Episode 346: Beyond the Finish Line: Winning as a Triathlete in 2025 - Part 3
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Training in 2025
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Purple Patch Method
In part 3 of Beyond the Finish Line: Winning as a Triathlete in 2025, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon from Purple Patch Fitness discusses his high-performance coaching approach, emphasizing a team-based methodology that has helped over 1,500 athletes qualify for world championships. Their coaching includes remote sessions with real-time feedback and ongoing education. Dixon outlines five principles for success: focusing on daily actions rather than outcomes, keeping things simple, responding proactively to challenges, reflecting regularly, and building a supportive team. He uses Stuart, an athlete with ambitious goals, as a case study to illustrate these principles, highlighting Stuart's resilience and adaptability in the face of life's challenges, eventually placing at a podium in triathlon.
Apply the five principles discussed (being results-driven but process-focused, keeping things simple, responding vs reacting, practicing reflection, and building a support team) to your own athletic journey in 2025. Matt Dixon explains that great success often comes from what is removed rather than added, emphasizing the importance of simplicity. Matt Dixon discusses the importance of responding proactively to challenges rather than reacting impulsively. He also reviews the cycle of the Purple Patch Method.
If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out at info@purplepatchfitness.com.
Episode Timecodes:
Promo: :00-2:03
Introduction: 2:28-6:29
Meat and Potatoes: 11:47-39:55
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Transcription
00:00
Just before we get going with the show, I can proudly say that Purple Patch is not like most other coaching companies. Our focus is high performance. But what does that mean? Well, what it means is that you will achieve your sporting goals, but at the same time, you're going to improve your health and show up in all other aspects of your life better. You see, we're deadly serious about performance, while we like to have a lot of fun doing it, and part of our mission is to empower you to thrive. So how do we do this? Well, first, we have a proven methodology, one that stood the test of time. It's driven some of the world's best professional endurance athletes to Iron Man title titles and World Championships, as well as countless first time finishes for amateurs across Ironman and half Iron Man events, we've qualified more than 1500 athletes to world championship events over our time. We take a team approach to coaching to ensure that each athlete, including you, has access to not just myself, but also a group of experts and coaches that can drive and fuel your performance. We amplify remote coaching via real coaching. Yes, that's via video, so that no matter where you live, you can gain expertise and real time feedback. Those sessions are all on demand as well as live. So you can get two way video with myself and the other Purple Patch coaches, and we have huge ongoing education and practical guidance to ensure that you become smarter, not just faster, across all aspects of sport. Ultimately, finally, we have one of the largest and most engaged and supportive communities to ensure that you get great accountability and a healthy dose of fun along the journey. In other words, why are we not doing this? Our coaching is special, and so reach out to learn more, either one to one coaching options or our hugely popular tri squad program. It is human coaching at your best. If you want to have a complimentary consultation to learn more, ping us. Info@purplepatchfitness.com
01:53
All right, we look forward to welcoming you to the team. And we also look forward to part three in our Triathlon Series, winning at triathlon 2025 here's the show. I'm Matt Dixon, and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. The mission of Purple Patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential. Through the lens of athletic potential, you reach your human potential. The purpose of this podcast is to help time starved people everywhere integrate sport into life.
02:32
And welcome back to the Purple Patch podcast. This is part three of our four part January Series, winning in triathlon 2025
02:42
let's kick off today's show with a little bit of a quick recap of what we've done for so far this year. 2025 Goodness me. Well, it all kicked off on January 2, where we laid the foundation of our education. We introduced the Purple Patch coaching model, and we also highlighted setting the proper perspective that's going to serve as the backbone for your performance gains over the course of this year. And then we got into the meat of it all the next week, we went through part one, which was really anchored around vision, goal setting and commitments. In that we explored a really important case study, an athlete called Sam, if you might remember it, and that was helping us understand how we could apply the lessons from that case study to not just set your vision and your goals, but also create actionable steps to create a clear path for yourself. And a big part of that, if you remember is, what will you focus on, and, as importantly, what will you not focus on so you can drive the performance needle, and that encompasses all level of athletes. It was a really important fundamental show. Last week, we did part two of our series, and that was all about consistency, focusing on structured training blocks, as well as integrating a high degree of flex to ensure that your training aligns with life demands really important. So we get integration, not just dumping training on top of life and building the absolute cornerstone of your success, which is the magic word consistency. So here we are this week. What are we going to focus on? This week? We're going to talk about the journey. If you want to have a great 2025 a breakthrough if you want to up level, no matter how strong your vision, your set of goals are, no matter how well you set up your plan, it's a dirty truth of any endeavor that you're going to face setbacks and obstacles and you're going to need to emerge through these if you're going to be successful. Your success ultimately depends on your ability to adapt. Adaptability is a huge component and cornerstone of any success in any endeavor, and you're going to need to navigate these inevitable challenges that you're going to come up against you.
05:00
In other words, even if you've got the very best team around you, and you spend all the time in the world to set the path, there's going to be things that you don't anticipate. And so we're going to go through today five core principles that can help you remain highly flexible and resilient, ensuring that you stay on track to achieve your goals that you've set up, and you did that in part one of our series, no matter what happens. Okay, so that's what we're going to do. We're going to talk about the journey. One of my favorite sayings at Purple Patch, we have many silly and very fun sayings, but one of my favorite sayings that has true meaning is embrace the journey, and that journey, you know, no matter how committed you are, no matter how ambitious you are, you it's going to include a whole bunch of setbacks. It's never going to be linear. Performance. Progression is not linear. And so today, I want to equip you, by the end of the education, with a set of tools and a framework for you to operate on. Now, once again, we're going to come back to some case studies. I'm going to draw some lessons and experience of some athletes that I've coached, including some of the Purple Patch pros, but I want to ensure that each of the principles we go through, we keep it as simple as we can, but also as actionable as we can. And so with that, let's do it. It's going to be, ladies and gentlemen, once again, part three, the journey. And it is the meat and potatoes.
06:35
Yes, folks, the meat and potatoes. And right before I dig in, I should note here we go through a lot of education, and you might listen or watch today if you're viewing it on YouTube, and you might think, I need a little bit of personal help here, I'm a little bit of guidance. And so yes, we are absolutely available to enable you to join the team at Purple Patch via coaching or tri squad. All you need to do is reach out to info at Purple Patch fitness, we can have that discussion. But if you're self coached, or you feel like you need a little additional support, and you don't feel like Purple Patch coaching is for you, that's great. Feel free to reach out. We're happy to do a paid consultation with you. We love to support athletes journeys. You don't need to be a Purple Patch athlete to take a part in our journey and leverage our expertise. Email the same address info@purplepatchfundrtch.com
07:28
reach out, just let them know that you want to have a consultation with the Purple Patch coach, and you can also do that with me if you would like. And we're happy to set up some of the components that we talk about, not just in today's show, but any one of the shows of this part of the series. So that's a consultation that's available for you. We want to ensure that your successful Purple Patch coach athlete or not. So with that, let's dig into the details of a little bit of today's show. And we're going to try and infuse Stuart, who's an athlete of mine that I've coached, again, Stuart a Purple Patch athlete. We're going to try and integrate some of the lessons of him as a case study into this series that we're going through here. So Stuart, Purple Patch athlete began his season with pretty ambitious goals. He wanted to podium in his age group. He also wanted to complete his first Iron Man. So he sort of had almost two parallel goals in the 70.3 or the Half Ironman distance, which he'd had a couple of seasons of background in. He wanted to move up to that podium level. So he was pretty ambitious on that. At the same time, he wanted to complete his first Iron Man race. He'd never done that, so he didn't have podium ambitions. There, we sort of nip that in the bud straight away. He just wanted a magical experience. His plan was tight. It was highly structured, and it was really aligned with life demands. And so he was actually sitting pretty at the start of the year. He had training experience. He kind of had his performance recipe dialed in, and this is how we love it. The goals were not out of this world crazy. They were really quite accessible. We certainly knew that he had capacity and certainly the physiological background to go and be really successful in a first Iron Man event. And he also with some commitment and consistency, we felt like he could up level two, a half Iron Man podium and perhaps a series of podium throughout the year. So at the start of the year, he was sitting pretty. It was fantastic. But as so often happens, life through through a few curve balls at him number one, a really demanding work project, and that was really derailing for him. He had massive implication of responsibilities in one of the core quadrants of his life. He has his family, he have his work, and of course, he has his training and preparation for events. And in the area of work, boom, it was a huge work project, and it absolutely.
10:00
Railed a core part of his training block. A second component is he had family illness. He had one of his close relatives had family illness, that included a whole bunch of logistical challenges as well as a host of unplanned travel. So that was another cause of life stresses. And I know plenty of athletes that have gone through very, very similar scenarios with that, and more than that, perhaps related, but certainly indirectly, he had a nagging calf strength, and that emerged halfway through the year. So here we are unanticipated. We have curved balls three being thrown at Stuart life, family, side work, boom week, but big work, Project training interrupted because of a niggling calf strain. And so how did Stuart navigate this season? And ultimately, was he ultimately able to be successful? And I'll give you the teaser here. Of course he was, because I'm using him as a case study, but I've reflected on Stuart's journey, and what I pulled out was really five principles that I want to discuss today. So as we're going to go through we're going to keep coming back to Stuart and how we navigate it, and then make it applicable for you. I also want to pull in a couple of examples that I've talked about before on the show relative to either athletes I've coached or, of course, some of the Purple Patch pros, because I think they're nice and inspirational and also full patch of lots of lessons for us. So leveraging Stuart's case study, here are five principles of navigating the journey. I think it's a wonderful case study to leverage all the way through. The first principle, it can be wrapped up into a simple title, and that is results driven, but process and behavior focused. This is really important. I'm sure when you start 2025.
12:00
you're ambitious. You want to up level. You want to smash your goals. And make no mistake about it, results matter, ultimately, results matter. When I was coaching the Purple Patch pros, I was highly ambitious look. I started off with a simple quest, I want to coach world champions. That was my ambition. And almost every Purple Patch Pro that joined our team was equally ambitious. They didn't come just just hoping to improve. They wanted to win races. That was the ambition. That's why they're doing it. It's not an easy journey. Yet, with that, we were results driven, but our focus was on process and behavior. And that's because we understand, as most high performers do that real progress, sustainable progress and sustainable high performance always stems from consistent behaviors and a commitment to the process, and so if we come back to the case study of Stuart, we can apply that into our lessons here, because Stewart was incredibly brave and really smart. He had huge amplification of stresses in work. He had unanticipated family illness that caused logistical challenge, whole bunch of travel, as well as emotional stress, and also on top of that, he had some physiological challenges with muscle nickels, and so he very quickly shifted his focus. Now he had a good team around him, but very quickly shift his focus, and he went from trying to chase his regular recipe of weekly hours. He always saw himself. He identified himself with, if I can lock in at 12 hours a week, I'm going to be successful. Instead of thinking about chasing outcomes of that, I need to accumulate a preset amount of hours, he did a remarkably good job of shifting to daily actions. Now that's a stewardism right there. This is what he said. He said, I'm going to focus on daily actions. So what was that? Well, when he had incredibly chaotic weeks, he tried to complete really short sessions. So rather than doing utopian sessions, he did something incremental progress. And the key part of that was a lesson that I've learned over the course of coaching athletes across the spectrum of abilities, which is sometimes progression is just not moving backwards. So you might have a predetermined vision of what great success is, but when life throws curveballs, or sometimes even when you need to go on family vacations throughout the year, progression can just be not sliding backwards, and that breaks the mold of this continual.
15:00
Linear progression of layering and layering, that magic word consistency is key here. Consistency doesn't mean consistently hitting 10 or 12 or 14 or 30 hours a week, whatever it is. It's about self managing and ensuring that you consistently can do the right thing at the right time in context of life demands, and Stuart did an incredibly good job of this. He completely removed outcomes so far as total number of mileage, total number of weekly hours over the as a barometer of success. Instead, what he did throughout the whole of his season was focus on daily actions. What is the best thing that I can do for myself right now, in the context of having to travel, to go and see the relative in terms of work, when life got really demanding, and ensuring that I can layer wrong consistency, and this was an incredibly important component his mindset here, his approach actually really reminds me of Sarah pian piano, one of the most successful Purple Patch professional athletes that I ever coached. And I talked a lot about her in many of the episodes here. But Sarah became despite, I would say, relative to the thin air of world class performance, a lower physical gifts of ability. So she actually had less talent than many of her peers and athletes. She became one of the most successful us Iron Man female athletes ever. But she built her success on really focusing on small daily habits. She focused on layering consistency, and she really dialed in her nutrition, her recovery, rather than chasing immediate race outcomes. She took the long term approach, and yes, she was tough, she was committed, she was resilient, but she really had a mastering of this process over outcomes result. So what does that mean for you, if you think about focusing on behaviors, focusing on process, not worrying about outcomes too much. Yes, results matter, but that's not where your mind is. Here's the key. As you take on this journey that is going to be full
17:31
of unanticipated setbacks and challenges and obstacles, etc, focus a little bit like our case study Stuart on what are your daily actions anchor yourself in process, and what that means is every day is, how can I get better today? How can I improve? What is my win that I can achieve today? And if you do that on a day to day basis, it enables you to put it within context of everything else in life. So don't start with what do I have to do today? But what can I do to win? If you do that in 2025 it's going to enable you to make better, real time decisions within context of life. And this is critical, not just for professional athletes, but I would almost amplify an importance for time starved athletes like yourself. What is my win today? That is your action. And it's not just checking a box of a big workout. It's about doing the right thing in the context of life, to ensure that you can weave consistency over many, many weeks and many, many months. Principle number one, results driven, process and behavior focused super What about principle number two? This is one that always catches people's eye and attention. Keep things simple. Look the simple truth is that complexity breeds overwhelm, simplicity fosters clarity and action. When I'm asked about the success of the Purple Patch professional athletes, one of the things I always talk about is the great surprise, because people always want to understand and learn about the key workouts or the complexity that we add, what do we add in? What do they do that's so different, and this answer to that is really quite surprising.
19:32
Great success typically stemmed from what we removed from an athlete's journey rather than what we added. In other words, the practices and the habits and the strategies of a highly successful professional athlete are wrapped around really mundane repetition. Their lives are almost mount life. They focus on the things that are going to drive the performance needle. They master those things.
20:00
And they repeat them, day after day, week after week, we tend to strip it down. In fact, one of the primary sayings at Purple Patch was nail the basics. When I developed the Purple Patch pro squad, where we took an individual sport with a host of individual athletes that were at different stages of development and competitive with each other. We built a team out of it, and one of the most core or central components of that team of professional athletes was to define a set of simple, non negotiable behaviors for us, those were the nail, the basics, and there were seven. Now, I won't go through all seven right now, but it's really, really simple. What they were, things like, we will always consume calories after every single training session. We will always go very easy in the easier workouts, we will prioritize sleep, trying to embed as much as we can, consistent eight to nine hours every night, and do everything we can to maximize the quality of sleep. We will have a bolstering of our immune system, recovering adaptations by mastering daily hydration. We will integrate strength throughout the year. So these are some really simple, universal practices and habits. But you know what we did? We mastered them, we ingrained them as a universal practice, and we tried to keep it as simple and repeatable as possible. And that's why this is our second principle, keep things simple. Let's go back to our case study that we're weaving through today's show Stuart.
21:45
What he did was he simplified his weekly focus. He had so much going on. He had that big work project we talked about. He had travel and the whole cognitive load of family illness. He couldn't over complicate life. In fact, we strip things away, and we focused on three core things. Number one, I want you to dial in strength. I felt like, with him going on to an Iron Man distance, that we really need to ensure that he had his durability there. So we focused on strength training. Don't let that go. Number two, we had a focus on higher intensity training because I wanted him to ensure that he could dial that in. We took the opportunity to build endurance when we could, but because his total training was going lower, we amplified a focus on higher intensity. We had to optimize with less training hours than he otherwise would have. And the third area is, we committed to recovery. Look, I'm the recovery coach, so that's no surprise at all. But those were three core principles, boost up higher intensity, maximize recovery in downtime, and ensuring that he had the backbone of good durability and strength really, really important, and we stripped away all of the unnecessary layers, and it really enabled him to keep consistency. Because in any given week, he said, Okay, where am I going to nail my strength sessions where I'm going to hit my one to two high intensity sessions? And everything else was living and breathing. If we had more time and capacity, because maybe he didn't have such of a load of travel with the family illness, or maybe the work project gave him a little bit more breathing room, we would take advantage. We would boost up the endurance that he could do. But when things got a little heated for one reason or another, and he had less time, we would reduce the endurance and just say, You know what that can come next week or the week following. That was really example, a really good example, a prime Purple Patch pro example of this is the most famous one that we probably have. Tim Reed, you might have heard me talk about this. Tim, he became world champion at the 70.3 distance. And the big story with him was, over the course of that year, 2016
24:10
he tended to be an athlete that could over complicate things. My loving, affectionate nickname for him was Tim The tinkerer. But in that year, we absolutely diffused many things that he would typically focus on, and we built all of the emphasis around the core principles. Those nailed the basics, and that's all we did. And what happened there is it tended to simplify. It created clarity of focus and empowered him to really master the fundamentals. One of those fundamentals was an emphasis for Tim on Terrain Management, and it yielded better speed return on his bike, and it gave him a toolkit that he could leverage, and he did leverage at the World Championships, and I think that was the biggest catalyst for his great success that year, really.
25:00
Really, really simple, really important. So what does that mean for you as you go in to 2025
25:07
well, it stems from some of the stuff that we talked about in part two of our episode in this four part series, which is simplifying your training. What I would encourage you to do is to identify your top two or three things that you're going to focus on every single week and dive into those now it's not just training. It might be across your swim, bike, run and strength, but it might also be a habit. But what are the two or three things that you're going to obsess on that are going to yield the biggest performance gains? One of the sayings that I like to leverage at Purple Patch is master the boulders and focus on the boulders and let the sand filter away. It's easy. It's appealing to try and focus on everything, but we as human beings just can't do that. And so if you want to be successful and you want to be equipped to navigate obstacles and challenges, you better filter out and keep things simple. Principle number two. Here's principle number three, respond, don't react. This is it. This is a key component here, when we have flex in the system, no matter how much we care about planning and prioritization, we are going to be met with obstacles and challenges. And so I encourage you respond, don't react. You see, the truth is, how you handle these disruptions is going to absolutely define your path forward. And so when you do have a pitfall, a huge work project, a family, honest, an injury, whatever it might be, don't react.
26:48
You don't need to throw the toys out of the cot. Instead, respond. What's the difference here? I believe a response is a proactive mindset. It's a it's a scenario in which you pause, you assess, and then you act purposefully. That's what responses and in an athletic mindset. What that means is that you, there's lots of Purple Patch sayings today, folks, you control the controllables. In other words, what can you influence? What can you actually focus on that you will yield a proactive, positive result, no matter what is happening. And when you do this, you want to come back to your commitments, and then you adapt the plan with purpose. So if you remember the Purple Patch coaching model, phase one was defining purpose and vision, what success looks like. And out of that, we establish goals. We then in phase two, talk about our commitments and what our priorities are. What are we going to focus on, and what are we not now, as you're doing the doing week to week, nailing down the training, navigating life, you might stray off track. You might be set with a huge challenge or obstacle, and if you want to respond to that, the only way to do it is to pause, come up out of the weeds. So in other words, get out of the emotion of it, come up and come back to those commitments. All right, what am I looking to achieve here? Where am I going and where did I agree and commit to place my emphasis and my energy? Okay, with that in mind, this is where I'm at right now. What can I control? What can I focus on? And how do I adapt my plan?
28:47
Because your training plan, or your global plan, more broadly, may not be applicable with this new information, and that's all it is, this new information and scenario that you're faced with. And so we need to adapt. Adaptability is a huge component.
29:05
And I like athletes, and as a coach, like to return to the commitments and adapt it with purpose.
29:13
So this is something that's really simple, and we can draw on Stuart. Let's talk about his calf injury. So this wasn't a calf tear. It was more of a niggle. And the truth is that the origin of this tight calf probably emerged from multiple sources. I think there was a mechanical component, a little bit of a lack of ankle mobility. There was also a stress component, quite often the body displays the accumulation of stresses when it happens cross life. And I think there was a component of that as well. I also even think there was a little bit of a shoe choice, but in many ways, this sort of multi area contribution to these tight calves we want to address.
30:00
Address those piece by piece, but ultimately, we want to keep Stuart moving and progressing towards his journey, trying to get to the podium, trying to ensure that he has a successful completion of Iron Man, and he is met with tight cops. The symptoms are there. So what's the very worst thing that I could do as a coach to Stuart keep prescribing normal running training, because it's only going to go down the cul de sac of failure. He's going to get muscle fatigue and greater injury risk. He's going to be set back and sidelights. He's not going to achieve his goals. So we need to not react. Oh my goodness me, he's got a calf strain. But respond, pause. Come out at the level. Let's think about it. The commitment was a really heavy focus on running, but we need to adapt. And so we shifted out. We did a couple of things. We started to transition to doing some more Hill based strength, because ironically, with Stuart, he could do that on the treadmill without any cause of pain and any extra tightness occurring. So that was step one. Step two, we introduced a few other modalities to help him navigate while it was tight. So that included some rowing, and we actually had an added emphasis on swimming. And then we got about trying to fix the root cause. So we shifted the shoes that he was walking around in a day. He was walking around in running shoes all day. That wasn't actually helping. We wanted to have a more of a neutral shoe, and we shifted his running trainer that he was using, and that really helped. We also got some body work done, and we gave him some just general rest and recuperation. And so that occurred, and over the course of the really, ultimately, almost three months that he was managing, that we were very, very cautious with his running training, but we just shifted an emphasis towards greater swim and greater bike. So that's what we leverage. And most of his bike training was on the trainer. Now this is not news to you. This occurs every single day, every single week, with athletes all over the world. It The good thing about triathlon is its swim bike and run wrapped up, swim bike, run. And so in other words, we could use other modalities to keep him progressing. And so this is not revolutionary from Stuart and his case study, but it was something that was necessary as we went along. The example, this is critically important. So in other words, when we think about this component, respond, don't react. It's an inevitable truth that obstacles are going to occur,
32:38
and so for you, when they do occur, I want you to staple this mindset on your heart. How can I respond constructively to the next challenge that I'm going to face? Because you're going to do that, and you want to think about that third phase, that's when you're in the action. That's the benefit, by the way, of having some coaching, so that you have a partner in your journey, with wisdom and with perspective that can give you some good counsel. But if you're self coach, you have autonomy to make some really logical decisions and ensure that you don't just react. Now this comes back to the whole flow of the coaching model, because if you haven't started with clear vision and success and you haven't met your focus, it's very, very difficult when things do go astray, when you do have a challenge, when you are set with an obstacle, it's really hard to respond. All that happens here is confusion, frustration, reaction, and so this is really where the model comes into play. For you, very, very important. That's principle number three. Principle number four. We've got two to go. This is my absolute favorite reflection. It is the glue that holds the process together. Every single week. In Stuart's case, I think this was the golden key of his him able to be successful because he had chaos going on, huge work demands, the family crisis, he had those niggles and injuries that were navigating, and he didn't diffuse any of his ambitions and his goals. And so he had an optimization challenge every single week, and it wasn't predictable, that's the thing. And he's no different than many Purple Patch athletes. Low predictability, high chaos. Welcome to life. And so reflection became a core principle of how he could be successful. What did it look like? Well, it occurred on a week to week basis. We leveraged the Sunday special, my favorite tool for driving effective effectivity, effectivity.
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So what did it look like? Well, it occurred.
35:00
On a week to week basis, we leverage the Sunday special to drive effectiveness and also get clarity of priorities. That Sunday special is a wonderful prioritization school tool, but it starts with a reflection. So every single week what Stuart did, and this was non negotiable, in other words, he could not be coached by me if he didn't do this and deliver his thoughts to me every single week. He paused, always have a Sunday and he looked back at the week prior, reflection. What went well? What did I get done? Where did I fall short in either my habits, my recovery, my sleep? Did I nail my strength? Did I hit my high intensity, etc, some of the components we looked at, what worked, what didn't work, where do I need to play some emphasis now, and though, with that information, he could feed into setting up aside or setting up his objectives and focus for the year or the week moving forward. So on a week to week, both basis, reflection was integrated into it, but also along the journey of his highly ambitious racing schedule, particularly relative to the confines of his life post race, we did really healthy reflection. All right, where are we? We've got a really busy life going on. What went well here? What didn't go well? Because not every race was great, by the way, and that's typical, particularly when you've got a more chaotic life and you're trying to be very ambitious and goal driven in this. In the midst of all that, what went well, what didn't go well, where do we need to adapt our focus, our priorities and our emphasis as we move forward and go on this journey. And then finally, we just did it twice. We wanted to it quarterly. It only occurred twice. Sometimes that happens. We did a big Refresh All right halfway through the year where we at, and as in the latter part of the year, we started to drive towards Iron Man. We actually re jigger the approach pretty healthy because of life demands. So that model that we're talking about throughout this January, we actually almost redid it halfway through the year, because we learned what was working and we understood what wasn't working. So reflection was absolutely critical. Now, all of the research in the world supports reflection being critical. Harvard Business Review, 2016
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absolutely highlights how reflection improves learning and performance because it reinforce lessons and also identifies areas of growth. That's not revolutionary. We understand that in World Class sport. So how does this impact? You build a reflection, habit, schedule it. Don't leave it to chance. Don't assume it's going to happen. You need to be programmatic about this. That's why I love the Sunday specialist at all for professional athletes, where we started it with very busy time, start executives, where I applied it after the pros and now across the Purple Patch ecosystem, the Sunday special, a simple tool for reflection and then prioritization and planning looking forward. I think it's the biggest unlock. And in our case study today, I've got to be frank, I don't think Stuart could have been successful if we hadn't have had that as a practice, a habit, really, really important. So what can principle number five be? We've talked about responding, we've talked about simplification, we've talked about reflection. What can we have as the principle number five to drive not Stuart's success. Here's our case study, your success in 2025
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Well, we know it's a journey. We know that there are going to be challenges. We know it's never going to roll out the way that we planned it. But you know what principle number five is build your team.
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Performance is never a solo endeavor. I don't care what you say. It's true that when you individually, even if it's just about you and you take a selfish lens, you will get more out of yourself and more predictable and elevated performance levels when you take a trick team approach to it, it's true.
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Look, I coach Stuart, but it wasn't just me that helped Stuart. Stuart had a team around him. He brought his family in for support, and we made sure that we coordinated all of the training and all of the habits into the family Scheduling Calendar. We ensured that they were constituents of the performance journey, so that he could remain present and focused on his family the ultimately the most important thing. He also had a strength and conditioning coach to help him, of which I.
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Coordinated. He had the community of the Purple Patch athletes, and he leaned into that community that was really helpful to hold him accountable and to support him on the journey. He had the bravery to actually share his journey, understand, enable people to understand. And you know what, within our community, there were a whole bunch of people that I'd either navigated similar challenges before or were going through parallel experiences at the same time, and that really helped him with perspective and bravery to do the things that I was asking him to do, because it is not easy if you have a pre conditioned mindset of what it's going to take to be successful, and then suddenly you have to take a completely different path to get there. Team is critical,
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and so leaning on a support system, dispersing pressure from making it just about you, and instead leveraging other people to help you and ensuring that you can get balance across personal, professional and athletic demands is a key catalyst. I'll give you a great example of someone that's done this incredibly well over the arc of the Purple Patch journey. He's an athlete that I've been coaching for almost 15 years, Pasquale Romano, or pat Romano, as I call him Pat's the CEO. He's a Purple Patch athlete, and he has balanced his career incredibly well. I've got massive amount of respect for him. He's also integrated great, ambitious athletic goals along that career, and he's also ensured that family has stayed a priority. And he's not only gone on and had a wonderful career professionally, and still has an incredibly tight family unit with wonderful relationships with his kids, including now his daughter, who's a Purple Patch athlete and running marathons at the moment, but he has continued to improve as an athlete, and I started coaching Pat in his early 40s. He's now mid to late 50s, and guess what? He's faster,
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and the way that he's done this is, yes, taking a smart approach, but it's because of a high performance mindset, trait, Coach ability and his insistence, with my encouragement, on leaning into team, you couldn't get a more team focused person, and so this is your takeaway, surround yourself with a supportive team. It doesn't need to be in person, but you do need to feel it, a sense of belonging, a sense of trust, a sense of shared mission and a high degree of support and accountability. If you can create that through coaching, through friends, through family, through a team or a community, online or remote, like we have at Purple Patch, you are going to amplify your performance. If you go through this journey with it just being you and about you, you're going to struggle, surround yourself with a supporting team. So I encourage you today, take stock, reflect whatever causes who's on your team, ask yourself, and then also, how can they help you? How can they help you succeed? How can they help you stay brave to your commitments. How can you share with them so that they can ensure that they can hold you accountable?
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You see
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this episode is important, because no matter how well you plan,
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your journey to success is not going to be linear. I've never seen an athlete have amazing breakthroughs when everything just falls into place and goes perfectly. It's always performance within context of their life with a high degree of resilience, commitment, purpose and adaptability. And this is what we're talking about here, building a toolkit so that you can be adaptable and by embracing these five principles, anchoring yourself in process, simplifying your approach, responding thoughtfully when you are met with challenges, ensuring that you have a practice of reflection and building your team, you're going to equip yourself to navigate the inevitable twists and turns of The Season. How did Stuart do? He did pretty well. He got a podium. That's great. He didn't get four podiums. That's what he wanted, but he got a podium, and life is a little clearer as we look forward. So he did great. His Iron Man a magical experience. You know, the best thing about his Iron Man, he said it was like a metronome of energy. He never suffered. He leveraged my great training advice or racing advice for first time minor athletes, which is go out and train all day and make sure that you have fun. Start with a point of reflection and have a little bit of gratitude.
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Good for being there, and ensure that you don't bypass that last mile, because you'll only have your first last mile of an Ironman ever, only once. It's only going to occur once, and so maximize it. Five Principles, high performance, 2023, that's how you equip yourself for the journey. We're going to wrap it up next week. It's an important one next week, part four. Please join me. And as I mentioned at the top of the show, if you want to become a part of the team, reach out to us. Info at Purple Patch fitness.com I hope that helps. Good luck. Looking forward to it, and I'm enjoying this. Winning at triathlon 2025 Take care, 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 of YouTube, and you will find it there and you could 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 in fact, 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, at Purple Patch fitness.com or leave it in the comments of the show at the Purple Patch page, and we will get you dialed in. We'd love constructive feedback. We are in a growth mindset, as we like to call it, and so feel free to share with your friends, but as I said, Let's build this together. Let's make it something special. It's really fun. We're really trying hard to make it a special experience, and we want to welcome you into the Purple Patch community with that, I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun, keep smiling, doing whatever you do, take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
high performance, proven methodology, team approach, remote coaching, ongoing education, supportive community, athletic potential, sport integration, performance gains, structured training, adaptability, daily actions, reflection, supportive team, consistent behaviors