age, maybe even 57 years of age. And he just keeps improving. Now he did it by shifting his focus, evolving his mindset a little bit, and changing up how he approached the whole sport. But it's not about getting faster, is it? And so what I want to do is break down a few pieces of advice, and we're going to do this in three sections. First is perspective—how you build the relationship with the sport. The second, I'm going to dig into a little bit around training, because I think that'll be helpful. And then, third, I'm going to extend the conversation a little bit and just touch on habits to close out the show. Okay? So three sections: perspective, then we're going to go into training, then we're going to go into habits, alright? So with that, Barry, let's lock and load. Let's do part one, guys.
Matt Dixon 11:05
Perspective: Build your relationship with your sport as you start to mature. As pointed out, there is no need to dilute your desire or your ambition as you start to mature in the sport; it just might evolve a little bit. One of the things that I see is too many maturing athletes that become, for lack of a better phrase, defensive in their mindset, and so they start to just fall into the trap of, Oh, I'm just trying not to slow down. I'm just going to shift from not competing to just completing or just giving up on competitive drive altogether. Maybe I should just exercise and stay healthy. Why should I take on a challenge? Now this game is inevitable. As you start to mature, your body will slow down over the years. We can't beat physiology, but we sure as heck can slow it down, and we can evolve our focus and our emphasis on where we train and how we train to create a catalyst to retain levels, or even sometimes improve levels. But there is a physiological truth: as we get older, we are going to ultimately lose strength and have to endure the increasing time of recovery necessary between hard bouts, therefore having a reduced capacity to train hard all the time. We're also going to have a reduction in our ability to produce power, and unless nurtured, we're probably going to lose some joint mobility, a little bit of coordination, and balance. So all of these things will ultimately start to come a little bit undone as we mature. And the truth of that is, ultimately, it's a game where, yeah, you're not going to go as fast, but that doesn't mean that ambition should erode or that growth still shouldn't be a predominant part of your mindset. We can keep improving if we evolve. There are a few options for how you shift your relationship and start to ignite imagination, excitement, ambition, growth, and challenge—all of these things that I believe are healthy and do not have to be defined by finish place, how fast you go, what you qualify for, etc. And so the first part of this is maybe spending a little bit of time defining or redefining your purpose. And let me just give you an example here, because I can't give you the direct answers to this Claire or anyone else, but my guess is, if I had to guess, in your 20s, as a youth doing this sport, I'm sure that the mission, the purpose, was a performance in the strictest sense—how fast can I go? Where can I come? What are the podiums I can maybe chase? What finish lines can I get across? So it was very much performance-driven in the way that we tend to look at things generally, but this is a nice time as you start to enter your 40s and beyond. By the way, I think you can still get faster, but it's a good time to reconnect with your why in sport, and perhaps there's a broader perspective on the reason for you doing this and really what defines success. Because what came across in your question is that you love it. It provides satisfaction, and it's a challenge, and that's healthy for us. We grow under challenge, but I'm sure it might evolve to the point where your purpose could extend beyond racing. Perhaps there's a part of you that wants to ensure that you're an inspiration and a role model for your kids, and maybe that's a part of the reason for doing it. I'm sure that you probably want to have in your 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, and beyond that you hope to have the highest quality of life possible so that you can go and explore and do anything you want in your life without needing to wait for assistance to get upstairs or whatever it might be. So there's probably a longevity and quality of life component to it; in other words, really defining and understanding why you love this sport and what success looks like makes it immeasurably easier to begin to set goals that fit under that banner because a goal is only beneficial if it guides you towards your WHY, your purpose. We're going to do a whole show on goals versus purpose, but a lot of people just choose events because they're in front of them. All right. This year I'm going to go and do Oceanside Half Ironman, and I'm going to go and do the World Championships, but quite often without really understanding your purpose or why. And so I think that you're in a place right now where there might be a shift in what you hope to draw out of the sport and what success looks like. And so that's the first little process you want to go through. You don't have to come up with an answer in 15 minutes with a piece of paper in front of you, but it can be an emerging process where you start to identify: What do I love? Why am I doing this? What does success look like? Therefore, what goals can I put into place that are going to bridge me there? So that's one component that I think is a healthy thing for you to go through.
Matt Dixon 16:49
The second is a consideration of maybe broadening out your race choices and the types of challenges that you take on. So I encourage you to continue with the triathlon. It sounds like you love the sport, and that's fantastic. You might just add some novel or different challenges in there—something that's going to elicit the healthy stuff, get you out of your comfort zone and maybe elicit a little bit of fear. Can I go and do this? and create a different set of challenges for you to go and get ready for. And this could be, quote, anything. It could be an ultra-distance trail run. Maybe it's a challenging, multi-day riding, bike ride, or bike trip through Europe or the White Mountains in the summer, whatever it might be—even a huge hike over back-to-back days or multiple days. I just had friends who came back from the Chamonix area after four or five days of massive hiking, which was different and a very different type of challenge, and it elicited a different goal, a different challenge, and a different opportunity for growth. It could even be something completely counterintuitive to your sport and identity as a triathlete. It could be a Spartan type of race or a high rock, which is trendy right now. These types of components—they're all healthy. The key is that it can help freshen things up. It's not about you changing or shifting your emphasis. You still, should do triathlons, but by integrating something else in, you'll be amazed at how fresh and exciting that can be. I would also recommend that, if you're under the triathlon banner, maybe do some different types of races. So perhaps before you did races that you could maybe do well at because they were flatter and faster and you could get a PR, but maybe you go and do cool races in cool places, a challenging race, something that's way out there. I had someone who used to love to go and do Arizona and Florida, and we flipped it up, and he went and did the Norseman race. I mean, talk about a challenge, but a different type of challenge that created all of the rewards. It created the fear, the challenge, and everything else but the pride and satisfaction of completing it. I just lived through this a little bit a couple of years ago. You might have followed it when I went and did the Haute Route—seven days of riding through the Alps. Different, really challenging, and hard, but goodness me, did it freshen things up? And so, in other words, these types of broadening of the lens of what it means to be a multisport athlete can make things different, really fun, and fresh. And the good news about it is that there's no reference point. You're not going to have any comparison, and it's going to create that healthy fear, as I talked about, get you out of your comfort zone, and pretty much flip things around a little bit. It's probably going to be good for your body. And so with these two options, I think those are two gateways where you can start to form a new relationship with the sport, and you can continue to chase improvements and growth. Now I would add one more, a little bonus that I like. If we hold hands, look ahead and say, Okay, you're probably not in a situation where you're going to radically improve your power, your strength, or even your endurance—after all, you've got a long, long history of this sport, fair enough. But can you take on a different challenge? Can you leverage all of your history in the sport and all of that training, and can you get more cunning? Can you be smarter? Can you lean on and leverage your experience to keep going faster and faster relative to your younger self and relative to the less experienced and younger athletes that you're going to be competing with? In other words, how can you stay competitive and chase your personal performance goals by improving how you race? You can get smarter with the distribution of your fitness, maybe evolve your hydration and nutrition, and certainly, because 99% of the people that I meet when they come into Purple Patch can radically improve their speed return relative to their fitness by getting better at The Art of Racing, Terrain Management, a shift in your training approach, which we'll go into in Part 2—better pacing, even better-supporting habits. And if that's igniting a little spark of inspiration, guess what? It can be really fun. It's questioned: how do I go as fast or faster with less? What a challenge, but also what an accessible challenge. And so that's the relationship and the perspective side. Now let's take a little break.
Matt Dixon 21:51
The Purple Patch Tri Squad doesn't just train you for your events. It makes you a better athlete. We make you faster. We help you become smarter; you get the results that you chase while also showing up better in life. Let me tell you, there's no other program specifically tailored to the demands of time-starved people like you. There's certainly no other program with such a proven methodology and results across all levels of the sport, and we are excited to help you. We have a whole Purple Patch team of coaches, including myself, and a global community of Purple Patch athletes, all there to offer support, accountability, and, of course, guidance along the way. Join us. It's a really simple process. Set up a complimentary consultation. We'll understand your needs and your challenges, and we'll help you choose the right program for you. You can get registered and on plan within minutes, and we're so confident that you'll love it that we even give you a 30-day money-back guarantee. We're looking forward to helping you, and here's the word: transformed. Alright, let's get back on with the show.
Matt Dixon 23:01
So for mature athlete part two, let's dig into the second component. We've established a really good mindset and perspective relationship with the sport. But how should you evolve your training? That's the second big part of it. Because the truth is, for any mature athlete, what worked for you in your 20s is radically different than what your body needs now. And that's good news, because all of the years that you've done, and Claire in your question, you outlined that you've been in the sport for, give or take, 22 years, and all of those years of training are not going to physiologically evaporate. You've got this amazing foundation, and it requires a little bit, like nurturing a garden. It requires a little bit of nurturing, addressing, and refilling, but it's not going to crumble. You've got this great platform to build on. But now I recommend that you begin to get smart. You evolve how you approach the sport from a training standpoint according to your needs and your physiology now and in the years ahead. And so for you, Claire, it's worth noting you are also 42 years of age, as you outline, and so not only have you got this foundation of really good fitness, but now your body demands something else. In addition, you've got a second component of consideration specific to you and women like you and your profile, and that's the fact that you're 42 and you are either right now or just about to, over the coming years, going to enter effectively what is a second puberty, and that's perimenopause. This has a layered impact as well that locks together with where you're at as a maturing athlete but also demands a shifting approach so that you can navigate the years that you're going to be going through perimenopause in the best way possible to offset many of the symptoms and side effects and help you perform and thrive, not just in sport but also in broader life. And so these two things come together, the mature athlete perimenopause and it demands a shift, and so I'm going to give you a few tips. Now, we're going to do a whole show on perimenopause, but I'm just going to give you a few tips for males and females—it doesn't matter—for approaching training for the mature athlete, okay? The first, and this is the important part, is an underfocus, a diminishing focus on big endurance work. It's okay to do some. Alright, so there is some over-distance and longer-distance training that's okay. But the truth is that in your current situation, long, slow, distance, or endurance work globally is not going to provide the same return on investment that it did when you were in your 20s. It's just the truth. It doesn't give the same physiological stimulus. It's not going to give the same ROI, so while you can have some, it shouldn't be the first thing that you put on your training plan. So we're going to de-emphasize endurance. It doesn't mean that you're going to lose resiliency or your capacity to race well. But it's not the first thing. It's not the foundation. Your foundation is the other end; the foundation of your training should be, and I can say it in a single word: strength. Strength and conditioning are critical, non-negotiable components. What does that mean for you? Well, first, build your training program, Claire. I can't pretend to build your training program on this show right now, but I would say that the first thing that I would put on the list for the week is at least two, if not three, very specific high-load strength training sessions. That's the first thing that's in your bullseye. Now, even though you're getting ready for an endurance event, strength comes first, and then you wrap, in your case, triathlon, swim, bike, and run sessions around it. So right at the heart of it, it's a shift in approach. It's a shift in your mindset. You don't do swim, bike, and run; there's probably some long-distance training in there, of course, in each of those disciplines, and then say, supplementary, yeah, I'm going to do some strength. I do strength, and then I do some endurance work around it. Okay, so that's a radical shift, but that is the driver for you becoming the best that you can be in the sport and also in life. The third component is the swim, bike, run, and any other type of modalities that you do, of that type of cardiovascular training you want to do at least once or twice a week, focusing on very high intensity, getting your heart rate up to the threshold or above, hopefully with repeated intervals, and driving that high-end physiological capacity once a week, minimum, maybe twice a week. So suddenly you think about key training sessions, two strength workouts, or at least, if not three, one or two high-intensity workouts. And that's it. That's it. Surrounding that are some supportive work and a touch of endurance. And that's such a radical shift than if I were working with an 18-, 19-, 20-, or 25-year-old to say, Okay, let's build the miles; let's build the foundation. We need to get the body ready. We need to build up our metabolic efficiency and all of these components. It's a radically different approach. And it's going to be powerful for you. It's going to be fresh. It's going to be interesting. It's going to be different. Okay,
Matt Dixon 29:02
A second component of training is a little bit more abstract, but I think it's really important and it's ignored. But I think there are really powerful benefits, particularly for mature athletes, and that's staying connected with others. It cannot be a lone wolf journey, and for maturing athletes who perhaps have a broader and even deeper purpose for why they're doing this, the more that you can take on this journey with others, the better the results are going to be. The more enjoyment you're going to get out of it, the faster you're going to go. If you can have systems of support and accountability, not just that you can draw from others but that you can provide to others as well, it becomes more meaningful. And in fact, I would even, Claire, think about your situation: with all of the experience that you've got, what about an opportunity to mentor someone else? Where that's going to help you get beyond yourself and why you're doing it, but provide a little bit of meaning you're going to help others benefit. And you know what happens quite often when you give the gift of wisdom, expertise, and mentorship to others? You receive. It's true, and it often drives. I've seen it many times in your performance. And so, as you think about this, you've got this radical shift in training structure built around strength. And then my second recommendation for training is to get out and engage. Get a system of support, maybe in your local community; maybe you become a part of a team like Purple Patch; and you engage with others, provide support, and do some mentorship. And I'm not talking about coaching others. I'm not saying, Hey, you need to go and start coaching, but you can get a friend to say, I've never done a 5k. Great, do a 5k. Come on, let's do it together or try and help, whether it's kids or others along the journey. As a part of PurplePatch, we have a lot of highly engaged, very busy, time-starved people who work in our private community. We have our hub, as we call it, providing counsel, support, and wisdom to their peers, and it's not paid. It's that they're giving the wisdom of their time in the sport, and those are the athletes that are receiving a ton that ends up having a great experience that has that deeper meaning. And so shifting your training to helping others can be helpful. And so if you are building your training program from the ground up, let's just come back to the core training, because I'm sure you want to say, Hey, how do I do it? Here's how I would do it, as I talked about strength training, at least twice a week. High intensity, very, very demanding, at least once or twice a week, probably twice a week. I would then think about where I am getting my mobility, work, balance, coordination, and overall athleticism. You want to keep them engaged. Then I would add in some really, and you've heard me talk about this phrase before soul-filling, easy endurance, so shorter sessions that are conversational and fun, when I go for my run with my dog, Millie, and listen to my podcast, that type of stuff. And then finally, at the most, once or twice a week across the three disciplines, doing more classical endurance training or work that's building up our muscular resilience, our longer distance stuff, once or twice a week at most. That's it. That's your training program, okay? And then finally, under the training section, is something that I alluded to a little bit with the relationship between sports. I touched on this. But get smart with your training. Just become a better athlete. This is a huge opportunity for you. I'm sure you've heard me talk about it in this show, but become better at terrain management when you're running, when you're riding your bike, and try to yield more speed from your fitness. There isn't a better example of this than what I've just witnessed over the last 12 months, where we integrated our new video based on Bike Platform. You've heard me talk about it, and we have had and it's honestly true that countless people in their 50s, 60s, and 70s get faster—get faster. They're becoming better bike riders. This is some powerful stuff, and it's a huge opportunity. So if you're only stuck in the mindset of chasing fitness and power, you're facing an uphill battle. But if you say, All right, I'm going to do everything I can to retain this, and I'm going to make sure that I don't slow down and lose too much power, and I stay strong, but now I'm going to use it more, in a different way, in a smarter way. You go faster. Do you remember my friend, Joe? He got faster because of it. Now this is a guy who played in the NFL. He was very fit and very powerful. And from 49 to 56, he got faster in 5k, 10k, half marathon, half Iron Man, Olympic distance, everything. He got faster. He didn't get any stronger. He didn't get more powerful; he used his fitness more, and so I hope that helps from a training standpoint. Now, I should say, At this step, this part of the answer, Claire, for you and anyone else who's listening that's in a similar situation, it's probably worth you doing a deeper dive here. And so, Claire, or anyone else listening, it's probably beneficial for you to set up an individual coaching consultation, because one of the things that a purple patch coach or myself can do is help you frame all this and get granular to create a strategic plan and all of this stuff. And so, feel free to reach out to us. Info: purplepatchfitness.com. If it would help you, we're happy to set aside 30 minutes or 60 minutes of paid consultation to create the roadmap ahead. I think you'll find it beneficial. All right, when we come back, we're going to talk about habits.
Matt Dixon 35:11
Tri-squad. It is so much more than a training plan. This is a triathlon program designed from the ground up, specifically for athletes like you. And you know what? The best thing about this is human coaching. We've got a proven methodology that's delivered multiple amateur world champions, more than 1500 qualifiers, world championship events, countless PRs, and first-time finishes. And the best news is that this is a program that integrates into your life. And so not only are you going to get faster; we're pretty good at doing that, but it also super fuels your performance across all other aspects of life. You want to be more resilient, and adaptable, have better focus, can process information, and show up in all areas of life. That's what we care about. That's why we try to be your guide and help you transform your performance across all arenas. Feel free to email us at info@purplepatchfitness.com. You can set up a complimentary consultation. We'll get you on the program within minutes, and if you don't like it, we'll give you money back. You've got 30 days to test and run it. What's to lose? Come on, get involved. All right. Now, let's finish the show.
Matt Dixon 36:21
Alright, folks, let's close it out. In Part Three of Claire's Wonderful Question today, we are talking about the mature athlete, but we're just going to shine the hot light on supporting habits. So it goes a little bit beyond the question here. But to close this session out, I think it's worth spending five minutes on supporting habits. What needs to evolve as you're a maturing athlete, well, the first, and this isn't specific to a maturing athlete, but I think it's really important, because I often see, as we do start to get a little bit long in the tooth, that we have a drop in perception of our hunger signals, our thirst signals, and components like that. And so, with the assumption that you're still training, you're still ambitious, and you're still chasing performance, you must emphasize eating enough calories of the right type. I can't tell you how many mature athletes accidentally and unconsciously consume. Hunger signals drop. You don't have the same catalyst. It's harder to eat, and you end up getting into a chronic cycle of continuing to train hard, perhaps shifting, as we talked about in Part 2, the emphasis of that training, but under consuming calories that leave you with lower performance yields, fogger fatigue, and ultimately not getting results. And you think I'm slowing down; I'm just getting old, but the truth is that you may be just not eating enough calories. Now, if you need support here, of course, we've got our partnership with Fuelin, a wonderful system that integrates with the training that you're going to do and provides you with recommendations, not just on the types of foods you should eat but exactly the amount of calories, so that you can go into your local grocery store, restaurant, or whatever you're cooking at home, out of the fridge, and make sure that you're providing enough of the right calories at the right time. Important. If you want to find out more there, just head to fuelin.com/purplepatch, let them know that you heard it on the show, and they will take care of you. Of course, you can always reach out to us as well. At info@purplepatchfitness.com, we'll be delighted to point you toward some other recommendations around supporting your training with enough calories and nutrition. Of course, I am happy to do that with you if you want some more information on that very, very important topic.
Matt Dixon 38:45
Okay, the second component that's important under the banner of nutrition is protein. a critical building block for you. Claire, we talked about going into perimenopause, building around consistent protein in every single meal throughout the day—breakfast, potentially a snack, lunch, potentially a snack, and certainly dinner—ensuring that you're getting 30, 40, or 50 grams of protein for every one of your meals. It's such a critical building block for you. Spread it throughout the day; it should add up to give or take around your body weight in pounds, and ensure that every time you bring out a dinner plate, breakfast plate, whatever it might be, your plate, the first thing on is your protein. Then you're going to wrap it around with a ton of fiber, lots of vegetables and fruits, and then, in addition to that, plenty of carbohydrates to support your training load, especially post-workout. If you want to lower cortisol levels, post-workout carbohydrates are important. Of course, they are also really important on days before or during heavier, high-load training, days that can come in the form of strength or endurance training. So some really important components and habits are around. Nutrition. Okay, let me just highlight everything I said there: eating enough calories at the right time, building your meals around protein, ensuring that every meal has a ton of good fiber in it, in other words, vegetables and fruit, and then making sure that you're throttling your carbohydrate always present to ensure that you're supporting your caloric needs and ensuring that you're getting that post-workout fueling that is important, particularly for high-level athletes, amateur athletes, mature athletes, the topic of today, and anyone else doing sport or caring about performance globally. All right, so that's kind of the nutrition bucket on the habits.
Matt Dixon 40:40
Now let's talk about another component, recovery. This is a critical component for maturing athletes because our rate of recovery, our body's ability to bounce back, is compromised as we mature, and this is systemically, so how long do we come back to full hormonal health, if you want to call it that? Also, from a muscular scan standpoint, tissue repair takes longer as we age, and so what that means for us is that we need to be a little bit more strategic about integrating planned recovery into our training cycles. So what this looks like from a practical standpoint is that if you're following a training program, you should embrace and fall in love with going easy in the lighter training sessions. I referenced before the soul-filling training, going for a run with my dog, and listening to my podcast or audiobook in my ear. Really good stuff, but go freaking easy. And for you, Claire, or anyone else listening, that's a mature athlete. If the legs are just tired, if the system is tired, maybe convert a run to a walk or a hike, or stop for a coffee when you're going for a little bike ride, whatever it might be. But have the courage in the easy sessions to make them soul-filling. It's so important for mature athletes because we have to have the courage to do a little bit less to get as much as we would have done 10 or 15 years ago. I would also, under the banner of recovery, really focus on building great sleep hygiene. We discussed this in-depth two weeks ago, and so I am just going to send you back two weeks. In other words, if you want to learn more about how to optimize your sleep, just go back. I break down REM and its ability to process stress. I also discuss deep sleep, where all the growth, adaptations, and repair occur. You want to protect those you want to optimize. And so it's all about habit development around sleep. Go back a couple of sessions ago; we'll leave the link in the show notes. If you didn't hear it, It's worth listening to, and it's also worth sharing with your friends. So that's good. And then finally, under-recovery, be more willing than ever to integrate a few days in a row of deeper rejuvenation, very, very light training, even sometimes psychologically, having a day off completely where you enable, ultimately a catalyst for better consistency of effective training. So when you're younger, the body bounces back a little bit quicker, and you can often get away with less time where you're just like, I just need to turn my back on this. As a mature athlete, you've got to have the courage to integrate a little bit more, which is simple.
Matt Dixon 43:29
Final component: I've got to talk about this on a day-to-day basis: hydration. Massively under-discussed and important. It is a catalyst for creating a robust immune system; it's an improvement in your recovery and tissue health. So, in other words, it's igniting your ability to recover quicker. And we've already just talked about that being a compromise factor between being a maturing athlete and tissue health. It's important. And it's also a key component in repair and adaptation. You go and do your strength training at high intensity if you want to get the biggest yield, and then you need to have well-lubricated muscles; it's part of the recovery process. And so, of course, with all of these habits, there's plenty of crossover here with all ages of athletes, but I do think that they have an amplified importance for maturing athletes. And so do listeners. I hope that perspective helped. Claire, thank you so much for the question. I hope that gives you a little bit of a runway to get going. If you would like to reach out with any questions that you have, we're going to be doing more Q&A sessions over the coming weeks. We've also got some really fun Q&A sessions with Scott Tindal from Fuelin around both race fueling and hydration for triathlon and other endurance events, as well as building habits and practices to amplify a daily performance around nutrition and hydration. All of that is to come in the coming weeks, but until then, hey, we might be getting a little bit more into the category of mature athletes, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't stay ambitious, keep growing, keep putting up the challenges because that's how we grow folks. I'll see you next time. Take care.
Matt Dixon 45:12
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, to also share it with your friends, and it's really helpful if you leave a nice, positive review in the comments. Now, 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, 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, do whatever you do, and take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
athlete, mature, sport, training, triathlon, claire, component, perimenopause, race, faster, journey, purple, challenge, little bit, patch, habits, mindset, performance, shift, days