371 - Turning Pressure Into Your Performance Edge
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Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!
On this episode, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon introduces the Purple Patch Marathon Special program, offering personalized coaching for $99/month with a 25% discount on the first month. The program includes live education, race strategy support, and on-site coaching. Dixon emphasizes the importance of balancing pressure with support to enhance performance, using examples like Sami Inkinen's success in IRONMAN and business leadership. He explains that pressure is a privilege when met with the right support system, advocating for high expectations and intentional recovery. Dixon encourages athletes and leaders to set high standards and provide a supportive environment to achieve sustained high performance.
If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out at info@purplepatchfitness.com.
Episode Timecodes:
00-1:44 Episode Promo
2:13-4:13 Intro
4:22-7:03 Meat and Potatoes
7:05-8:26 What is Pressure?
8:30-12:00 Sami Inkinen
12:30-17:05 Athletes under Pressure
17:10-22:47 Applying the Balance
22:55-end Business Example
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Transcription
Matt Dixon 00:00
Just before we get going, I've got some exciting news for you. Purple patch has just launched our marathon special program. It is the perfect upgrade for any runner who's chasing smarter, faster, and perhaps sometimes, most importantly, healthier marathon racing. What you're gonna get in this program is personalized coaching lead on top of our proven run squad program, the program that has driven so many athletes to cross the finish line for the first time, to take their performance to the next level, to even get massive qualifications and podiums at Marathon races, it also includes live education, race strategy support, and even on site, coaching at some of the key events around the country, and it all starts at only $99 a month, a little cherry on top, 25% off your first month to help that entry. Moment, if you want to fuel your marathon with the full purple patch coaching methodology and the support of all of us as a coaching team, well, reach out to us. Info@purplepatchfitness.com we'll have a complimentary needs assessment. We'll see if we're a great fit, and we'll set you off on your journey. It is a great program that's going to help you unlock marathon performance. I should add as a little bonus here, if you're not a marathon runner, if you're not thinking about taking the marathon, but you do want to take your performance level to the next level. Well, we always hope into a conversation as well. Reach out to the same email address info at purple patch fitness.com we'll set up a complimentary needs assessment, and once again, we'll see if we're a good fit. All right, the show today is all about pressure, which I'm told is a privilege if you get the balance right. Onwards with the show. Enjoy. 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 02:13
And welcome to the purple patch podcast as ever your host Matt Dixon, and let me ask you, how you doing today? How you feeling? Huh? A lot of people answer, oh, I've got a lot on. I'm just feeling so stressed. It's just so demanding, whether you're talking about your training journey for a marathon or an Iron Man, or maybe everything that's going along around the summer with kids and trying to send them off to camps, or perhaps you've got a lot of demands going on at work, if it's anything like me and my recent trip that was pretty quote, stressful. Stress is something that's harmful. Yeah, it's a performance impediment, not necessarily. What we're going to do today is we're going to dig into two words that might elicit a little reaction for you. Number one is stress. That sounds really harmful. Number two is pressure. Why? Mastering the distinction between these words is absolutely central for athletes and leaders, you're going to learn how you can leverage pressure as a performance driver and why your support must match demand if you're a leader, how to create conditions for people, whether it's athletes, whether it's team members, to thrive within pressure rather than break under harmful, chronic stress. I'm going to dig into some real world examples. I'm going to give you some coaching insight and, most importantly, some actionable takeaways. This episode bridges the worlds of sport and leadership with one powerful truth. Performance isn't built by avoiding pressure. It's built by pairing high pressure environments with great support to drive you forward. And so with that, let's dig in. It is my favorite moment in the show, because I get to say it is the meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 04:22
All right, so let's frame the meat and potatoes. Today's show is going to resonate whether you're preparing for your next diamond or whether you're leading a team of high performers in a fast moving business. I want to give a special shout out as well, if you're a coach listening to this show, because I think this is an important construct to help you drive the necessary expectations to elicit great performance from your athletes, while also leveraging your coaching to deliver the support to ensure they're successful along their way, we're going to be talking about pressure most specifically, why it's not the enemy, how it can fuel your performance and the. Line in which it turns into chronic, unyielding stress, and therefore, ultimately burnout and maladaptations, or, of course, performance decline. We're going to unpack why you hear that saying so much in sport, pressure is a privilege, but the truth is that that while it's true, while it's a great saying, it only works if it's met with the right system of support, and this is true for whether you're talking about elite athletes or you're talking about C suite executives. So we want to define pressure versus stress and start to unpack the journey. Let's start by having a nice differentiator here, two words, pressure, stress, the fork in the road. Okay. Now when I'm talking about stress today, we always view stress as harmful. We've talked about the show how having a positive relationship with stress, having the right mindset, can actually equip you to leverage it for your future gains. And that's true. Really talking about there is pressure. When I'm discussing stress today, I'm going to talk about the chronic, unyielding stress where there's no opportunity to integrate adaptation or growth. And so stress where it does become harmful, whether you're an employee, whether you're a mom or dad, whether you're an athlete. Okay, so let's talk about the fork in the road. All right, we're going to draw a simple and profound line, one that most people never talk about when we think about pressure. And pressure is a prerequisite of growth in my mindset, when we think about pressure, what that is in any arena in life is high high demand. And that's a truth, whether you're looking to elicit gains in sport, whether you're looking to build your own business, whatever it might be that you care about, you're living in an environment of high demand. But coupled with that, demand is great agency. Okay, you have autonomy. You have the skill set the ability to actually meet that demand. And that's where things get really, really powerful, really positive. It's a challenging situation, but one in which you have the tools to respond to that challenging situation. You have the belief, the clarity, the focus, the support and the readiness to step up and meet the demands. Now, there is a mindset component to this. There is a physical platform of health. We are ill equipped to step up and meet those demands, demands if we are existing in a fog of fatigue the whole time, one of the reasons why, across the broad spectrum of people that we talk about on this show, we always start with the physical. It's important to have a foundation of health. Fatigue makes cowards of us all, and so we want to have that that's a catalyst to then get the agency coupled with the mindset. But when we think about high pressure, it is tough, challenging, not very comfortable. It's demanding, but you have agency, and that's a huge component that creates a catalyst for performance evolution already. With that in mind, if you think about high performance, and we think about high performance in sport or any arena in life, the truth is that high performance isn't really related to the actual amount of pressure, the amount of demands that you face, but instead, it's how equipped you are to meet those demands. It's the environment around those demands, and that's where things can get really, really interesting.
Matt Dixon 09:13
I've talked about Sami inkanen a lot on this show. In fact, he's going to be a guest on the show over the coming weeks. But the story of Sami, if you haven't heard it before, is a real, powerful case study. To highlight this, we can label Sami story as the Iron Man and the IPO Sami was preparing for the Hawaii Iron Man, the most prestigious Ironman race in the world. And at the same time, he was leading Trulia, his organization that he co founded through a $2 billion IPO. Now that's pressure, okay, but he thrived. The question is, why did he thrive? It's because he had systems in place. He had rhythm, he had confidence, he had a framework in which he could operate. He trained for his Iron Man with a smart system, integrating it into the other demands in life that built his capacity. He leveraged that framework to lead with an intentional mindset, forcing savage prioritization to filter out distractions and focus on the key boulders, and he ultimately built a system that. That enabled him to meet all of the massive pressure with greater capacity, so he didn't avoid pressure. He designed a system for performance within that pressure, and that's really the model, in many ways. The interesting thing about Sami is he then set the conditions in his own corporate environment, leading his team, starting at the leadership team, permeating all the way through to the interns of the organization in which leveraging challenge personal wellbeing was a point of performance catalysts. He had a high performing culture at Trulia. He's now replicated that at his current company, Virta health. And so it started with him as the role model. He built a system to meet the high demands and thrive in it by leveraging his journey in sport. And then he took those lessons and applied, not trying to convert every employee at Trulia and now Virta health into triathletes or Ironman athletes, but instead setting up the conditions where he valued positive health, people getting out of their comfort zone, people looking after themselves as human beings, so that he could get more out of them as team members and employees. And this becomes really, really salient when we think about pressure, because if you're a leader, if you're a coach, let me tell you, if you're trying to drive an athlete to be successful, or you're trying to inspire and set the conditions for all of your team members to be as productive as they can be, it is absolutely critical that you take your expectations and you raise them. You ensure that your expectations are very, very high. When I reflect on coaching the professional athletes, I never lowered my expectations. Our mission that we faced was to drive world class performance. I had a strong understanding of what world class performance was, and I set my standards, the non negotiable behaviors to be at that level. And so high expectations is a critical component of driving high performance. It's a fundamental principle at purple patch and across a win cycle program. It applies equally in business leadership as it does in coaching and sport. If you want great results from an athlete from a team, you've got to put them under high Here's the word pressure. Okay? Now this is only going to be successful if that pressure is paired with massive support, because if it's not paired with support, that's where things start to get undone. You start to hear words like burnout, and ultimately, that pressure turns into chronic, really, really damaging stress that the person or the athlete is ill equipped and able to adapt to, they can't perform, and that's when things start to break now, of course, the reverse of this is true as well. If you lower your demands and expectations, well, you're going to start to have a real challenge on your hand as well. So let's think about it as a simple matrix. Here you've got your excess x axis as you go along from low demand or expectations to extremely high expectations, and then let's balance that with the y axis, where you go from a low support environment to a very high support environment. Our mission to get high performance from our athletes or from our teams is to raise our expectations going along the x axis, but pair it with great support. That's when you get high engagement, high buy in growth and ultimately, better results. That's the magic component. If you lower your expectations, the demands, the pressure goes down, and you're still really comfortable. You're a cheerleader, you're nurturing as a leader, of a coach. What's going to start to happen? There is just stagnation. You're not going to have any real growth. People are actually going to get bought. It's just not great. You might have great support, but they're just sitting in a place of comfort. You're not going to get the most out of people if you lower your expectations, on the flip side, if you hit really, really high expectations, but you're not giving them support, be careful, resentment, burnout, a lot of the components that are what pandemics across our business, performance and even our sport. Performance, work hard, the old military style leadership, rah, rah, rah, harder, harder, harder. But you're not providing a supportive, positive environment, you are going to have great burnout. And then if you have low on both, not many expectations, not real support, that's where you get the worst word of performance, apathy. People are just going to leave be uninterested. They're not going to get results.
Matt Dixon 15:13
They're going to quit the sport. And so our mission, when we think about performance gains, is to set very, very high standards, but your role as a leader or a coach is to also provide an environment of great support. Now, if you're listening today, and you're an athlete and you're not coached, well, you need to be a catalyst of your own journey, almost agency for yourself here where, if you don't have a mentor relationship, a coaching relationship, but you are very driven, you want to be really successful, you can set your own standards. You can set your expectations. But if you really want to be successful over the long term, you have to find some way in which you have a support system, through your friends, through your family, through training partners, to at least give you that support to help you keep those standards high. It's a very, very rare and it will never be optimized to just go on a singular journey. That is why every great champion athlete loves and demands to be coached, and that is why the higher you go in organizations, the much more likely it is that somebody reaches out for external support, for a sounding board for coaching. That's because they understand athletes and great business leaders that high demands are critical. We need to have the pressure. But in order to be successful over the long term, you need partnership, you need coaching, you need support. That's how we get to great performance. So let's use a real world example of sport as we go through this. Let's think about finding and I'm not a fan of this word, but I'm going to use it the balance between support and athlete. Let's go through and imagine a coaching partnership, and I'm coaching a young aspiring triathlete who's really looking to not just go and complete an Ironman, but he wants to qualify for the Hawaii Ironman World Championship. The goal is very, very clear. He's seeking high performance, and that's pressure on himself. It's very important to him, but in order for him to develop and grow, he's got very, very high expectations and a lot of pressure to get to that performance. Now imagine that I write the magical training plan. You've got your long bike ride, you've got your threshold intervals. You need to go and do a track session. You need to go and do this 5000 yard swim with lots of short intensity in it. And I just throw this magic program up there. You go, hit it, and you've got lots of demanding training sessions in there. I put them in the plan. The workouts are good, the demand and pressure that those workouts provide is an absolute balance relative to this athlete's expectations and goals. In order to achieve great performance, they have to work very, very hard, but imagine as well, then I just take a step back. My job is done. I'm a coach. I've written the plan. This athlete has everything they need to go and be successful, but I offer absolutely zero context to that plan as a part of it as well. We've got all the big sessions in there, but I don't integrate any intentional recovery. I don't have any check ins with the athlete. I don't understand how the athlete is responding. I'm not receiving feedback. I'm not providing feedback. The athlete is not held to account, also not provided any support and nurturing when maybe things go a little wrong, perhaps it's a little bout of sickness or a little injury, but hang on, my expectations are high. I've delivered the pressure. That pressure is a prerequisite for success. What do you think is going to happen to that athlete as they go along, their first four weeks, their next four weeks, their next four weeks going up to 1620, 24 weeks in preparation for this big Iron Man race, that they have lofty goals that they need to perform in under pressure in order for them to achieve their goal. I tell you what's going to happen, because it happens every single time the athlete gets overwhelmed, discouraged, a little bit lost and quite commonly over fatigued or even worse, injured. There is high demand, but there is no support. Purple. So what we've created there is just ongoing chronic stress. Great. Now let's contrast this. Let's say that I write exactly the same plan with similar building blocks in there, but I pair it with a few little key components. Firstly, every single workout, there is a clear purpose. The athlete understands whether I'm expecting them to go really, really hard and go and suffer no matter what the cost is, or quite deliberately controlling things where it should be, more soul filling, more conversational, easier as they're navigating along the coaching journey. They're getting frequent feedback. They're getting some mental coaching around, maybe when things find they're finding things challenging, or they pulled the pin where it was just too painful or challenging, they just said, I just couldn't face it today, whatever it might be. And as they go through the program, I'm deliberately and intentionally providing them agency with some intentional recovery, give them, giving them easier training session, easier blocks of work, so that their body has time physically to take the hard work that is a prerequisite, but absorb it, adapt, grow, fit a stronger, more powerful and carry on the journey with greater consistency.
Matt Dixon 21:24
Imagine in that environment what the result might be. The result is really quite simple, because as we go through the weeks, four weeks, eight weeks, 16 weeks, as we go along, they're starting to build consistency. They're starting to understand their body. They're starting to have victories. They're not having cliff erosion. What starts to emerge from it is probably the most powerful thing in a plan's success, and that is an athlete believing in it. It's really, really critical. Now, the difference here in both environments, the training is very demanding. I am putting the athlete under pressure, but I'm giving them in the second environment, tools. I'm equipping them so with that pressure, they're in an environment in which they can thrive. And so that is really a catalyst of high demand and high support. It's very simple. And anyone that's in a really positive coaching relationship really understands this. This is not rocket science. We're talking at a very basic level of high performance in sport, and so with that, let's flip it, and let's take exactly that case study, and let's apply it to business. Let's imagine in this scenario now, we've got a leader of a team, so a business leader with their employees, their team. Okay, let's flip it. Let's imagine that you're a CEO, you're leading a team, and you're going through rapid growth. The company's doing well. The organization is growing. You are experiencing a huge catalyst. You're a rocket ship, and with that, it is necessary for the future success of the organization that you as the CEO, raise expectations. You drive for innovation. There's a lot of change occurring. You're moving fast. All of this is necessary now, if you're listening right now as a business leader, and give you a straight analogy of what's happening under our feet right now, the movement of our flaws is absolutely palpable, because AI is here, and it's not happening over the coming years. It's happening over the coming months. That's an example of change, and it's occurring. So here you are. Boom, we need to move fast, we need to innovate, we need to evolve. Expectations go up. It's a really, really exciting time, but this CEO's company team start to show signs of burnout, disengagement, frustration, almost resentment. There's not a cohesion. Why? Because this CEO is delivering pressure without a supporting structure. So what's missing here? There's no consistent team cadence going on. We're not providing any recovery after big projects, the series of sprints that occur. It's the next thing. It's the next thing. Every single week, every single team member finishes their week of work feeling like they still had 10 other things to do, and those 10 other things layer on top of the next 10 things that are stacked up the week following. And it's accumulative. There's also not a clarity of focus, not just on what the emphasis should be on, but also, most importantly, what it shouldn't be on. There isn't a rigorous process. Of prioritization. There's no space in this environment for reflection, for feedback, for course correction. There's no sense of psychological safety as well. Everybody on this team is committed.
Matt Dixon 28:37
They're working really, really hard, but there's no system of support, there's no catalyst to create the conditions of a high performing team, and so the company continues to grow, but you have a team that is getting ever detached, ever splintered, frustrated and burnt out. Ultimately, the performance levels are going to drop, and so this is a catalyst for this leader to fix the balance here, the change that needs to occur is very, very simple. We need to set up systems for the long term, for sustained high performance. So what might that look like? Well, I just give you a few examples. The first component is setting the conditions and starting at the top, where there is a prioritization, a focus on every team member, looking after themselves as a human being, personal wellbeing, ensuring that it is culturally the norm for people to be able to integrate daily exercise. They're encouraged to eat really well to make sure that they're not compromising sleep, at least on an ongoing basis. Sometimes that's necessary. We have big deadlines and projects that you have to hit. We're not living in Utopia, but as a habit, prioritizing sleep, encouraging people to take on personal challenges, to step away from the challenge, occasionally and every single time, this can culturally only be infused through an organization and team if the leader is living that Life, setting the standards and being the role model. But beyond that, focus on personal well being. There are some structural things that need to occur on the common practices of that organization every single week, having strategy huddles. Okay? There's 50 things we can focus on. What are the three, four or five that are the most important this week, what are we going to deliberately move to next week? What can we execute really well? So it doesn't turn into chicken casserole, but instead, it can feel like, as a team, that we're creating progress, a mini victory with that emerges from these sessions. Clarity of role. This is my role within this ecosystem. This is what success looks like for the team. This is how I influence it as this team goes through little landmarks, little projects that you complete, integrating times to have a breather, to have a step back, not just layer on the next thing, because we're in fast, high speed growth, but instead say we're going to pause for the long term. We're gonna have a day, we're gonna have two days where you just settle nice and control and as you go along continually, the CEO pausing, helping the team reflect. This is the success that we're achieving, celebrating great effort, great iteration, not just outcomes, not just markers of financial success, but actually how people are contributing, celebrating individuals, and ensure that this leader is modeling all of these behaviors, from a focus on personal wellbeing, from taking transparently time to reset, but ensuring that their team can do the same and also responding to all of the change, not getting distracted continually focus on those commitments. It is the same pressure, the same demands this organization is growing rapidly. They need to innovate. They need to ensure that they can be thriving through change, but now, with that high pressure, they have systems to support performance rather than draining it. It is the same thing that a coach does with an athlete as a leader can do with their team. So what does this all mean? Well, if you're listening as a leader, reflect a little bit when you think about your day to day, your week to week, when you're integrating all of the demands of your life, whether it comes from family, whether it comes from work, whether it comes from travel, etc, and you lock in all of the demands of your training that you're executing to get ready for your big goals. Are you in a state of high demand in which you're thriving, or are you in a state of chronic stress in which it's harmful? Are you feeling like every single day you're in a fog of fatigue and you're just surviving? I would set every single week what you. Might call an agency audit, what we call at purple patch, the Sunday special,
Matt Dixon 30:05
where you have a little check in with yourself. What did I do last week that was great. What did I do last week where I really struggled and didn't execute as well? And now, what do I need to do this week when I'm planning all of the components of life, my life commitments, my work commitments, and, of course, integrating my training and habits, but in that moment, where do you feel overwhelmed? Where can you insert some more structure, some more support? Are you, if your coach leaning into your coaching relationship, asking for support, being transparent, not just waiting to be told what to do, but providing feedback on that and build this as a habit loop so that it support your hardest training sessions with really, really good habits and a smart understanding of what you're looking to achieve. Of course, it goes beyond if you want to improve your capacity, you got to fuel Well, you got to sleep well, you got to set the right mindset. But these are the things that you can do as an athlete. And of course, the final component, after all, I am labeled the recovery coach, make room for recovery. And this isn't just physical recovery. This isn't sitting on the couch and wearing a set of compression boots. This is time to turn your back on the sport, give yourself a breather and emotionally recover as well. You need to be equipped for the long term. If you're a leader or you're a coach, well, I said it again, high pressure, setting high demands, that's your job. You don't want to go easy. You want to make it tough, but make it safe, provide great support, audit your own Weekly structure. Ask yourself, as a leader or a coach, does my athlete or do my team members know what great looks like? Do they understand this week what we're going to drive towards? What does success look like? Because you don't want good, you don't even want great. You want world class. But does every team member understand what world class looks like? Do they understand their role in it? Do they have a agency on how they can influence and move along that continuum from good to great to world class? If not, you need to set a structure where that clarity is given. This is what we are focusing on and build in structurally the same way as we do with athletes, building time for a magic high performance habit, reflection. You also want to infuse recovery, great, strong feedback loops being open, that's the way that you can start to ignite and develop a high performance culture, and ask yourself with your team, are you setting high demands, but just driving the wagons like their employees are just commodities, or are you challenging people and providing the support investing in the support to ensure that they have agency and they have their toolkit to meet the demands to thrive, because when things get into a vortex of performance, predictability is when you have a highly engaged, motivated team on a shared mission with great systems of support that are driving towards a common goal. That's where things start to accelerate. High performers do not want it easy. Don't lay out lower your standards, but they do need it to be possible. That's a key thing. So we come back to our cute saying that we started at the top of the show. Pressure is a privilege. That's true, but only when that pressure is something we care about or engaged in, and most importantly, we're built for it. Whether you're chasing a personal best or you're leading a high stakes team, your performance isn't just about capacity, it's about system that you build to meet the demands. And that system, it starts with how you lead yourself and you lead others around you. And so to finish the show, if you're an athlete or you're a leader and you're looking to build a system that helps you thrive under pressure, reach out. We offer complimentary consultations and needs assessments to understand your challenges, but also see whether we can help you with some coaching, whether that's triathlon running leadership or developing high performing teams, because the one thing we know quite a lot about is winning. All right, see you next time. 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 nine. 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
Marathon coaching, personalized coaching, race strategy, performance edge, pressure vs stress, high demand, agency, support systems, high performance, athlete mindset, recovery, leadership, team performance, growth potential, actionable takeaways.