Episode 332: Off-Season PART THREE: Q and A session with Matt Dixon - All Your Off-Season Questions Answered
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Welcome back to the Purple Patch Podcast!
This is the final part of our three-part series on setting up a great off-season for athletes. We recommend checking out the first episodes of the series.
In episode one, we discussed the importance of the Off-Season and the need for a real break while also laying a strong foundation for the upcoming year. In the second episode, we delved into the specifics of our approach at Purple Patch, building on last year's successes while making necessary refinements.
We received positive feedback on the first two episodes along with some phenomenal questions from athletes like you. In this episode, Matt shares the top 10 questions we received over the last two to three weeks about the off-season. He breaks the questions down into three categories: Big Picture Questions, Off-Season Training Questions, and Nutrition and Body Composition Questions.
Matt covers a range of topics from health and energy improvements to maintaining weight during the off-season, rest days, training volume, and the use of AI in training programs.
We believe you will find this episode not only fun and interesting but also empowering, and hopefully, it will help you plan your off-season and set yourself up for improved performance.
If you have any thoughts, or questions, or want to learn more about our services, feel free to reach out to us at info@purplepatchfitness.com for a complimentary consultation.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 02:52 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
02:59 - 22:39 - The Meat and Potatoes: Big Picture Questions
22:43 - 32:57 - Off-Season Training Questions
32:59 - 45:42 - Nutrition and Body Composition Questions
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Full Transcript
Matt Dixon 00:00
Matt. 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 00:31
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast, as ever, your host, Matt Dixon, and folks, by hook or crook, we are getting there. We are on part three, the final chapter of our series on setting up a great off-season one for the athletes, and today it is your turn. We've received a ton of positive feedback on the initial two episodes, in which we first frame the components of a proper off-season. And then, in part two, we peel back the curtain a little bit on how we're approaching a purple patch, some of the specifics around our strategies to try and help people be successful and yield the benefits of the off-season with rejuvenation, a lot of flexibility. But of course, that important groundwork that we want to do to set up a great performance level as we go into the next season. Now, you get to ask your questions. We've got some great ones today. We've got about ten questions to get through, so I can't be too wordy. I've got to be pretty quick-fire as we go through this. These are all questions that we've received over the last two to three weeks around the subject off-season. So, I'm not straying out of the boundary here. I'm going to keep it pretty focused on our subject of the day, and we're going to add context to your journey ahead. Through these questions, we've filtered through. We've got a lot of questions, but we've filtered through with the questions that we think are universally of interest and, of course, applicable. Now, I've organized these questions into little categories, and I'm going to try and answer as many as I can. I think I'm going to get through about 10 of them. It should be both fun, interesting, helpful, and, of course, empowering for you. Alrighty. So, as we lock in and get ready to go, here's a reminder: as usual, we're bringing this year's show to you today, absolutely ad-free. And so, if you would like to continue the discussion with us if you want to set up a complimentary consultation, we are here for you. If you're interested in anything around the purple patch or if you have follow-up questions, feel free to reach out. It's info@purplepatchfitness.com. Just let the team know that you're listening to the show and you'd like to have a follow-up discussion, and then we'll be free to or happy to set up a follow-up call with you. And of course, if you want to look at any of our programs or offerings, they are all at our website, purplepatchfitness.com, but with that, Barry, the producer, it is now time we are going to answer your questions. It is the meat and potatoes,
Matt Dixon 02:59
Alrighty, the meat and potatoes, and it is all your questions today. As mentioned, I'm going to focus on this around the off-season. So, we got a few questions that went outside of the boundaries of that subject, and I'd love to be able to answer your questions. I will respond via email, but I can't, obviously, in this show because we want to do a Q&A around the off-season. What I have done is categorized it into a few areas, and we're going to start with part one on big-picture questions. I got quite a few on some of the bigger concepts that we've gone through over the last couple of weeks. I'm going to start with this first question, and I've got the reading right in front of me, so I've got the opportunity to read here. This is from Lynn in Missouri, and it's a good one for those who are chasing performance gains without necessarily being a triathlete. Now, remember, as I sort of started about three weeks ago now and laid out this series, I said I'm going to place my emphasis on triathletes because we work with a lot of triathletes, but a lot of concepts apply to everyday folks, whether you're a runner, whether you're a cyclist, whether you're just a lifestyle athlete that's looking to improve their energy and health in life, and so Lynn is one of these, and she has asked this question. I've listened with interest over the last few shows, despite not being a triathlete, and it seems like the same concept could be applied to someone who's just chasing improvements in health and energy. I'd love to get started. I'm a little more sedentary than I'd like to be, and I wonder whether this is the perfect time, as you guys are going into the off-season, too. Well, it's a great question. I, Lynn, just finished up with an executive team and an executive team working with them in a workshop, and we probably had about 60% of people that were struggling to get any traction on their focus on personal well-being, which, of course, is a catalyst to better sustain performance in anything we care about, including in the business world, and one of the empowering things for them was not to just commit to their journey but create a shared journey together where they could hold each other accountable and get a lot of support along the way. And so, for you not being a triathlete, it doesn't matter at all. It's a fantastic time to commit to yourself but also lean into a community of other kind, whether it's with Purple Patch or someone else. I would say that you don't need to be an athlete to draw from the benefits of an athletic approach, and what I mean by that is, once you get up to a little bit of a groundswell of daily movement, you can lean into some of the benefits of how we get to, ultimately, world-class athletic performance. And the keywords beyond consistency are structured and progressive exercises. So what you're doing in one-day links to the next day, links to the next day, links to the next week, and so on. And the fancy word for that in athletic terms is often periodization. Many people don't let you know; they know what periodization means, but it's enough to just say structured and progressive. So, put intention behind your exercise. And so if you do decide to start with ourselves or another group, the off-season is a fantastic time because it tends to be a lower stress time, at least so far as training demands are necessarily the case, and you can build up the focus from the ground up. The second thing is that for us, our off-season starts October the first, and that's a nice runway into the holidays. It sounds counterintuitive. Many people start to start after the holidays. January, new year, new you. But this is a really good time to get a little bit of control over your well-being, your fitness, and some of these associated habits that are going to help you bring better energy that you then bring into the holidays and stay consistent, not obsessive so that when you're coming out of it, you're not digging out in January like many people are at the whole of desperation. So I think that's important for you. The question here is, How do you get started? And the first word I would say is patience. You want to start with where you're at right now. Your start line is not where you want to be in six months. It's where you're at now. And build simple mini-victories. And so if that was someone that was completely sedentary, that just might be walking every night after dinner and making a really simple commitment, and don't overcomplicate it, and then gradually, as you're successful on that, introduce new things. So your focus can be patient. And even where you're applying your focus, it can be progressive. It might start with just movement and maybe a little bit of strength. Then, once you feel good, maybe we'll start to think about hydration. Maybe we'll introduce some intention behind your eating, but don't try and change everything at once. I think that's important. Remember what I said? I love the runway into the holidays. A really good time. And so, yes, if you're looking for a little bit of inspiration, October is the first Okay, that is the time to rock and roll. So, pretty much right around now, build it in. You have a few weeks to get going, and then when you meet the holidays, you're already going to be showing up for that holiday. Time when there are more parties, etc., with a little bit of framework and structure, and then you'll go in, and you won't need to say, New year, new you. You'll already be on your journey of transformation. It's a great question. Question number two: this is one from Jack down in Florida. Good stuff. Jack is not a purple patch athlete, but he had a good question, a good big picture question again, which is, he is a competing triathlete, and he said, This year I had a pretty light race season. I've enjoyed my training, but unlike other years, I'm not feeling tired or tired or burnt out whatsoever. And so, with that in mind, can I just keep charging? Can I skip the postseason and keep going with my higher training load? I don't feel like I need a break. Well, you might not need a break. You might not need to have that complete mental cleanout, but I would strongly urge you, Jack, not to maintain full-blooded training, particularly if you want to shine next year, and I'm making the bold assumption that you do want to have a great year next year. Whenever you start to continue on your training load, and you just maintain hard training, the likelihood of you not being able to in six months, having a little bit of corrosion of motivation, a little bit of fatigue, and accumulation, your chances of getting there without that is minimal. I've never seen it done. Whenever anyone has just gone full-blooded in the winter, something happens. It's just too long of a time for the body and the mind to absorb the training and keep it effective. And so you don't have to have that 10 to 21 days off, but I would lean into remembering what I talked about in the last couple of shows. The off-season is the time when you are preparing the body to accept and optimize the hard training that's going to come in the months ahead, and the off-season is also the time that athletes globally can focus on things that they simply can't win. They train hard, and so if you just keep the right training hard now, you're going to under focus on the good stuff that's going to help you improve your skills, improve your technique, and lay down some good habits, and you're not preparing the body to train. You're just loading the body up. And so accumulation begins, and you've missed all the really good stuff that occurs. And almost for sure, burnout is going to be ahead. So I'll repeat it. I've never seen an athlete hammer autumn, hammer the fall, and shine in the spring and summer. And so instead, if you've got lots of mental energy right now, double down. Become a master of your craft. Build up more of the habits. But getting to January like a bottle of champagne that's been shaking up. All right, just nice and shook the shoulders, as I like to say, in other words, shake the shoulders. You've shaken up that champagne. It's ready to pop, but you're there physically and mentally. That's the best thing that you can do. You've always got room to grow. For triathletes, I've never had someone say to me, I wish I had gone out on the swim harder in a race, and I've also never had someone say I didn't have a bad season, but I wish I had trained much harder throughout the off-season. A patient approach with room to grow is a huge component. I hope that helps Jack come and join us for a little bit of off-season fun. You'll have room to grow, and you'll have a great 2025 season. All right. Question number three from Marisol. Marisol, she's somewhere in, she said, Central America. So, well, should we make up a country in Central America? No, choose one. Central America. Marisol, fantastic. She said, I
Matt Dixon 12:21
have made sacrifices during the race season, and I have trained very, very hard. How do I get that mental break while also continuing to train in the off-season? What is the good news if you've felt like you've got Marisol? You feel like you've invested throughout the last sort of nine months or so, and you've raced very, very hard. It's, I think, the best way. And first, I would send you back to the last couple of episodes on this question. But the second thing is, the good news about the season is it should feel very different. And what I mean by that is, if you're doing it successfully. It shouldn't have the same mental toll or pressure as the rest of the season. And remember, one of the key concepts that I talked about is whatever your maximal capacity to train in your time-starved life is in the off-season. You don't want to train up to that limit. You want to give yourself. More room to grow, so it should feel fresh. It should be different. And right at the peak of your hard training and hard racing, there is a juggling act that occurs for most athletes. It takes a lot of focus. I'll acknowledge that for a time-starved athlete who is trying to be competitive in sport because you've got all of the non-negotiables of life and work, and you're trying to maximize your training load that you can get in while yielding positive adaptations and race readiness. So there is this tension, healthy, natural tension, that forces effectiveness and prioritization and optimization and all of that, but it takes you an intention in the off-season. You should have a big breath. You should have more space. And so, if you don't feel that relief, you need to peel it back even more. You need to give yourself more time. The second thing from what you're saying in that question is I would urge you to have a mental cleanout, so probably two weeks where you can exercise like a healthy human being if you like. But I wouldn't do any structured exercise at all. I wouldn't have a heart rate strap. I wouldn't have a power meter or GPS monitor on. I would just exercise, and I would take my athletic hat off, and I would just be a healthy human being. What do healthy human beings do? They move their bodies most days. They consume good-quality nutrition as much as possible. Sometimes, they have a little excess. Sometimes, they go big party time; all of that stuff is good, but you don't become a sloth. You can keep moving, but you don't have any order or structure around it. You just flow, and you go with the rhythm you're not training. Then, when you get back on, you've got this big mental cleanse that's occurred, and you're probably desperate to have the framework and the structure back because suddenly people realize that that's really how they are—operationally effective throughout broader life. And you can start with a fresh lens and go from there. And so yeah, athletes thrive in the off-season, but it shouldn't feel like a burden. And if it does, you need to peel it back and commit even less, not in terms of commitment of focus but in terms of total training hours, and you'll be able to be productive. Good stuff. Alrighty. So, question number four, the last one in question number throughout the big picture questions, is here. This is from Erica in New York. She said you have discussed a lot about lower stress and key-specific structure. What are your thoughts on some of the newer AI-driven training programs? As these seem to be the most specific and optimal methods to get customized off-season training and even beyond, well, it's a big subject, and it's a great question. Thank you, Erica. I'll say this, and let me talk about AI first: AI is a part of our lives. And I don't want to have the discussion here or point out opinions of the benefits, the positives, and the potential negatives of AI. AI is with us. We utilize it at Purple Patch. You are smart if you integrate AI in some way into your life. All of us will be integrating AI into our lives, etc. And so I am by no means anti-AI. If you want to have that as a blanket statement, it is a really useful tool that can help us become more efficient in multiple areas, and that's great. As we look forward throughout the next 2, 3, 4, 5, and 10 years, AI will be an essential tool for coaches, delivering programming to athletes, as well as education, as we're here right now. There are a couple of things that we should think about with any AI program. The first without being an AI expert, per se, so I don't claim to be, but the first and important component is that there are two key features of any AI program that are very, very important to make it effective. The first is that it needs a methodology to begin so that, like a climbing frame, it can create the decision-making trees that are occurring. So, at the start of it, you need some form of methodology. So if you're going to utilize an AI program, you first one, I understand who's governing or created, what's the methodology that is built on? And quite often, a lot of these AI companies or organizations are currently like black holes. They'll talk a lot about the marketing speak, but they won't focus on the original methodology. The second thing that AI needs is. It is a massive amount of data, and so that's one of the primary reasons that a lot of the young AI companies right now are spending so much money on marketing and, quote, giving away their platform because they're leveraging their actual client base to build their algorithms, etc. And over time, those will get better. Where I stand right now with it, with the programs that are out there right now, there's a couple of limiters that I see with it. Firstly, it's just not quite there yet. There are some elements there, but it's nowhere near what the promise is around it. And, if you look at the programs, the challenge is that they extract quite a lot of joy because you get a lot of repeating workouts that are really simple in structure and a little bit boring, not very interesting. The second component that I have a challenge with is if it's so personalized, which is theoretically not such a bad thing, but it diffuses some of the components that you can gain from team, community, and culture. Imagine going to a master swim workout and every single person doing a completely different session, and those sessions are all quite boring. That has been a challenge for me, where you're losing some of the camaraderie, the support, and the team component to it. So there's that side that's a little bit challenging as well. But the biggest area for me as a coach is that one of the things that you can't do, all that we're managing with an AI-driven program right now, is a training stimulus based on intensity, length of duration, and several intervals, so training load and intensity, but a big part of the off-season is teaching and guiding, at least from a purple patch lens, teaching and guiding some of the technical elements and some of the Terrain Management elements. And we simply, if we were just spitting out AI programs based off of a theoretical platform of a methodology that no one's allowed to know, wouldn't be able to leverage one of what I think is the biggest catalyst for performance jumps: that you can teach people the art and the craft of writing. And so, I think that the landscape of coaching is going to be very different over the next five years; any successful coach will be integrating AI into it. I'm incredibly excited. The truth is, it's just not there right now, and it's going to be there, and there are elements we want to be open, and we're having a lot of discussions with a lot of the AI organizations, but I'm just not wholly sold right now with the solution as it is given right now. And that's why you have to look very, very carefully at the marketing and the promises and the claims that have been made, and so understand the methodology. What's it built on? Realize that you are a part of any AI platform to build their algorithm. That's just a part of it. They are leveraging you. Nothing wrong with that, but just realize that's what's occurring. Be ready for some pretty stale and repetitive training programs, and also realize that you're missing a huge opportunity if you can combine that opportunity with understanding the craft and then go for it. But right now, it's just not quite there yet. And I guess I know I'm rambling on this one a little bit, but
Matt Dixon 21:48
The best analogy I could give you is if I were to write a newsletter for Purple Patch, and I was just going to put it into ChatGTP and then say boom, it's done its job. Copy and paste, send it out without ever actually really liking reading it, and say, Is that really what I want to say in the right tone, in the right message when the machine told me it was perfect, so I'm just going to trust it? And you can see that when you see people's blogs, LinkedIn articles, newsletters, or anything else, they're throwing it into ChatGTP, and they're just trusting it all up there. That's sort of the most simple metaphor I could give you, with where it is what it says you've been receiving this program. It must be great because they told me it's great, but that's just where we're at right now. So anyway, I hope that helps Erica, and that's a great question. So, Q&A session part two is going to be more around off-season questions, and we're going to get a bit more specific around training. And the first question here is from John, and he is from Europe. He's from London. So good. Good to have you, John; just outside of London, I see Bournemouth, which is down to the south there, very similar to my town, John South, and in Essex, so sort of like a brother in kind, in a way. But you got a question about balancing strength goals with endurance training—the nice, meaty one. But to begin, John asks, I know I need to work on my strength training but to prioritize something that I don't have unlimited time to train until now, I tended to do one strength. Work a week, but not consistently. And the thing that I've always balanced is that I also want to work on my swimming this off-season, trying to swim two to three times a week. I'm figuring out how to make all of my training work so that I can also get strength training in a week. Should I do two workouts on the bike rather than three? Should I shorten my run? Should I do any combination of strength, etc.? So this is a little bit of an optimization challenge, John, and it's good. Let's help you first with your mindset already. So you've got sort of two goals: you want to work on your swim, and you want to work on your strength. So what I would first do is let's first prioritize strength because I think it's really important. So, at the height of the season, most triathletes, understandably and appropriately, see strength as a supplement. Because when you're training hard for the rigors of an Olympic distance, a half Ironman or an Ironman swim, bike, and run is your bullseye. Flip it upside down. Over the next three to four months, your Bullseye is your strength training. So, on the weeks that you can most or on the days of any week that you can most likely bring your best, bring your strength training, those are the two sessions, and I would focus on doing two workouts a week. Now, remember, you only need to do somewhere around 30 to 40 minutes for it to be effective. So that's the first building block. The second thing that I would do is integrate when you can be other two to three swims because that's your second priority. And then I would start getting Bolt-on's. So what I mean by Bolt-on's is after your strength, and maybe after your swims, I would be seeking some run frequency, so I might do a 5-10, 15-20, 25-30 minute run after your strength on both sides. So think about it like a brick. And that's simple. If you're doing it at a gym, you can go and just hop on the treadmill. It's really good. If you're doing it at home. You can just hop outside, or unless you've got a treadmill at home, that's a nice way to do it. And then, quite often, it's really useful. If you can swim and then do a really quick run, that's great. Another thing you might get to do is just a pre-dinner run. So you might swim in the morning, and maybe just before dinner, you get to go and do a 15-minute run. It can be soul-filling. It doesn't need to be a big, rigorous training session, but sometimes that's a nice way to sneak things in, where it energizes you. You feel better, you enjoy your dinner, you're more present for the family, etc. If you just go for that little shakeout, sort of pre-Energizer. It's nothing that's so demanding that it's going to disrupt your sleep, but it's helpful. So it's in that order that you've done it, and then, depending on your week, you can then get in two more bike workouts on the trainer and, if you're lucky, a third. So that's the nice way to think about it, and you want to get those in. Now, what I would suggest is that you probably want to get in both of the bike workouts. So if that means one week when it's busy, you need to skip a swim and only do two swims. Do that; if you can get in two bike workouts and three swims, that's great. So, I would globally underdo the single standalone run sessions. You might get one or two of those in a week; I would flex on the number of swims and the number of bikes, but ensure that you do swims first, then bikes. But if you can't get in two bikes, you're going to lose a swim, and then the third bike is a luxury bike. It's great if you can do it. If not, don't worry, two sessions a week. So that's the way that you organize training, and there's no rigid rule around this, but a little bit of flex on there enables you to feel like it's not overwhelming. And then the one reminder that I would give you is that, remember, we're not going to full capacity. So when I say, Do you have time to add the third bike, or are you going to drop your third swim so that you can get two bikes in? I don't want you butting up against full capacity. So if it's a decision to be made, go less. If there's a decision to be made, go less. Very simple. Okay. Hope that helps as a concept. Great question for you. This question is nameless. Don't know who gave us this one. It's coming in anonymously, but we'll go with it. Is it better to focus on improving just one discipline in the season, or can I expect to make improvements across the board? So I think it's a great question. What I like about this is that let's first remind ourselves what improvements we're looking to make. So, we are not in the season looking to drive central fitness gains. So improvements are not I'm getting faster, I'm getting more powerful. I'm dropping my average pace, etc. I'm preparing my body instead. Need to train. So the improvements that we can make are more technical and then foundational, not building your base, but foundational from building muscle and tissue integrity. So, under that banner, you can approve everything because we're not looking to drive central fitness gains. So that's number one: you can upskill across all elements because even if you're doing it once a week, if you're focusing on it, you've got a little bit of skill acquisition. You might remind yourself to hold better posture on the bike. You might do some higher-end stuff on the bike and a little bit on the run. And so there's not this big performance in the classic performance lens shift of gains you're not looking to say in the off-season; I'm looking to drive up my threshold, or my FTP, or my critical power, or any of these other metrics that you can sometimes monitor as a barometer or bellwether of central fitness case. That's not what we're looking to do. And so you can focus on this second part of it, though, of this question is, I do like it when we define a purpose. So the last question we had, John from Bournemouth, was about really focusing and doubling down on strength and swimming. I like that because running can become more supplemental. It can be soul-filling. He can still emphasize and focus on riding Terrain Management when he's doing the bike workouts, but he's building his week around the strength and the swim. And so I do like that for athletes, and typically, I like athletes at this time to think about, Where is my opportunity, and Where am I going to just shine the light? So if people, I'll give you an example here. If people are frequently injured in the running, this is a great time to do the run project, where you can go through and patiently build consistency so that you can improve tissue integrity so that your body can be more robust and absorb training when it gets harder. And so this is building up your weaknesses or looking for opportunities for the biggest gains. And so it's not all or nothing. It's not that I'm only going to train for running, or I'm only going to work on my swimming. It's really where I am shining the light, where I know I need to bring my best focus, intention, efforts, etc. But remember, we're not trying to get fitter in the classic sense, driving power bigger metrics. We're not even looking at that for the next many, many weeks. And that is soul-filling in itself. Fantastic. Final question here, Enrique: good question. MEXICO CITY is here for rest days and off-season training. If the overall volume is lower during the off-season, does that mean I can do something every day, or should I still be scheduling a full rest day periodically?
Matt Dixon 31:18
Well, the good news here is there is no right answer to this. Enrique and I have athletes who do something almost every single day, and that includes the off-season. Now, I would say in the off-season, the focus can be dialed down a notch. The obsession can certainly be dialed down. And quite often, life happens in the off-season; it might be a holiday party, it might be a school event, it might be Halloween, whatever it might be. And on those occasions, guilt-free, leverage it for a rest day. The second part of the answer is that if you feel like you benefit from one day off, that you just don't do anything because it's off-season and it makes you feel better, then take a day off every single week. We can build programming where you have a rest date every single week, and you get everything done. That's a nice way to do it, and a lot of athletes love that. But if you're someone who enjoys doing something every day, it makes you more energetic. It's a part of your ritual. It helps you structure your overall day. There's nothing wrong with doing something every day, realizing that a lot of it's pretty easy. We're not driving central fitness gains, and we're not going up to our full capacity. So you have a lot of license and a lot of leeway. Generally, most people tend to do something every day with a guilt-free rest day that life just brings you. And when that happens, we don't even think about it; we just move on. That's a great one, and that does it for our questions. We're going to finish up part three with nutrition and body composition questions. Now, I am going to do an episode over the coming weeks with Scott Tindall from Fuelin. We will go through some discussion around body composition and off-season and laying good habits. We did it last year. I want to have a refresher on that topic with him. I think he's a great resource for us, but I did have a lot of questions about this subject, so I'm going to finish off the day with some contextual stuff; we've got three questions here. The first one is from Nicole. And Nicola is from Missouri. Again two, two representatives from Missouri. Who would have thought it? But here we go. Nicola says, I'm worried about gaining weight in the off-season as my volume of training goes down, but my appetite tends to stay the same. Do you have any recommendations? Well, I do, and I think sometimes the first thing I'll say is that a lot of our eating tends to be somewhat habitual. But there are several who answer this without actually knowing you. Nicholas, so I don't have the full context here, but generally, if you or anyone listening happens to be an athlete, when they are training and racing, they get quite lean as they go into that. There's nothing wrong. And so, I would say it is appropriate to add a few pounds of body weight throughout the non-racing season. And it tends to happen pretty organically, naturally, when the winter comes in. If you're going into the winter, people tend to carry a few more pounds than when they're spending more time outside, etc. But I think generally, the off-season time is the time that you want to double down and create habits of a platform of healthy eating. And so, in talking to Scott Tindall from Fuelin, he said something last season, which I thought was helpful, which is that when you don't have as heavy training demands and those training demands force an athlete to consume a whole bunch of calories, and particularly layered on top of it, a whole bunch of carbohydrate and even more protein, it becomes a battle to get enough calories in for really training athletes. When you remove those demands and training stress gets lighter, it opens up the opportunity to double down on something that all of us should be doing all the time anyway, which is to create a platform for healthy eating. So if we're not training that much, quote, most of us are training pretty consistently anyway, but we're not training that much relative to hard training demands. We can build our daily eating around really high-quality proteins, tons of fiber, and great vegetables and fruits, and then have enough carbohydrates to support our daily living and the training that we do. And it is that foundation that we carry and build throughout the offseason that then when training demands go up, we want to. And here's the key thing: maintain that platform of healthy eating, and all we're doing then is throttling up, for the most part, carbohydrates on top of it. So when we talk to Scott, we're going to dig into that a little bit, but that's a way to think about it. So build your meal plates throughout the off-season with protein-rich food, so a lot of vegetables, a lot of fruits, etc., and then layer on just a little bit less carbohydrate because your body isn't demanding that in training, and that's a really good way to go about it. I would also say that the off-season is a really good time if you are someone who is looking to make body composition improvements. This is the time to do it. This is the time that you could be under guidance and supervision. A lot of purple patch athletes use fuelin. You can find out more about purplepatchfitness.com/fuelin.
Matt Dixon 37:01
fuel in, I should say, and a lot of athletes who use their platform and their app and their support from their coaches and nutritionists to help them build healthy habits and good quality eating smart way to approach it. They're a great team. They're a great resource, and they will hold your hand through the whole journey. And I think that's a really good time to do it. The big mistake that I see is athletes try to shift body composition while training very, very hard. Not only are you managing a lot of stressors there, but you also get into a little bit of trouble and sometimes a little bit of accumulation fatigue or injury risk because they're underfunding relative to their needs, so don't worry about it. And secondly, finally, Nicola, you don't want to be managing your weight through training per se, so I would just encourage you to shift your mindset; your body composition and weight management are around your eating habits and your stress management, and you're just fueling to support the demands of your training. And so there's a little shift to occur there with that. Don't think about burning more calories because that's just going to lead you to do more, more, more because you're worried about body composition. So, let's build healthy habits first and then support them. The training with appropriate fueling. That's a way that you might want to think about it. As you go ahead, feel free to reach out to us, Nicola, or anyone who's got more questions on that, and we can help you privately. Just ping us at info@purplepatfitness.com. We can give you some more information there and help you. So, if anyone is interested in finding out more about that, we'll try and give you some resources and some guidance because I know that it's a pretty comprehensive subject. We can also introduce you to the folks at fueling, if you would like, and maybe get a consultation with them to help you set yourself up. Two more questions to go, guys, and I'm pretty well at kippernits synced here. This is another anonymous one. This is fueling and off-season training. How do I adapt my session fueling and daily nutrition habits? Well, we just talked a little bit about building the platform of healthy eating first. And I think it's really about—think about throttling on a motorcycle. How much are you revving the engine? If your training demand is less, you don't need to think as much about fueling during the workouts. So, if you're doing anything under 60 minutes, you don't need to consume calories during the workout. In my opinion, you also don't need to overly worry about race fueling and hydration because you shouldn't be doing any training that's trying to meet the demands of that. This is not the time of the year that you're doing race simulations piling in 60, 80, 90, 100, and 120 grams of carbohydrate per hour in most of your sessions; you can turn your back a lot on the gels and components like that, very, very high-intensity sessions you might choose, and we only do one or two a week at most. You might choose to do a little bit of fueling in there, but for the most part, a lot of your off-season training can be without caloric support already because we're not doing much long, extended-duration stuff. Once you go beyond 90 minutes or so, you're probably leaning into some supplemental support. If you do get to go outside and you do get to go and do some low-stress bike riding, for example, and you go and ride for three or four hours, there is nothing wrong with doing that occasionally. Then, you can eat some real caloric support. But I would lean more into real food in the off-season, and that's just a personal preference. The area that I do think is important to maintain is that habit of post-workout fueling, and so with any of the sessions that are 40, 50, 60, minutes and beyond, ensuring that you're replacing calories, protein, and carbohydrates primarily after the workout. It's a really good habit. It gives you a sense of control. It's going to have a positive impact on your eating choices for the rest of the day. It's going to energize you and help you perform in your other activities in life. So, I like athletes to always maintain post-workout fueling, which is already pretty simple stuff. And finally, the question: I think we're treading over trodden ground already here. But do you recommend reducing the amount? This is another anonymous one. Do you recommend reducing the amount of nutrition one consumes in off-season training since the workouts are not race-specific? Well, I'll repeat here. Just to finish, you don't need to consume like you're training for a race in session; we can remove all of that. The second component is that your trend demands are less, so your total caloric intake will be less if you are trying to meet your training demands and your life demands. You want the demands to be less, so you consume less. So that's important, but I'm going to double down here. The reason I wanted to focus on this question is that I'm going to double down and revisit what Scott said; this is a great time to build a platform for proper eating. So, in other words, you are eating enough calories to support your daily demands with a ton of protein, a ton of vegetables, some good oils and fats, and enough carbohydrates—a balanced eating program. And you go through, and you build that as your bedrock; what you will have less of is the added supplemental, mostly carbohydrates that fuel the demands of your very heavy train. You're not going to have that right now. So that's where most of the caloric addition gets removed. And so when you've got that foundation, if you build that, when we go into the northern hemisphere, January, February, March, and training starts to go boom, boom, boom and ramps up. You're adding calories from some additional protein and mostly carbohydrates to fuel that trend demand. But you've got this bedrock and foundation of really healthy eating habits, I will say, globally, around nutrition and body composition. This is the time. It's a wonderful time to build your very positive habits around daily hydration and proper foundational eating habits. Get those in order when training stress is low and when people do that, much like general off-season training. It sets the foundation to make things much more simple and much more effective. When we dial up the noise a little bit, we start asking you to train very, very hard, and that's it. That culminates our episode, folks. Thank you so much for all of your questions. But have a great end of your season. If you're still racing, if you're excited to lay the bedrock, whether you're a triathlete, a runner, a cyclist, or you're looking to perform in life, it's a great time, and as ever, if you have any reach out or if you want to continue the discussion. Info@purplepatchfitness.com, we'll see you next week. Take care,
Matt Dixon 44:43
guys. Thanks so much for joining, and thank you for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing. Head to the Purple Patch channel on YouTube, and you will find it there, and you can subscribe. Of course, I'd like to ask you if you will subscribe. Also, Share It With Your Friends, and it's really helpful if you leave a nice, positive review in the comments. Now, any questions that you have, let me know; feel free to add a comment, and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. And, as we commence this video podcast experience, if you have any feedback at all, as mentioned earlier in the show, we would love your help in helping us to improve. 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
season, question, athletes, training, fueling, good, triathlete, ai, workouts, build, patch, focus, swim, body composition, feel, little bit, purple, habits, demands, support