Episode 328: Reflecting on the Year - A Look Back at Off-Season
Follow the Purple Patch Podcast at:
APPLE PODCASTS - SPOTIFY- AMAZON MUSIC - GOOGLE PODCASTS - YOUTUBE
Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!
As we air this show, most Purple Patch athletes are busy preparing for a variety of late-season races. We have the Ironman World Championships in Nice for the women, the Ironman World Championships in Kona for the men, the Ironman 70.3 World Championships in New Zealand, and the T100 series ramping up with the championship approaching for the pros. Additionally, we have the New York Marathon, the Santa Cruz Half Ironman, and a series of Ultra Trail runs.
Despite these big looming events, we want to take a moment to encourage high performers to pause, step back, and reflect. In this week’s episode, we take a look back at the past year to see the big picture of how we made it to this point.
Almost a year ago, we emphasized the critical role of Off-Season in achieving significant performance gains in the year ahead. This week we want to report on the impact of this approach on Purple Patch athletes.
First, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon revisits the key goals of Off-Season and focuses on what a successful off-season looks like. Matt then shares his observations and insights from this past season and both qualitative and quantitative data to highlight the effects of Off-Season. He then shares feedback from Purple Patch athletes on how the off-season affected their performance and lives.
In this episode, Matt discusses the mindset and commitment required to excel in your Off-Season. Whether you are preparing for upcoming events or gearing up to tackle a personal challenge in 2025, this show is crucial for you to refocus and recalibrate your performance, regardless of your goals.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 06:39 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
06:46 - 23:45 - The Meat and Potatoes: Part 1 - Framing Your Off-Season?
23:49 - 33:36 - Part 2 - Reflecting on the impact of Off-Season
33:37 - 44:17 - Part 3 - From the Athletes Themselves
Purple Patch and Episode Resources
Purple Patch Video Podcast and More
FREE WEBINAR - The Secret to Your Best Year Ever: An Optimized Off-Season
Learn more about our Tri Squad Program
Amplify your approach to nutrition with Purple Patch and Fuelin
We've reimagined indoor cycling - Find out more about 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 00:32
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. As ever, your host is Matt Dixon, and today we're going to look back a little bit. So as I record this show, the vast majority of Purple Patch athletes are busy preparing for a host of late-season races. Some might say, What do they say in America? It's prime time. We have the Ironman World Championships in Nice for the women; we have the Ironman World Championships in Kona for the men. We've got the Ironman 70.3 World Championships in New Zealand. We've also got the T100 series ramping up with the championship looming for the pros. We've got the New York Marathon in just a couple of months, more than 60 athletes getting together for the Santa Cruz Half Ironman in just a few days, and a series of Ultra Trail runs. Even my jaunt for the $50,000 is coming up very, very soon. And a bunch of other races; besides all the big ones, it is the vortex of races. And yet today, I want to do what I suggest all high performers do, and that's pause, come out of the weeds, and reflect a little bit. We are going to cast our minds back almost 12 months ago, when I, sitting at this desk, here in this room, discussed off-season. I spent a lot of time talking about the critical role that offseason could have a positive impact on any person who was seeking a huge performance gain in the year ahead. Today, what I want to do is report on that approach. How did it impact Purple Patch athletes? What I've done is combine a series of qualitative and quantitative data. We're going to get to dig in and highlight the impacts who, in my mind, nailed off-season. And so whether you're ramping into the last few events of the season or you're sitting here right now with readiness to take on a big personal challenge in 2025, I believe this show is really important for you. In fact, for some of you, I might even say this might be the most important show for you to listen to in the whole year. It's all coming up in the meat of potatoes. But before we get going, I do want to extend one small personal invitation. You see, today we're digging into the off-season, and we're going to investigate what happened to the purple patch athletes who actually, and this is stunning, actually listened to me and adhered to a proper off-season over last year. What were the outcomes? How did they feel? We're going to hear from some of those athletes now today; we won't dig into every detail on how you can nail your off-season because, for most of us, that's looming in the months ahead, but I do want to share that information. But I thought, Why don't I share that information in a venue and forum in which you can ask me questions as well? And so we've set up another performance webinar. It is September 23rd; it's at 9 a.m. Pacific and we are going to do a live performance webinar for anyone. You guys can come and join me live. And what I'm going to do in that show is I'm going to frame what a proper off-season should look like for you, and it's going to help you establish the right approach so that you can get the most out of it. We're going to set a path where you can have a whole bunch of freedom, a lot of rejuvenation, and get fresh, while also laying the critical platform for you to catapult to your very best season in the year ahead of you. This is the webinar that I believe is the one that can unlock your greatness, whatever that means to you, and it's free. It'll be pretty fun. Join me live, or if you can't attend live on the day or maybe the time of day, register. We'll send you the recording if you're unable to attend. Also a favor for me, it's September 23rd, and it's welcome to everyone, not just purple patch athletes, so if you could please send this invitation around to anyone who you feel might benefit. I'm sure you know a friend who's either planning a big season committed to a big, giant challenge or race or just desperate to take their racing or performance to the next level. This is for them; whether planning to go on the journey with Purple Patch or otherwise, this is a webinar that will benefit them, so please share. Off-season is the time when I see the biggest mistakes occur, and I don't want them to occur. It pains me to see athletes fudge up their off-season and then navigate nine months of frustration due to just some really simple mistakes. And so why don't we just nail it together? It's better for the sport. It's better for humanity. September 23, 9 a.m. Pacific. It's free. The link is in the show notes, and while we're talking about, this show, if you find the topic or education insightful, please also share this episode on your socials or the best channels, whatever is better for you. Even carrier pigeons if necessary. Personal shares are great. If you email people, it helps people, and it helps us with the show. Finally, as I've said over the last couple of weeks, and I'm extending it to this show as well, we are going to bring you this show completely ad-free. I'm not going to interrupt the education with any promotions whatsoever. Suffice it to say, that if you would like to continue the discussion with PurplePatch or find out more about our programs, a simple introduction is necessary. Just head to purplepatchfitness.com. That's purplepatchfitness.com; you can see all of our programming there. Alternatively, reach out directly to us, at info@purplepatchfitness.com; that's info@Purplepatchfitness.com; we're here to chat. Initial consultation is always free. Just ping us. Would be happy to set up a time with you. With that, let's get going. Ladies and gentlemen, it is time for the meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 06:46
Yes, it is the meat and potatoes, and this is a show that is about performance broadly. But today we're going to narrow our focus a little bit; we're going to shine the light on endurance sports. If you close your eyes and envision your favorite events and the preparation that is necessary to get ready for them, I'm sure that the first thing that comes to mind is maybe something like running across the finish line after an epic finish to a personal challenge, or perhaps the great training sessions that pushed you to the very limit, or a wonderful outdoor adventure in the height of summer, when you just feel like you're getting better and getting the benefits of the countryside. But the truth is that one of the critical elements of all levels of athletes, from pros to newcomers, that is necessary to take their current performance level and make a huge jump is far away from these experiences and memories. It's that No Man's Land that lies between the end of one year in season and the beginning of the next. We label it off-season.
Matt Dixon 07:59
While athletes have events all over the year, if we think about it in terms of the middle of the bell curve, and, how we structure it mentally for the majority of our athletes, knowing that we have people having lots of different things going on, our guiding mindset at Purple Patch is that our off-season is mostly anchored around Q4 October, November, and December, when we're thinking about our northern hemisphere athletes. And so that time, from October the first until the holidays in the new year, Q4 is our off-season. Now again, we have to tailor it for individuals, but if we take up the big fishing nets and grab all the tuna, that's where the majority of our athletes are. And it's a very unsexy time of training because most are trying to reset at that stage, rejuvenate, navigate holiday parties, do other fun stuff, focus on the family, and embrace less rigorous training than they might apply—perhaps the month or two or three months that are leading into those big key events. And yet it might be unsexy, but this is the time. This is the time. If I had to identify a single element that is always present when I observe an athlete make a huge leap in performance from one season to the next, it is smart and appropriate off-season. That is my number one pick across anything that I could do—not a shift in diet, not a change in coach or training methodology—a smart and appropriate off-season is the number one thing—and I want you to listen to this carefully—that is always present. I have never heard of or observed at least an athlete who has made a huge performance leap that has been sustained without an appropriate offseason. That's pretty compelling; that's pretty important. So we want to dig into it today, and I'm going to do two things today.
Matt Dixon 10:16
First, I want to ground us, so we're going to revisit some of the key goals of off season. What should it look like? We're not going to get into the how today; that's going to come in subsequent sessions, but we should at least identify what a good off-season looks like, broadly, what I see as the important elements that you want to nail down, and then the main thrust of today is to look back and report my observations and insights from this season of purple patch. What did we notice from the athletes who did nail their off-season? What was the impact on them? And we're going to hear from a few Purple Patch athletes, because, for a part of this show, I reached out and said, Give me your unbridled truth. How did the off-season impact your life and performance? So as I mentioned, I'm not going to go into the structure and the approach of off-season that's coming up in the following weeks. We're going to do subsequent shows in it. And of course, you have that performance webinar that I talked about on September 23rd, but today, what I want you to do is I want you to buy into yourself, and I want us to establish the right mindset and approach and then commit to yourself if you want to nail down offseason. Then, in the coming weeks, we can get more action-focused and applied and start to put some rubber on the road to make it a real thing.
Matt Dixon 11:37
So in part one, let's talk about the off-season broadly. What makes a good off-season? Well, whether you're brand new to the sport or you're excited for the year ahead and you want to uplevel, many people always join a coaching organization. I want to take my sport to the next level, or maybe you're finishing an arduous year of training and racing, and you just feel like you need a break before going again for the next season. All of you need to realize that the off-season is critical and to nail the off-season, you want to have a lot of patience and you want to apply a smart setting. The good news is, that doing it right doesn't take up much physical commitment or even much cognitive load. As you're going to find out, it could be confidence-building and a whole bunch of fun. And so let me highlight a few of the key aspects of what I would label a smart off-season. Last year, so if we go back 12 months, we built a whole quarter, that Q4 off-season, around three simple words: foundation, skills, technique—that was our mantra, if you want to call it that, and that's the umbrella of the guiding principles for what I want every athlete to accomplish. The first is, that I want you to have a whole bunch of freedom in the off-season. And so I, quite deliberately, prefer to see athletes avoiding obsessive training. I want to ensure that whatever your full capacity of training hours it is not the total hours in your life, but whatever your workable capacity of training hours in any given week, you're not training up to that capacity. You're giving yourself room. So you're not overcapacity. You're not driving the wagons; you're not right to the edge. You're giving yourself more space. I also want you, under the banner of freedom, to have a chance to go and play, try new things, be present for work and family, easily be able to be guilt-free, hit the office holiday parties, and do all of the other stuff that you like to do. And so it's a pretty slow burn. It's pretty calm. I also want to ensure that you get some real rejuvenation. The driving mission of an appropriate offseason is for you to head into the new year. And what we labeled the preparatory phrase, the prep phase, preseason, if you want to call it that, is mentally engaged, excited for the year ahead, systemically and hormonally, fresh and incredibly healthy from a musculoskeletal standpoint, no niggles, no pains, no injuries. If we're in that place, then we're in a good part. And so yes, isn't that just a license? I have freedom. I drive other things. I do holiday parties. I want to be fresh. I want to be healthy. I can just go random, yeah? And I can turn my back on structure. No, that is a grave mistake from a performance lens. Remember what I talked about? I have never observed anyone go to the next level and have a wonderful season without an appropriate offseason. And so I want to avoid you making those mistakes. Yes, I want you fresh. Yes, you benefit from doing other stuff, but some mission-critical pieces of training simply cannot be missed. And the truth is that those mission-critical pieces of training simply will not happen in any part of the year, period. It's not going to happen. And so for me, the off-season is the only time that you can fully dedicate and integrate the other parts of the training that we're going to go into a little bit today. And I would say that if athletes don't commit to these key aspects that are foundational in athlete progression, they're never going to do them. They miss them. Performance suffers. The rest of their year is less positive.
Matt Dixon 16:10
So what are some of those things? Well, the first is what I would label a foundation of tissue health and strength. What that includes is a really smart and appropriate dedication to strength training. Yes, that is an important component for an endurance athlete in the off-season; it gets catapulted to the bullseye. Very, very important. Second is a bunch of endurance activity that isn't hard but prepares the body for the months ahead to be able to accept, absorb, and adapt to the harder training that is looming, because we know that we need to train hard in the months ahead if we're going to go and have breakout performances. What we want to do in off off-season is enough endurance activity to get the body primed to accept the training, absorb it, and be able to make the positive, effective physiological adaptations from that work. And so there is some easier endurance activity. Now, there's a broad range of what you can do under there, but that's a component. And the third component of that is if the athlete complies with the strength and does enough of the easier activity, just enough of the right work. What starts to occur in the offseason is their risk of injury drops dramatically, and the positive adaptations from the hard work in the months ahead are better, so they get more from their work, the bigger ROI. So there's a foundational element. There's the work. There's the foundation component of it. We're setting the body up, building the structure, getting the body so that in the months ahead, when you do turn up the volume, you do drive the intensity, and the body's ready for it. So that's one key component: foundation. Now, this isn't hard; it's not dramatically time-consuming, but goodness me, it's important.
Matt Dixon 18:10
The second component is technique. Remember our three words: foundation, technique, skills, and technique. So if we have a lower training load, what that does is open the door to actually focusing on your technique. Now this can include aspects such as what we did last year, what we labeled Swim School, led by our swim expert, Purple Patch Coach, John Stevens, where we went through and focused on some drills, on some technical elements, going to the pool, and working on improving your effectiveness and your efficiency in the swimming pool. You hear all about the power of drills, and I talk about how drills can be fool gold that can extract people's minds away from needing to do the work. But in the off-season, it is okay and appropriate to add in some drills throughout swimming, running, and a little bit of bike riding, but we are going to add to that in a little bit, and so this is the time that we do focus on technique across the disciplines, actually getting better at doing what you love to do, and so over these months, if you go on a progressive journey with this lower stress training where you are making technical improvements, then you've got a fighting chance of integrating and retaining that better technique as we start to build the training load. But it is almost impossible, and I would say impossible, for a time-starved athlete to train hard and improve technique. And we need to train hard in the future, but now that we don't, this is the time that we can. Improve technique. And it's really fun because we do it in a really simple fashion in which we can progress and make you improve. And so now we have two words: foundation and technique.
Matt Dixon 20:11
The third component is critical as well: skills. This is not the same as technique. What we're talking about here is starting to have you learn aspects such as Terrain Management, how to stand up on the bike, how to get the best speed return in running and riding, from going downhill and uphill, navigating the terrain and environment, even in swimming, how to learn how to sight correctly, so that whatever fitness you build in the swimming you can apply to open water by swimming in a straight line, by gaining awareness. And so skill development is particularly rewarding, a lot of fun, and eye-opening for athletes, but without actually integrating it now, it's almost impossible to be able to focus on it when you're being asked to work very, very hard—do over-distance fatigue, inducing volume, integrating intensity and intervals, etc.—and so do it now.
Matt Dixon 21:20
The final component, from a physiological standpoint, is that, without all of the endurance necessary, we get to focus on one other physiological stimulus, a whole bunch of really high-intensity, short sprints. And what that's about is raising the ceiling of your potential. So off off-season, we do get to do more work, which is fun, a fresh and different challenge, where we do short, high intensity. Now this is not only about raising your potential as an endurance athlete; it's also incredibly healthy for a human being and has a direct link to all the research showing it to improve cognitive function, heart health, other aspects related to disease, risk reduction, as well as longevity. And so this is a really important and healthy thing to do as a human being. It's also really good to do to shift the stimulus for you as an endurance athlete.
Matt Dixon 22:19
The mission here, when we think about the foundation, we think about technique, and then we think about skills, is for you to improve your potential for your speed relative to any fitness level that you're going to achieve over the year ahead. So yes, in the months ahead, when we look forward to next year, we're going to want you to get very, very fit. We're going to build your muscular resilience. But you're also going to have a toolkit to apply when you're going to get the best speed return possible. In other words, this is a low-stress, fun, really different suite of training that is going to be the key to unlocking you and getting more out of the fitness that you need to build in the year ahead. And this has massive, massive potential for people, and yet no one discusses it. They just skip over, go on structured, and see you next year. Oh, time to turn it on. It's time to get ready for my Ironman half, Ironman marathon, whatever it is. And so the cycle continues. We're smashing that. This is a critical component. In fact, for me, this is the most important component. We focus on it in the off-season, and then we aim to focus as much as we can while we're up in the work throughout the year. And so that's what off-season, in a nutshell, is.
Matt Dixon 23:49
So with that in part two, let's go back a year. 13 months ago, I put down a marker. I said, Everyone at Purple Patch is inviting listeners to this show; join us; we are going all in on off-season. We are going to do it right. We want to make it fun, fresh, pretty low stress, lower training load, and a whole bunch of freedom. We're going to build habits, but we are going all in, and we are going to commit to three months of great off-season work, I invited people to join us. I asked Purple Patch athletes, to double down their commitment, even if they've done it before, and you know what's happened over the last year—we've had a lot of success. We had a team, a galvanized team, sharing in a journey together with a purpose in the months when it can feel like no man's land, but we had a team of folks doing it. So my question is, what happened? Did it have its hoped effect and impact? Did my promises convert?
Matt Dixon 25:02
So I have some reports or observations here, and I thought long and hard about, How to reflect on this. Where do I start? And there's some objective stuff that's very, very easy, but I also need to be careful with some of the data to make sure that I'm not just manipulating data to make me or Purple Patch look good. And so I've gone with honesty being the best policy, as it always is. And let's first just reflect on the season that we've had because that's who I'm observing every single day. We have had better results than we've ever had before. It's been incredibly galvanizing, inspiring, and truly across the broad spectrum of purple patch athletes, athletes who are winning overall amateur titles, as well as people who are crossing the finish line. Now, naturally, as I go through this and I start to reflect, I know that the data that I'm pulling is pretty imperfect, and it's important that as I go through this process, I don't just pin all of the success stories that happen to have a great off-season and then ignore any athletes that maybe got injured or had a tough race season. And said, Look at us; we're great. Look at all these nice case studies. That was important, so I've tried to mitigate that as much as I possibly can. What I can do, though, is I can honestly highlight some trends and also just ask the Purple Patch athletes who are involved. And so we captured 10 or 15 people. We asked them what their reflections were. They emailed us, and they said, This is it. Had a couple of conversations as well. But it is hoping to get some stories of transformation and some honest reflection on whether the athletes enjoyed it, whether they gained benefits, etc.
Matt Dixon 26:55
So here's my imperfect data. First, the one that I'm most excited about has been objectively, quantifiably the lowest reported years of injuries in the history of Purple Patch. So Purple Patch is 16 years of age. This year is our lowest reported incidence of injury. Now I could apply this to our continued drive and global adoption of integrating strength and conditioning year-round. I think that has a positive impact. I also think that the athletes have had added educational resources with some smart people—Renee, our physical therapist, some of the folks from fueling, etc.—to try and help support some of those components. But I think the strongest link here has been off-season to tell you the truth. I asked the team to the purple patch team of coaches to compile a report of all athlete injury reports, and it is startlingly low. And the rate of injuries is just very, very low, and particularly low with athletes who did adhere to the off-season. And so for our athletes that went through the off-season, at least from the data that we can get, the incidence of injury was incredibly low. For athletes that have gotten injured this year, the highest trend emerged from athletes who joined Purple Patch 2, 3, 4, months away from their key race. So some of the people thought, Oh, it's getting real. I'm 12 weeks out. I've got to get ready for me—make it up—Half Ironman, now it's time to go. That rate is still low relative to the norm, but significantly higher than athletes that had a chance to dial in a proper offseason. So there is a clear differentiator. Let's call it the late bloomers, the people who are coming in for a rush and ramping up to athletes who went through a patient, progressive build, including off-season. And of course, that makes sense. If you jump into anything quickly and chase performance over a bridge time frame, a shorter time frame, the injury risk is going to be massively higher versus if you go on a journey and ramp patiently. Your body is the place that it can absorb, adapt, and gradually prime for readiness, and so a key observation that I can say is a proper off-season, quantifiably delivered lower injury. That's great, but none of us do sports just to try and not get injured. We all want to go faster. We want to improve our performance. So what data can I pull from this?
Matt Dixon 29:41
Well, this has been quantifiably one of our best seasons ever at Purple Patch. We no longer coach professional athletes, but across our amateur ranks, we've had more first-time finishes across all distance events than ever before, and that's a thumbs up. Now, maybe we're attracting more first-time athletes, but we have had more first-time finishes across all distances. We've also, on the other end of the spectrum, qualified more athletes for world championship events this season than any other season before. We've qualified more than 100 athletes that have qualified to world championship events. That's great. We also had, interestingly, a significant qualification bounty in spring, so, in other words, earlier in the season. And typically, we see athletes that come in, and it comes in in the summer months. We had a massive wave of athletes qualifying early in the season, and so we came out firing this year as a broad group, despite not making early-season races a huge priority. I spent a lot of time in the spring saying, Just race off of our baseline program. Don't get overly obsessed. Go and do a half Ironman or half marathon or whatever your goal is, and don't make it your primary race of the year, yet, we had tremendous success, and I think that's a testament to our athletes being fit and fresh.
Matt Dixon 31:10
The third element that I can pull from is incredibly low burnout. The way that I try to review this is to look at our churn off the program, because whenever an athlete leaves Purple Patch, we like to ask, Why do you leave? And sometimes it can be injuries. It can be falling out of love with the sport, or a little bit of burnout. There can be other factors, financial, other components that come in there, life changes, family, illness, whatever it might be, changes at work, etc. There's a whole suite of reasons that we like to try and extract from athletes so that we can learn, so that we can continue to improve, and injuries and burnout are just simply not factors. Most athletes are just not bored. They're having fun. And in addition to that, we've had a drastically lower churn rate than any other year. So I spent a lot of energy saying, Hey, start earlier, do off-season, and yet, we're having lower dropoff than ever. And people, when they do drop off, not saying it's burnout, it's usually life circumstances that are there. So there is a clear trend that we have of athletes sticking around and going on the journey. Now, a high part of this retention as a little bit could be attributed to the value and effectiveness of the coaching, but also, maybe some of the added features that we have put into the program over the last year or so, the video-based coaching, a lot of our athletes love that. It's a differentiated program. It's very, very different than you can get elsewhere, and it's really valuable and important for its effectiveness, as well as our brand new education and community hub, which, of course, galvanizes, creates, and fosters more of a team impact. So I have to acknowledge that could be a part of it, but I do believe low burnout is huge to our retention. So in other words, what we've managed to do is, right from the start, integrate training into life and avoid athletes feeling like it's a second job or a monkey on the back. And all of that begins, in my opinion, as a coach, with the proper foundation, in other words, a smart and appropriate offseason. And I think it's been huge. So in summary, we've got better retention, lower burnout, lower injuries, and folks are being successful and going faster. I think that's good. It's no wonder that we have a little bit of a pause with our coaches and say, Two thumbs up. We're doing well.
Matt Dixon 33:37
But to finish this, what did our athletes think? As I talked about, in preparation for the show, I reached out to about 15 athletes at random. Now some of them have been with us for a few years. Some of us are first-timers who have gone through, but all of them went through a complete off-season. And what I asked was, please reflect on the last year and give me your honest thoughts, some of your memories, and some of your reflections. So what I thought I'd do is just read a few.
Matt Dixon 34:07
The first one is from Jack. He lives in Michigan. He said, "I usually hate off-season because I feel like I'm unraveling. I'm letting all of the hard work that I've done in the season before, and then I just start again in the new year. And so it feels like Groundhog Day. This is the very first off-season where I doubled down, and surprisingly, this has been my favorite part of the year. I got to hit a whole bunch of great cross-country skiing and a few cool trips to various ski resorts. "He's a big winter sports guy, obviously, "but he emerged into March with more confidence and, interestingly, felt like I was under control and in a better place to ramp it up than I've ever been. Ironically, off season was one of my favorite parts of the year. Who knew that there was so much to learn on the bike? I always thought I was a strong cyclist. Well, I am, I guess. But now I'm not just strong; I'm also smart, therefore I'm faster." Jack's referring there, by the way, to our off-season bike program, which is all around teaching terrain management and optimal speed return—a lot of skill acquisition. That's a great one. I honed in on the speed return side of stuff.
Matt Dixon 35:22
Here's the second one. Jenny, from San Francisco, "As you know, Matt, I'm an injury magnet," goodness me, "and have been dealing with a lot of systemic suppression over the last few years. The off-season for me was important and transformative because it gave me permission to pause and build from the ground up. In prior years, I've been forced to completely rest at the end of this season, but this was the first year where I stayed on, committed to rebuilding my body with strength, nutrition, as well as with the support of fuelin, and the run frequency project," which, by the way, is having athletes run very, very frequently, but mostly very easy and quite short." It's completely changed my life. I hesitate to say, as it's August, but I'm still injury-free, and I'm almost enjoying running. You promised me last year that I could go from hating to loving running if I was smart; well, I'm almost there, and I begrudgingly admit you might just be right." That's music to my ears.
Matt Dixon 36:29
Amir from New York, "I went off-season kicking and screaming. I traditionally stepped back from structured training just to focus on my family and work, and then I returned when I felt like I needed a plan, when things were heating up and I wanted to ramp into my race. Your messaging last year was persuasive, and after not entirely happy with my last couple of races, I decided to commit for a couple of months and see what happened. Well, here we are, and I can't now, for this year, wait for the off-season. Throughout this season, I qualified for next year's World Championships, but I ended up, more importantly, having more fun, and I managed to find balance throughout the whole season. I never felt the shift; the sport is now just a part of my life without dominating it, and I got faster. I hope you guys can deliver the same depth of education and support, and I cannot wait for swim school again with John, which is fantastic." So yes, Amir, we are going to deliver the same education, etc. Fantastic.
Matt Dixon 37:29
And then finally, from Jeff, my old friend who's been around with purple patches for a few years. So here's what Jeff said. And he said, "Well, as you know, I've been with Purple Patch for quite a few seasons now. So you could call me already a part of the converted, and I've been pretty religious with off-season under your guidance for some time. What that means is that, personally, it was just as important as last year or other years prior. What I did notice, though, is what it seemed to have done to the community aspect of Purple Patch. Now I do think some of this helped with the launch of the Purple Patch education hub, and that's made it much, much easier to connect. But I'm amazed at how off-season seemed to be a powerful catalyst for connecting, sharing, journeys, and support. We sort of felt like a true team, even though people are all over the world. I wondered whether this might trail off as folks got into their seasons and had different events, etc. But I've never seen such connection or support throughout the year throughout my time at Purple Patch. It certainly started with the off-season and all of the challenges that you guys had us do, the group education, the adoption of so much new stuff, including the coached bike riding on video, John's Swim School, the new running drills, etc. I think that it made everyone feel like they were kind of a part of a journey, and it certainly brought us together. This year, I raced two international races, and I got to meet up train, and support with a purple patch at each of them, and that's super cool. Not sure if this is what you're looking for for feedback, but that's how I reflect on off season. It made me feel more part of a team." Tremendous. That's it.
Matt Dixon 39:17
The list goes on. I'm not going to bore you and go on and on, but I found so many of the components that I just talked about really compelling: building their health, amplifying performance, delivering a certain aspect of control, improving confidence, if you remember right at the top, where we started ramping up the fun factor, feeling connected. This is it. And I think, I believe, as a coach, that these things occur when people collectively get out of their comfort zone together; they might have different types of challenges: training for marathons, training for Ironmans, training for five Ks, life training, whatever. But if they're out of their comfort zone, they're taking on a challenge, and they do it together; it's galvanizing, and you see it in all walks of life. And I think in many ways, that commitment to off-season last year became the conditions that fostered that togetherness, that understanding, that sense of support and accountability, which went well beyond my expectations. The reason I talked about off-season being so important is I want athletes to be successful in integrating support into life and get faster. One of the things and the patterns that I saw from the feedback of athletes is the galvanizing aspect, the team aspect, and that's important. So this feedback from current Purple Patch athletes is nice for me, because it's a catalyst where the off-season was lower pressure, but it was certainly a catalyst for helping many be successful, and I find that compelling.
Matt Dixon 40:59
So what are the lessons today? Well, let's remember our goals. Off-season is not hard training. You should rejuvenate, have more flexibility and fun, and be able to invest in other parts of life, but adding structure and specificity to that freedom is a catalyst to connect with others, build a foundation, and work on aspects of performance that typically fall down the pecking order. You get to create a foundation of habits and approaches that will continue throughout your year, and our data shows it—faster than ever, more first-timers, more qualifiers, lower injuries, and fewer folks optimizing out. Our athletes tell us the truth. And so whomever you train with, this is less a call to action to join Purple Patch. whoever you train with, as you begin to wrap up your summer and you look towards fall, I want you to march towards winter with off-season and having your eyes wide open. This is your opportunity to do it right. As I mentioned in the show, for me, this is the most important part. This is the unlock, the key part of your performance journey. It's going to give you effectiveness, control, better results, and more fun. You're going to enjoy it more. And then you get back to training your booty off. Alrighty, folks, if you're racing, a race is looming; best of luck. Go train hard. Go and have cracking fun. I hope you get everything out of it. Keep smiling and enjoying it, and we will be ready to rock and roll when the season's over; we'll be waiting for you. If you need us, info@purplepatchfitness.com, we'll see you next time. Take care.
Matt Dixon 42:45
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, and keep smiling doing whatever you do. Take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
season, athletes, purple, patch, training, performance, ramping, injury, months, year, integrating, focus, race, component, part, burnout, coach, hard, life, work