Episode 338: Q&A Part 1 with Fuelin’s Scott Tindal

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Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!

Matt Dixon and Scott Tindal discuss the evolving landscape of nutrition in endurance sports, particularly in triathlon. Scott, co-founder of Fuelin, shares insights from the Hawaii IRONMAN World Championship, emphasizing the importance of tailored nutrition plans based on individual energy expenditure. He highlights the need for athletes to balance caloric intake with training intensity, noting that high-intensity athletes may require up to 120 grams of carbohydrates per hour, while lower-intensity athletes should consume less.

They also discuss the importance of consistent, high-quality nutrition for overall health and performance during races and daily life.

Matt and Scott discuss the evolution of nutrition and fueling in triathlon, with a focus on the importance of quality nutrition and total calorie intake. Scott reflects on his work with Sarah Piampiano and the changes in nutrition and fueling over the years. The conversation highlights the importance of day-to-day nutrition and the relationship between nutrition, sleep, and training. Matt and Scott discuss the challenges of athletes consuming high amounts of carbohydrates and the importance of context in nutrition. Scott explains the relationship between power output, energy expenditure, and carbohydrate intake.

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Episode Timestamps

00:-3:47 Introduction

3:47-9:20 Background of Fuelin

10:15-17:30 Nutrition Trends

23:00-44:28 Racing Nutrition of IRONMAN World Championship in Kona

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Full Transcript
Matt Dixon 00:00

I'm Matt Dixon, and welcome to the purple patch podcast. The mission of purple patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential. Through the lens of athletic potential, you reach your human potential. The purpose of this podcast is to help time starved people everywhere integrate sport into life.

Matt Dixon 00:29

And welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast. As ever, I'm your host, Matt Dixon, and today is part one of two conversations that I'm going to have with nutrition expert Scott Tindal. Scott is the co-founder of Fuelin, a partner of Purple Patch in the big realm of nutrition and fueling, and is, by all accounts, a world expert in nutrition. His origin started off in professional rugby. He went to Britain. He worked with British rowing and various organizations over there. He then went on to Toronto and Canada to work with the Toronto Maple Leafs, the very large NHL team, of course. And about eight years ago, he dabbled in triathlon, starting to work with professional athlete Sarah Piampiano. Many of you guys will be familiar with Sarah as she was a long time Purple Patch Pro. And from there, Scott got together with Jonathan Lee, the founder of fuelin and together, they have built up one of the most dominant and most influential resources and apps, educational apps for fueling and nutrition across endurance sports. And I invited Scott back to the show today to have a discussion around fueling and athletes. Scott was recently at the Hawaii IRONMAN World Championship, so I thought it would be fun to get him on the show and have a little bit of a coach's chin wack we go through various aspects today, starting to unpack why it is very, very different. So far as caloric needs, if you are a lower level amateur athlete relative to what the peers are doing. You don't need to consume as many calories. We also get some of Scott's insights around the professional sport in Kona, and we unpack the reasons behind that Kristian Blummenfelt throw up that so many of you would have seen on the course in Hawaii. It's a tremendously entertaining conversation. It's very simple. It's getting a lovely chance to welcome Scott and I in person to have a nice conversation. And then in part two of the show, we're going to broaden our perspective on nutrition and performance, and we're going to talk about athletes, people and individuals that are looking to up level over the course of 2025 we unpack some of the recommendations of what you can do as an athlete right now with your eating habits to help set you up for a great year ahead. We also discuss the important elements if you're looking to improve your body composition. And finally, we talk about longevity and daily energy and what are the key elements to help you drive your performance on a day to day basis. That's in part two. But today it's all about athletes. Kona and well, a coach's conversation in nutrition. It's a lot of fun as ever. This is ad free, promo free if you want to continue discussion, if you want to get a hold of either the team at fuel in or at purple patch info at purplepatchfitness.com you can find the fueling team at fuelin.com that's fuelin.com/purplepatch. And you can find all of the purple patch programming at purplepatchfitness.com but until now, it gives me great pleasure to welcome Scott Tindal to the show. It is the meat and potatoes.

Matt Dixon 03:51

All right, it is the meat and potatoes. And once again, our star guest, we are in person. Lovely to have you back on the show. Scott Tindal, co-founder of fuelin Welcome once again.

Scott Tindal 04:02

Thanks. Mattie,

Matt Dixon 04:03

it's good to see you. Absolute

Scott Tindal 04:05

pleasure to be here.

Matt Dixon 04:06

It's good we are. We are bunched together. We're going to share this space. And it feels a bit weird for you guys that are watching the show rather than listening to the show. When I first met Scott, it was intimidation on his bulk and his size. And

Scott Tindal 04:23

what are you saying?

Matt Dixon 04:24

You are a Shrinking Man. The only thing I would say that you've still got me on for sure is, well, let's just check, yeah, yeah, I

Scott Tindal 04:31

definitely got you. There

Matt Dixon 04:32

is a there is a wet noodle coming out of my T shirt. That's my arm. I need to get into the purple patch strength. And you are still a man of steel, but good to have you here in person.

Scott Tindal 04:42

Yes, thanks for that intro. I have been described as little Tindal these days by my friends. There you go, shrinking violet. I think always endurance exercise.

Matt Dixon 04:52

Yeah, it's good. It's good for you, good for the soul, good for the brain, for sure. But yeah, you've been doing half IRONMAN racing. Do marathons now it's, it's been a journey for you, huh? Yeah,

Scott Tindal 05:04

I guess that's all part of the the fuel engine, isn't it into what we've created. And I guess experiential learning is something that I often bang on about. And so I guess throwing yourself into the mix with endurance sports is probably part of it. And, yeah, it's certainly been a journey for me. And I think learning about training, yes, and foremost, through you and other coaches, and then certainly putting into practice our philosophy of fueling into into play and learning and living it, and, yeah, experiencing it. So

Matt Dixon 05:37

let me ask you, are you enjoying the journey?

Scott Tindal 05:41

I love it. Great. Yeah, I even had a period of time where I wasn't actually enjoying lifting weights that much, and so it's been a big shift. But after this next marathon, I'm I said I'm just going back to the gym, and I'm going to lift a lot of heavy things and get some size back. So fantastic

Matt Dixon 06:00

good stuff. Well, what we're going to focus on? We're going to do a couple of these episodes we're going to record, and today, we're going to focus mostly around the Hawaii Ironman World Championships. You just returned. I was not there. I was in Orlando, Florida, of all places, working with a leadership team there. So I, for first time in many years. Missed the Hawaii race this year, but it was a spectacular race. But obviously we want to have a conversation anchored more in the fueling and nutrition side and some of the some of your observations as an expert in nutrition, but before we dive into that, should be an interesting show, and certainly me watching it as a spectator, I certainly gathered a few of my own observations. So I'm interested to hear what you think of what I'm going to say as well. But, um, but I'd love to check in on on fueling and and how it's going for you guys as a team for um, for context, for you listeners, if you if you don't know your co founder, uh, Jonathan Lee, is a long time purple patch athlete, so I've got to be a little bit of a passenger on the journey so far of fuel in from, from really, Jonathan's idea collaborating with yourself, you building up, really, what has now become the major nutrition of fuelin brand in the sport so far as Nutrition coaching and so where do we find you now as a team in fuelin Where are you guys? And I'd love to know what your plans are for the next two or three years.

Scott Tindal 07:31

Yeah. I mean, you talk about Jonathan. I still think back I was traveling through Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Jonathan sent me an app at the time, which had a panda falling off a box, rolling down a hill, and it still sticks with my mind. And obviously you would have seen, or you may have seen, and the listeners may have seen the fuel in unicorns, yeah, at COVID, and it's gone from one to two to we had four there this year. And it's all very funny. And the reason for that, you know, from evolution, was I stitched up Jonathan to put on the fuel in unicorn outfit and go behind Jan Frodeno, who was handing out water on Pilani back in 2022 because he was in we obviously didn't know yarn Well, I didn't know yeah time. So that video went viral. Then, you know, Jan ended up reaching out to me. I started working with Jan. Jan then ends up investing in fuel in and now he's our Chief Performance Officer. So it's, it's funny how things go in in circles, and how life happens. And you know, that fateful day of just, you know, saying, Well, let's try and get some views on Instagram. It worked out pretty well in the end. So look, it's, as you say, it's been, it's been a journey, you know, where we are. And we made this comment. Jordan Blanco was talking. She sent me a lovely message, and she said, Well, look how far you've come. Yeah, when you know, I did a recent podcast with Yan and Daniela in Kona, and you know, to have the opportunity to work with and speak to, I mean, the goats of the sport, like, for sure. I mean, I sort of pinch myself and think, wow, how did I get to here? And that's that's certainly exciting. And I think there's a lot to come. So you asked, what's to come? Obviously, we're very happy with, you know, then the number of athletes who are using the platform and the partners we've got from teams like yourself, coaches like yourself, extending from their platforms, from training peaks to try.to final surge and soon to be human go, which I think is really exciting. And we're just broadening that integration garment, direct integration with those now that's now live, and then I think we'll build out those integrations. You know, I have talked to you many times from aura to whoop. You know, as we start to build that in, athletes want to see that. They want to see, How does sleep? How does the heart rate, HIV, how does that relate to or correlate? Nutrition. And I think, from my perspective, nutrition, and I think this is what we're doing very differently, is, I think a lot of people position, you know, sleep in its own silo, yeah, mutual training in its mutually exclusive silo. But if you think about it, nutrition is actually the one thing that is central to everything, yep. And there's this bi directional relationship, which, again, a lot of people, I don't know whether they don't think about or they fail to acknowledge it. They don't see that relationship between, say, food and sleep. Now, if you eat poorly, you can have poor sleep. If you have poor sleep, you can eat poorly. Same training, yeah, if you don't train, you probably have a likelihood just to go, I'll eat whatever. You start training, and it starts to create this sort of switch. It flicks the switch in your brain, doesn't it? Where it says, you say, You know what? I just did some training. Maybe I don't feel like a burger. Maybe I feel like eating some salad, some good quality protein, plant or animal. And so again, there's that relationship, you eat, well, you probably, you know what, I feel healthy. I'm going to try. And that's cool.

Matt Dixon 11:06

It's an interesting like we always talk about the performance base layer, and actually creating, when you have your pardon the pun, performance recipe, it creates a weave of a of a really robust platform, a great sort of fabric of performance. When you think about how those cascade, you know, Keystone Habits, where quite often we're doing a lot of work at the moment with leadership teams, mostly for folks that are sedentary or really struggling just to get movement into their life. And quite often, we don't actually start, interestingly, with nutrition, because a lot of folks are just getting 3000 steps a day, which, of course, is a direct cause to all cause mobility. But when you start to progress people along the continuum, and they start to move more, they feel a little success, and then they are ready to actually think about, oh, maybe I want to think about what I'm eating here, and maybe I want to think about sleep, etc, and, and it's when you can get the unlock of really basic habits around nutrition that you start to see the vortex occur of better energy, better you know, more robust immune system, all of these components, better cognitive functions. So always right at the center is, is nutrition. It does relate to every aspect so, so.

Scott Tindal 12:25

And I think that is exciting, like when we when we framework that, and we start to build these connections, and that's what we're now doing. I think we're starting to see athletes get that, oh, I can't get it. And then it becomes this. Or maybe it's not just about races Exactly. Maybe this is about life. And I always laugh when athletes go I got no more races. Now I don't need nutrition. I'm like, what you're not going to eat? Yeah? Like, just because you don't have a race doesn't mean you can't eat well. And so then I know we're going to get into that later, but I that's probably something that we're really working on now, how do we create, again, that engagement? How do you think about maybe blocks throughout the year? Yes, you've got racing blocks, but then you've got off season blocks. You've got, you know, change in focus, like I said, Now after the marathon, I'm just probably going to reduce the running volume, lift weights, change my focus to putting on some size maybe, you know, focus on that. And that's going to revolve around nutrition, because I'm going to have taken probably more calories, yep, probably adjust the macronutrient split, but be very aware of that. And so that's certainly a key focus. I think the other really interesting things that we've got new app dropping should be November, really soon. UX UI completely changed, much more intuitive, more focus on giving easier visibility over some data, building in more and more AI into it to provide, again, more feedback the food tracking remains as good as ever, or I think the best on currently on offer in terms of being able to just speak casually to scooter our AI food tracker, and just saying, you know exactly what you have for breakfast. I have breakfast this morning, and I'm playing catch up on eating after being in Kona, which I know sounds funny, but I was on my feet the whole time, yeah, probably did a bit too much. So this morning was sort of, you know, two two hits of protein in a drink after a run with milk, slice of sourdough, two eggs, two handfuls of baby spinach, handful of blueberries. And I just literally said that to Scooter, and it just logged everything. And obviously, you know, from that ease and practicality perspective, that's what we're really focusing on. Now, with your lens,

Matt Dixon 14:48

it doesn't do the dishes as well. Does that? Unfortunately? No, yeah,

Scott Tindal 14:51

I just gave that to Jordan,

Matt Dixon 14:53

fantastic. Yes, it's, it's very important. Well, it's, by the way, your your challenge. Is the same for any coach, where folks finish their last race and then they think they're done, and then they come back six months later and and they repeat the pattern. But listeners to this shown know all about that, because I've been talking about it for many, many months, and are on that side. I will say, I just want to shine a light on one thing, which is, I think when, when athletes build a relationship with fueling or whatever program, quite often they enter thinking just about race, fueling and and how they can perform best in race, but, but you have always had a broader perspective. So I want to ask you a question around that, because you individually, as an expert, have a long history in World Class nutrition performance across many sports, rowing, ice hockey, with the Maple Leafs, professional rugby, originally, all sorts of sports and and you entered triathlon via a Purple Patch Pro Sarah Piampiano, we've talked about that many times, but that was probably seven or eight years ago now, and because we're getting older, but be really interesting, because it coming back from Kona as we start to get into the meat and potatoes. Of the meat and potatoes, if you can reflect when you first started working with Sarah 6,7, 8, years ago, and your observations then, where you were brand new to triathlon, you really were like you came in, still a world expert, but coming into this sport and and how you felt then, what your observations were in general terms to where we're at now as it pertains to nutrition, fueling at the professional level, what do you have any changes that you've seen? Well,

Scott Tindal 16:44

I think first word that comes to mind is opportunity. Yeah, I think there was a huge opportunity. And I actually spoke to Sarah the other day, and it's crazy to think it was seven years ago, then we were just reflecting on that journey and reflecting on the journey with you at Fire Station in San Francisco, you're grilling me. Look, I think back then the emergence of, look, we've always known carbohydrates are important, yeah, but it go, it's gone in these ebbs and flows. Carbohydrates are important. Back to the 60s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. Okay, maybe not as high carbohydrate intake as it is today, but certainly carbohydrates were in vogue. Then it shifted. We saw this low carb, high fat, sort of, you know, period come through, where people got excited and, you know, probably more anecdotal than actually science based, yep, we then have seen a resurgence and a renaissance, sort of of kind

Matt Dixon 17:37

of a few years, really like two to three years, correct? Yeah. However,

Scott Tindal 17:42

back in 2017 there was the research saying to come out, you had individuals like James Morton and whatnot, yeah, providing these studies. So, you know, I certainly admire and look at their research despite being a competitor. I mean, it's science, and so I can look at that science back in 2017 and go, Well, there's something to there's something to this, isn't there? The body, from a physiological standpoint, can take in way more than 60 grams an hour. Well, why aren't we doing this for those athletes who are pushing that high effort, exactly high octane effort, Sarah being one of those athletes. Matt, yeah, you came to me. Look, Sarah's inconsistent with her race performance day to day. She's inconsistent. She had some health issues around bone stress injuries. She had gut issues. So it was, it was sort of unpicking her, saying, What are you doing on a day to day basis? Okay, let's change your nutritional intake day to day, which, again, I still look at today, and it's extremely frustrating for me, for everyone to be so focused on race fueling. It's not that hard, like, you know, train your gut. Work out what your actual requirements are based on energy expenditure and how fast you're going, how hard you're pushing. You can work out grams per hour and train that. But what's happens to the day to day? And it's like, I don't believe you can just eat crap all the time and get away with it. It will come back to bite you in the bump, yep. So those habits you talk about, those foundations around great quality, you know, vegetables, fruits, quality proteins, great quality fats. It is super important. That's a really, every day, every day, and that's an important framework. Total calories, absolutely crucial, in line with what you're trying to achieve. Yeah, not just calories, because you can take as many calories as you want, calories in line with what you require. Yeah, huge energy expenditure, absolutely huge calorie intake, not very high calorie intake, yellow expenditure. Maybe you don't need as many calories, and therefore quality can be even further emphasized, because actually total calorie intake does require so with Sarah, back to the original question, what was the opportunity? Yeah, changing race fuel. Only huge opportunity at the at that time. And we did that. We bumped her from 50-60, grams an hour up to 101 -100, close to 120 grams an hour for a tiny, tiny female, yeah, 115 pounds, 120 pounds. That was a huge opportunity increasing protein intake at the time. You know, no one was taking in sort of two to three grams per kilo body weight of protein, and that had a huge impact on her recovery. Increasing her vegetable and fruit intake improved, I think, from the fiber intake improved at gut health FODMAPs. It was only emerging at the time, sort of Monash University in Melbourne, in university in Australia, talking about these FODMAPs, these fermentable types of carbohydrates, did an elimination diet. Instantly she felt better. She realized she didn't have to remove everything to do with gluten. She didn't have to avoid carbohydrates anymore. So now there was a specificity to her day to day nutrition and a specificity to a race fueling, including hydration, and she started to dial it in. You hear about dialing in all the time. I hear it from I'm going to dial this in, but she really did dial it in because the nutrition, day to day and race fueling was tailored to her, and that all of that became fuel in it

Matt Dixon 21:29

was you mentioned me grilling you. I'm not an easy interview, but you

21:36

were scared. Well, no, they were scared.

Matt Dixon 21:40

It's my treasure. It was Sarah, and it's important for listeners, because we all have short memories, and I want to, I want to reflect at the time you drove Sarah up to, you know, and I'll do it in pounds for the American audience, but more than a gram per pound of body weight every day, and of protein, of protein on a day to day basis. And at that time, it was just, it just felt like so much protein and and then in the racing, then we go to the racing. You were driving her up towards 100 and 120 grams. There's nothing revolutionary about this. In 2024 go back seven years ago. I felt like I was standing on the edge of of, you know, the Eiffel Tower, looking off, and I had to make a decision, am I going to jump with this guy or not? It was, it was like catching an early wave. It was absolutely crazy. But, and I say this, this was the catalyst of Sarah going from great to world class. I think it really enabled her greatest consistency that she had. She had her best results off of the back of this and and we have seen, and we'll talk about it, the sport really evolve behind this, this wave, it's been, it's been incredibly interesting to see the the emergence of this with with maybe some some, some parallels of that. So it's been a fascinating journey that I felt like I got a little like into a secret chamber, almost, and I saw this, and was like, goodness me, this is absolutely crazy. I thought you were crazy. That's why I grilled you so much, because we really wanted to make sure that I felt like you knew what you were talking about, and we went on it. And it's true. And, and I think many industries are often really positively impacted by external sources, any any sport, and this can be some of the best sports, like the biggest sports in the world, soccer, or whatever is can get institutionalized and and when you go outside of the sport and have new ideas, sometimes that can often be the unlock. And I think in the in the in the sphere of nutrition, I think that was absolutely the case yourself and others bought in this with the with the research, and it was really fascinating. I want to dive into to Kona, specifically, you talked earlier about high octane athletes, and I can't let this go if I let this go and I forget about, there is a huge disconnect in my experience working with a lot of coaches that are coaching athletes, working with a lot of athletes, and we just talked about Sarah consuming 100 grams an Hour. I see a lot of confusion with this new sphere of 100, 120 150 grams an hour, athletes, natural tendencies, and coaches, coaching athletes, driving athletes, up, up, up, up, up. But it's not always a good thing. And and it all comes down to mostly energy expenditure, caloric burn. And I want you to discuss something for the audience that I think is really important, perhaps the most valuable thing that you're going to get out today. Most athletes nowadays ride with power meters. These professional athletes, the. Male athletes are averaging more than 300 watts over the course of a nightmare. Female athletes somewhere between 222, 50 watts over the course of an Ironman, they are expending a lot of calories, and so therefore, to support their racing performance, they are able to and should consume a lot of calories. How does that change for an athlete that is riding the same distance, but only perhaps producing 120 150 watts? Can you explain the difference there for coaches that are listening? I think this is a critical piece that is so so missed. Yeah,

Scott Tindal 25:38

it's actually something popping up quite frequently for me, from coaches and from athletes who are experiencing GI distress, especially on the run and also on the bike. I mean, I think the disconnect here is everyone's seeing on social media and, you know, whatnot, that 120 grams an hour, it's just standard for athletes to do now. And you hear talks of 150 170 grams an hour, apparently, you know, there was a lot of rumors flying around. That's what Magnus was going to be taking on now, again, if you're pushing 350 watts as an average or normalized power for, you know, four hours like you probably, you know, if you can tolerate it, theoretically, it makes it makes sense. But this disconnect between a coach asking me why she threw Why isn't my female athlete not talking about female in particular, because it's an actual example. Why is my female athlete throwing up? She's only taking in 70 grams an hour? And I'm like, Okay, well, let's look at let's look at power output. Let's look at energy expenditure that is a direct relationship to the power being pushed through the bike. Oh, it's 130 watts. Okay. What does that equate to? Total energy output in terms of calories per hour, is around 300 odd calories, so she's

Matt Dixon 26:59

burning over the course of an hour, to be very clear, about 300 calories, to get my Watts and calories

Scott Tindal 27:05

all mixed up, about 300 calories, yeah. Okay, what's 50 grams of carbs per hour? That's around 200 calories, yeah? Or it is 200 calories. That are the 100 calories. Okay, you've got endogenous stores, liver, muscle, blood glycogen, yeah, you've also got fat on your body, which you will utilize despite taking in carbohydrates. There's plenty of research and some really cool research showing even intakes of up to 90 grams an hour, you can still have maximal oxidation of fat, yep, during periods of time where you take in maximal amounts of carbohydrates exactly, it's not a blocking agent. It's not it is acutely, yeah, and it can suppress utilization of fat as a fuel source acutely. But once time is extended, exactly, you start to use fat as a fuel source, because your body's like, I need calories, yep. So thinking about this athlete, 70 grams an hour is above her threshold for requirements. It's not what she needs. And so actually dropping that athlete down to even 40 or 50 grams an hour of carbohydrates, maybe every hour, taking in something like a bar, which might have some protein, some fat, some carbohydrates. Breaks up the glucose monotony. She's not that athlete is not world class. Their relative intensity is still high, yep. So still working at 65% or plus of their vo two Max, or maybe 75% of their max heart rate, whichever one you're looking at, but absolute intensity, 130 Watts versus, as you said, female pros pushing 250 watts. 240 watts is a big difference in energy expenditure for that athlete. And so again, what it comes down to is understanding how those Watts translate to energy expenditure. You can look on your training platform, training peaks. Does it wonderfully. So does triad on it gives you a work value in kilojoules. It gives you a caloric estimation in calories. You can literally do the math if you want to. And of course, the fuel in we would work it out for you, yeah, but you don't. It's not always more is better.

Matt Dixon 29:32

It's not always more is better. And in addition to that, the game that we are playing, and this is the case in calories and hydration, we're not trying to be net zero. So in other words, we're not trying to directly balance expenditure with consumption.

Scott Tindal 29:45

You will very rarely ever consume, or need to consume the exact amount that you're burning and expending. Yeah, and that, again, that will probably resolve a lot of GI issues. So. Yes, a fuel in and yes, I am personally very pro carbohydrates. Yes, however, it's not like just smash carbs for the sake of smashing carbs, much like don't smash calories just for the sake of smashing calories. Have it in context, context to you as an individual. Work out what you need as an individual through repeated testing. So documenting again. We call it carb capacity testing, fuel capacity testing, whatever you want to call it documenting your session, the type of session, bike, swim, run, the intensity, lower intensity, higher intensity, certainly the higher intensity, race pace sessions, the duration, the types of products you took in, what that equates to in terms of total carbohydrates, what that then equates to two grams per hour. But most importantly, and again, this is the piece of the puzzle that I think so many athletes and coaches forget. How did you feel? Exactly? How did you feel? Document. We document that I felt full, I felt heavy, I felt sick, I vomited, I went to the toilet. Do you know what? Okay, it doesn't mean you can't do that again and repeat exactly the same how you felt, how you did. And if actually you get reduced symptoms, that might be a case of, okay, now you're training your guard, adapting it you're adapting. But if it happens two or three times, stop hitting your head into the wall. Don't be a hero. Drop the intake down. Oh my god. I didn't feel as heavy. I actually still pushed really good watts, or the watts which I was being told to push. I didn't vomit, I didn't regurgitate, I didn't do anything in my pants. Okay, maybe a little bit less is actually better for me. And so, yeah, that I think it's look, use the science, use the numbers again. We track everything, don't

31:53

we? Yep.

Scott Tindal 31:54

I mean, we. I mean, talk about habits and things like that. I mean tracking sleep. Everyone tracks their sleep those days, and then you ask them, you know, how many hours of sleep do you get? I can think of one person in particular. Oh, I get six hours sleep, and it's been three hours, three years of tracking that, and it's still I'm on six hours sleep. Obviously still zero. I've digressed from carbohydrates, but same thing. If you're doing the same thing over and over again, you are tracking it, but you're not actually intervening with that, then why bother tracking?

Matt Dixon 32:23

I think the one of the key points that you just talked there, as well as the inspiration of pro athletes, if you want to be inspired by a pro, go through the processes they go through. So everything that you talked around with, the self assessment and the in the tracking and the elements of that, but don't shrink it and pink it. In other words, don't look at them and think Magnus is doing 170 grams. So I should be chasing towards that and XYZ, Daniella or or Taylor nearby is doing XYZ grams. So therefore that's what I need to try and do, because that's what world class do. It's the same with training methodology. Consistently. It's it's putting it into context. That's important. I want to go specifically, go ahead,

Scott Tindal 33:05

but on that, like, don't be surprised, though, not all pros are pros.

Matt Dixon 33:10

Not all pros are pros at well, yeah,

Scott Tindal 33:12

I can think of like, Sarah, you went back. Sarah took it on. Yeah, she wanted to learn she wasn't so pig headed or big headed, I should say that she felt like she knew it all. She was inquisitive. And I would say I think most of the female athletes I've worked with have been fantastic in terms of, they've pushed me, but they've also pushed themselves to learn something new. And unfortunately, there are athletes out there who don't want to listen, and I think that ends up biting them in the bum in the end, because you said, happened time and time again with what's going on with them. And I think, like, you know, I think of the athletes that I get to work with at the moment, and they receptive to new ideas, to testing, to intervening, to assessing, and then it's that team approach, with the coach, with the athlete and with myself. And Holly is a good example. Obviously. You know, congratulations, Holly for the birth of your girl. Leading up to that like throughout the experience of working with her. She's inquisitive. We would meet once a week. Talk about what's going on, how training is going, what she's eating, is it working? And that's coaching as well. Well, just numbers. Just numbers. The

Matt Dixon 34:33

highest performer, the champions in life. One of their key character traits is coachability, understanding that they need a team around them and really effective, driving effectiveness and community communication, collaboration, feedback, both directions, giving feedback and receiving. And that's exactly what you're endorsing. I want to talk about Kona. You came back. I was not there. We got there eventually, in the last 510 minutes. I just want to have a couple of observations from Kona. First, first thing that. As you were, there was there anything new that came out of this Kona for listeners to keep an eye on, or maybe consider an integrating in their own recipe? If you recall that, did you see anything that was interesting in

Scott Tindal 35:14

terms of like product or in terms of product technology, technology,

Matt Dixon 35:18

anything, and you can go outside of nutrition, if you want here I saw outside of four unicorns, rather than,

Scott Tindal 35:24

yeah, there were, there were four unicorns, fuelin unicorns. No, I didn't actually see anything that was groundbreaking, or I saw some cooling vests that I sort of went there. Yeah, I wasn't that impressed with that. I saw some interesting setups on the bikes. I noticed a lot of everyone had the bottle stacked bottles on top with integrated hydration, certainly for the pros, which I really liked in the arrow. Obviously, there's an arrow there. I have heard it's going to be banned the bottle on top facing backwards, because it's creating a bit like the fair the fairing. Yeah. So I think that is going to be banned, but if it's not, then certainly it looks advantageous, certainly Sam laid low, had that set up on it. What I thought was good about that setup was, I imagine it's fuel in a one liter bottle, fuel in the one liter bottle underneath that, and then in the integrated system, I imagine is what they're doing is putting water into there, yeah, so they can refill, if they can grab a bottle at the aid stations, I certainly saw a lot of missed bottle grabs, which came back to bite some athletes on the bump. But I imagine they're just filling up the integrated system and then carrying three liters of fuel within a one liter bottle. Theoretically you could carry 160 grams of carbs. So I think that's that was interesting observation. I think using special needs in a race like Kona, I think hindsight probably fill it with water, and at least if you don't need to use it, don't use it. But if you've missed all the aid stations because they're just not grabbing them. I think having that special needs, or athlete needs, as they call it now, certainly would make sense.

Matt Dixon 37:06

Yeah, makes sense. I noticed some, some cooling pads on arrow bars. I saw gimmick or or actionable performance gains to be determined. But the thermo regulators are an inside arm. It makes theoretical. Sense, whether, whether it's practical sense, who knows? But one thing we did notice, and most spectators would have seen this as it relates to increasing driving up carbohydrate intake. We saw some really interesting footage of and there was one in particular, Kristian Blummenfelt, but, but I noticed several athletes over the course of the bike ride, projectile vomiting, not just throwing up, projectile vomiting. I've seen all sorts of over the my 20 years of going to Kona, I've seen all sorts of stuff occurring on the run, typically out on the Queen K later in the races, people throwing up, people coming out the other end, etc. This was early in the bike course. I'm interested, from your perspective, how, as a nutrition expert, how do you correlate with that, with where an athlete is in the bike relatively early, two hours into the bike ride, they're throwing up? Is that a direct cause of nutrition? That's an impossible question to answer. Is it? Is it more global? Was it jellyfish things? Was it was there? It was cold conditions driving up the pace. Did Do you have any perspective on seeing so many athletes throwing up? Yeah.

Scott Tindal 38:34

I mean, it was hard to watch, wasn't it with Kristian? And just to be clear, I don't work with Kristian so and, don't know what was happening with him. Look, he may have had some food poisoning. Never know. He may have eaten something the night before. Paul fella and, you know, had had a reaction and maybe pushed through in the morning, jellyfish swing stings. Apparently, everyone did get stung. I don't know if something in there's a toxin there that could cause some issues. Did he swallow a heap of sea water? That's that's probably common one in Hawaiian. That's probably the first thing that comes to mind. He swallowed a heap of salt water. And then that's just come back. He's probably tried to consume some noise normal caloric intake, which I imagine, is quite high. Those the Norwegians, you know, from what we hear, is they're consuming very high amounts. Maybe it all just got too much. The pace on the bike at the start was extreme, extremely, in my view, certainly, Sam and Magnus were pushing the pace. And so to try, and my understanding, is to break Kristian like to try and give a distance. And maybe it was just a combination of a few of those, are all of them that unfortunately resulted in, yes. I mean, it was vomiting like I've never seen, yeah, and I felt really sorry for him at that point in time. I mean, you know, you never want to see any athlete or any competitor struggling like that. And you know, you know it's going to be a long day when. In the very start of the race, you're doing that. And I just felt, felt for him at that point in time. So, yeah, I mean, was it intake of carbohydrates? I don't believe. So I'd imagine he would have trained, taking in large volumes of carbohydrates on the bike at that similar intensity along the way. So I imagine there was something else.

Matt Dixon 40:21

It's probably that on top of whatever the other factor, whatever another factor could be as well, by the way, that we haven't mentioned, is going in just a little bit fatigued as well. And yeah, that has a huge component in in Hawaii, in that environment, typically. And I'm not suggesting it is that. I'm not saying they got their training recipe wrong. I'm just, you know, it could be that. It could be sickness. It can be consuming of too much sea water. It could be a mess. It could be food poisoning, as you say. So, temperature

Scott Tindal 40:50

was pretty cool on the bike as well at the start. I mean, it was raining at one point in the morning. Yeah. So whether the athletes really pushed it because they thought it was going to be a cool day, and then, as we saw, it really heated up. I mean, it was a typical, fairly typical corner day in the end, but super humid, super hot when they got to the run. And you saw, you know, Benny Canute, who I work with. I mean, he pushed the bike really hard. He had a great bike race, but in the end, it cooked him. Yep, it cooked. Sam laid low. It cooked a lot of them, Magnus purple to him, he looked down and out and came back strong. And if any second after that, that bike was pretty incredible.

Matt Dixon 41:31

It really was, I tell you something, the more things have evolved, the the more things they stay the same. And Hawaii delivered, it's the it's a very similar recipe, although I will say my my perspective, and I've got one more question for you on the Kona show here. But I do remember several years ago, I'm not working with professional athletes anymore, but, but I remember probably seven or eight years ago, I said to our group of pros at the time, particularly the male athletes. I said, we need to start evolving rapidly here, and the train is leaving the station, and I gave them, probably, this, this, this speech, two or three times, the sport is evolving, and there is going to be greater depth and greater performance levels than you can even imagine right now, half Iron Man. Iron Man. Distance. Everything is changing. And what the train left the station and and what we saw in Hawaii was, was really what we've seen across the t1 100 race experience, if you look at the level of the racing there is absolutely staggering what Martin Van real and the other cast of characters in that racing, that racing performance, the sport has evolved. And it's very, very difficult for the folks in 2017 18 that were top five in the world that to up level. Now the performance levels and what we see in their folks riding under four hours, folks riding 230s off the bike. It is, it is staggering. And I remember, I do remember Patrick Lange saying, I think I can go seven and a half hours. And everyone laughed in his face there, and he went 735 that is a, that is a performance sea change that we've seen when you go back to 2009 Chris liedo, an athlete that I coached, eight, whatever. He went 808. Whatever it was. And everyone was, goodness me, can anyone ever go under eight hours? Here we are, 19 of them went under 19. Under eight hours so and just on that,

Scott Tindal 43:35

though, like Kenworth, you know, like mastery, you talk about someone who has adapted, yeah, just kept pushing. And he is an Aussie, obviously, I'm very proud of and I said, I think he's going to run himself into fifth. And I got laughed at it, kind of, he didn't, obviously get to fifth. He got to seventh. But, I mean, extraordinary. And yeah, they again. Like, look at Yani even, like, you know, last year with Milwaukee, yeah, yeah, no one counted him in. He's 41 years of age, but he was willing to adapt to what he was seeing, which was that point on, well, maybe I need some carbs. He'd never used carbs to the extent that we pushed and he was willing to change his approach, to adapt to what he was seeing. Lo and behold, it ends up working. And I'm sure, like, I don't again, I don't know cam. I don't work with Cam, but he is clearly evolving as an athlete and adapting because he's, I mean, he's 41

Matt Dixon 44:37

it's an incredible performance by him. And I will say, I'll make a long joke. You know, he's with INEOS. And INEOS, they've got three soccer teams that are all middle of the tables and not doing well. They just got stuffed in the American Club. Their performance levels of the All Blacks team, which is the worst All Blacks team ever. Team Sky used to be a great cycling team. They're no longer great. And he has emerged despite that mediocrity. That I'm joking. I'm joking. Cam, I have the greatest respect for you and and what you've done, by the way, he's a man that came out of rowing, Olympic rowing. He's done, he's had an incredible journey, professional cyclist, one of the great icons, I think, how to be a professional athlete across so much time. It's fantastic. So I'm very much joking, inspirational.

Scott Tindal 45:22

Yeah, I again, I don't know, but I find this guy inspiration, wicked

Matt Dixon 45:29

smart, very funny, and knows how to be a professional athlete. It's great. So, Scott, thank you very much. We are going to talk about in part two coming up in there. In our next show, we're going to actually broaden the perspective and talk a little bit around creating a bedrock and foundation of great nutritional habits to drive you into your next performance over the course of 2025 whether you're an athlete, whether you're looking for improved body composition, or whether you're looking to boost your daily productivity and longevity quality of life for your years ahead. So that is in part two, we love to see you then. Thanks Matt. Take care. Bye, 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.

KEYWORDS

athletic potential, nutrition expert, fueling app, professional sports, caloric needs, Ironman World Championship, body composition, daily energy, longevity, endurance sports, training philosophy, race fueling, carbohydrate intake, energy expenditure, performance evolution

Carrie BarrettNovember 13, 2024