Episode: 351 - Go Time! Key Considerations of dialing in your Winter to Spring: From PREP to BUILD
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Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!
IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon and Purple Patch Coach Max Gering discuss the importance of strategic training for IRONMAN and half IRONMAN races, emphasizing that 8-12 hours of training per week can be optimized for performance. They highlight common mistakes athletes make, such as neglecting strength training, ramping up training too quickly, and failing to increase calorie intake as training volume increases. They stress the importance of maintaining a balanced approach, including proper nutrition, hydration, and recovery. Max also underscores the need for athletes to have fun and maintain a positive mindset, suggesting that enjoying the journey is crucial for long-term success and performance.
Max raises the issue of athletes forgetting to have fun as they ramp up their training. Dixon shares a story about an athlete who significantly improved her performance by increasing her calorie intake, highlighting the impact of proper fueling. Together, they share reflections on what Purple Patch has been focusing on with it’s Athletes over the last few months, along with telling advice on common mistakes to avoid in preparation for this season.
If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out at info@purplepatchfitness.com.
Episode Timecodes:
:00-2:04 Promo
2:04-2:32 Intro
2:40-10:30 Max Gering Update
10:36-14:30 Kona Camp Preview
14:35-25:32 Go Time Overview
16:40-18:40 Reflection
25:27-48:26 Classic Mistakes
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Transcription
Matt Dixon 00:01
If I'm sitting in front of an audience, and I often love to ask a question, how many hours do you think it's necessary to train if you really want to perform well in an IRONMAN? The response is typically 18-20, 22 hours, somewhere in that range. But if you're stuck in this thinking that you really need to train 20 or more hours every single week to perform at your best Iron Man or half IRONMAN. You need to think again. You see, there is a smarter and more strategic approach, one in which training integrates into your life. And I want to tell you how. I'm hosting a free webinar next week so that we can peel back the curtains and show you how to do it. Join me on March the 13th, at 9am Pacific. That's noon Eastern. Or for the important people in the world, the British people, that's 5pm for you folks, you can learn how to optimize your training on just eight to 12 hours a week, and you can train and race faster. That's a good thing. You can avoid injury, and you can also get to balance life outside of your sport. In fact, it's additive to everything that's important, whether it's how you're showing up for your family or friends, or how you're showing up in the workplace. In this webinar, you're going to discover why traditional training tends to lead to burnout and instead, how to maximize your performance in minimal time, key strategies for nutrition, hydration, recovery, plus, we'll give you some free trial access to our video based coaching, something that's a lot of fun but also really valuable. And we're going to give you a free training PDF so you can put some of the principles and action them into some real world training strategies for yourself. Save your spot now. Head to the URL in the show notes. Join us, and if you cannot attend live, do not despair. If you register, we will send you the replay. Of course, you're going to spend some time with me, so if you can attend live, I recommend it, because I'm going to offer you a chance to ask me any questions that you have around the topic. I hope to see you there and enjoy today's show. Take care. 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. And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast as ever your host, Matt Dixon, and I'm not the only host today, because we get to welcome back. Purple Patch coach, Max Gering to the show. Max, welcome back.
Max Gering 02:46
Thank you. I'm excited to be here again.
Matt Dixon 02:49
Well, last time we did this, a couple of weeks ago now, we said we'll see how this goes. It's something new. We'll ask for feedback. And I thought that you were gonna get kicked off the island.
Max Gering 03:00
I thought I was gonna get fired potentially if it didn't go
Matt Dixon 03:05
and but no, there was resounding, promising and positive feedback. So we thought, You know what, why don't we do it again? And and so we're gonna have a coach's conversation, a little bit of a chat around what we're labeling go time. And what I mean by that, for you guys, the listeners, is that we have done, if we cast our memories back all the way back till the fall. We did a couple of episodes around off season and the importance of the continuation of the performance journey after your last race of the season. We talked about what off season was. Then we talked about at the end of the year, going into the start of this year, around our prep phase, that we are really just in the midst of right now and starting to transition, but we're right on that cusp now where things are getting serious and a lot of athletes races are looming. We can start to see them on the horizon. They're not just mythical things where, in the future, they're starting to have their grip. And so things are getting serious. And the truth is, for the vast majority of athletes, it is kind of go time. It's time to get a little more serious, trying to lose a little bit of the flexibility in in our training life, get a little bit more precise and specific to really drive through to the breakthroughs. But what does that mean? Because we see so often Max we see so often athletes making a lot of mistakes at this time, where suddenly they do a binary switch and accelerate. So I thought that we could get together have a conversation, hopefully, impart some of our perspective, your perspective, my perspective, on what athletes need. But before we dig into the meat and potatoes today, I'd just love to hear how you're doing. Been at Purple Patch for eight or nine months now. You still own your own coaching business. You're integrated. So how have you been over the last few weeks? Weeks, and how's it going at Purple Patch so far, things
Max Gering 05:02
are good. A lot has changed since we were last together up in San Francisco. I would say, how to put it? How would I put it? My world has exploded. Started out coaching and now doing many, many other things beyond coaching. Still, a lot of my time is spent coaching our Purple Patch athletes, but really getting my hands dirty with the broader Pearl patch community. Besides coaching, I've started meeting with our incoming athletes. So can think of it as an athlete concierge, meeting with potential athletes, whether they're going to go to one to one, coaching to our run squat or try squad, but meeting with them, hearing where they've been, where they want to go, and making sure that we get them set up with the program that's the best stitch for them. So that's a lot of how I spend my time, which is exciting. I get to meet a lot of interesting people, spending more and more time with you. We're making content. I'm editing your video. So if we're not talking, I'm playing your videos on on repeat, and hearing, hearing your nuggets of wisdom, and editing a lot of content and getting my hands dirty with social media. So it's been, it's been fun, and it's, it is fun. It's exciting times Purple Patch
Matt Dixon 06:03
it's really fun. And it's actually, we could almost call you the gatekeeper, couldn't we? Because I don't think there's really a Purple Patch athlete joining now that doesn't first have a conversation with you where it's really helpful for you to understand their journey and help them get onto the right track. You must, must have some really interesting conversations with people, and pretty broad range of people that work with Purple Patch,
Max Gering 06:29
yeah, for sure. And I think something that I've learned from when I started working in Purple Patch is one of the most important things to do at the beginning of any athlete's journey is to set the lens. So I really love the conversations that I have, because I think that when you have a really good conversation in the beginning, and you can set your mindset right for how you're going to approach the change that you're going to make when you join us at Purple Patch, it sets the athletes up for success. So it's, it's a lot of responsibility, but I enjoy it.
Matt Dixon 06:54
It's great. And we've also been doing and a part of it was perhaps because I mentioned it on the show a few times, but I know that you've been one of the primary coaches talking to athletes internally on our squad program, having some supporting consultations with them to plan their seasons, as well as a whole group of folks externally, so people that are not on an ongoing basis coached by Purple Patch, but you've been working with 60 minute consultations. Anything interesting that's come up on on those, I know those are a lot of fun, because you're really sort of helping people with a big, quick, hard hitting, almost 60 minutes of power.
Max Gering 07:32
Yeah, yeah. I think it's perfect for a lot of our listeners, because there's a lot of people out there that are very they're tight, they triathlete, they like to be in control, but are maybe lacking a little bit of clarity so that the athlete that is super autonomous doesn't want to change what they're doing in terms of working with a different coach or a different program, but just need some outside perspective so they can keep driving the wagons, as you say, forward on their own. Those conversations are really helpful for that type of person.
Matt Dixon 08:01
Get any fun ones lately by chance, and I'm just, I'm interested, because I don't get to hear too much of this. Any interesting stories that maybe can inspire some of the listeners?
Max Gering 08:10
Yeah, I think something that comes up a lot, and it doesn't matter what the athlete's dealing with, it's being able to when someone's when someone's stuck, when someone's not necessarily getting the results that they want, it's being able to assess a little bit about what's been going on and why what's been happening has been happening, and then let go, kind of have this clean mental break and practical break of, okay, these are the these are the things that I'm going to implement. And you just hear a lot about people talking a lot about the past. I've done this, I've done that, and in the conversation, helping them understand that the story they're telling themselves about the way sport has been in their life, the way they've been feeling. I've always run slow. I'm not a good swimmer. I need to improve at the bike. Their self talk becomes a self healing prophecy, and in the conversation, it's just helping people break, break free of that so they can get then go do the things and tap into the potential. Or do you get some some interesting people?
Matt Dixon 09:14
It's interesting because it's, you know, I've talked all on the show about reflection and how, I mean, we know, as a part of the Sunday special, every week we want a Purple Patch athlete to pause, reflect, come out, what went well, what went and so often when I think about a consultation, you think about, you know, looking forward, but so it's interesting that you highlight, actually, in order to go forward, you've got to first pause, reflect and understand so that you can really set the right lens going forward in many ways. Yeah,
Max Gering 09:45
it's definitely, it's a key part of moving forward. And then I think the last thing is also reminding people, let's be really ambitious. But going back to if I've had any fun ones, let's have fun. This is a hobby that I'm passionate about, and I think we'll dive into that when we talk about mistakes. The people making this time the this time of the year, but reminding people they're allowed to have fun, and that performance is fun, and getting people to have that energy about going on their performance journey and not feeling so stressed out about training for the race.
Matt Dixon 10:15
Yeah, I think that is so, so important. I was just actually on a podcast this morning being interviewed, and we talked a lot about, you are allowed to have fun like you can have permission. You don't need to turn this into a second job. That's important. Talking to fan, I desperate to ask you, because we talked about a little bit internally, but you had the Kona camp experience. We've got the Napa camp coming up. But late January was, was your first sort of Purple Patch camp that you've come and coached on a week away in Hawaii. How, how you navigated that suffering. No tongue can tell, but, but we've got Napa coming up, which is going to be another big camp for us. Really important. High Value. How was Kona for you from a from a eyes wide open. Coach done other camps before, but how was that as an experience for you as a coach?
Max Gering 11:09
It was a really unique training camp experience. I've been I've coached in the train on training camps, and I've been an athlete in training camps, and most of those camps have been focused really around just let's train really, really hard for several days. And, you know, throw all, throw together all this type of training that we can't do at home and we're busy with normal life. But it was always missing this community aspect, this, like team cohesion aspect. So that was really fun about the burl patch camp was getting to grow together as a team and really come together in a short, short time span and see how that allowed athletes to tap into their potential and new ways to get out of their comfort zone and to do things that they think they were able to do. Yeah, and just for an example, it's not, you know, you spend a lot of time talking about leadership. People have a positive influence on others around them in many different ways. So there's some people that are the, you know, the loud leaders, that really, okay, you're coming with me. We're going to go bike up the hill hard, and you're not going to stop, and you want to stop things like that. But just noticing how people, you can have a huge positive impact on somebody, even without realizing it, you don't have to speak to them directly. We pick up a lot around a lot of behaviors around us, and so just from the side, seeing athletes bond subconsciously and have that impact on one another.
Matt Dixon 12:31
Yeah it was. It's really interesting if every as you, as you got to see, but every, every camp that we do on the last night, which is always the, what we call the banquet, we have a big meal and we do some fun awards, mostly, you know, a little bit poignant, but a lot of humor in there as well. But I always find myself getting a little choked up, which is a very unlike me because of English and b It's like, hang on, I'm at Camp number, you know, 50 or whatever it's been over the last 20 years. So, so why does this one always get to me? But I think the reason is, is that it's always starved. It always startles me how you have such a broad range of goals, talent levels, quite frankly, backgrounds across these sort of camps, and how we do get them, everyone out of their comfort zone, whether they're a stronger athlete or a weaker athlete, everyone gets out of their comfort zone, but the galvanizing impact of doing it together, and how by day two or three, it's like we're locked in. We're a team. This is it. And I think your point is really sage. It's not just the loud people that are the leaders and the influencers. Sometimes it can be just really, really positive. I think of Yoko, lovely Japanese woman that joined us that, you know, was, you know, her English was much better than my Japanese. But that doesn't mean it was gold, you know, and, and yet, she had a really positive impact on that camp, you know, she, she just worked really hard, was really consistent, was always there, and started to become a sort of a beacon, in many ways. And it's really galvanizing. It's, it's pretty fun, yeah, go through that pretty magical experience now we've now we've got to do it again in April in Napa, which is a very, very different experience, but equally fun and hopefully helpful. Yeah, just keep them all safe. About it. Should we talk about that? Should we talk about the topic at hand?
Max Gering 14:34
I guess, so the time has come. It's go time, as they
Matt Dixon 14:38
say, isn't it? So, so let me, I'll just leave the the grounding on this a little bit. And so we're into March and we're launching. We can safely say with that the off season is done. If we go back to my conversations that I had, me pontificating by myself, but I talked about off season being October, November, December. Orb. Any time which your last race was done after a break, you enter that point. So it's a little bit like a river. You can enter at any point then the first part of January and first half of February. I We Purple Patch. Wanted to have athletes to retain a preparatory mindset, an off season mindset, in many ways, but now we can, you know, almost smell the looming good weather, the longer hours of daylight that are coming and and races are up on the horizon for most people. So it's getting serious. And so the reason that I wanted to have you on today and us have this talk about it, is this is really the moment that we start to see athletes put their serious hat on start training hard and also sabotage their seasons with a whole bunch of mistakes that are easily avoided, and that's what you want to do. So I want to actually focus around pitfalls and mistakes, rather than just this is what you should do. It's like, these are the things that we see that you just don't need to do and you can really go through. So we're going to break apart a few considerations where we sort of go from winter to spring, from prep to build to early season racing, etc, and and the one other thing I'd say is that I think it's important you, you mentioned reflection earlier on about having people look back what they've done. So why don't we do that as as Purple Patch athletes? Where? Where are we at right now, over the last few months? Well, we went through off season and a sort of prep phase in many ways, and that, the bullseye of it all, almost universally, full of our athletes, was strength and conditioning, very, very important, building body patch. I know passion of yours. You led all of our strength in Hawaii. Fantastic, really great mobility being a part of it, movement pattern. So strength was a bullseye swing, along with that. On a swim standpoint, we did a lot of technical swimming. Coach John Stevens designed with myself some some really good stuff. He really refreshed up the swim program this year. I thought it was great. And there was a lot of technical swimming. We weren't obsessed around fitness development, necessarily for most athletes, but we also strayed more towards short intervals. I really like that for early season, swimming, shorter, faster swimming, consistent rest. So a whole bunch of 20 fives, a whole bunch of 50s, rather than a bunch of slow, laborious, 600 800 so that was a sort of our swimming the bike. A lot of folks that we tough, yeah, would talk about it. A lot of bikes tough. So you know, most, most purple, many Purple Patch athletes didn't get to ride outside really much because of weather and safety or other considerations. So a lot of indoor riding, obviously, and that was really focused on two things. Number one, Terrain Management, skills, artistry, good posture, really, really powerful. I think some of the best stuff that we do in the whole year is, is in these last blocks of training. Going into this next block, we did a whole bunch of very, very short, high intensity work, and that's really closely. And then we'll probably come back to the bike, because I want to hover on that just a little bit, and I'm going to ask you a question. But then the run, finally, for folks, we did a lot of very, very easy running, high frequency running. Some people were running almost every day and and then just some short bouts of high intensity, you know, Hill sprints for 2030, seconds, flat strides, etc, but not really very much, hard intervals in running at all. We really as a group, obviously, some people are, but on the umbrella, we've really been building resilience, but I'm interested to hear before we dive into the mistakes and stuff. Short, high power. You attend live. You're on there this morning, the bike sessions that we do, the video bike sessions. You're in San Diego right now. I'm in San Francisco. You'd be surprised at how much high power we've done high intensity and how tough those sessions are.
Max Gering 19:05
Yeah for anybody that's lucky enough to do the live classes, even if you're doing the on demand video recorded sessions, I like to say to people that are joining Purple Patch, the bike program is like peloton for triathletes on steroids. It's a lot of fun, but it was tough these vo two Max sessions. I found myself going into workouts as a coach intimidated knowing that if I do this session as prescribed, and I really push myself, it's going to be really hard. I'm going to get out of my comfort zone. My legs are going to be burning, my lungs, my lungs are going to be burning. But the really cool thing about the way they're designed is that they set you up for success, so they're very challenging, but very doable. And that was, I think, the most enjoyable and the magical part of the off season is it was, we're going to go hard in short bursts. We're going to make sure that it's attainable so that you can continue to shrink together consistency and success. I think it's a really. Really safe environment for athletes to push themselves. Safe in terms of physically, when you push yourself so hard on the run, you run the risk of injury. And I think a lot of athletes that end up coming to us push themselves and try and do their vo two Max work on the run, and then that has a negative fix. So I think physically, in terms of impact, it's a really safe place to push yourself. And there's something really powerful for time starved athletes about having a short session when you only have an hour. Some athletes only have 45 minutes work. You can get a lot done if you're if you're going hard as you're supposed to.
Matt Dixon 20:34
It's funny you you talk about hard the there's so much. I can't help but tell a story. I got a wonderful guy that I that I have started coaching, is a real joy to coach. His name's Bob, and he's he's a student. He's so thirsty for for learning, and he's also really open to try different things. And he left a platform in which he was being asked to do an FTP assessment every single month, time trial and and forget about the other platform. It doesn't matter. But I just thought that just sounds awful, just absolutely awful. But interestingly, and he's, he's a guy that's sort of my size, and, you know. So a sort of bigger guy, you're going to call it that I'm six two, is probably not six two, but we probably weigh a similar weight, you know, we've got some mass between us and and he's, quote, Functional Threshold, which is his barometer, is very, very metrics based and very concerned around heart rate and where it should be, and the power of Zone Two, and how much into zone four should he go to and and should he do another assessment? A lot of this stuff. For the first month, I've just completely peeled it away, and I said Bob just going to freaking stamp on the pedals and go as hard as you freaking can twice a week. It's going to be strength endurance, big gear, you know, the work that we've just started doing. So it's lucky, it's serendipitous, on timing. And you're going to do a month of this high, high st stuff, no barriers, like, no barriers, no thoughts, no metrics. Dive in. I want you to go freaking hard. And he's like, Well, what about the zone? But take the handbrake off. Go, go strong. Have fun. That's just go have fun with it. And of course, that is, he can join the live class. You've seen him on there, and so, so he gets my stupidity. He also gets Angus singing in his ear. But I bet his quote FTP that's been assessed once a month for the last two years and hasn't moved. I bet it's up 50 watts right now in a month, just because it is not physiological yet, there's nothing magical. It just what happens so often with athletes. They they get so shackled by these metrics and trying to be so precise, sometimes you just gotta go, and you open up and don't worry, there's still lots of easy stuff. Zone two is still important. You know, I've read it all. It's all Yes, and I do, and we're going to do plenty of that stuff, but it's really liberating to see someone just go through to the next level and really rock and roll. It's a lot of fun.
Max Gering 23:19
Yeah, I think you really learned that in the live classes with the blind intervals. So for those listening that don't know what I'm talking about, you do see metrics as you're riding, and then the way you program the workouts is there's certain intervals where you don't see any metrics, you can't see your cadence, you can't see your power, and you have to dial in that inner animal and that feel. And that really teaches you to be super present and put the metrics on the side and truly understand one what your potential is, and also how to control that potential when you have to go zone three, Zone Two, by feel. Also, that's challenging for people.
Matt Dixon 23:52
I think it's a great point that that's that's actually one of my the most powerful tools of that platform, is to be able to actually have people ride still be capturing, still feel the tension, still feel the grade and everything like that, but ride blind, as we call it. So it's really good. So anyway, now it really is go time. So that was a long introduction. Let's, let's go with it. Let's go through some some mistakes and and we'll go from there I am. I'm going to kick it off. I'm going to start with one that I'm going to ask you to lead to begin. And then we'll, we'll talk about it. Because, you know, most, most listeners here are thinking whether it's a spring marathon, whether it's obviously triathlon, half Iron Man, im, whatever it is, and it's swim, bike, run. I want to start with strength. Actually, this is the time honored mistake that I think many athletes have committed to strength successfully in off season. But now the hours start to creep up, the days get longer. They start to ride. They run more. They think about the intensity their legs get a bit. Tired because they're loading up on the focus on the swum bike run, or the run, if they're just a marathon runner, etc, and it goes by the wayside, and people let strength dissolve, or let it be very much a passenger. I think it's one of the biggest mistakes for a professional athlete, and even more so, a regular, time starved, busy, unbusy amateur athlete as well. I'd love your thoughts on it.
Max Gering 25:26
Yeah, and I think because people make this, this mistake, is why we have to convince people to make strength or Bullseye in the off season, because they neglect strength, starting right about now, for several months, then the fall comes around and we have to completely course correct. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking about turning your back on strength, don't and then when the off season comes around, you'll actually have more time to work on new projects. Instead of needing to work on strength as your Bullseye every off season, you can just keep continue strength training. Maybe wrap it up a little bit. Look, it is hard for people's in people's defense, it is hard when you need to start to add in more rides, more runs, more swims. You're thinking about your Ironman, your half Ironman. You haven't been in the pool more than once, and something has to give. So I think people turn their back on strength, not necessarily because they're anti strength, because they don't know how to manage their time, and they don't know how to weave strength training into their training as they're ramping things up. So one thing I tell my athletes a lot is that we need to have a long term perspective on strength, and so our goal with strength, depending on the athlete at this point in the season, doesn't need to be to make the biggest strength gains. Week to week. Maintenance is really important. So even if you're bringing volume of strength training down, you can still maintain the strength you built, which is important for performance and longevity and health and life, and you can still make strength gains. You just have to accept that you're going to do it at a slower rate, and that's okay. Your goal is to continue to progressively get strong over the course of 2025 so if you reduce strength volume to make room for other stuff, but you still consistently strength training. You still consistently, consistently strength train. You will progress over the year. This is a little slower rate. And then, on a practical note, I would say one way to strength train at this time of year, when you are time starved, is to shorten your workouts. And if you can have some strength equipment at home, it's a huge time saver. Being able, just like we you taught us coaches to do with runs, suggesting athletes do quick, 20 minute runs before dinner, to build tissue resilience. Same thing goes with strength. You if you have a kettle bell at home, through how to prepare dumbbells. At home, you can do short, 20 minute workouts before dinner, other times throughout your day, on the weekend, and that volume slowly adds up, and it's a really good way to make sure you're staying on top of your strength training as training builds.
Matt Dixon 27:56
Yeah, I'll add two things to that that thinks that the other venue for particularly for folks that travel with work, is strength is a great thing. Like most hotels have pretty decent or even if they're grubby, some form of gym in there. And you obviously choose the hotel that has the gym, if at all possible, but it's really good for something to do on the road. Obviously, running is because you just need a pair of shoes, and in most climates and environments, you're okay to run. But strength is a good tool for travel. I would say the other part of it that you mentioned their longevity and health, I think it's important when athletes start to get focused in on, let's make it up. Someone's racing. Ironman, Texas, someone's racing. Pick a race major in in May, in in Europe, whatever it might be, and you get very pigeon holed, narrow focus on this race. But why are we doing this in the first place? Yes, we want you to get faster, and yes, you want to achieve your goals. But there's a long arc for the vast majority of folks, in which strength training has these incredibly important, non negotiable benefits that we should be doing year round, for cognitive health, for tissue health, for bone density, for body composition, for energy throughout the day, for longevity. Says all of this stuff that you want to be doing it anyway as a human being. So the last thing you would do is turn your back on that. And I would actually argue that that is strength training for a regular human being. That's not training for an event. It's that and daily activity and exercise, which is really the go back to the bull's eye, is there? So so on a broader perspective for our for our health and quality of life, we shouldn't be skipping it in the first place, yeah and yeah, I think it's good.
Max Gering 29:44
Okay, one last thing before someone's listening this, okay, but how do I how do I not turn my back on strength? Another tip is, don't underestimate the power of body weight workouts. So if you don't have equipment at home, and you're at home and you want to bang out a strength workout, if you do enough body weight strength work, it will help you achieve your goals, and it will keep. Moving forward and maintaining the strength you have. So just not having that all or nothing mindset around strength. Between an hour and the gym and nothing, there's a good 20 minute transition in there,
Matt Dixon 30:11
yeah? Like lunges, body weight, squats, dips, dips, push ups, etc, just particularly as a bridge, yeah? So if you've got four days you don't have gym access, whatever it might be. Well, we'll do some of that every day, and you you go from there. So I'm going to let you lead the the next one. What's, what's your next mistake? If you've got something for me? Yeah,
Max Gering 30:29
I want to ask you about, you talk a lot the triathletes. Ramp, we're about to do a webinar. So if you're listening to this, when this comes out, we're going to be doing a webinar on March 13. In the last webinar that I was a part of, we talked a lot about the triathlete ramp and how it's a big mistake that people make. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, for people that have no idea what I'm talking about,
Matt Dixon 30:50
yeah, try athletes ramp. It's good you. I think a huge mistake of and this, this is either folks that are coming out of the new year. So I talked about this, or, alright, it's the X in the calendar, you know, March 1 time to go. And it's a little bit like, if you're a really powerful motorcycle, and you you've got an open highway in front of you, and you just yank the throttle, you go, whoop, and you go flying off the back of the motorcycle. That that's what I see a lot of athletes doing, where they sort of go from zero to hero way too quickly, and it comes with a cascade of challenges. So how does someone accumulate massive fatigue or massive injury risk? And of course, relative to life stress, total training load, in terms of volume and intensity, is one factor, but a place where athletes get a lot of immediate injuries, Achilles, calves, hamstrings, a lot of lower leg is from going from x in the calendar and accelerating too quickly, adding load. So the actual ultimate weekly training load combination, index of intensity and volume might actually not be too much, but they get up there too quickly. They try and get up there in a week. It's almost like a stepper. And if you can ramp and just take a little bit more of a patient, 234, week, slow, incremental build. The body has time to become familiar with the stress and adapt to that added stress and then get stable and consistent. So quite often, athletes get a lot of fatigue, accumulation and injury, not because their regular training program is too much, but they've ramped to it too quickly, and so that really patient, and that takes the long arc of perspective. Number one, it also means, hopefully for athletes, it's a big part of the reason we talk about the value and power of off season, prep phase, etc, your first point around strength that you've almost you've net, you never let the boulder stop, because it's really hard to get going again. So that's sort of, I would say, one thing that is incredibly important. So if you are behind the eight ball right now and and you're sort of getting going, the last thing you can do, even if you do, there's nothing wrong with having an X in the calendar, but you have to remain objective with what's my starting line right here, and so if you are getting more serious, it's a steady ramp. Always, there's never, I always like to say there's never a bang, it's always a whoosh. So if you're cresting a hill on the bike, you don't, bam, accelerate. You whoosh over the top. If you're it's all about momentum. So you're, you're looking to build momentum and and I always like to talk about it if someone's just starting their journey. But even here, when it's go time, it's building mini victories. I i One of the coaches I really like, I like I know him personally, and I enjoy chatting to him, but I also monitor his stuff on social media, a guy called Steve Magnus, fantastic guy. He's been on the show once or twice. He always talks about winning workouts. It's such a great thing. You know you you, there's very few times you should fail in workouts. Well, you shouldn't fail weeks of workouts. Either you should. You should build it. And it comes to that, how do you actually get ready? And I think this really couples with, over the last few months, we've been encouraging athletes to have a little bit of capacity to grow. And so what we have in our life is most of us have very busy lives. We've got family, friends, social life, work commitments. You're at Purple Patch. You've got a lot of work commitments. Because I expect everything. And and then you've got leftover time for all of your good support and habits and training. And so many people just run up to their capacity or dump a training program on top of life. So I'd sort of say the triathletes ramp is two things. Number one, accelerating up to load too quickly, or just thinking, all right, I've been really patient up till now, but now I need to go and do my 20 hours, because I've only got eight weeks until x, and that's where people just get absolutely destroyed. And it ruins seasons, it ruins enjoyment, it ruins performance potential. So I, I would almost say that's our number one thing is patience. Patience, patience. Long term thinking, Yeah,
Max Gering 35:44
you said, what you said at the end. First of all, I love I love all that, and completely agree. And what you said then got me thinking. You said, they see the eight weeks, and then they ramp it up. And I'm curious to hear your thoughts. I think a lot of it stems from people getting anxiety about a race, anxiety about a deadline, and then they make all these decisions. I hadn't been doing this. I haven't been doing enough of that. I need to I need to compensate, and that causes them to make a lot of mistakes. And so I think if athletes can just do a double take, look in the mirror, talk themselves, and make sure that they're operating from a rational place, a place of patience, a place of perspective, and not from a place of anxiety. They're much more likely to make the good decisions on their own and not make that mistake of ramping too quickly.
Matt Dixon 36:31
I had, I had a call with an athlete, conversation with an athlete yesterday, where I encouraged them not to start building cages around themselves. They were so worried about a summer Iron Man and whether they were going to be ready or not, and if they were going to be able to finish it, and that all of their mind, all of their emotion, was drawing to what ifs I said, don't worry about something that may or may not happen. Let's come back and let's control the things that you can control right now, and ultimately, you have whether it's eight weeks, whether it's 16 weeks, whether it's 12, whether it's 24 weeks, the only thing we can do is control the things that we can control, and do the very best things, you know, execute as well as we tend to get ourselves as ready as possible. And even if you do all of that, you still are going to have setbacks. You still are going to have fears. And I don't know many athletes that get to the race and say, I've done everything and I'm perfect. You still are always going to get to a race and be like, what else could I have done that's a really normal human condition, you know, we don't be like, I'm ready, and so yeah, like, lean into the things that you can control, logic, not emotion and and double down and have a little bit of patience. And I will say it's remarkable. I had flu last week and start of the week, as you know, a couple of days that I was just really knocked out, and when I had flu, I couldn't even imagine lifting up a weight weight or going for a run. You know, you just feel terrible. And yet, now a week later, I felt very strong, very healthy. Got back to it, did a couple of strength sessions, did a run session, etc. I can't even remember what it was like or how I felt so sick. You know, the body is such an amazing adaptive mechanism that you just need to trust that if you string together two three weeks, the whole world can feel different, look different, be different, physiologically. So you got to trust the process a little bit. I would say, yeah.
Max Gering 38:39
And for before we before we dive into the next one, because I know we we need to keep moving. We could talk forever. Something that came to mind is, when I said anxiety, we talked about this just now, is there is that person's they're nervous about their Iron Man in the summer. They're also excited. And there's a lot of duality in life and sport. Nothing's things are a lot of things aren't black and white. And so think, as a coach, something, I was just having a conversation with an athlete who's joining Briar in Texas, and I was talking to her about, on one hand, we want to be very excited about the race, and we do want to think about it, because it's your a race, and we're driving towards it, and it's really important for you. At the same time, we can't be overly excited and be consumed by it all the time. And so yes, have you know, as you know, as you start your season, as you ramp things up, it's important to think about what you're training for and why and and have, you know, a fire under you to help you prioritize your things you need to prioritize, but be aware that it's not too much.
Matt Dixon 39:34
Yeah, I think that's great, like a small tangential point in that when athletes are really getting ready for a races. And I love to carve out a little block of time to say, Yeah, spend 30 minutes going through, you know, your plan, your visualization, whatever you like to do, but then try and compartmentalize that and say, I've thought about that for today. So now I'm not going to obsess about it, rather than it can become all consuming and it. Exhausting. Frankly, yeah, if you spend two weeks messing around anything, it becomes exhausting and tiresome. You want to be excited on race day. You don't want to be too fatigued. So anyway, it's a tangent. All right, I'm going to do a I'm going to do another one. Here. Go for it. I'm going to Banner it as food for fuel. And here's a big mistake that folks make. We spent a lot about building really good nutritional habits. And, you know, anchoring around protein, and the very simple rule of thumb, meeting about a pound a gram of protein per pound of body weight, very challenging for people to get in, but that's important for your foundation of health. Eating a ton of fiber, so lots of fruits and vegetables and some carbohydrates to support training. But one of the big mistakes that I see athletes make is they sort of have got healthy eating as a platform, but then we start to ramp and build training load, and for a whole host of reasons, athletes fail to then layer on the required additional calories. And most of those additional calories need to come in terms of fuel, a little bit more protein, but a lot more carbohydrate, starchy carbohydrate. And athletes fail to do that and start to get into a lot of problems, lot of maladaptation, tissue decline, injuries, fatigue, performance challenges, etc. So I would say food for fuel, not what ramping calories to support that added training load. Love your thoughts on that one? Yeah,
Max Gering 41:28
I think it's this is for all the athletes that are okay. Now my Ironman training is kicking in. I need to go from off season to Ironman training, because your weekends, I think, are going to look a lot different as you start to ramp training. Ramp training up. All of a sudden, you have maybe you have an over distance swim on Friday, you have a long ride and a brick workout on Saturday, and then a long run on Sunday. And I see this mistake most around weekends, because the training midweek, a lot of times this time still stands, tends to stay the same time starved hour on the bike on a Tuesday, but it's during the week. Athletes are forgetting that they need to fuel, not just to recover from the session they did, but already start fueling for the next session. If you finish a if you finish a long brick workout on a Saturday afternoon, and you're waking up early on Sunday to ride and you're coming off a big week and you did a big strength session or a swim on Friday, the engine's burning, and you need to remember that you're not feeling in a vacuum. So that's something that I've seen people struggle with a lot. And I think you're right. It's hard because sometimes it feels counterintuitive. They've just spent the off season trying to eat healthier and eat less carbohydrates, because the training volume has been down and that habits been ingrained. And so athletes, what I would suggest they do is look at their training if they're not using a program like fuel in look at your training in the beginning of the week and make a note to yourself where you need to be extra intentional about fueling, because, again, it's habitual, and so if you're not cognizant of it, going into the week, you won't easily forget and just resort back to your old habits, of which will result in under fueling.
Matt Dixon 43:13
I'm glad you actually brought up fuel in because it's it's interesting, because if what that and that, they're a great team over there. But one of the things that enables it is, sort of empowers athletes to put intention behind their eating habits. And I always like, I've had a discussion on this show with Scott Tyndall, the co founder of fuel in the talks about the off season is great to cement foundational habits, but I think you're exactly right then it's a bit weird, emotionally and physically and logistically challenging to start pile on a whole bunch more rice or breads or pastas, and there's an emotional like, I have the same thing, and that's where people run into trouble. So I do like their platform and system to say, No, this is a great meal that you're going to have, which is more of a sort of health focused meal Foundation, building blocks, adaptations, nutrients. This is a meal, either priming, as you talked about, or post that's really performance that you need to layer on top of that, high quality nutrition, more fuel to get ready or to focus, and taking some of the guesswork out for that. A couple of weeks ago, we had Panos cocolas Show. Great, great interview that we did with him, his his wife, Helen, leverages fueling is not a triathlete, an athlete, but how she's had so much success. She said, I stopped looking at eating habits says, What do I want, and more, what do I need. And I think athletes can learn a lot from that. That's a lifestyle sort of athlete, as if you might label her anything, but it's like, what do I need, not what do I want? And it shifts the whole relationship that that's why I started with few food for fuel. I. Can't help but tell one quick story of this, and I think I've told it on the show before, but we had on on the live bike, as you saw, and I told a story about Sarah pian piano, Purple Patch Pro. I've told many stories about Sarah as she's a fantastic athlete and person, but in the the latter stages of Sarah's career, where she was probably 37 years of age and had done really well, won multiple Iron Man's and in the last couple of years, she just went bam and went up. And in reflection, I as a coach, didn't change very much. Now, another year, another year, another year. We went on, but the biggest injection that we had was really the starting point of fuel in because Sarah found Scott Tyndall. Sarah was the first triathlete that Scott Tyndall worked with, and Sarah and Scott in many of you think always, never worked with a professional triathlete, and now you've got a professional triathlete working with them, is that? Is that a flaw? But actually it was the reverse. It was complete gift, because he looked and just said, I don't care what you're trying to do, you're not eating enough. And he was having a re on a daily basis, 1500 to 2000 more calories every day, like an huge extra 30 or 40% of calories she was eating 456, 7000, calories, depending on the train load, every day. And that was the injection where, for the last couple of years, it just went bam. And you know what really improved her staying power off the bike. And I remember thinking having arguments with Scott. This is only four or five years ago. Arguments because I thought he was a lunatic, because he wanted her to fuel with 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour. You can't do that. Scott, how the sport changes. He was, without doubt, one of the guys on the frontier of that hole, not only being able to absorb more calories, but having the direct performance benefit of doing so, not in the first five hours, but the staying power. And so I don't think he gets enough credit in the sport. He was a frontier changer in many ways. So yeah, really interesting guy, not shackled by the sport, not institutionalized, and he's coming in. He came from rugby, British rowing, Maple Leafs, hockey, you know, professional sport. But just like, you need more calories. Very simple, yeah, so it's
Max Gering 47:30
a, it's a big performance unlock, and it's a, you know, if you don't do it, it's a mistake, and it can completely derail your season before it starts. And if you do do it, it's a huge, huge performance unlock. And I think the mindsets shift to your mindset. It's not a hassle. It's a part of your plan. It takes a little bit more attention. And just last thing on intention is, do you ever ask an athlete, you know, I had an athlete I didn't feel so good in my long run, I say, Okay, what did you eat before? What did you eat Saturday? What did you eat Friday? And they're like, I don't know. I don't remember. If you don't really remember what you're eating. It's a sign that you probably need to be a little more intentional about what you're eating. And that's it. That's a good place to start if you're figuring out how you can implement this.
Matt Dixon 48:11
All right, I'm gonna get, we got time for one more, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna let you have this one. I think we've had, think I've had a couple. So give me, give, give me your last one, and we'll, we'll call it a day.
Max Gering 48:21
All right, let's go with fun. That's what we started to talk about in the beginning. Athletes forgetting to have fun, losing a bit of perspective as they start to ramp things up. And want to hear, I mean, you've coached some of the most successful athletes, successful executives, who are all successful in sport. And I think back to the Super Bowl, which wasn't that long ago. When you see people winning, whether it's individuals or team, they have this swagger about them. They they've worked really hard, but they also emit this energy as if they're having a lot of fun and they're really enjoying the process. I think you see a lot when you see that when you look at professional cyclists, when they ride together, they have a lot of fun. Yes, they work hard. So just your how you think athletes make that mistake of not having fun or not having perspective about their performance journey as they wrap things up?
Matt Dixon 49:16
Yeah, it's, um, it's interesting. You've gone there. I what comes there's two things that come up for me on this. I reflect to the pro squad, world class sport, yeah, like ruthless and with, with the pros that we coach and and I got to coach a lot of pros, probably more than 50 over the course of the career, but we always had 10 to 12, and we have some real personalities. And the foundation of the results that we did achieve was, I really wanted athletes to be healthy and and so, and that's well versed. We've talked about that. So having this performance based layer, as we call it, now, you. Right and those that were most successful, the ones that that had the right mindset with that that was the really, the differenti. So actually, the most talented athletes that I coach weren't always the ones that you've heard all of their names and the stories on this show about they were the ones that that really unlocked. Were the ones the right mindset. But the thing that took it to the next level, where we became, where I almost talked about, sometimes performance was inevitable, and we just was, was team, and the absolute power of the reinforcement of being a part of a team and and all of the support and accountability that that went along with that, and it diluted some of the pressure on each of the athletes shoulders, but a big part of it, it was, it was high standards. Every athlete was highly ambitious. I was freaking competitive and ambitious. I wanted to coach world champions, period. Like it was like, results driven, but we had fun and it the world was actually pretty simple for us. You know, we had really with the the same nail, the basics. We want you to focus on the boulders, not the sand. So these are the non negotiable habits that everyone is going to adhere to. We are all part of this team. We're all looking to become the best that we can be. And everyone's welcome in this journey, okay, the sort of there's a couple of teams in Britain where they have a no dickheads policy, okay, pardon the French, but it's like, no, this is us. We're Purple Patch, and it's really fun. When we go on training camps, we would laugh and we would be silly and we would have fun and we were deadly serious about performance. This is people giving up the normal chapter of life to go and see how good they could be with no certainty of financial success and fun like a lifetime of experiences. Laura Sidd, Rachel Joyce, Chris liado Tim, just fun, and it was such a catalyst. It was so liberating. And interestingly, with the executives and C suite folk that I work with, it was exactly the same, you know, where I was like, first thing I want to do is get you better energy, optimal cognitive health, etc, commit to this journey. You got to do it, whether you're climbing Kilimanjaro or you're training for an Ironman, getting ready for a marathon, whatever it might be. But what started to happen when Yeah, and it does take commitment, and it takes organization, and it takes some certain amount of sort of sacrifice. I don't like that word, but you know what I mean? It's like, Yeah, I'm doing this. But what would come out of it was this real buzz, like, it's just like, Wow, I feel more in control, and I feel like I'm making progress. And it's really fun. And in both of those, the joy of it was not by any victory, any World Championship, any you know, breakthrough crossing the line. It was just the process and the people that really, really where you look at them, you're like, how the hell do you do that? It's the ones that just freaking love it. That conversation that I had a couple of weeks ago with Panos, great example. He's done a whole bunch of amazing physical stuff, let alone how successful he's been in life, but the heartbeat of it is fun and ensuring that this journey, for me, of taking on this challenge, doesn't need to be a second job. No one cares how fast you are. No one care. People want you, your friends, your family, I think, want you to be successful. Want you to have a great race. Want you to cross the first finish line or qualify for Iron Man or whatever it might be. But you're doing this for yourself, and the more that you embrace the journey, the better results are and and I think in many ways, I'm going on a monolog here, so sorry, Max, but the metrics of this can be, can become really paralyzing, because people feel like they're getting judged every day. And I thought barriers, and that's why metrics are quantifiable. Stuff is very, very important at the same time. Could Have fun, could have a little bit of poetry in this. You know?
Max Gering 54:19
Yeah, I love that. It's true, and I love that. That's why, that's why I asked the question. And to wrap it up, because I know we are coming up to time, you both have to continue working for the day, time together, the fun, with everything we just talked about, you're only going to be able to have fun if you do those, those first things that we talked about, right? Because when you don't have clarity and you're not making good decisions, and you're fatigued and you're getting injured, and all the different things that we talked about, from not fueling, from not prioritizing strength training, from having too much intensity across disciplines, you're not going to be able to have fun. So on one it's it's chicken or the egg type situation. So. Um, you need to remember to have fun, but you also need to do the things right in order to be able to have fun. So, yeah, that's what, that's what comes to mind with athletes. But yeah, and it's really shocking,
Matt Dixon 55:12
have standards for yourself. And you know, look, winning is fun. Usually is about that, like swagger in order to do that. That doesn't happen by accident, and so you need to commit. You need to do the right thing. And you know a Purple Patch, brand value is serious with a wink. We are deadly serious about performance. Today's live bike class is a great example. How many times have we been silly in there. At the same time, it was very, very important to me as a coach, that people were doing that session correctly. I want you to think about terrain. I want you to feel that that's really important. And we can have Nico undo his big hair and have Angus do a fake legal disclaimer, pretending that we're going to get sick, like all this funny, silly stuff, because it's it's fun, it should be additive to life. And so maybe that's a lovely way to end it.
Max Gering 56:09
Yeah it is. No lots of lots of good thoughts, thinking about all the athletes that need to have more fun, that should separate a little bit of their self worth from their training via the episode for a topic, for another episode, another
Matt Dixon 56:22
day, there you go. That's a good that's a good episode. We're going to do self worth and training. Let's separate them and and success will come, and you'll also have more fun. Max, thanks. Thank you very much for joining. I very much enjoy these conversations. I think they're really, really valuable, and appreciate your perspective.
56:40
Thank you for having me. It's a lot of fun. I look forward to
Matt Dixon 56:44
doing awesome. We'll see you next time. Take care guys. 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@purplepatchfitness.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
Ironman training, training optimization, webinar, strength training, nutrition, hydration, recovery, injury prevention, performance balance, off-season, ramping, fueling, fun in training, athlete mindset, team cohesion.