361 - How about: An Optimized Approach to IRONMAN in a Busy Life - A Case Study
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Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!
On this episode, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon and Purple Patch Fitness Coach Max Gering discuss the case of David, a 52-year-old father and IRONMAN aspirant with limited training time. David's initial marathon training was rigid and stressful, affecting his family life. The team at Purple Patch adapted his training to a dynamic, flexible schedule, focusing on hydration, sleep, and post-workout fueling. They deferred his Ironman to five months later, allowing him to build a performance base. David's training included a mix of strength, running, and biking, with key sessions planned in advance. He successfully completed his IRONMAN in 12 hours, demonstrating the effectiveness of their integrated approach.
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Episode Timecodes:
00-:46 Promo
1:25-3:35 Intro to episode
4:30-12:30 David Case Study Profile
14:35-23:15 Intervention
23:15-28:38 Build Habits
28:38-38:37 Key Training Components
38:37-end Outcomes
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Transcription
Matt Dixon 00:00
Just before we begin the show, I want to talk to you about performance that fits your life. Are you time starved, but still you're driven to perform well at Purple Patch, we specialize in integrating endurance sports into your life, not around it, whether you're chasing an Iron Man finish, or you just simply want more energy or consistency, we help you show up at your best backs with over 20 years of proven results, our tri squad and one to one coaching programs deliver your health, resilience performance across work, sport and life. We're not just coaches, we're your team. Ready to start email us info at Purple Patch fitness.com we'll set up a complimentary call, and we'll fight make sure that we find the right fit for you. Cheers. 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 01:14
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. As ever your host, Matt Dixon, and once again, not just me hosting Max. Welcome back to
Max Gering 01:23
the show. Thank you. It's good to be here in San Francisco. It is indeed. We
Matt Dixon 01:26
get to do it a little bit in person. How are you doing? My friend? I am
Max Gering 01:30
good. It's been a great week visiting, working from the center. We had the caf event last night for the Challenger Athletes Foundation, which, yeah, just incredibly inspiring. A lot of fun to get the community together in person and went for a nice run in the Golden Gate Park this morning. So all is well. It was the challenge
Matt Dixon 01:48
athletes event. Absolutely fantastic. Hey, it's to have, what do we have? Six or seven of the the actual athletes in house. We had Vincent Luis, yeah, Paula Finley, Morgan, Pearson, lot of fun. Nice pads.
Max Gering 02:01
Your previous athlete that you previously coached hit 650 watt and 182 rpm with one leg, which was a sight to see. Yeah,
Matt Dixon 02:11
that was Mohammed Lana, who had a lot of joy. Bringing Mohammed back into the fold, if you don't know, Mohammed, a Moroccan athlete who was it was essentially born without a femur, the upper part of your leg. And so you want to imagine leg from basically the knee down, starting at the hip, and born in Morocco, transplanted across the US Olympic silver medalist and Bron medalist in the in the Paralympics. Absolutely fantastic, one of my proudest coaching moments. But I think everybody's jaw was just absolutely open with disbelief when he managed it 182 revolutions per minute on the bike. That was that was something terrific. It's very cool. He is a magnetic personality. But what are we doing today?
Max Gering 02:58
We are going over some athlete case studies. It
Matt Dixon 03:02
is, it is going to be fun. What we decided to do, we thought would be really, really helpful, is really take, in many ways, the most tangible components of all of the education we deliver, and make it very, very practical. And we have long believed since I've been scribbling my books that case studies are a great way to learn. And what I want you to do max is just give the listeners little context of how they should approach this episode. We're going to focus on a single athlete the Purple Patch has coached. How should the listeners think about this when they're listening to it? Because we don't just want it to be transactional and a direct transfer of information into their own journey. How can they pull apart the education apply it to their own lessons?
Max Gering 03:47
Yeah, I think that's a really good place to start. I want listeners to not think, okay, am I similar to this person, or am I not similar to this person? I want the listeners to think about, what are the challenges that this athlete faced, and what are the solutions that we help them apply in order to solve their problems and be creative as a listener and think, Okay, is there an area in my performance journey that I can apply that type of thinking, that type of solution, to solve my personal challenges? So it's okay if your challenges and your situation doesn't match one to one, to this athlete in particular, really think about it as a whole. Listen, be open, and then try and apply it to your life,
Matt Dixon 04:25
which is great. And I will say, I think there are going to be quite a few listeners that actually say, goodness me, this is me. So because the first person that we've chosen is a gentleman called David, I'm going to have you run through the profile, but this is what we labeled, the highly time starved athlete. And, and David's ambition when he joined Purple Patch was to not just complete but but complete really successfully an Ironman triathlon and, and I guess the question for that, for for David was, can I really be successful? Full of Iron Man, when I only have give or take Monday through Friday, 60 minutes to train. So that was pretty succinct, sometimes 75 minutes, but that was but that was basically our sort of optimization challenge. In the week, I basically do one session of the day, give or take, about 60 minutes. And then on the weekend, it wasn't like he got to go and escape and do a four or five hour bike ride every weekend. He had a couple of hours on Saturday most weekends, 6090, minutes on Sunday at best. So this was pretty time starved, give or take, 910, hours a week, sometimes a little more, as you're going to find out, sometimes a little less. But I think it would help if, if maybe you just lead us in, give us the overall, overall profile of David. David,
Max Gering 05:43
yeah, so David's 52 years old, family with two kids. He's a nine year old and a 12 year old. Been in the sport for several years, and he's started with doing some shorter course racing and different running races. He came to us after already having ran a marathon, and that marathon prep, as we'll get into, that whole experience for him was quite challenging. It's actually one of the reasons why he was skeptical of the Ironman process, because he looked back at the marathon prep and he said, Well, if Iron Man prep is going to be anything like that, this isn't going to work with my life. Yeah, I can't. I can't repeat that process. And he had done several 70 point threes, so an experienced triathlete feeling like, okay, if I'm going to accomplish new goals, something is going to have to change. And that's how he came to us.
Matt Dixon 06:25
Yeah, it was, it was really to solve a challenge. We're going to go through some of the challenges that we go through. I think that one thing that is worth business bearing in mind is when he came to us, because this is something that changed. When he came to us, he'd already registered for an Iron Man. It was just over, just over four months time. So I think we had, by memory, about 17 or 18 weeks to get ready, and
Max Gering 06:49
he forgot to mention this, along with his busy professional life, that included a lot of travel. So in addition to the kids and work, when he was at home, he traveled a lot. So he said, I have four and a half months to do this Iron Man that I'm signed up for. And in those four and a half months, I'm traveling at least once a month,
Matt Dixon 07:06
which couldn't be more of a classic Purple Patch athlete, in many ways, high travel, busy demands wanting to and I think one thing that is important worthy really wanting to be present as a partner or as a father, obviously his role at work, very, very important. Wanted to show up for that. And in his marathon experience, he felt those real tension and tugging at all of the really core components of life. And ultimately, I don't think he really enjoyed the experience getting ready for a marathon. So, so why don't, why don't we dig into the challenges. The way that we like to break down case studies generally, is to think about, okay, who's the profile? What's the person we're looking for, what were the challenges that they faced? And then, for lack of a better phrase, how do we approach it at Purple Patch, which we might label the intervention and and go from there, and then ultimately, what were the outcomes. And it's no surprise, I'll ruin the end in the outcomes were pretty positive, but, but I think that there are really, really a bucket full of of lessons that we can draw from this. So challenges, I guess I'll lead it off. And I want to start because we're talking about the the marathon side of things. That marathon what we identified straight away when we asked David his approach, he was one of these guys that followed a very what I would label classic marathon approach. So it was a relatively rigid training structure. It was built on a combination of hours and miles per week, which many listeners know, I'm not a massive fan of, trying to hit a set, predetermined set of number of hours, number of miles. And it was a really rigid structure when his life was anything but rigid. And he really found that challenging, and the training consistency for him was tough. He felt like he was consistently behind schedule, because he would very rarely hit every single session that was on his program and and I think he also one of the things that I really remember when he came on board, because while I wasn't directly coaching him. I did have an initial conversation with David. He felt like his pursuit of the marathon took a toll on the family, because he would be a partially present with them, because he had quite a lot of fatigue, and secondly, he would be out doing his quote long run that he felt was a prerequisite every time. So certainly that marathon, that that relatively recent marathon training experience was a negative and it certainly didn't crack the solution. So that was that was number one that I found, was there, what were the other challenges that we had? Something that
Max Gering 09:49
we saw with him, which is really common for people that travel a lot and don't have a program that flexes with their life, was that when he was traveling, it became a challenge to be consistent. As you mentioned, and then he would come home and feel like he was playing catch up. So he was, in a way, somewhat chasing his own tail. And I think that went over this. What that created was a situation where he wasn't focusing on what he was doing. It was always the focus was always, I'm not doing enough, or focusing on what he's not doing
Matt Dixon 10:20
he also, and I think this is important, when he traveled, he ended up playing catch up on the weekend, and that was that's something that we see a lot. Here's my predetermined plan, I'm going to add on the weekend. And of course, that took further toll on his his family and and then he had, at the root of it, the baseline of it. We always talk about building performance on a platform of health. He had variable energy and and that was a key thing. So he wasn't bringing his self, best self, not just to training, but I think, in broader life. And so we certainly saw that we wanted to try and stabilize that energy. I thought that was, was really important. And and then he, I'm not sure if we can identify this as a challenge, but he was certainly ambitious. He wanted to complete Iron Man, but he was certainly really fearful of is this really something I can do? Is it really going to fit into my life, and particularly with the demands that were not going to dissipate? So one of the things that we couldn't control is we couldn't lower down expectations or responsibilities in work. We certainly didn't want to take him away from his family. So he really had a question, even though he'd registered for the race, could I actually succeed with this? And that was the starting point. That was really the big challenge point, and so I think it's really helpful. Okay, let's go into diagnostics here, and let's look at our opinion of looking at what he did. What could we start to unearth so that we could create an action plan for David? And I'll let you lead that part of it
Max Gering 11:59
off. Yeah, so I think that we mentioned the beginning is it wasn't, as we say, an integrated approach. And so with that, we can break that down for the listener and looks in a few ways we can explain it. First of all, we can talk about the specific workouts that he was doing so approach that wasn't right for him was consistently having hard interval sessions in the middle of the week, no matter what was happening in his life, travel, lack of sleep due to kids. That's an example of an of a plan not being integrated into your life, where the plan is always staying the same, no matter what's happening around it.
Matt Dixon 12:31
Yeah, it's not flexing, yeah, that was, that was actually true. And I think, I think with that, he, he, um, we observed very, very quickly with taking step back from it with that, and it's obviously a byproduct of what you just said there. But he wasn't yielding any health benefits. No, he didn't have a stable platform of health that was that was it. I think that was a hugely important component. He didn't have intentional recovery in there. I think he was always playing catch up, mainly with sleep. That was a big thing. Sleep was a big thing. And with that, he wasn't, he wasn't getting what I like to label the performance tonic benefits of this. So what we look for success is for success of an athlete is always okay. Can they reach their goal? Can they achieve their goal in a sporting context, but in doing so, what they should, if everything is, is going really well. What they should be able to yield from that is better energy, more capacity, etc. And he was the antithesis of that. He was trying to cram it in and not get so that was, that was certainly a big challenge. And then then timeline, that was a big one as well.
Max Gering 13:38
Yeah, that provided a lot, a lot of pressure, and that really impacted how he was. Let me mention that he was a bit fearful, but the pressure going back to the performance tonic benefits, not only was he not was he not getting the physical benefits and the daily energy, but the confidence and the mental and emotional benefits that training should give you. Outside of sport, feeling like, wow, I'm really able to take on challenges. I'm really ready for for more at work, at home. He wasn't getting that because he was so concerned about the race, and he was always a bit anxious about what he was going to do.
Matt Dixon 14:18
Yeah, that's it. I think, I think the timeline was something that was ultimately fundamental for his success, and this was one of the relatively rare occasions where, in onboarding, we had a really frank and open discussion with him, and I wasn't a part of this discussion, but we had a Franken and open discussion with him, of this timeline is not doing any favors and and how we approach this was to actually persuade David to push his Iron Man back. He was sitting in this in this almost compression vacuum of of sort of pressure to get ready for this race. And we wanted a bigger landscape to. Do it because we broke it down into two main components. First, at the macro level, there needs to be evolution of how you're actually approaching the sport. Let's depressurize. Let's build fundamental practices. Let's really start with a great platform of consistency health, energy and control. And then let's train for an Iron Man. So he was, and I think this is a great testament to his coach ability, his plasticity. He actually deferred his race, pushed it back to about nine months by memory and, and that gave him such a better landscape to go and get ready for this race and, and I think that was one of the relatively rare occasions. We don't always do this, but a rare occasion where we said, You know what, this isn't the right goal for right now, and that's such an antithesis of how many in the sport approach it. Because if someone came to coach a, b, c and d, or someone said to their friends, I've got 18 weeks to get ready for an Ironman. That seems like a long runway, and where she said that's not long enough to actually solve a longer term challenge of you integrating sport into life and getting all of these other benefits, and then also for you not to just survive an Ironman, but actually thrive in it, to actually enjoy it and go from there. So I think that was a huge component,
Max Gering 16:20
yeah, and that was really going back to him being really ambitious. He didn't want to just do it and check the box. He wanted to have a really positive experience in the hopes of doing several after which we know he has done.
Matt Dixon 16:30
He has done. Indeed, we're going to get into the juicy parts because that, I think the least listeners really want to get to. Okay, what was the intervention for lack of better phrase and and, what do we actually do here?
Max Gering 16:44
So started it with this idea of the mindset shift and reframing. You know, the first part of the intervention was that initial conversation of, maybe this isn't the right quote, unquote deadline, even though I don't like that word in this case, but the timeline was too condensed, and that was creating too much pressure. So that was really the first part of the intervention of reframing how he's gonna approach training for an IRONMAN
Matt Dixon 17:05
I think that's really important. Was if we are gonna ultimately be successful, let's first establish the perspective on what success looks like. And I remember us really talking about shifting your mindset of this is what it is going to take to be successful. And the thing that we took the sledgehammer to is, I need to hit X number of hours per week. And what we talked about is, how many hours of training can you accumulate over the course of many, many months. So this more layered approaching to get through. And then with that, it's not even just how many hours can you accumulate over many, many months, it's how many hours of effective training can you accumulate over many, many months? And that's really the key that's going to be the unlock to effectiveness and readiness, in many ways, collaboration on race plan. That's the second one that I have written down here. We talked about this a little bit, but our first thing was that persuasion as well, under the mindset of, let's not do this race right now. That's pretty rare, as I mentioned, for us to do that. But we felt like it was really, really important for David, David to first crack his code on consistency and finding the recipe, and then when he had that code, he had his performance recipe, felt like it was under control. Then point the ship towards Iron Man. I think that was a really, really important component. And And then third was the dynamic approach. You mentioned this, so I hand this on for you, but not having a fixed mindset as it relates to how many hours a week, but also the training that you're doing, having a really hybrid mindset, a dynamic mindset as it applied to training, particularly when it came to travel. Do you want to talk about
Max Gering 19:04
that a little bit? Yeah. So I think if we think about our methodology of coaching at Purple Patch, this is where, you know, David and his coach got to work, everything we talked about until now, about the intervention was setting the stage and reframing, you know, his mindset towards towards training. And this is where, okay, this is where the actual coaching happened. Of that weekly bi weekly communication between coach and the athlete, having a really good pulse on what's happening in the athlete's life, how they're feeling, what's going on with them, in working in life, and then prescribing workouts appropriately. So when you know, he started to layer on the habits, and started to dial in the sleep a little bit more and improve daily hydration, even when traveling for work, he earned the right to be able to do some harder workouts, and his body was able to show up and perform. And that, I think the key there is have the coach having a really good pulse on what's happening with the athlete.
Matt Dixon 19:55
Yeah, and communication, I mean, that's what you highlight, communication and. I would add one more thing to this, the absolute critical role of the Sunday special for him, and having the Sunday special as a shared practice with the coach to really understand, like defining what was successful for a training week, the toughest thing for David to get over was some weeks an appropriate dose of training was six hours a week, and that could be really, really successful. We had Stephanie go on here, a Purple Patch athlete, just a few weeks ago, talking about her many, many training hours. And she was, she's an age group podium winner at Iron Man, sometimes navigating six hour weeks of training, which sounds ridiculously low, but those were appropriate. But then when life flexes a little bit, and it ebbs, and you have more capacity take advantage and do some of that prior planning that was at the really the root cause of leveraging every single week, understanding training, and making sure that he wasn't chasing something that was that unrealistic, but actually building something that was more realistic and can get get to that consistency of the most specific training over many, many weeks.
Max Gering 21:03
Yeah. And then one thing I would add to that of that communication is which is something that we do with all of our athletes, whether they're super time starved or have a lot of time part of that communication is picking the weeks the weekends, whether it be a mid week day when you have a day off from work or your less responsibility at home to have some big key workouts, in this case, training for an environment, some big brick workouts, some long swims, because you couldn't usually be in the pool for an hour. So having those times, let's earmark the days ahead of time where you're going to get that long swim in, because I think that's important. We don't want to create this fantasy that just because your time starved, it doesn't mean you do hard work to accomplish a big goal. Yeah, you have to make a certain investment. And our job as coaches is to making sure that we're holding you to account and setting standards that are really relevant for you. And so that took a lot of pressure off from him in the beginning of the month he would see on his training peaks. Okay, I have three weekends from now. That's my big Sunday. I'm in communication with the wife. She's going to give me a few hours with the kids after I'm home from the brick then I'll take up some more responsibility and not depressurize by putting those big days on the calendar ahead of time.
Matt Dixon 22:12
Well, we are. We're going to get into how we actually break down the week for him. So I think that's as granular as we can possibly get. And then we're going to, I want to revisit what you just talked there, because I think it's important. I do want to so far as intervention. I think it is important to also highlight just before we go there. So I'm just going to hold our horses a little bit. I want to talk about habits, because there is a big part of that. It's if we just dive into this is what we did, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. That I do want to touch on. I think it's going to pull listeners away from some other really important fundamental stuff we we wanted to address low energy. A part of that was him, not chasing the training, shifting the mindset. That was actually an unlock for energy as well. But there are a few components and and I want to go through in Priority what we did, perhaps counter intuitively. The first thing that the Purple Patch coach did with David was to focus on hydration. That sounds really what he was, as many people do, and I'm not talking about hydration during a bike trainer workout or during a run. I'm talking about hydration in life. He was classic, how what we see most people walking around like a dried sponge, as I always like to say. So we had him hydrating an average of three leaders every single day. We had him waking up and hydrate and hydrating a leader, right when he woke up, before his coffee or with his coffee. That was, that was a, the reason that we started there is a it was really, really simple, and it had an immediate impact. He had this little mini victory, because it did boost his energy, actually fostered recovery. And so that was, that was the first thing that we started with. And then you mentioned sleep consistently. And I think that was a real priority for for David as well, shifting sleep, when, when you could around, around, travel and everything,
Max Gering 24:05
yeah, and going back to being the same, approach was taken with sleep as with hydration. So we don't just like to talk about habits or fix your habits. We like to make it really attainable and start with small things that athletes can create these, these wins and generate momentum. And so for sleep, it was as often as possible having a regular bedtime and creating consistency around sleep that, for him, proved to move the needle the most. And that may be different. For some people, maybe it's being a little more disciplined about certain hours or sleep hygiene before go to bed. The point is picking something specific and not just saying, let's work on sleep. Yeah,
Matt Dixon 24:42
improve your sleep. Okay, how? So it's all about becoming more resilient. Okay, how do you do that? Information transfer to do it? And then the final thing around habits that I think is really important, and goodness me, I feel like 2005 Matt Dixon here when I say this, because. Is probably the number one thing that I consistently for years and years and years, particularly with pro athletes. By the way, the first thing that we integrated is post workout fueling, ensuring that you're just building a habit, that after every workout you consume calories, protein, carbohydrate, really high quality, hopefully real food, not just chocolate milk and and that had a really immediate impact for him as well, both in terms of his decision making, of of food that he was eating in the rest of the day, but it just gave a little bit of control. So we did do some things around nutrition, obviously, post workout fueling that was important, actually consuming more calories sleep, as you mentioned, and making it really actionable, and hydration. So I think those three fit those three or four things really helped on that they want to know about the training structure. How do you do that? So we're going to, we're going to tell them. So I've got it, I've got it mapped out here and and so I'm going to refer to my notes a little bit as I go through here because we framed out. And this is a typical week when David was not traveling, and we'll talk about the flex of this and a little bit. And I think it's important first that David was following in his marathon program that he did and his prior Half Ironman programs that he did a typical three week on, one week off schedule, so three weeks of relatively high training load and one week off and and that's very, very common. I think in most of our case studies we're going to hear that of people incoming, we shifted that we went to a three week rotating schedule. In other words, two weeks on, not that every single day was hard in those two weeks, but two weeks of slightly higher training load, and then one week of what we call a transition week, where you have intentional recovery early in the week, then a little bit of activation, then something more demanding on the weekend. And that cycle tends to work, but I think it's important to bear in mind even that cycle with David was not fixed, so that was the guiding light. But we didn't have some big spreadsheet where it was two weeks on, one week off, two week on, because he had such a dynamic life that was a guiding light. But very often, I would say, most cycles, we needed to change it. We might do an early transition week with travel, we might actually sneak an extra half a week. So we had to be really, really flexible in mindset on that.
Max Gering 27:27
Yeah, and for the listener, I think something to think about. The reason why that worked was because in the beginning, the lens was set of, let's think about accumulating a body of work over a long period of time. So then the need to change things around didn't stress him out so much. If you're so focused on your 1612, week build, whatever it may be, you have very little wiggle room to move things around. If you zoom out and you say, Okay, that's a body of work over months, build a performance based layer and then build into an Ironman build, all of a sudden the changes aren't so threatening to you and your potential success. So that really helped him internalize it
Matt Dixon 28:03
and suck into it. It's such a critical point. It's uh, because that that it provided confidence, and it provides confidence of, you know, if you've got a week where it is appropriate to only hit six weeks or six hours, it's six hours in the big fabric of 500 hours that I'm accumulating versus, oh my goodness me, I did 10 hours last week. It's a regression, if I've doing six hours this week, and that that really created the progression. So here we go. Here's a here's how we did it globally on Monday. And we did a lot of hybrid sessions, as we call them. So think about training for a triathlon. Think about training for an Ironman. You've got swim, bike, run and strength. So you've got four components seven days in a week. That's something that is static, and you're trying to cram a lot of work into it. The sport itself is not though, swim bike and run. It's swim bike run. It is one sport and and so we wanted to combine things to ensure that he could have touch points. And we built really, really high frequency so when he was not traveling, we would integrate on Monday strength and conditioning, and then we would typically partner it with a run. And typically would be a run after the strength, so activate the body, get the programming body, and then translate that run was typically pretty easy, I will say. Sometimes on alternate weeks, we would sometimes do a swim and a short run there and sacrifice the strength a little bit. So short swim, swim is a predominant one. But most weeks, it was strength and run Tuesday. And I think this is really important, he really leveraged and had the opportunity for the Purple Patch bike session. So that was he got to attend live with me remotely, and he got to do that 60 minute session Tuesdays. We tried to take a. Advantage of having a short 10 minute run off the bike, because where that word frequency is going to come up. But that Tuesday bike Workout Trainer based for efficiency tended to be higher intensity. That was a key session, very, very demanding. And then Wednesday slightly non. Traditionally, we would put the bless you. Excuse me, I'll restart that part. Then we move on to Wednesday. And Wednesday, we found with him was a really good day to build an endurance run, a resilience run, again, a little bit time starved. This wasn't two hours. It was typically 60 to 75 minutes. But that really worked for him, because that could be more soul filling and go through him there. So we've got this. Tuesday is the first day that we're shining the light on. That was the key day that would really hit, and then Thursday would come again, and we'd hit another key bike workout. It's going to be a pattern that emerged from that. That key bike workout for us was, in many ways, the foundational session. We did a lot of strength endurance, low cadence work, high torque work, again, sneak in a run. So suddenly, now you got four runs in a row, short one off of strength, short one off of bike. Little bit longer, typically running off of the bike, with a little bit of activation on Thursday and then Friday would be a strength again. So short strength, nothing too demanding. And then the swim, and that swim was speed focused. So that was the week you notice you're getting, you're getting four days of running in there. You're getting two big bike workouts that were more intense, if you want to call it that we had some strength endurance. The running was really smooth. And then swimming, we got to sneak away, because he only got to swim most weeks twice. So by by definition, we had to make those shorter interval higher intensity. That's what we did. And and then Saturday, he'd go into a ride, and depending on the week, that ride would either be more zone, two people will be happy to hear that. So more endurance, resilience, focus, or if we lowered the intensity on one of the Tuesday or Thursday rides, we would do more specific intervals there. So as we went through some longer intervals outside with a short runoff, so that ride on the weekend, we would love it to be outside. Sometimes life demands meant it was inside. And then Sunday he would do, if he was lucky, a strong swim, 45 minutes again, and then a runoff. So we'll try and get about 90 minutes there and go 45 and 45 and that was, that was the bones of it. Now let's revisit what you talked about before, because that was the starting template. That wasn't how we actually got him ready for Ironman. So why don't you lead into sort of what we look to do every month, and then how we looked at the macro planning so that we could really get in my man ready off of the baseline of that type of program. Yeah,
Max Gering 33:07
I think it's important to know that this was the you need to start some if you don't have a plan at all, there's nothing to adapt when you need to adapt. So this was his plan when he was at home, and then the work was done based off of that. And when I got into Iron Man planning, the big thing was, okay, When can he get in bigger bodies of work? Because listening to that, there wasn't always a long ride on a Saturday, there wasn't always a long run throughout the week. So picking those weekends ahead of time in advance that he's going to have those big, big workouts. And then also trying to find weekends where we did more cluster sessions, so trying to string together a few days in a row to create a bigger body of work, because he made it. He didn't necessarily have time on one day to do a huge session, but he could prioritize three days in a row.
Matt Dixon 33:50
Yeah, I think that's, I think it's one of those moments in the show where we sort of take a step back and do an acknowledgement if an athlete is going to take on an Iron Man, it is really valuable, and we could say important, that they do some over distance riding, that they do some over distance running. So let's acknowledge that, because that's that's necessary. It is really valuable if you can ride 456, hours north of that sometimes it is really important to do some longer distance running. The question for us is how and and we want to do two things. Number one, have it planned and programmed in advance, not every single weekend, because that's how the sport becomes a monkey on the back. The second part of that is he could do it. In David's case, he could collaborate with his wife, key component and constituent in his life, and plan it. And that created clarity. So he could guilt free and friction free, go and do this one that was necessary. And so once a month, just once a month, generally, he would designate that and get a little bit more time on one of the weekend days he could go out and do. It. And then when it really became into that last 18 weeks, that last 1618, weeks, we identified 345, times, that he really could get Iron Man ready. And that was an investment from the family. That was clarity for David, where he did, as you mentioned, two things. Number one, I'm going to do some big, really over distance day that we could simulate, get the body and the mind ready for. I'm going the distance and Iron Man simulator. And that was really valuable. And then the other weekends, thinking out of the box a little bit. And we did this. I remember twice, I think, with running, and once, I believe, with overall multi sport, if you want to call it that, three days in a row, where Friday, he did a trainer with a longer run, off Saturday, he did an over distance run, I think it's about two hours, and then Sunday, another 90 minute run. So he did that. That was big weekend. It still didn't dominate time. The multi sport cluster, as we like to call it, was trainer with runoff on Friday, big Iron Man simulator for about four hours and a 60 minute runoff, then a big swim and a big run on Sunday. But that didn't happen every week, but these created the moments of training load when he wasn't traveling. His family knew he could do it, and that is the investment. But it was built off of this baseline foundation of depending on the week, an average of 10 hours, sometimes it was six, sometimes it was 12, if he was lucky, and I think that was really the unlock of him, and nowhere from there is there anything else we're missing on the trainings. And I
Max Gering 36:47
think that really covers the nitty gritty of what it was we didn't mention travel. We have that in our notes. So when he traveled, we leaned into running a lot more, and running and strength, mainly because that's what you have the easiest access to when you're on the road. So did a lot of going back to frequency. It was a lot of frequency of running when he was traveling. Often lower stress depending on the demands of the trip and how he was feeling. And then also continuing to do strength work, because it's something you can do body weight or in a gym. Yeah.
Matt Dixon 37:15
And then the one other thing I wanted to mention, which I think is really important, is that we actually removed quite a bit of the intensity out of the running. And we really built this. In fact, if you think about the intensity hierarchy, most of the swims were pretty short and high intensity just because we didn't have the luxury. So it was an optimization challenge. And then we really built it. And It sounds counterintuitive, because he was time starved, but we really built his redness around the bike, because it was a vehicle that can build the fitness and the muscular resilience in a really healthy way. So that leveraging the training was really important, but leveraging really trying to protect outside of the travel weeks, the three big rides, and then for the running you mentioned it leveraging travel as an opportunity to actually invest in the run. And that was that was a really nice thing, and then generally building the required tissue resilience, the muscular resilience ready to go and do an Iron Man through frequency. So he said, I can't believe, like I'm almost running every single day. But we avoided mind fatigue, we avoided injury. We just we actually, I always talk about it as like, almost being like a piece of paper sliding under the door. That's how we built fitness. It crept up and it whacked him on the back of the head and and, you know, moving to outcomes, I'm going to go right to the end of his Ironman race. My biggest joy of seeing following his journey from relatively afar, because I wasn't coaching him, but working collaboratively, as we do, within a team of coaches, and seeing him experience the best thing is the control he had on his run and how he felt still running with walk breaks. So I might add, and we've talked about walk breaks, but, but running really well in the back half of his race and feeling great. So, um, but, but that's almost going to the end. What are some of the other outcomes that that he experienced? So I guess it's not just about race day, the value that he got out of it,
Max Gering 39:17
yeah. So going back to training from a physical standpoint, one of the benefits, and this is speaking to the section that is more focused on the Ironman build. So this is after, you know, he built the performance base layer by focusing on hydration, nutrition and sleep and so on and so forth. But he was able to really bring it to those big key sessions that he pinpointed on the calendar with his coach. And this is something we see with a lot of athletes. They reduce the amount of big brick workouts or the big cluster weekends because of life demands, but as a result, the athlete is able to then show up to those sessions when they have them mentally and physically ready to really, really bring in. It, and so they just become really positive sessions for them in their in their journey, and give them a lot of confidence. So it was when he was asked to bring it, and that doesn't necessarily mean going super hard, but bring it by going long and being in a good mental head space and having good a good endurance workout. He was able to do that.
Matt Dixon 40:17
I think it's good, because what, what does an athlete ultimately need. They need really effective, and you would say, a specific training, but they need confidence in feeling like they're under control, and when you can sit consistently, can show up to the sessions that matter, that are identified as the key workouts. What makes it more fun, but it also builds confidence in your readiness. And I think that was huge. I would say also, it really reduced cognitive load because of his evolve perspective on what success was, it enabled him to be pretty non plussed when he only got 456, hours in, because they were good hours, and he still showed up at the key sessions. On the flip side, he was really stoked when he got more hours. And so that sort of it removed that original friction, which I think was was really, really important for him. The other thing was actually that that first phase, because we talked about kicking the can down the road a little bit, we didn't use that terminology, but we moved from four and a half months to five months later. So almost 10 months he actually ended up doing his Iron Man. That first phase was about establishing control and performance recipe. But in that phase, he had his best half Iron Man that he ever had. And that's that's also really good confidence. And also, you know, how do we actually feel successful? It's by making progress. And I think that was a really pivotal moment for him. Yeah,
Max Gering 41:43
yeah, I agree. And I love that philosophy in general, of using races that aren't necessarily a race, and doing a half Ironman is still a fantastic goal, and using this to really build those wins and prove to yourself okay, I can do this in a smaller context, and then going into the Iron Man prep boost, I just have to do a little bit more than I was. It wasn't so there was no fear by the time you got to the Iron Man build. Yeah, we
Matt Dixon 42:09
don't have to talk about race day, because I'm sure you guys know he had a great one. And he did have a great day. He was really happy and celebrated. I think he went about 12 hours, which was actually a little faster than I assumed he might go and and really, really impressive for his profiles background his first time, the only thing I want to highlight on on his race day was his enjoyment and enthusiasm of it. And I remember he finished and quite often. And if you've, if you've done an Ironman, I'm sure you can identify with this feeling crossing the finish line and thinking, goodness me, I never want to do that again. He crossed the finish line and and chatted to his coach, and he said, what's next? And you know that someone's
smashed it when you do that. And it was great to great to hear any other thoughts on young David did pretty well, didn't he?
Max Gering 43:00
Yeah, no, I love what you mentioned. You said to his coaches, and that's what we're really trying to do, is sustain high performance, and that that is key to finish a big challenge and feel like, okay, I can do something like that again and I'm not burnt out. Yeah, and athletes do that, it's a it's a good day for us. We know we're on a good
Matt Dixon 43:19
recipe. So, folks. I hope that's helpful. That was David, our case study of the day, the highly time starved Ironman triathlete, of which he is now a multiple Ironman. But Max we're going to do this again. I think the next one we're going to tackle is injury prone athletes. That's going to come in probably a couple of weeks time. But thanks so much for joining us. Ever appreciate your wisdom and insight. This was fun, yeah, just a little bit frustrating. The you're such a stunningly good looking man with such great style, and there's no wonder you have the nickname of Hollywood. But appreciate, yeah, thanks being a part of the team, and folks, we'll see you next time. Oh, and I should say, just before we go, if you want to find more information out about David, or you want to have any sort of a conversation with us, to extend our chat and becoming a part of the Purple Patch team, you can set up a complimentary conference consultation. In fact, in set up a consultation with young max here, all you need to do is reach out at to us, at info@purplepatchfitness.com, we'd be delighted to tell you about our programs, how you can become a part of the team. Take care, guys. Thanks so much for joining and thank you for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing. Head to the Purple Patch channel of YouTube, and you will find it there, and you could subscribe, of course, I'd like to ask you if you will subscribe. Also Share It With Your Friends, and it's really helpful if you leave a nice, positive review in the comments. Now, any questions that you have, let me know, feel free to add a comment, and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. Any. 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
Purple Patch, endurance sports, Ironman triathlon, time-starved athlete, training consistency, marathon preparation, performance recipe, dynamic approach, hydration, sleep, post-workout fueling, strength training, travel adaptation, mental resilience, race day