376 - Stop Getting Injured: The Longevity Guide for Endurance Athletes with Renee Songer DPT
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Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!
On this episode IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon discusses the importance of the off-season in triathlon performance, offering complimentary Needs Assessment calls to help athletes prepare effectively. He introduces Renee Songer, a physical therapist at Purple Patch, who emphasizes the role of physical therapy in performance enhancement beyond injury recovery. Renee highlights the significance of pre- and post-activity preparation, the importance of multi-plane strength, and the need for individualized approaches to mobility and stability. She also addresses common mistakes athletes make, such as neglecting upper body mobility and overlooking the importance of strength training. The conversation underscores the value of integrating physical therapy into an athlete's routine for optimal performance and injury prevention. If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out at info@purplepatchfitness.com.
Episode Timecodes:
:00-1:13 Promo
1:41-3:00 Intro
3:15-19:16 Injuries from Time Starved Athletes
19:45-26:15 Time investment in Recovery
26:30-34:15 Recovery Mindset
34:20-38:15 Tissue Halt
38:20-41:50-end Multi-planar Strength
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Transcription
Matt Dixon 00:00
In 2026 Do you want to make this the best season yet for you? Well, guess what? It doesn't start in January. It starts in off season. It is a critical phase. And in the world of triathlon, there's a ton of information out there. It can be complicated, it could be time consuming to understand, but we're going to help you break through. We are offering complimentary off season Needs Assessment calls you can meet with one of our coaches, where we can understand your background, your goals, what your ideal pathway is to success. Now it might result in us finding that you're a great fit for purple patch, but either way, I tell you what you're going to leave with some real, practical insights to make sure that you can go ahead and nail your off season, which I have said many times and we dig into on today's show, is the baseline most critical phase for athletes to have performance breakthroughs. It's very, very simple to get involved. All you need to do is reach out to us info@purplepatchfitness.com let them know that you'd like a needs assessment with whether on our coaches and we will set you up we are going to unlock your effectiveness and your off season magic. 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 01:42
And welcome to the purple patch podcast as ever your host Matt Dixon, and today, we welcome a special guest, good friend of mine. She is embedded in the purple patch Performance Center here in San Francisco. She has her grubby fingers over many purple patch athletes. She is one of the leaders in physical therapy and a great mind in not just the prevention of injury, not just fixing injuries, but helping people come to a whole nother level of performance. Her name is Renee Songa. She is a key part of our network of partners at the purple patch center, and also across the purple patch ecosystem of athletes, she is a great resource, and we are going to dig into everything from what does it mean to be a great physical therapist, it's not just getting your back to walking down the street as a normal human being. Today's discussion is insightful if you want to understand what it means to partner with a great physical therapist, how to make yourself bulletproof, how to shift your perspective, not just from injury prevention, but performance progression. Renee is going to share all it's a wonderful discussion. She has a wealth of knowledge. It's a lot of fun. You're going to enjoy it without further ado. I give you. Renee Songer,
Matt Dixon 03:08
all right, it is the meat and but meat and but meat, as promised, as advertised. We are with a very special guest, someone I've been looking to get on the show for goodness me the last year or so. Finally, schedules align. Renee, thank you very much for joining. Super happy to be here with you. Thank you. We see each other multiple times a week. I try not to send you many people, because we're purple patch. We don't like to get people injured, but you have put people back together again for us, it has been my pleasure. Thank you very much. We're very lucky to get to work with you. And as I mentioned in the in the in the pre main of the of the show, Renee is is really sort of one important cog as a part of the Performance Center here in San Francisco, one of the Bay Area's most respected physical therapists. What you work all over the Bay Area? I do and but home base here at the Performance Center in San Francisco, and so very familiar to all of the athletes here that train with us in San Francisco and have helped many athletes beyond as well. So we are going to dig in today, and we're going to talk a little bit about you, a little bit about physical therapy, and then we're going to get into the meat and potatoes of the education. But as I do with every guest, I'd love to just know a little bit about your background, where you grew up, and family history and stuff along those lines.
Renee Songer 04:32
I am actually a California native.
Matt Dixon 04:34
You are one of the rare ones, very
Renee Songer 04:37
rare fish these days. Yeah, I grew up in Santa Barbara and one of three girls, and have always kind of been an on the go outdoors kid, went to college at UCLA, and then I defected out of California for a whole three years. Went to physical therapy. School in Georgia at Emory, yep. Oh, and then moved back. I was in LA for my first job, and moved up to northern California in 2007 and have been up here since
Matt Dixon 05:12
and when, when you growing up, I'm always fascinated with this. I was just chatting to a new athlete that I'm coaching. I said, What's your sports background? I always love to hear that. And his answer was, I was a professional water skier, just like something completely out of the blue. And then we've never had one of those. So I'm guessing you weren't a professional water skier. But what was your sports growing up?
Renee Songer 05:34
I am very mediocre at a very large number of things. I am not a professional anything. My first competitive activity was swim team when I was probably eight or nine, okay? And I really kind of found that I liked the competitive nature. I did not like being the solo attention athlete. You know, everybody's watching you perform on your own, yeah? That was not my thing. So girls AYSO soccer had just started, so this is like late 70s, early 80s. So I started playing soccer when I was in fourth grade, and that took me through high school. I spent a lot of time on the bench. Was not very good. Got to college, and was not good enough to play in college, but I ended up rowing. Oh, interesting. It was very interesting for a short person to choose a tall person sport. Ended up having a back injury, ended up as a coxswain for the men's team for the last two years of college. Fascinating. Yeah, very different skill set telling a lot of, you know, young 20s, very oversized boys, what to do all day. So a skill set that was developed then and then, since then, it has just been, you know, kind of Jane of all trades, master of nothing. I in the summer. I'm on my bike, I'm in the pool. Before my knee injury, I used to be able to do a bunch of running. I loved my three or four half marathons a year. Winter, I will be cross country skiing and snowshoeing and down testing and so I mean, again, I am, I am moderately competent at whatever I enjoy. Ball sports are not my thing. Yep, I have terrible eye hand coordination,
Matt Dixon 07:25
all that, all that good stuff. Yeah, and when you growing up as an athlete, this is, this is clearly a leading question here. But growing up as an athlete, were you consistently injured? And the reason I'm asking this question was that that's sometimes the obvious catalyst of someone getting really interested in a trade is that they had their own challenges, etc. Like I as a coach, I wanted to, you know, make sure that my athletes didn't make the same mistakes that I did. So I became known as the recovery coach, etc. So, so I guess the question is, how did you get really interesting in physical therapy and take that on? And was that because of of injuries. Growing up,
Renee Songer 08:01
I definitely had a collection of injuries. But also when I was little, I loved my pediatrician. And from the time I was really young, I wanted to be a doctor. And then, you know, I had a really nasty ankle sprain in high school soccer. I had some knee pain. You'd go to the the orthopedist, and it was very clear that you were either a surgical candidate or a PT candidate. And so and then when I got into college, I herniated a disc trying to compete with girls who are a foot taller than me. And again, same thing, like you go to the doctor and it's the diagnosis, and then out the door you go to this person who is the problem solver, the creative thinker, the relationship builder. And I was like, Oh, I do not want to be a doctor, yeah, this, this is the domain that I want to go in. So it was, I think healthcare was always on my path. It was just I switched domains in college when I figured out that this was more the lane I liked.
Matt Dixon 09:03
It's a good leeway. I mean, you've worked with a tremendous range of athletes. You got, I mean, right here in the center, you've got, you've got a ski race as a bib up on the on the wall, professional ski racing. But obviously a ton of endurance athletes. Was that, do you see working with endurance athletes, is that something that's that's challenging beyond, let's call it general population, because they're at the pointy end of sport, and it's almost the school of learning. There the opportunity to have amazing case studies like what really expanded, where you were excited to work with with athletes of all kinds.
Renee Songer 09:39
You know, my first job, we had a ton of professional athletes, and, you know, they were mostly ball sport athletes, and so you have your baseball players, basketball players, purple players, and that was fun. But it is, it's it's really specific. It's very skills oriented. And then when I. Moved to the Bay Area. I mean, you can't everybody here is hyper competitive. Everybody here has to, you know, accomplish the biggest thing. And so the transition into endurance athletes really kind of came out of geography. I think
Matt Dixon 10:15
everybody is an endurance athlete.
Renee Songer 10:19
Just sits on their couch chair, yeah, and so it was, I'd say, kind of circumstance rather than intention. But the Yeah, they are everywhere, and it's just a different kind of project. I think you're looking to make a person be able to do a thing that they love for a very long period of time.
Matt Dixon 10:42
And that's that I mean, that that strikes, I want to sort of go into the philosophy of being a physical therapist. And for you, you know, there's a preconceived notion of, I go to a physical therapist when something's broken, I fix it, and then I never see them again. I'd love you to and it's almost setting the stage for this conversation. Define the role through your eyes. What's your role as a physical therapist for someone that's coming into you, what do you define success as I
Renee Songer 11:10
find success as them being able to do the thing that they want to do? Sometimes that is pain free. Sometimes that isn't pain free. Sometimes that's at 110% sometimes it's at 93% I have great personal satisfaction when the person comes in and says, Here's my project, here's my goal, and, you know, they can actually get there. I think the role of PT, you're right, historically, has been, can I go on my American healthcare system soapbox? Yeah, the insurance system has really mitigated access to PT for so long. And so you used to have to go into your doctor to get a prescription. Your doctor had to agree that you needed PT. You had to find a clinic that took care insurance. Insurance would tell you get three visits. And so, yeah, the everybody's expectations here is that PT is gate kept and really limited and only for a problem, there's no prevention. And so now I think it's it's important for people to know that they can. Across the country, you can access physical therapy through a direct access system. Every state has their own version of that. In the state of California, you can come to a PT without going to your doctor, without getting insurance approval. It doesn't mean that your insurance will necessarily cover it or cover the whole thing, but you can see a PT if you have a problem now, so you get six weeks or 12 visits, whichever happens first. And after that, you know you have to work with your PT to get a physician referral and etc, but you don't have to wait until you're broken.
Matt Dixon 12:53
Okay, that's and there's I want to ask one other thing about it, because when historically and I moved to America too many moons ago now, 1992 but when I first came and at that time, I was, you know, a swimmer, and then I went on to race triathlons, professionally, and when I had any interactions with PT, the common thing was Just bringing it back to basically function, rather than performance. My experience of working with very good PTS, now yourself included, is that's a very different mindset of now, how do we actually not just get you back to baseline, but actually get you back to high performance? Is that something that sort of drives your thinking?
Renee Songer 13:37
For sure, for sure. I think that you know, in the in the general population, a lot of people are just satisfied with back to baseline, and that's important. But in the endurance athlete population, I think a lot of people don't necessarily recognize that they have limitations, or they have restrictions in their participation, in their performance. And so if, if you have somebody who's been an athlete from the time they were a little kid, usually there is some sort of historical injury. Usually there is some sort of, you know, grouchy little bit that'll show up. It gets managed. They stop doing their exercises because the pain goes away. It shows back up two years later, and you just end up on the sine curve. And personally, I think PT is evolving to say there's, there's more that we can do for people. The idea that, you know, I'm working with a woman right now who was similar to you, a super high level swimmer, Olympic trials, freestyle endurance. And you know, she's describing from the time she was in high school, she has the shoulder pain that they just gave her cortisone injection after cortisone injection over the decades. And now she's 35 she wants to be able to do push ups. She wants to be able to do pull ups. And so it's like peeling back the layers of the onion to figure out the root cause. Is, how do we teach you how to move better? How do we undo this 25 year history of your movement patterns and and give you the strength and, or the mobility and, or the just like body awareness to be able to do the thing that you want to do?
Matt Dixon 15:17
Yeah, that's great. I can't help but go on a tangent here, because I was thinking about you operating in the purple patch center here, and the cycle of service, being a part of a team. And so I'm just going to use a little case study here that happened to pop up. And I didn't pre warn you about this, but working with my athlete, Jenna, who has low ankle, Achilles sort of issue, and you had a little look on the bike. And then who is going to be, I believe, next week's podcast guest Chris. So from strategic fits exactly, and I happen to walk by not, not that my I'm always watching, I'm always listening, but I heard you guys having a conversation. And Chris, for you guys, I know you can listen to him on the podcast. I think next week is a fantastic world renowned bike fitter and and I heard you having a discussion around Jenna and her biomechanics on the bike fit position, etc, and going in is that that must be a really empowering situation, not just here, but whenever you get to work with other experts, where you triangulate and try and come up with a solution for the athlete to actually say, Okay, this is great because you can't fix things in a vacuum. Basically, it's relying on the coach being smart and collaborative, the athlete having really good habits and doing their homework, which is a big thing. That's the art of follow through, and then having the perspective of real experts in potential domains, like Chris having that. So I'd love you just your quick perspective, and then we're going to get into sort of some of the deeper education. But I'd love your perspective on that cycle of service. In a way.
Renee Songer 16:49
I absolutely love having collaborative coaches, collaborative experts. I mean, I know what I know, I also know what I don't know, and I don't know a lot, and so to be able to sit down with Chris and say, like, Here, here's the video. I saw her working out here in the studio yesterday, I went and I'm like, you're still doing the same thing. Try this. Try this. We're going to talk to Chris tomorrow, because I know what I see. I know what I want to change for you, but I don't know how we put that into play on your bike. Does your fit need to change? Or does is this my job, or is this Chris's job? Yeah, how do we interact?
Matt Dixon 17:28
And then my job to reinforce when I'm seeing her actually exercise, and
Renee Songer 17:32
my job to say, like, Hey Matt, she's got to dial it back on this little bit that that's creating this issue. How can we change her program so that it doesn't compromise her end game, but we can let this thing heal. We can change this movement pattern and then get her back into the structure that you want her training in. Yeah, and it is really one of the things that I love about being here, that I can have a conversation with, with crystal about what's happening in strength class. Yeah, and I'm working with a woman who's got tons of knee pain, and what is she doing in class. What does she look like? Can we change this? When you give her this exercise, do this instead, and it just it makes it so much more effective, rather than leaving it all on the athlete to figure it out for themselves.
Matt Dixon 18:22
That's impossible. Yeah. Impossible. That's great. Well, fasten your seat belt, because we're going to dig into some stuff if you're if you're ready here and I want to first shine the focus on people that have a lot of competing demands. You know, purple patch and most people listening to this show are incredibly busy. They're also performance driven. They're either performance driven in typically leadership and professional wise and etc, etc, but are certainly exercising, etc. Or, of course, the majority of the listeners, which are performance driven in sports, and so they are, you know, not looking to just avoid injury. They are looking to drive performance when you have an athlete without going into the old quite you know, the Achilles is a common issue, the cough is an issue, all that stuff. What do you see some of the common issues or mistakes? Maybe that when you start working with a time-starved athlete, people that are very, very busy, what are some of the missteps that you see on the preventative side or the daily habits side, that that many athletes unfortunately fall into the trap of,
Renee Songer 19:27
I think people are so focused on the training, yeah, that they think I have time for a 30 minute run today, And if I have five minutes of prep work, I'm I'm devaluing my time, and I think that that's a really hard thing to ingrain in people that I mean, this is actually an interesting question back at you as the coach, that to me, you're going to have a better outcome of a. 25 minute run. If you have five minutes of prepping your body to do the thing that it has a hard time doing, then you're going to be just ignoring that and running for that extra five minutes.
Matt Dixon 20:15
I mean, would you like my response there? Yeah, so I think there's, I think there's a layer back on that as well where, unfortunately, and this, this emerges out of just the the zeitgeist of maybe the mindset of the endurance athlete, also the mindset of the coach, and how coaching occurs. And a lot of coaching is is remote, and people get used to seeing workouts on a on a spreadsheet or a platform, etc. And they define success. Of here's my magic plan that I've arrived downloaded off of the internet, or I've got my coach that's written it for it. And if I can check the box on every one of these, and then I am going to be ready, yeah. And so that's the definition of success. And of course, the truth is that that's never the case, you know. And in fact, when I work with someone individually, you might lay it out, and we always call it a living document, and you have to be willing. You actually build the trust with the athlete to say you might not do everything here. I might actually push you on and have you do more. I might pull you back, but you always have courage. And when you're working with a world class athlete, they tend to be better at this. They actually train it, where they actually say, Hang on, I realize that I'm looking to build effective training, but people that are ambitious, that are time-starved, that don't have much cognitive capacity or time to really absorb it, just think it's another box check to get done. And so already. So that's one part. I think a second part is athletes are already tight, very busy, so they feel like they've only got they've already got an optimization challenge with their training hours, so that there's a perception of I could train 20 hours, and that will be great. I've only got 12. I need to make every hour count exactly. And so then every one of these hours is pass, fail, and if I miss one session, or if I do to, in your example, 25 rather than the 30 minutes I'm behind, yes. And so it's that always catching up, catching up, catching up. It's, oh, my metaphor is always going into a gymnasium and hanging onto the rope and saying, If I can hang on to the rope for the next 16 weeks. I'm going to be great. You're not, you're screwed. So, yeah, so I think that's, that's one point, so sorry to go to go and dominate, but yeah, come back to come back to you. What are other stuff that you see?
Renee Songer 22:35
I think you know, the prep component of it is super important, but, but I also think that the undoing of what you just did to your body, you've been in the pool for an hour, you've been on the bike for four hours. I mean, the bike is just, it is, I think there's less prep work on a bike, and there's more undoing that's required getting out of that super tight fixed position, or, I think the the racing from being the desk body into the athletic body, yeah, you know, again, people just don't view the time as important to undo sitting at your desk all day, yeah, You gotta, you gotta get out of that physiological system situation and into the the athlete movement, physiological situation. And that's tough,
Matt Dixon 23:30
so we'll get into some tools and tricks of that. That's a nice way to think about it. You're you are moving from a static disposition body into a dynamic athletic body, so there needs to be some sort of transition. And then, and I'm just, I'm almost mansplain here, but I'm just repackaging it for myself. Is and then when you have finished the activity, unwinding, what you've done the bike is actually really interesting, because it's relatively non weight bearing, but it is a very static position. So if someone goes out on the weekend and does a four hour bike ride, especially when you're in a flatter terrain where there's less, you know, motor motor recruitment differences, you're sitting in one position, that's an incredibly corrosive thing, yes, on your lower back, on your like, your muscles. So there's got to be some unwi unwinding of that. In many ways, that's really what you're talking about, yeah, yeah,
Renee Songer 24:23
yeah, it is, you know, a swim. I think there's less unwinding that's required. A run, there's, there's some, but on a bike, man, you are just, I mean, you might as well just be in a in a fetal position, in bed, yeah, you know, and then trying to get up and move and live your life, pick up your kid, reach for a glass off the top shelf. It's like the opposite direction of what you just spent your whole Saturday doing. And you know, I think the other thing, especially when working with purple badge athletes, when you know the endurance events aren't the 3045, Minute. Events. They're the 13 hour. Yes, you know? I mean, it's just people spend so much time on their bike and and if you expect your body to feel super coming out of that and being able to transition into a run or into life, I think it's just, it's, I don't want to call it impossible, but it's really hard.
Matt Dixon 25:19
Is it is it possible his even as a coach, as I hear this, I buy in so that the transition and the unwinding, that's a really nice cue to actually, you know, present value to it. At the same time, it's really challenging for athletes to to to actually habitualize that correct? If you don't think about that, and you're not talking about a lot of time, you know, because we are always managing time. There are massive competing demands, etc, so, you know, depending on athlete, etc. But the prep work, you know, from the transition, as we're now calling it or the unwinding work, how much time investment is there? And I use that word investment deliberately, but how much investment are we talking about here?
Renee Songer 26:07
I think it really depends on the person. I think if, if you have someone who has been an athlete from the time that they were a little kid, and they have, you know, ingrained athletic body skills, probably less prep work, right? Because they their body knows how to do the thing that they're going to do. I think those people need more of the unwinding, and they need a little bit more of the the intermittent maintenance on other activities that isn't their activity, if that makes sense. Yeah, I think that the people who are coming into endurance sports later in life who weren't necessarily super athletic kids, their bodies don't have that ingrained athletic skill set from the time that they were little. Those people probably need more prep work, because their body needs to be be tuned up for whatever it is that they're going to do. If you're going to go for a run and you're not historically a runner, you got to tune up the things that need to be ready to go to enable your body to be an efficient, effective runner. Yeah, that makes sense. And so I think the sport changes things, and just kind of how you're coming into the sport,
Matt Dixon 27:25
that's, that's a really good perspective. There's also, surely, a little bit of a, I'm going to call it a lack of genetic component to it. And, you know, like, I'm, I'm incredibly lucky in so far as I quote, never get overuse injuries. Really. It just like one of these. You know, I'm naturally mobile and I never work. I ashamedly admit I should never work on mobility, because I'm mobile and it's never gone away. And I've done years of this competitive transitions. I can make transitions really quickly, because I've been an athlete all of my life and and I have this so stretching has been even when I was an elite athlete, I hate stretching because I didn't see the value, because I could it didn't actually draw some benefit, so I didn't do it. And but other athletes is that I always get the should you stretch or not? And the answer is, of course, yes, likely, but it does depend, because there are these outlines.
Renee Songer 28:16
Sometimes the the answer in physical therapy that you hear all the time is, it depends, and it's just the most annoying answer, but it really, really depends. The swimmer I was talking about earlier, she is hyper mobile, like a medical diagnosis of hypermobility. She does not need to stretch.
Matt Dixon 28:36
But does that come with great weakness?
Renee Songer 28:39
It comes with vulnerability. Vulnerability, I think, is more how I think of it, because she can move her body in ways that I will never I could stretch to the day I died, I would never be able to move my body the way that she can. So what she needs is an awareness of, you know, you're not going to catch here. You're gonna catch here, yeah. And then you need the strength to control all of that movement access that you have in your joint. So she's like, I just need a stretching program. I'm like, That is the last thing that you need. You need a stability program, yeah. And so that's more the it depends.
Matt Dixon 29:20
It comes back to your problem solving. Part of it where you're creating the right you're bringing out the right tool for the right athlete you actually need to be seen. And I think for for people that do stray on the either natural or earned over many years, really, really poor mobility, it is something that can be dramatically improved. And I'll ask you this question, but I just a small anecdote, a legend of the purple patch camps, a guy based out of Colorado, lovely guy called Paul finger, and I remember we are now. We've just launched our 14th camp in a row. So 14 years, Paul has been to every single camp, and when he first started in. Swimming. His streamline was, for you guys that are watching on YouTube, was like this, you know, it looked like a peak of a house. And he can now get into the classic, you know. And he's 65 years of age now, so starting at 50 yard, he's like, I am going to do this and that. And that's a, you know, that getting into a true streamline, that's, that's a really tough thing for people, but he just worked on it. He just did a minute every day, basically. That became a part of his habit. But of course, what that's done is that's had an impact for him on how he carries his shoulders in running. He's much more it's not just about being able to do a streamline just became the thing. So the point is that one can really improve the limiters, whether it's stability in the summers case, whether it was mobility In Paul's case, this is stuff that if you do invest in, you can actually dramatically improve, and it will have an impact, not just an injury prevention, but ultimately, performance.
Renee Songer 30:54
I agree. I think the the value I'm going to be a little, you know, self promoting, but the value in PT is determining what the mobility restriction really is generated by. And I had a guy who is in his early 50s who randomly bought a bike and is in, you know, he sends me a picture, and he's in a pretty aggressive, massive hip flexion required position, and comes in because he's having a whole bunch of hip pain, and we do our exam, and he structurally skeletally, his hip is not going to allow him to get into that position. And so he's been at home for six months, stretching, pushing, you know, being in a deep squat, doing his his 9090s and he's like, I feel worse every time. And I'm like, Yeah, you are grinding away, yeah, at a structure that is not going to get there for you. And so we've been able to back off that his hip pain is resolved. We got him a good bike fit. We have kind of just changed the focus a little bit for him. And, you know, this year, he is going to do his first half and and he feels really good and really strong and pain free, and is, and is really pumped about the whole thing. But, you know, I think having someone assess, is it a mobility deficit or a mobility excess? It is strength excess, because that happens too or a strength deficit. And so it really becomes a tailored project.
Matt Dixon 32:37
So the real key is finding a the right practitioner that's got a problem solving mindset and not just bringing it and number two, really making sure that whatever effort and energy you're going to put in, you're putting it in the right channel. Yeah, and then, and that's what otherwise you can be budding. And that's a massive part of the frustration, is you can be working on XYZ, whether it's mobility, whether it's stability, and it's actually that's not the challenge. So you have someone that really, and I would say, you know, pick your foot, because we're obviously talking to people globally. Pick your physical therapist wisely, someone that really understands the athlete, rather than just trying to get you back to basic function. It's like that not and, you know, not all coaches are made the same, not all physical therapists, but someone that really wants to understand the root cause rather than, you know, and I shouldn't be so disregarding expertise. But rather than just putting a bag of ice on it, it's like, no, we want to actually get to the root cause to understand what channel you should place your emphasis is, and which I think, is your, your superpower to be, to be honest, how do you I want to talk about mindset, because we've talked about investment a little bit. How important is it for athletes? What? Here's your five minute pitch in a way of, why is it so valuable, so important for athletes to think about that word investment five minutes up front to save a bunch of time in the long term. Setting the mindset where, how do you get every listener here to buy in and say, this is worth it. You've got, you've got two minutes. This is your preach. I give you the seven.
Renee Songer 34:19
That would be, if I actually could get every person to buy in, I think I would be very quickly out of a job. I think is fantastic. You know, when I'm when I'm trying to get people to say I'm gonna commit to the thing that I need to do, it really becomes about attaching it to something else. I mean, it's it, you know, like you, you probably are a better expert in this than I am. It's the habit creation mindset. If I need to do heel raises because I need to build calf strength, because I want to have a better push off in my run, when am I going to. Time to do that. I'm going to do it while I'm brushing my teeth. Yeah, I'm going to stand in the bathroom and I'm going to do my 35 heel raises in the morning. I'm going to do another 35 at night when I brush my teeth before I go to bed, if that's all I can do, because I am that time-starved Person, good enough, right? We working with that person to be able to say, here is the thing, yeah, before you get on your bike, you are going to do this one thing, yeah, before you go out on your cross country ski in the winter. This is the one thing you might be. You might be a prep person. You might be an undoing person. But here is the one thing, and you're going to attach it to that thing, if you're a multi sport athlete, before you get in the pool, here's your project before you get on the bike, here's your project before you run, here's your project. Yeah, after the pool. I think another thing that people kind of overburden themselves with is, you know, if I don't stretch after my bike, it doesn't count. Yeah. And sure, take that two minutes, right? That's super valuable, because then you know you're going to get it done. But two or three nights a week when you're, you know, I don't know, sitting around on the floor in the evening watching television. Don't do it on your couch. Do it on your foam roll if you're playing with your kids on the floor do your 9090s while you're playing Legos. Yeah, you know, just like create a logical system for yourself that creates a cue to remind you to do the thing.
Matt Dixon 36:33
The I would add to that as a coaching thing. A lot of folks listening to the show have heard us talk so much about the Sunday special, which is our organizational tool. And we we get our athletes and very busy executives to organize whatever our life non negotiables. What are we doing for work now we integrate their training and their habits, things like sleep, etc, and that's shifting the perspective and relationship with their training to not an afterthought or a luxury, but actually a non negotiable, to integrate into life so that it amplifies everything else. Not only gets them ready for their events, but we also encourage, particularly our really busy executives, of you are integrating onto your calendar when you are doing lunch, when you're going to go and take a 15 minute walk after lunch. So this should be on the calendar, and there's a, there's a shift in mindset of prioritization, and it's a 10 Minute calendar thing, yeah? But it actually, then it's something that you can go back to that mindset and actually say, Yeah, this is something that is a check the box thing, and where it is a non negotiable. So shifting, because if you just think, I'm just going to fill it into the cracks, those cracks fill, and it's never going to occur. And that's just a simple truth. So it's, it's such, I think, an incredibly important tool to help actually unlock there and and then using opportunities as it were, I think it's, um, it's really valuable. I'm going to do some preventative strategies and go into some some quickfire stuff here, and tissue health. You know, we've got mostly endurance athletes here. So what would you say are sort of some of the non negotiable, either daily or weekly habits, practices, we said just, I just talked about the Sunday special there. What are some of the things that you think almost every athlete should prioritize?
Renee Songer 38:29
I think most of us in this day and age are sitters, and so I think that, I think that hit mobility, for whatever it is that you are, whatever sport you're doing, is a fundamental to modern society that gets missed. I think also, like chest and upper back, upper body, neck mobility is another thing. Because, I mean, like, you know,
Matt Dixon 38:58
yeah, you and I keep trying to sit up, and then sit up and then sliding back down here
Renee Songer 39:04
badly when I go to dinner with a patient, because they're like, I just, I can't, I can't, not think about my so I think that, from a a maintenance in life perspective, those two things are really critical. Yeah. I mean, we can, we can talk about specifics on stretches, but I think that those are, if I had two things to give general humanity, yeah, those would be it.
Matt Dixon 39:37
I want to go back. I can't help but ask something here, because you said something here, and it sparked straight away. The big point of neglect that I see of athletes, which I always call it, upstairs. So a lot of cyclists, runners, load bearing. First thing they look at, calf, hamstrings, quads, and they completely ignore upstairs. But the truth is, and. I'm saying the truth is to you, and I should, I should ask it as a question, but this is the source of a lot of challenges that occurred downstairs, with the chain and net shoulders, chest and PEC Can you, can you just dig into that a little bit? Because that's counterintuitive for people. It's, oh, swimming just relaxes me, but everything's downstairs. It's like, well, that's the challenge, because of what's going up here. So can you just dig into that? For me a little
Renee Songer 40:22
bit, I think we have a lack of understanding about how the body works on diagonal planes. Yeah. And so when I am running and I go to push off, there's a counter rotation of my bottom half and my top half. It's like a little pepper grind here, and if I'm stuck up here, you know, Tom Cruise runs in the Mission Impossible. You really have to be able to have a head to toe dynamic pattern, yeah, for the thing that you're doing when you swim and again, you go into that catch. If my left hip flexor is tight, my right arm is not going to be able to get there exactly. If my if I'm, you know, I mean, it is. If I'm on the bike and my upper back is stiff, I go to my transition, I'm doesn't matter how mobile and strong my hips and my lower body are, if my upper body is fixed and collapsed forward and I can't get out of that, I'm going to be stiff as hell getting out of the gate. Yeah, I can't completely get there.
Matt Dixon 41:36
Yeah, and you, because there's idea well, but people, people think about running as a single plane, certainly cycling as a single plane. Let's build off of that a little bit. The importance of multi plane strength for athletes is it's critical. Yeah, if you want to dig into that a little bit, yeah, you know,
Renee Songer 41:57
running is a series of single leg hops, yes,
Matt Dixon 42:00
by definition, if you're running both feet or off the ground
Renee Songer 42:03
Exactly, yeah. And so you're just always like bouncing. You're jump roping on one foot at a time, over and over, hundreds of 1000s of times. The thing that stabilizes us and allows us to push ourselves forward is the muscles on our on our the lateral hips, if I don't train side to side, lateral motion or rotational motion, my hip strength and stability doesn't allow me to push myself forward. So like you're if all you do is think about going straight and I'm triathlon is, you know, Jim actually at a rate of speed, as fast as I can and efficiently as I can. But again, our bodies work on these diagonal movement patterns, and so I need to be training lower body rotation. I need to be training upper body mobility in rotation. I need to be training single leg balance, single leg power. So, you know, rate of force development through speed and and a lot of the time I feel like, in this day and age, people are in the gym, you know, there's this huge, huge movement, especially for women around you have to be able to squat heavy. You have to be able to lift heavy, yeah. But what, what ends up being implemented for that is double leg deadlift, Double Leg Squat. Super. Terrific. That needs to happen. But you you are functioning on one foot, yes, and you need to train Single Leg activity. You need to train side to side dynamic movement. And even if you know, you're like, Oh, I'm kind of retiring for my endurance sports. I'm not doing these big, long things, you know, you gotta, you're gonna move your couch to clean behind
Matt Dixon 43:47
it. Yeah, you're gonna have to walk up stairs, and you don't want to have to use the handrail. Yes, it was the same thing. It's still functional. And it is a little bit of a case of of both things, isn't it? Because, you know, drawing on the female, female for their metabolism, for bone density. It's very good to do some, let's call it overweight strength. You need to have that, but not in the absence of the functional stuff. That's why they call it functional strength. To actually go through and doing that stability and ultimately explosive stuff off of single leg and multi plane is it's such a critical component. It's an it's an investment. I think that's also another thing. And this is particularly if you shine the light on mature athletes, female athletes, the youth, can get away with it or more. It's still really valuable, though, that's the other thing is looking at, what does it take for me to perform in my endurance sport? Still, strength is back in the day, when I started coaching professionals, there were basically zero professional athletes, endurance athletes, that were integrating strength and conditioning. There was a wave against it. Of we got. Lot of criticism with our pros because we were, quote, one of the first to to be a member of the purple press pro squad. They had to commit to year round strength. Their peers, other coaches and the media are just like waste of time that Matt Dixon is a quack. Blah, blah, blah. I mean, nowadays, there isn't a professional endurance athlete that doesn't integrate strength, not a successful one, particularly in the long term. So that paradigm shift has absolutely, thankfully evolved so much, but as a busy, time-starved amateur athlete, and then heightened if you're mature, if you're a female, strength is not a little bit on the side that you bolt onto the program. I would argue for them, it's actually central to the program. I always talk about when I'm working with fitness. Let's just pick a female athlete that's 45 years of age that wants to go and do a nightmare and I said, you've got your Bullseye strength and conditioning and everything that's wrapped under that umbrella where everything we talked about, mobility, stability, then we wrap the endurance around it. That's really hard for someone to wrap their head around when they've got to go a long way for a long time in a single direction, yeah, but it really is the catalyst for results so
Renee Songer 46:17
and, and I think in that population, it's also the catalyst for injury prevention, yeah, and it's also the catalyst for, like, life longevity, yeah. I mean, it is. I remember, a couple summers ago, I was in Portugal, in Lisbon, and you know that the cobblestone streets are a bajillion years old. And I saw more women in my age bracket, you know, 40s, 50s, who were in walking boots because they had fallen and, like, sprained an ankle Brook. And I'm like, oh my god, what are we gonna do for these people? They need strength training. Yeah. And so again, kind of coming back to this idea that if you don't do lateral work, if you don't do rotational work, you might be able to do your iron man, but you're still going to fall on the cobblestone street in Lisbon. Yes. So anyway, little
Matt Dixon 47:12
aside there, but I want to get your opinion on something and we strip it down. I'm going to, off the top of my head, say a few modalities or interventions, if you want to call it that, and maybe just give me 30 seconds on each of yes, no, or in context and and so here that, here they are. You don't have to answer all of them, but there are things that I think are important. When people think about recovery, they think about improving performance, they think about injury prevention, they think about systemic health, et cetera. So I just want to get you a quick sort of Renee 32nd response. I'm going to do it dynamic stretching, so that's obviously more mobility, static stretching, foam rolling a lot of people, and everything that goes along with it, Thera guns or those types of modalities and and then everything else that you can really be sold, so cold plunges and red light therapy and all of that. Let's just, let's just spend five minutes on this stuff, because people want to know it's really confusing. It is. And so should people be using a foam roller? Should they be using compression boots? Should they be doing static stretching? Should they be doing diamond like give people the answers in under two minutes to everything? Right now,
Renee Songer 48:37
I'm going to take static and dynamic stretching. Yeah, that's good Stony Point. They have done a bunch of research in this. The research is really squishy. They've recently come out with more research around the static stretching isn't bad, but static stretching needs to be utilized in a way that is again, if we come back to this, like prep idea, if I'm going to go on a run, and I've been sitting for 30 years at a desk. Chances are the anterior structures in my hip don't have the availability to allow me to run efficiently. I need to be a static stretcher. I need to statically hold that for a minute, two minutes. I need to be doing it before every single run, but then when I go to run, I need to do some like activation prep work before I get out there. Yeah? So they're not, they don't live in mutually
Matt Dixon 49:30
exclusive. Yeah, that's interesting. And is, is sorry question to Naveen here, but is it really important for most people, speaking in the middle of the umbrella, to find the sort of central one or two things to do every single time. So in that case, really opening up the hip flexors, that's the static stretch. Make it non negotiable, and do some activation, rather than thinking 360 degree body. Is there an answer? To that. I'm not sure if
Renee Songer 50:01
there is. It depends. Yeah. I think that you know most again, I see the broken people still, yeah, right. You know people, people who are having great success and feel wonderful in all their training. Thankfully, I don't know them, yeah. So I know that I'm biased in this way, but I think that most people have a deficit around the activity that they are trying to be successful and ambitious in, and so figuring out what that deficit is, and in treating that deficit. And so I think it's also, I think one of the things that limits people from the care that they need to give their body to do their thing is that 360 degree philosophy is overwhelming, yeah, and so it becomes inhibitory in your behavior. It's like when I go to Safeway and I'm looking at the cereal aisle and I'm like, oh my god, I have too many choices. I can't make one. What do I pick in this moment? I can't make that choice effectively, consistently for myself. So I think it depends. It depends. Okay, so dynamic stretching. Dynamic stretching, I think, is a lovely way to prep your body. If you're in the gym, you spend 10 minutes, maybe even 15 minutes, of this under load mobility work. You're doing a frame bear walks, you know, you're doing deep squats. You're doing the things that allow your body to activate its neuromuscular pattern system, to go into your lift. People again, think that, oh my god, I'm not going to spend 15 minutes of my 60 minute lift doing work. And it's like, well, that are not doing work. And I think it's important to reframe that first 15 minutes as work. Yeah, right, you are
Matt Dixon 51:58
doing work. Yeah. That's a good mindset shift. Foam roller. That's one that we always get.
Renee Songer 52:03
Foam roller. Foam Roller, historically, has been thought of as I'm breaking down scar tissue. And that is not true. You can so I'm going to dump the Thera gun in here too, the little you know, text, everything, tennis ball or cross ball, all of these things you are going to have areas of your body that hold tension. You might be a person who has an injury that does have scar tissue associated with that. If you are the scar tissue person, then getting in and like working in that isolated area in a deep, probably uncomfortable, way, is valuable that can be soft tissue work with a massage therapists, that can be self mobilization with all of these tools, the foam roll, really a lot of what happens the surface area is so broad that you're not going to get In and break down that scar tissue, the foam roll really is about inhibiting your nervous system's input to the muscle group. And so you kind of find, if we use the example of like the tight hip situation from the desk sitter, you're going to kind of position yourself on that diagonal line so that the foam roll is in the pocket area, like your jeans pocket, and then just lay down and kind of melt over the roll. And you're going to find that when you allow your muscles to relax and that pressure comes into the muscle, it is going to inhibit the system. When you have your legs straight and you're doing the zip, zip, zip, back and forth on my IT bands, and I'm down my IT band scar tissue, the contraction of your muscle is actually holding the roller on the surface. And it's not really getting into the good so
Matt Dixon 53:48
you actually want to sink into it. And how about with them on that somebody has, somebody feels their cough pull, and it's either a, you know, a cramp, or the hamstring, or whatever it might be, wherever the symptom shows up. I think it's worth a sort of cautionary word on that, because the first thing that people do is a really over stretch it, or get their thumb in there and be like trying to will it to go away. Or, of course, foam roller, which we're talking about here, Thera gum. I need to attack this, but actually cause, end up causing a whole host of trauma that creates the injury, versus quite often. Is your recommendation to go north and south of the injury in many ways or or the place the symptom, what's the perspective someone like that? What's a tool that someone or a tip that someone can take away with there?
Renee Songer 54:37
I think if you, if you have an acute clustering, pull and acute calf pull. You want to respect the idea that the physiology is going to kick in and do its job and it needs healing time. And the more you poke the bear, the more that, like inflammatory, reactive healing thing is going to stay elevated, right? You're not going to give your physiological. System. Time to go through the cascade. It's supposed to go through of the healing process. And so if it's acute, be kind Yeah,
Matt Dixon 55:10
you know my coaching phrase for that when you have an athlete. So it's always the same, by the way. Here's what I'm wanting to do, leave it the fuck alone. Nobody gets the message across. Don't let it for exactly that reason. Let it actually go through the process.
Renee Songer 55:28
And I have a similar one, which is, don't fuck it up.
Matt Dixon 55:32
Yeah? Like, leave it alone.
Matt Dixon 55:36
That's our race strategy, by the way. That's those Yeah, for our pro athletes, the last words you say, all right, don't fuck it up.
Matt Dixon 55:44
So I do think that there is, like, you know, it sticks. It sticks. You want, you want the hook where people are like, Okay, let's do it. I'm not gonna fuck this up.
Renee Songer 55:52
Yeah, I think when there are more chronic issues, yeah, it that hamstring, that chronic hamstring tug. There might be a local issue, sure, that needs to get worked out. You need the Thera gun. But you know, like, I kind of try to describe this as, like, the Buddhist middle path for people, don't leave it alone. Don't get after it. 100% find the middle ground when you're stretching, when you're doing the foam roll, when you're doing the tennis ball. It's like you want to live in the middle third of discomfort, at the middle third of intensity. Too little is not really probably going to get you there. Too much your body has this reactive, protective response, and it holds you out of being able to do the thing that you're trying to accomplish. So middle path it,
Matt Dixon 56:39
it's um, it, when I think about this. And you know, people here in the center, for example, in the Bay Area, so lucky, because they've got you on the diagnosis, and you obviously on the treatment as well. But then they have access to people like the Sports Medicine Institute upstairs smi away, that that's where you can they they can, with professional hands, get in the right place. So actually leaning into professionals with the right bodywork. They're orthopedic massage therapists, but they're obviously athletic trainers as well. So that's a real specialist. Finding your crew is is really tough. You know, if you're living in Kansas or wherever you might be living, it's really tough, but it's so critical, yes, and it's, do you ever do remote consultations with our things? Yeah, we'll put the link in the show notes.
Renee Songer 57:26
Yeah, yeah. No, it is. It's obviously easier when you have a person in person, yeah? But when, if you really are kind of stuck somewhere and you're like, I've got this problem that nobody's been able to solve for me, it sometimes can be just, you know, the video, a run, a bike, a swim, and an online consultation. So it, it can, it can be at
Matt Dixon 57:50
least where you can shine the light of emphasis to say this is probably the root cause. And so do this, etc. You can't get hands on, but you can do something purple, yeah. So last thing, what about the other treatments, all these things like cold plunges and red light. It's, I'm not sure if you even want to go into it, but, you know,
Renee Songer 58:07
I mean, I have not dived into the science personally, so I don't want to over step. I do think that there is a decent amount of research around the cold plunge, around the sauna, the compression boots, the, you know, the normal guys like they physiologically, they do good things. And I think if, even if it's just a little bit of a placebo effect for you, that's okay,
Matt Dixon 58:33
because that is very real.
Renee Songer 58:37
Percent of what we do is placebo effect in life, yeah, the red light therapy, you know, I, most recently, I've read about they're having more infrared wavelengths, which is going to penetrate deeper. I feel like a lot of these things, you know, like, you know, old school Ben gay, or what's the modern one, Biofreeze, yeah, those are placebo. And go for it, if that helps. If you feel like it helps, you know, your compression sleeves on your calves. If you're a calf Sweller, put them on. Yep. There is very little that is damaging. There is very little that is negative. It can be a lot of money, yep. And if you're willing to do that, is it just in case? Like, go for it. Who cares? Have fun
59:25
well, and sleep on your red light.
Matt Dixon 59:26
I'll tell you what is damaging. Lack of fueling after workouts, really poor hydration, really poor sleep. None of this is expensive, by the way. It's just habits, but that's the bedrock. And I always see all of the modalities that we talked about, the Go for it, but realize that's never the fix. It's never going to it's never going to undo, you know, not enough calories, not the right type of calories, not fueling at all. The stuff that I just mentioned there, that is the bedrock. That's probably as much what you're trying to get people to do, rather than just do year round strength, etc, etc. And. The banner of strength. You know what I mean?
Renee Songer 1:00:01
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it is, if, if you're tired, your body, you know, people think, Oh, I'm tired, I'm not going to perform, but it is, you're not going to function. Yeah, it's, it's a lower level than that, that you're creating a deficit, you know, the the hydration, I really think is such an interesting you know, 10% dehydration in your cognitive function declines, yeah. And like, 10% that's not very much. And if you're out on a run in a hot, sweaty day, you know, and even if you're the person who's come in for the sweat test, and you have all this knowledge, you still have to execute on it exactly, yes, and it's hard, but it is. It is fundamental.
Matt Dixon 1:00:45
It's the bedrock. And we go to sleep at night, we lose about a liter of fluids, so we wake up by definition, dehydrated.
Renee Songer 1:00:53
I learned one thing, that an average person loses eight ounces of sweat through their feet in a work day. Oh, that's a lot
Matt Dixon 1:01:02
of I think I'm about 12 ounces. Actually, I get very sweaty feet, sweaty palms as well. So I'm about 16 ounces just to the extremities. I'm a sweaty English man with bad teeth.
1:01:16
We all have our strengths. We all have our
Matt Dixon 1:01:17
strengths and weaknesses. Any last I guess here's one question for you rate on one to 10. For endurance athletes of all levels, the importance from one being not very important at all, 10 being highly important. What is the importance of endurance athletes engaging and committing to year round strength as a part of their program? Under strength, being, stability, mobility, single leg stuff. It's What? What? How important is it?
Matt Dixon 1:01:46
10 out of 10? I mean, I know, I know my dear
Matt Dixon 1:01:50
rhetoric, that is why we have a purple patch, standalone strength program that you can purchase that will integrate into your or your coach's training program. Thank you very much for that. I went to get that little chromo in my turn over here. Well, it's because the strength program is joking aside, that the strength program, we aim to design this where people can kind of do it anywhere, with minimal equipment, but infuse this component to it. And so all of this element that, as you talked about today, was so important. It was so much fun. Thank you. Thank you very much. We're going to add into the show notes. The link you can head to Renee has her own page on on purple patch, and so we'll add that link to the show notes. And also, if you are remote and you can't come to the Bay Area, and here in the purple patch Performance Center, you heard it here, you can also consult with Renee, where she can help troubleshoot all your challenges and get the path ahead. But I, I can't tell you how fun it was firstly, but also really, really insightful, really interesting. And I know your time is valuable. So thanks so much for all of the preparation and and the time today. It was a great time. We'll have you back. I really enjoyed it. Thank you. Thanks so much, Renee. Take care, guys. Thanks so much for joining, and thank you for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing. Head to the purple patch channel of YouTube, and you will find it there. And you could subscribe, of course, I'd like to ask you if you will subscribe. Also Share It With Your Friends, and it's really helpful if you leave a nice, positive review in the comments. Now, any questions that you have let me know, feel free to add a comment, and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. 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
off season, intentional recovery, purple patch, triathlon training, needs assessment, case studies, athletic potential, race preparation, injury prevention, foundational habits, strength training, nutrition, sleep, community support, training program