363 - Succeeding in Triathlon - Inside the blueprint that has qualified over 1,500 busy athletes to World Championships
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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 Purple Patch coaching program, emphasizing the importance of flexibility, personalization, and community in achieving long-term athletic success. They highlight the success of their tri-squad program, which has helped over 1,500 athletes qualify for World Championships and boasts an average athlete duration of 29 months. Key elements include adaptable training plans, regular check-ins, and coaching consultations. The program also leverages community support through the Purple Patch hub, live events, and video coaching sessions. Metrics show high satisfaction and retention rates, with 98% of departing athletes considering rejoining.
If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out at info@purplepatchfitness.com.
Episode Timecodes:
:00-1:14 Promo
1:43-5:04 Welcome
5:10 Start of Q & A
5:32-8:15 Vision of Coaching
8:30-14:50 Growth of Purple Patch and Tri-Squad
15:20-19:49 What is success for a Triathlete?
20:20-23:40 Training Program
24:45-30:51 How to equip an athlete for success in life
31:30 How to give an athlete support in coaching
40:32-end How to Customize Programming in Coaching
Purple Patch and Episode Resources
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Get access to our free training resources, insight-packed newsletter and more at purplepatchfitness.com
Transcription
Matt Dixon 00:00
On today's show, I'm joined by Purple Patch coach Max Gering, and we talk all about what it takes for athletes to be successful. It's so much more than just executing training sessions. We really dig deep into how do you actually break through and create lasting, long term success in which you can achieve all of your goals, but also amplify life. Now as you listen to this show, you're probably going to get a little bit of inspiration, maybe a little bit of course correction on your current approach. But if you'd like to take the opportunity to have a conversation with us about any of our coaching programs, here's the offer, just schedule a needs assessment and coaching consultation with Coach Max himself, we can understand what your goals and needs are. Set it up pressure free to see whether purple patches are fit for you, whether you're looking for one to one coaching, which we discussed today, or whether you're interested in joining our very popular tri squad program, all you need to do is reach out to info@purplepatchfitness.com that's info@purplepatchfitness.com let them know that you heard this episode. Max will set up a needs assessment, understand your goals, and we can see if we can partner on the journey of performance. It's a lot of fun. Now I invite you enjoy the show. I'm Matt Dixon, and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. The mission of Purple Patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential. Through the lens of athletic potential, you reach your human potential. The purpose of this podcast is to help time starved people everywhere integrate sport into life.
Matt Dixon 01:45
Matt and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. As ever your host, Matt Dixon, and this week, once again, I get to welcome back Purple Patch coach. Max Gering, to the show. Max, welcome back.
Max Gering 01:55
Thanks, Matt. It's a pleasure to be here again.
Matt Dixon 01:58
You are a podcaster maniac as I am, we, we spend too much time listening to podcasts and audio books, I think. And there is one podcast which we have drawn a little bit of influence on for for this week's show, how I built this, which is a an American podcast delivered by NPR, and we're going to steal the concept for today's show. Is, the rumor is that, right,
Max Gering 02:19
this is correct. This is what we're going to do. It's
Matt Dixon 02:23
fun. Okay, so what we thought, ladies and gentlemen, is we are going to look a little bit inside, and I am going to get to have a very relaxing day, because I'm going to sit back in my chair and I'm going to let Max guide me through a little bit of an inside look at Purple Patch. We're going to go back to why we built our programs the way we did. And the main thrust of this, what we would like you to get out of this show is a very clear understanding of what it takes for an athlete to be successful and achieve their goals. And of course, we have a broad range of commitment levels of aspirations and goals for people that are podium chasing or looking to qualify for World Championships or looking to just thrive in life, but there is a common thread. What does it take for an athlete to be successful, especially over the long term, and in order to get there, we thought we would take a little bit of a look inside, and Max is going to draw it out of me, I hope of how we designed both our tri squad program, which is very popular, as well as our one to one coaching program. So Max, I hope that this is going to be really fun and really interesting, but most importantly, really useful for the listener.
Max Gering 03:44
I think it will be, it's going to be a great inside look at pro patch, and it's going to be a great thought experiment for people to really assess where they are on their journey, if they're hitting these, you know, key marks on the way to making sure that they're going to be successful, and help them realize, you know, what they need more of, what they need less of.
Matt Dixon 04:01
We certainly have a few. What should we label them relic listeners, folks that have been listening to the show for a long time, but aren't necessarily Purple Patch athletes. So we thought this would be a great chance to peel back the curtain, have a little look inside and and gain some understanding that you can draw for your own journey. So so I wouldn't view this as an advertorial for Purple Patch. I want you to be able to listen today and take the lessons and apply it to your own performance journey. I will say, of course, if you would like to explore more, we are always open to a call. And I think this week, anyone that is inspired to set up a needs assessment is going to get the opportunity to speak directly with you max. And so all they need to do is reach out to info at Purple Patch fitness. But I guess we can get going. Yeah, should we fasten our seat belts and luck and all right, what I'm gonna what I'm gonna do is say, firstly, this is the meat and potatoes. We only have a pause there, but what I can do is, I'm just gonna give you the keys the ignition you put down. The gas pedal and get us going. So over to you. I'm sitting here willing and able.
Max Gering 05:06
All right, so I think a good place to start is back when you started coaching, Matt, what was your vision? What was your mission when you moved into the world of coaching, what were you looking to do with your athletes, and then after that, what we looking to with greater Purple
Matt Dixon 05:27
Patch when I started, it's great question. I have to go back quite some years now. I'm afraid to say but, but, and I think many, many of the listeners would already know this, but my coaching career really emerged out of my own struggles as an athlete, I ended up with chronic fatigue. I had ignored many of the elements that fuel long term performance, concepts such as recovery and really smart nutrition, etc, etc, really afterthoughts. It was all about toughness, doing more more, more, etc. And when I started Purple Patch and started to coach athletes, I really wanted my athletes to not make the same mistakes that I had made as an athlete. I was committed, I was tough, I had a certain talent level, but I never really reached my potential and and so I was really fueled by a, I would say, a deep sense of purpose. And I wanted first for my athletes to be really, really healthy, and I felt like performance could be built on a platform of that health. So when I first started Purple Patch, I never thought about scalability or anything. To be honest, I was just looking to coach champions, mostly elite amateurs and and professional athletes. But it's interesting, still to this day, that first methodology, which is pretty polarizing at the time that I that I started with having equal emphasis on recovery, nutrition, integrating strength, which was completely foreign for insurance athletes at the time, that still lives on today as as the backbone of the Purple Patch methodology. So I I'll never forget, Kelli, we're on a United flight coming back from Oceanside race down your way, where you live, Max in San Diego. And she said to me, what do you want to do with Purple Patch? And I wrote down on a United Airlines napkin, I want to change the way endurance sports were coached. And that might sound somewhat egotistical, but it was. It was really my purpose. I felt like there were so many people walking around in a fog of fatigue and and not yielding the performance gains that their effort really deserved. And so that was the catalyst for me and and it started with just me in a studio apartment, coaching a certain set of athletes. And over time, it really just built out and almost took a life of its own in many ways. But it was always driven by that, that sense of mission and purpose, I think that was very, very important.
Max Gering 08:02
I love that. And then talk, walk, walk us through the transition when you made that switch from okay in your studio apartment, coaching professional athletes and also coaching time starved executives at that point to saying, Okay, I want to take this mission and expand it and make it bigger and bring it to a bigger audience. And when then tri squad and the one to one coaching program was born, what was your vision there? What were you trying to accomplish when growing Purple Patch at scale?
Matt Dixon 08:31
Yeah, tri squad has gone through, I would say, multiple iterations. And originally it was called custom programming, I think, but it was one of those. My analogy of coaching is very similar to a personal trainer in which you build up your roster, but at a certain point, if you want to increase any more revenue, then you start to have the challenge of quality. And so you add more clients, your quality starts to dilute because you've got dispersed focus, etc and and I really took the lessons of really what drove and fuel I believe so much of our success with our squad of professional athletes. At the time, I was coaching about 12 pros, each of them like a teenager, and like most coaches that were coaching professional athletes, I was just treating them as individual athletes. Each of them had different goals. Each of them were different stages of development. But the thing that changed everything for us at the elite level is when I really applied a team approach and and really sort of unified and shifted from just coaching a bunch of individuals to say we are the Purple Patch pro squad. And over a few years, that had an amazing, galvanizing impact that drove not just individual performance, but it started to create this high performance culture. And I started to realize, even in a in. Individual sport team was really the fuel that made it took it all to the next level. And so when I was coaching and I started to want to build Purple Patch out, not just from a pure revenue standpoint, but I really felt like I was writing a wrong I wanted to be have big influence on the sport. That's why I was always writing in magazines. I was kicked off this Purple Patch podcast. Now, several years ago, it was really the education was at the backbone, there was a river of a certain way of doing it, and I felt like we were going against the tide, if you want to call it that, against the flow of the river with deep meaning. We wanted to actually evolve the way that endurance sports were coached. And so I had a deep desire to reach more people, and a deep desire to ensure that we could maintain quality and ensure that, because we are a little bit more premium that every athlete would get what they needed. And when I looked around at any other sort of relatively well known coach, the way that they would scale their business globally was just to add coaches, and each coach would have a logo on their chest. They would be identified with the mothership. So in this case, it would have been Purple Patch, and he just add more and more and more. And I saw, I saw a lot of challenges with that model, the biggest of which is suddenly now, I saw my life being just managing the quality of their coaching and not being able to coach very much. And it really didn't have a team approach. You know, you could have Johnny in Kansas and Jill in Florida and Bob in Scotland, whatever it might be, they happen to have a logo on. But how do you actually manage quality, and how do you galvanize really, really impact? And so I wanted to take that pro athlete squad that we did and the principles of that and replicate it in our coaching model.
Matt Dixon 11:04
So I always envisioned having a very small team of coaches, even now we have seven coaches, which, for the size of the organization, is really relatively small. And I wanted those coaches to be in a team where they could support each other, drive each other on for high standards, hold each other to account, lean on each other and their different particular expertise, but also then try and create a program, and nothing like it existed at the time. How can we create a program where we can effectively get the quality of one to one coaching, but in a much more affordable and ultimately from a business sense, scalable format? And that was already what we started. So we wanted to ensure that with what was originally custom programming now has evolved into what we call tri squad, we knew that we didn't want to just deliver stock plans, because that wasn't what made an athlete successful. We wanted a coaching program, and we wanted a coaching program in which anyone participating could have a lot of access to ask a small team of dedicated coaches, but also put the athlete in the driver's seat, give them a lot of autonomy and give them a lot of support on the way. So that was really the catalyst. And I would say when we when we first kicked it off, we didn't get it all right, because we were we were basically just thinking brainstorming. How do we do this? You know, it's really challenging. How do we give people the appropriate level of support without it just being a ton of bricks on top of us from timing standpoint? How do you enable people for autonomy when it's something fresh? How do we actually build this when nothing else like it exists at the time? Really nothing did. And so what emerged from that is tri squad, and I would say, and you know Max, because you're a Purple Patch coach, but evolve or die is an absolute thriving mindset. And every year, you know now that we're basically 10 years into tri squad, every single year, has been about looking inside, reflecting what's good, what do we need to evolve? Where do we need more Athlete Support? And it feels like now the last three or four years, particularly, it is a program that is just starting to get that flywheel effect of inevitable performance and really, really delivering that vision, but it took some time to get it right, I would say, and now it's something that I think really does put athletes in the driving seat, but doesn't leave them in The Desert of guesswork all the way along their journey.
Max Gering 14:43
Yeah, I love that. I think that that key to the scalability of Purple Patch coaching was actually empowering the athletes, empowering the squad athletes. And we'll get into that before we talk about what makes an athlete successful in their journey. I think it's important. To frame this, which is when you were working with the pros, it was to be world be world champions. So when creating tri squad, and now, as we think about amateur triathletes, people who are training for endurance sports because it's a personal passion, and the goal is to enhance their life. What is success? What is the outcome that someone should be optimizing for when going on a performance journey as a triathlon enthusiast.
Matt Dixon 15:28
Yeah, I was a slow I was a slow learner, and and it took me a while to realize that not everyone is going to be a world champion, and but to be honest, I mean, I was very proud to be able to coach world champions and the pros that were so successful, and we had a lot of results, and it was a wonderful source of learning. But I've always been driven to just see people improve. And so when we think about what does success look like, and I always invite you know we do as a coaching team Max. We want to have a very clear, aligned vision of what success looks like. And so in general, I would say there's the there's the primary one, the one that actually sits really above all else, the reason that almost anyone will come to Purple Patch, which is, I want to get faster. That's and I don't think we should forget about that in the same as if you're built starting a coffee shop and or, you know, starting to become a band, you want to success. I think unashamedly, athletes should want to get faster. They should want to improve. And as coaches, we should never forget that. So speed, fast, success. That's a goal. That's great. That's what is motivating. That's what's really hungry from a coaching team and coaching program. Our role is to under that banner, under that spear, in many ways, physically prepare them for their goals. If someone's getting ready for a marathon or an ultra marathon or an Ironman or a sprint distance triathlon, we want to ensure that they're physically ready for their goals, and they're fresh enough to perform, so that their potential can actually meet their race day performance. That's number one. Number two, I would say that the more mental side, having athletes very confident and having a lot of trust in the process and what they're doing to be ready. And there is a systemic side of that, of feeling confident because they're under control, they're fresh, and their body feels good, and they're mentally fresh through the journey. I think that that's a really important part. So whether you label that confidence or control, we come back to that word empowerment. I think that's really important. The third element is particularly relevant for busy people, which is the vast majority of our listeners, as well as our our athletes, which is a control over their training journey in context of life, and having the athlete be very, very clear on where they're going to apply their focus, in order for them to get faster, in order for them to integrate the sport into life where it becomes more of a lifestyle, in order for them to stay mentally and physically fresh, they're going to be controlling their of their training in the context of life. That's very, very important. And the last two things are things that that I think, isn't a reason that necessarily, people sign up for coaching or become part of a group or or even sign up for races, but I think are really, really important and and those two things are number one, make sure it's really fun, because this doesn't need to be a part time job. You don't need a second job. We don't need additional workload in life. We want things that are going to be fun. This is ultimately a hobby. Most of our athletes are not getting paid to play. And the third and the second, one of those, the final thing that I'll say is in taking this on, in really facilitating the challenge and pursuing the goal, trying to get faster, making sure that another outcome that isn't maybe necessarily a reason for joining, but is a great benefit, is to boost your health and improve how we show up in life. It's a thing that we don't think about, but I think it's really valuable. And I think quite often isn't necessarily the reason that someone joins, but it sure as heck is the reason that people tend to stay. I think that once you're inside and you realize that in any in whatever program works for you, if it is helping you as a human being, you're not going to give that away and and that's a real, really important part, so we try and deliver that. I would say
Max Gering 19:42
I love that. I think now we should get into it about how we do that. What makes an athlete successful. So let's transition to the next part of the episode, and have you start to break down for listeners, what makes an athlete successful. So how do they achieve all. Of those great things that you just mentioned,
Matt Dixon 20:01
we have to start with the training program. I think, I think that's ultimately when you know, if you took 100 athletes and you talked about preparing for a race, whatever their goal race was, the first thing that 100 of those 100 athletes would say is they would talk about their training. So let's talk about the training first. We'll highlight a challenge. First, a rigid training program that is built on a spreadsheet, built on, you know, in training peaks, whatever it might be that is simply and there are two types of rigid training because I think it's important for the listener to not think about just a downloaded plan here or a or a training program that's just off the shelf that that is one type of rigid training program. But there's another type of rigid training program as well, which is pre planned with progressive overload, typically building week week recovery week week week recovery week. So most people have seen annual training plans in which you're planning through that classic periodized training. And periodization is not a bad thing, but that rigid periodization, I would put that down as a rigid training program as well. I've seen that when you are looking to execute that in a very busy life, it breaks under the weight of life. It is very, very rare that an athlete can check the box of all of the training sessions in every program that is pre designed in progressive overload successfully. And so at the core, whether we're talking about one to one coaching, someone being coached by you or me, or someone being a part of a group program like tri squad success, I believe, absolutely requires a program that can flex with the athlete's schedule, their energy, their priorities and and it's absolutely important. It is a fundamental part of it. And so you want to have an element of periodization. You certainly go through phases of training, but you want to have coach and athlete or athlete in control of being able to make really smart decisions when either time is limited or energy is limited, and that is a fundamental component that I think many, many coaches miss, because they believe that success is creating a really nice spreadsheet, and if the athlete can execute that preordained, wonderful program, then they going to be successful. The truth is that it goes through the meat grinder and it gets spat out the other end, and athletes are either injured, fatigued, frustrated or losing confidence because they haven't been able to check the box of every single workout that is planned. And the last thing I'll say on it is that's why, and I hope listeners really draw from it, that's why I really dislike having weekly hours or weekly mileage be the predetermined factor of success, I think that is a route to a cul de sac failure. And so I read flexibility in the program, I think is number one, no matter what methodology you use so far as high volume, high intensity, whatever it might be.
Max Gering 23:41
Yeah, in your book, fasttracker athlete, one of the things you cover to help people manage this and be flexible is you break down for the reader how to change a session based off of your energy levels that day or based off of the time you have in the context of your life. Why is that important? Like an athlete that's part of being empowered, and a thinking athlete being able to make those real time changes, and then how do we do that at Purple Patch for the athlete so they can how do we guide them in that process and give them options of what to do?
Matt Dixon 24:20
Yeah, you come back to, you come back to what we talked about of making an athlete successful. And we said we want them to be physically prepared, we want them to get faster, and we want to be confident, and then a few other things in support of that. And so in any given week of training, life ebbs and flows. And in any given day, life ebbs and flows. We might have really demanding day of work or family commitments or whatever it might be. We might be traveling for work, etc. And every athlete's mission is to accumulate the most training that they can. Plan that is effective training. So we are placing a specific training stimulus on the athlete to yield adaptations the body will always adapt. Is whether it positively adapts, getting Stringer, stronger, fitter, faster, etc, or whether it negatively adapts, in other words, accumulating too much fatigue or injury, etc, etc. And so you've got to have a little bit of flex in this. And there is no I should, I should label here. There is no metric that can tell you, no matter what, whether you're wearing a or a ring or a whoop ban, or if there is no metric or computer that can tell you this, you've got to actually integrate this into life, and it's got to come by feeling and life's restrictions. What I see a lot of programs delivering is training plans that look like chicken casserole. In other words, all of the workouts might be good, but when you put them together, it gets really murky. So there's a couple of things that I think are really important. The first is, what are we looking to achieve in this week? What are the key workouts? So whether you're talking about a professional athlete or a newcomer, you want to be able to look at the week of training and say, here are the top two or three sessions of the week that are really the primary focus, typically the most demanding sessions, the ones that are looking to drive the performance needle in terms of overload duration or intensity or both. And with those really looking for coach and athlete or athlete to shift those around to where you are best able to execute those with intent, and hopefully bring in your best. So that's really important. And then the supporting workouts are the workouts that are still important and valuable, but are delivering either general conditioning, muscular resilience or maybe some technical development. And those workouts are where you have a little bit of ebb and flow that can dance with life. So that's a really important component, the second person, the second thing as well, is within any given workout. What's the appropriate dose? Well, it depends on a little bit of fatigue, but also on time commitments. You might not have 75 minutes to execute. Might You might only have 45 minutes on a given day.
Matt Dixon 27:40
So we want to make sure there's a little bit of flex in there. And if time and energy allows, get the 75 but if time doesn't allow, go to what we call the time starved version, where you can scale it down and still nail the purpose of the workout without it dominating life. So in the squad program, where we put the athlete in control, what we do there is we clearly identify the key sessions, what the supporting workouts are, and then every single workout has a time rich version, where you've got a little bit more time, you've also got a time starved version. And then in our cycling workouts, most of the year, you've also got indoor option or outdoor option. So you have a lot of autonomy on how to manage it. What that means is, based off of the same programming, you could have an athlete in one week execute appropriate training for them that leads to effective adaptations, and it might be 678, hours on another week, family might be away, week off work, they might be executing 1618, 20 hours a week of effective training. So this enables us to put the athlete in control. It's very, very simple system. It's a steep learning curve, but once they get it, it smashes a lot of the shackles that erode athlete confidence, but it's like, yeah, I'm I'm progressing, and I'm building that magic word we always talk about consistency, and that's putting, putting yourself in the driver's seat, and you thinking through this, and you driving the wagons on this is empowering. You're not waiting for a machine to tell you, you're not asking your aura ring, whether you're ready. You're actually been in touch. And we had an episode a couple of weeks ago about RPE and the importance of that internal compass. This magnifies that. What am I looking to achieve? What's the timing I've got? How do I build it? And and the last thing I'll say on this, you know, we've, we've had a couple of athletes on this show recently that are really great living testaments of this Stephanie go that's won her age group at Ironman races. And many, many weeks, layering six hours a week because she's a medical doctor with a crazy schedule other weeks, 12 hours a week. So time starved, very, very busy, but yielding consistency over time of positive training that is at the heart like that's the boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom of the programming. And I think it's so critical. And if you're a coach listening, I really encourage you draw for. From that, if you are telling an athlete that's busy, that's looking to achieve a goal this week, we've got to hit a 15 hours next week. We're going to hit 16. Next weeks, we're going to go 17. It will break under the pressures of life every single time. I've never seen an athlete be successful long term, taking that approach ever in 20 years of coaching?
Max Gering 30:23
Yeah, no, really, really important point we can keep the rest of the episode could be all about this, but we have other things to cover, so we'll keep we'll keep moving. So that's the training plan. Setting up a training plan for success needs to be flexible, needs to integrate with your life. We talk now about what that looks like a little bit more. And then we have the guidance, the coaching. So as you mentioned, your mission when creating tri squad was to make one to one coaching affordable and to give people more than just a training plan, to give them a coaching program. What are the things people need to think about when thinking about coaching support on their journey? Why is guidance important, and how can people get guidance? What should that look like?
Matt Dixon 31:04
Coaching is it's interesting. The the higher the level the athlete that I've got to coach in my time, and actually, if I extend it to a lot of C suite executives that I've worked with, the higher up in the organization, the more valued coaching becomes. The most successful athletes that I coach, Tim Reed, Jesse Thomas, Sarah piampiano, Rachel Joyce, all of these athletes were highly, highly coachable. And the ones that were equally as physically gifted as them that you've never heard of, one of the challenges was often a lack of coachability. That's that's the truth. Coaching is really valuable, and the reason it's really valuable is that no matter what your goals are, and you don't have to be trying to win a world championship, but you are taking on a commitment, a challenge, a set of goals in which you are hoping to, yes, get faster and be really successful. And it's a journey. There's no shortcut, that's the truth of it. And along that journey, you are the one that is doing all of the work. That means, by definition, you are in the weeds, and it's incredibly hard to retain perspective and actually understand how to course correct when you start to stray off course, or even that you are straying off course when you're the person in there committed doing the work and the hard graft. I always heard, I heard Steve Kerr who's the Golden State Warriors basketball coach, and he was talking about him as a player and the value of coaching and and then he talked about great players, and he was his point was, you can't watch yourself play the game. So therefore, it's really important to have coaching who can see it's not that they're the coach is a better player. It's not that the coach is a better athlete than you. It's that they have perspective that you don't have. The other thing that a coach has, hopefully, is a broad vision of a whole bunch of different athletes that they've seen.
Matt Dixon 32:11
They've seen your journey before, even though your journey is unique. And so as a part of athlete success, it's very, very difficult to go alone. I think it's almost impossible to achieve success long term, when you're just going along, you need to have some fine form of guidance and and that's just on the training that we're talking about. Now let's think about all of the other elements that are important that fuel athlete success, nutrition, sleep, recovery, equipment, choices, strength and conditioning, mobility, injury management, blah, blah, blah, I could carry on. All of those fields are incredibly complex, full of confusing information that's contradictory out there. How are you supposed to be able to filter you so all of that information and understand where you should apply your focus on what is right for you, and so with all of the highs and lows, personal circumstances, motivational dips that naturally occur, even if you're committed, that's going to occur, fatigue life, stresses, etc, without support, athletes lose perspective. They spend hours that they don't have looking for answers, and sometimes they never know where they really found the answers. And so coaching support is really the thing that helps build that confidence. Take away distractions, like I see ourselves as a filter, take away distractions and enable people to remove the guesswork and place their energy and mindset on the things that are actually going to move the performance needle. So coaching is a fundamental element of it.
Max Gering 34:50
Fantastic. Do we want to break down a little bit about what that coaching support, accountability and feedback looks like for squad athletes?
Matt Dixon 34:59
Yeah, um. Hmm, it starts. I mean, the truth is, it starts before an athlete even joins, you know, if, and you're going to be the one that knows the most amount about this, because, you know, we really love it. It's great if an athlete just signs up for the squad program. It's terrific, but but it's really enjoyable when you get an athlete reach out, and quite often, Max you lead these conversations, for lack of a better phrase of a needs assessment. Really understand hang on a week. Are we for you? We? Are we going to be a good match? Because they see it as a performance partnership, and any athlete can have that, that call to understand what squad is, but also for us to understand what their goals and their needs are, etc. So I would say that the coaching process almost begins before the athlete is actually signed up. But when an athlete does sign up, they get onto the program, obviously, but the first thing that we do is have a coaching kickoff call. So really understand making sure that they have alignment. We can understand who they are as an athlete, we can understand their goals right from the start and empower the athlete to do what we've already talked about before with their training. Okay, around your goals, your current fitness level, your schedule, etc. This is how we want you to be successful. And then with the squad program, which is the more autonomous program. We'll talk about one to one coaching in part two of this show. But we have a check in process, because it's really important. I mean, if we're going to care about the athlete getting faster, being in control, building confidence, and going on the long term journey, we can't just put them out to pasture and hope that they generate fantastic milk. And so we have a check in process that is one week, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, six months, one year. So all the way along the journey, we've got check in the proactive from us to the athlete. That's not all of the communication that you get from Purple Patch.
Matt Dixon 37:50
That's us reaching out to you personally to ensure that it's successful along the journey. Then the athlete obviously has, from their proactive side, the opportunity to connect with coaches, etc, and we'll probably get into that. But that's a that's, I think, the the fundamental part of it. And then in a broader perspective, beyond the check ins and the kickoff, having access to our team of coaches with all of our different expertise, and frankly, our personalities. Yeah, I'm big, loud and boisterous, but we have all sorts of personalities. Athletes have email support asking any questions that they want with Q and A, I think our hub, which is about a year and a half, now that we've launched the hub program, which is the cornerstone of our education, our community, our feedback, that's a game changer for us. That's a game changer. Our athletes tell us it's a game changer, where they get to connect with each other, but they also get to connect with the coaches, and then having the live events. You know, many, many athletes join when I or one of the other coaches, quite often it's me lead the live events for an opportunity to ask questions to particularly around the subject. And I think one thing that that, I mean, you could almost all that, but the coaching consults consultations is, is, I think a really, really, I would almost label it coaching on demand, and I would say, and, and I think that's the personalization where it matters, is the way that I would label that. And that's beyond the regular coaching program. If an athlete needs deep customization, deep personalization. Wants to do some season planning. Wants to actually talk about a particular subject, whether it's race, anxiety, female physiology, whatever it might be, they can just opt in to a one to one coaching consultation with yourself. Coach John, Coach Nancy, Coach Brad, any one of the coaches, those have really become a feature of squad and a very, very incremental on cost 30 or 60 minutes that you spend one to one. I think that's great. And actually now the majority of tri squad athletes do choose to utilize those. You know, we've, we're doing hundreds of those a year. And I think in many ways, I'd love your feedback, but they they're really one of the most valuable features of the score program, in many ways, don't
you think?
Max Gering 39:30
Yeah, I think it's really where you have the opportunity to meet with a coach and do a deep dive and get the guidance that you need. And just to give a few examples, so we have season planning, we have pacing and race strategy, or reflecting and reviewing a race. But there's also, you know, I'm newer to triathlon. I'm just getting into Olympic and sprint triathlons. How do I make changes to the programming? How do I customize things that are right for me? Or we had an athlete sign up the other day. She's training for a marathon. Um, with her husband. You know, how do we blend our training together so we can go on this running journey and performance journey together? And so anything that you can think of, all of the things that are just personal circumstances, that's your chance to meet with the coach and get the support and guidance that you need. It's it's fantastic. We before this episode, I reached out to Tiger. I was curious about the stats, about our coaching consults. And we did 374 coach consults in 2024 and just so far in 2025 we've done 202 and so myself and all the other coaches that that's a big part of our our week, and a big part of what we love about the job is the chance to connect with the squad athletes all over the world, which are 29
Matt Dixon 40:42
countries. I'll also in the vein of how I built this as well. There's an important coaching element to this as well, which is, for a team of coaches, you mentioned that it's a big part of your your weekly life. But think about what starts to evolve there on coaching quality, because you're you're not just working with your 1015, 20 athletes, however many athletes you're working with, you have your thumbprint on many, many athletes journeys. So you're gaining experience. The whole time the team of coaches is looking at individual challenges and providing guidance in a really succinct manner to fuel their success. And there is a huge breadth of different goals, challenges, situations. So it's that hands on advice and counsel and guidance that I think really fosters ongoing coaching development, and we start to see that galvanize you know that that's why, I think a big part of the reason that coaches don't tend to leave Purple Patch and and it's such a tight knit team, because we get to coach a lot, and I think that's, that's why we're in it. So it's really, really fun.
Max Gering 41:55
Yeah, no, it's a really good point. It's definitely a fantastic part about working for Purple Patch, moving on, going back to training a little bit. You know, in the beginning, you spoke about how building out an annual plan isn't necessarily the best way to do things, and life isn't a spreadsheet. That being said, having a long term approach and understanding the progression of a triathlon season and where your goals fit in and when you're racing so on and so forth, is important. So could you talk a little bit about this idea of having a long term approach, long term integration and transformation and going on it on a journey? Yeah, it's,
Matt Dixon 42:35
um, I'll go back to the professional athletes as well, where you know, if you think about being a professional athlete, you've got X number of races a year, six to eight races a year, often culminating in things like the World Championships, the Hawaii Ironman, the Half Ironman, World Championship, whatever it might be, whenever we started a coaching relationship, the driving mission was to become the best athlete possible. They might have aspirations to become world champion, but it was through athlete development and by becoming a better athlete over the long term. So what you are doing this year should help you be ready for all of your races this year, but also create a platform that you could build on and become a better athlete the next year, following and many of the I think that was a part of the driver, both the team based approach with squad and that long term athlete development vision was the fuel that really enabled the longevity of many of the coaching relationships. You know, Sarah piampiano, 10 years, Jesse Thomas, 10 years. Tim Reid, five or six years, Rachel Joyce, five or six years, it was because an athlete would improve incrementally each year and along the way be successful. Why would that be any different for a busy, busy amateur athlete. And so we designed the program through the arc of athlete development. When you finish a season, you don't, don't go back to square one. It's almost like a virtuous, you know, circle going up and up and up and up. It's building and building and building and building, year on year, month for month. So at the heart of it, whether you're working with a one to one athlete, whether you're working under the tri squad program we set and we label this baseline, because it's the galvanizing thing. The truth is that most people can be in lockstep most of the year on a similar athlete progressive journey. So that's how we develop the arc of development, and that makes it really fun as well. Because for much of the year, for much of your journey, you're doing stuff, even though, remember, we're tailoring and customizing for every person.
Matt Dixon 46:30
We might be doing a different number of hours in a different order, but we're kind of in the same. Drum beat together, and that creates the cult, the galvanizing the tribe, the squad, and that goes from there. But, and I think it's a big but almost an and, and we need to make sure that athletes show up on race day, ready, and that means that they need to progressively train for their key events and ensure that they show up, swim, bike, run and strength ready for race day and recover from those sessions. So almost layering on top of it, almost coming off of a freeway, we have the race builds, where they count down day by day into race day, recovery from and then flowing back through. So you've got two things going on at once, which is long term athlete development. That's why we have so much retention. And then race builds to ensure that you, if you're on the program Max, are getting ready for your race, whether it's getting ready for a sprint triathlon, whether it's getting ready for a marathon, whether it's getting ready for an Ironman Triathlon. So that's how we create the flywheel effect of performance. I think it avoids burnout. I think it helps people dialing. The other part that I think it really helps is the depth of intentional focus. So enables people to go along the journey and really integrate it into life, but then very clearly, clearly, which I think is really helpful for the psychology of an athlete, to put an X in the calendar and say, It's go time here I've got for the next seven weeks, 11 weeks, however many weeks you're going onto your race build. It's go time. And now I am applying it's something that's a demarcation in the sand of, let's get ready and let's dial it in now, and it gets more serious for that short period of time, but then enables when they're on baseline to have a little bit more flex and and that's really, really important. And, and the final thing I'll say on it is it really helps smash one of the biggest challenges of athletes, which is, I need to be perfect all the time. And then they try and check every box of the athlete, but they don't address things like recovery, sleep, intentional blocks of rest, hydration, nutrition. If you're getting that most of the time, you're yielding consistency, and then you go and lock and load. So yeah, it's infused in the whole program. As I would say,
Max Gering 47:34
it's huge. I think it's a key point of having a successful performance journey that this long term approach, but also dialing it in when necessary. A lot to learn there. Yeah, moving on. We've mentioned this before, and this is just very, very clear that something that's really important to us, but the power of team and community, something that started when you you know this was the big shift for the Purple Patch pros. But why is team and community important, especially in a sport like triathlon, which is an individual sport in many ways, well,
Matt Dixon 48:12
I'll say in one sentence, it makes athletes faster. That's that's the blunt truth of it, when, when athletes are a part of something beyond them. It really helps. This can be a lonely sport, a lonely endeavor, and if you're listening and you've ever taken on a challenge or goal, and that goal is very, very important to you, and when it's important to you, that means that there's going to be a little bit more internal stress and maybe a little even a little bit of fear and anxiety and and quite often, it can build and build and build until it becomes almost paralyzing. If you're going along a journey, and you've got people that are taking on equally ambitious goals, similar goals to you, and they're going on their journey, and there's a whole bunch of success happening. There's people that are navigating struggles and failures and setbacks, and as a part of that, you can see, you can live, you can actually help them celebrate success, navigate setbacks. It goes beyond you, and you being pass fail, and it actually helps you retain a broader perspective, and you draw from athletes. So interestingly, I think some of the most powerful shares that we get within our hub community are of the athletes that say I really blew it, and the groundswell of support that occurs and the lessons that emerge out of that help all athletes, not just them, all athletes galvanize and draw from that. So it is the most amazing perspective driver, confidence builder and catalyst. The fun, and it prevents ego and tunnel vision and and so that hub is really the important part of tri squad, I would say, because that's our marketplace meeting place, that's our town square, and it's really interesting to see the mentorship that emerges from that, the accountability that comes out, the perspective that helps the crowdsourcing of questions to all of the answers stuff that I don't know. What are the best wheels? Should I buy an arrow helmet? What? How do these gels work, etc? How do I manage terrain? What am I going to do if I'm a shift worker and I have to do night shifts, etc? And even from that, how that blossoms into real life, when athletes actually train together, meet up at races, even form relationships. We've had people hire each other out of Purple Patch.
Matt Dixon 50:05
That's where had several Purple Patch marriages, that is it. And and I think that that sort of dovetails a little bit into the life coaching as well. You know, I've, I've just come out of, well, I've come out of doing my strength session Max live in the Purple Patch center. But before that, I was coaching this morning, the life bike workout. You know, we had our 20 people in studio, but we had our 75 people that were remote and and it was from Denmark, Chile, Mexico, all over the US, two way video. That's, I think, a really important component as well. And if I can just keep going here, I know we're off of community a little bit, but the video coaching for me, whether it's on the live sessions or the on demand. You know, our video based bike sessions, our on demand strength sessions that are all a video enabled. The reason those are important is, here's the truth, most athletes, and this goes all that starts with the pro athletes. Every pro athlete that I've worked I've had to educate them on how to train. How do you actually, really train effectively? How do you manage your effort in real time? Today, we did a series of short hard intervals into a maximal steady state threshold workout, being coached through that workout. So I wrote it. I had the intention in mind. Now I get to coach it. And while you're doing it, and you are on the session from San Diego with me, I get to coach you. I get to hold you to account. I get you to retain your form when under fatigue, under real pressure. That is coaching. That's a reason that you would go to a track workout with a coach, you would go to a master swim workout. And the fact you can do that from anywhere in the world, I think that's a big, big thing, not just for community, but actually coaching or training effectiveness. I would say,
Max Gering 52:53
yeah, it's, it's huge. And I think you get that benefit there's that's connect, connects to the team, right? Because you're doing it if you're doing it live, especially, but even if you're not doing it live, there's this feeling of we're all doing something very similar, and it helps you work harder when you know that those around you, even though they're not physically around you. But the greater pro patch community is also out there doing these workouts and getting coached on the same things, yeah, and then just something that came up that I do want to highlight, especially now, it's nice time of year for where many people live, and they ride outside. It's not only ride inside. For example, I ride I do the live class once a week, so I do on demand once a week, and then I ride outside the rest. It makes the riding that you do outside more fun because you have a chance to implement and put to practice all the things that you're learning when you're inside. So it's not just put your head down right on the trainer all the time, and that's all we care about. It still does connect to that greater mission of having fun and enjoying training.
Matt Dixon 53:57
Yeah, we want you to become a better rider. That's for a better athlete. I will say, as we, as we're doing this episode, I think because we have received several questions about one to one coaching as well, we should do a part two to this podcast where we talk about a little bit about this, but apply it to one to one coaching. Maybe we can do that next week, where we can carry on and do one to one coaching, because it's, it's the same concepts, but it's a little bit different, and I think that might help. So live on air here, I'm saying, let's do that. I want, I want to highlight just to finish the the show. And I'm not sure if you know these stats Max, but I too, did some homework with Tiger. So I want to read off a couple of stats about our program. Because you asked me to do this around the tri squad program. I thought it was a good idea, but I've got some stats to share with you around the tri squad program. I wonder, as a coach, whether this will be surprising for you so current. What athletes if we if we did that, how long do you think that they have stayed with us? What's that? What's their average duration of being a part of Purple Patch? What would be your guess average?
Max Gering 55:11
If I didn't know, I would say probably the average is around the year people come for a season, doing a race and and move on with their life. The the
Matt Dixon 55:19
average is 29 months. That's about two and a half years. So it's pretty, pretty significant our 90 day survey. So this, when we take this results of a 90 day survey of customer satisfaction is an A so very, very strong, 4.8 out of five average on NPS. This is one for the the techies out there in the subscription SAS product. So as our net promoter score is 98% I believe, and people that depart, this is the one that I really like. People that decide to depart the program, 96% say they would strongly reconsider joining in the future. That's, I think that's the most important thing. And here's the here's the other thing, 100 100. We've had more than and by the way, we can't capture all of these, and we're only talking about major events here. More than 100 podiums, so age group podiums in 2024 year, more than 100 athletes qualified to the world championships last year. That's good. So that that adds we need to start to shift up our more than 1500 athletes, because that was about two years ago, we did the count. So we need to start to say more than 1700 athletes. But once we're up there, we're happy. So So I think that's it. I think that's it, isn't it?
Max Gering 56:41
It is, I guess, one final question before we wrap it up, to add on to the statistics, a final thought from you about, you know, you say a lot in the workouts. This is us. This is Purple Patch. You know, we've talked about how every athlete matters, and we really, really care about our athletes. We talked about being, being results driven and wanting to make athletes faster and better. Is there anything else that that comes to mind to wrap it up, that you think about when you say, this is us. This is Purple Patch.
Matt Dixon 57:11
Yeah. Well, I'm going to rebound and ask you the same question, so be prepared, but I'll give you my my version of it, which is, I think everything that we talked about today, the most important thing is we celebrate when people achieve great things. You know, when they win amateur world titles or whatever it might be. Quite frankly, I don't care who the fastest is, I don't care who the best is, who the strongest is. What I care what really drives me, and I think it will drive me, why I will never stop coaching, is that I love people to improve. And what tickles me that class this morning where we had folks in their 70s, people trying to win their age group, people that are not participating in triathlon, the common thread was a desire to improve. And that is the thing that I think when when I say on those bike classes, this is us. It's the galvanizing ball of energy that fuels Purple Patch of You are welcome. You will get faster, and we will celebrate you, improving the matter where your start line is. And if we keep that in mind, and then it diffuses and removes all of the shit stuff of sport, all of the ego, etc, and it creates a really, really welcoming environment. That is, what's that word Max? I always forget it fun, and that, for me, is the important thing. You got any thoughts on that? I
Max Gering 58:53
don't know if I can say it much better than that, but I to piggyback on it. Is yes, this, this commitment to tapping into your potential. Yeah, it's not for everybody. This is, you know, being performance driven in your life and wanting, wanting to be the best version of yourself is not for everybody, and that's why not everyone does this sport, but being part of a team, being part of a culture where people are committed to tapping into the potential, not just in sport, but also in life and going on that journey, it's for those people. And so it's fantastic to be a part of people's journeys.
Matt Dixon 59:28
Yeah, that's great. And I'll just piggyback on that again. Come over the top again and say the one thing that I love is helping people realize that they are stronger than they think they are. And quite often you see case studies out there and you see people achieving amazing things, and they end the common sort of reaction is, Wow, that's amazing. How do they do it? But the truth is, we can do it, and we can achieve amazing things. We are stronger than we think we are. And when you get in the. Right place, with the right people, with the right support, and you make sure that it integrates into life and you're committed to it, you can, to your point, reach your potential and live a performance life. Well. Thank you very much. I appreciate you guiding me through that as a lot of fun. My pleasure
Max Gering 1:00:16
it was, and I think we should definitely do this again and touch on one to one coaching. But this was a fantastic, fantastic chat. Hopefully people found it valuable.
Matt Dixon 1:00:23
It was good as a reminder, folks, if if you would like to reach out, if you'd like to have a needs assessment, there is absolutely no pressure. I want to double underline that. It's a complimentary call with max here himself. Let's call it a needs assessment. All you need to do is reach out to info at Purple Patch fitness.com and we'd love to partner with you on your journey and and if not, if Purple Patch is not for you, I just hope that you are radically successful and living your performance life, and you smash all of your goals, and you be successful because we celebrate everyone that is looking to thrive. Max. Thanks so much. I appreciate it, and we will speak to you next week. I think we'll be talking about one to one coaching then, guys, thanks so much for joining and thank you for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing. Head to the Purple Patch channel of YouTube, and you will find it there and you could subscribe. Of course, I'd like to ask you if you will subscribe. Also Share It With Your Friends, and it's really helpful if you leave a nice positive review in the comments. Now, any questions that you have, let me know, feel free to add a comment, and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. And in fact, as we commence this video podcast experience, if you have any feedback at all, as mentioned earlier in the show, we would love your help in helping us to improve. Simply email us at info@purplepatchfitness.com, or leave it in the comments of the show at the Purple Patch page, and we will get you dialed in. We'd love constructive feedback. We are in a growth mindset, as we like to call it, and so feel free to share with your friends. But as I said, Let's build this together. Let's make it something special. It's really fun. We're really trying hard to make it a special experience, and we want to welcome you into the Purple Patch community with that. I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun, keep smiling, doing whatever you do, take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Triathlon coaching, Purple Patch, athlete success, training flexibility, team approach, long-term development, performance journey, coaching support, community integration, race preparation, athlete empowerment, personalization, video coaching, athlete retention, performance life.