383 Triathletes Before You Start Training In 2026, Listen To This
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Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!
In this episode, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon discusses strategies for setting performance goals and training effectively in 2026. He emphasizes the importance of starting now, before the holidays, to avoid the "New Year, New You" pressure. Dixon identifies three common challenges: the overwhelmed athlete, the rigid athlete, and the mature athlete. He advises against chasing specific events and instead focuses on a year-long journey of progression. Key strategies include building a flexible training plan, prioritizing strength sessions, and maintaining consistent habits. Dixon also highlights the importance of integrating training with life demands and encourages listeners to reach out for a complementary needs assessment. If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out at info@purplepatchfitness.com.
Episode Timecodes:
00:-1:10 Episode Promo
1:38-4:17 Episode Intro
4:23 12:04 Start of Meat & Potatoes
12:20-31:25 Part 1: The Overwhelmed Athlete
35:55-38:01 Part 3: Decide on Key Ideas
38:10-end Step 4: Sunday Special
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TRANSCRIPT
Matt Dixon 00:00
Today, we're talking all about 2026 Yes, setting up a journey of performance for yourself across the whole year. We're not going to wait for new year, new you. We need to get going now. Before the holidays, we decided to bring this very inspirational and actionable podcast show to you early to make sure that you're setting up the journey of success. When you listen today, you might be inspired, maybe to further the conversation, to continue to explore how we a purple patch might help you feel free to reach out for a complementary needs assessment. We want to understand your goals, your situation, perhaps some of your challenges, so we can offer advice, and if a part of that advice is that you end up becoming a part of the purple patch family and team, well, that's great as well. We'll help you get on the right program for you, all you need to do is reach out to info@purplepatchfitness.com that's info@purplepatchfitness.com it is absolutely pressure free. It's useful. It's going to help you set your path for 2026 and you can become a part of the team if it's the right fit for you. Alrighty, happy holidays and 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 01:38
And welcome to the purple patch podcast as ever. Your host Matt Dixon, and welcome to the New Year's Special, which we're releasing before the New Year. I thought we would be taking on a how to tackle a challenge in 2026 but we realized that you as listeners, you're already goal driven. You're already chasing something for the most part, and so I thought we'd unpack instead this show, which is about helping you approach your goals, whatever they are, in a way that actually works, not just to feel more productive, but to make very, very real, lasting progress without adding any more pressure or stress, this an important time. In fact, it's a wonderful time to pause, zoom out, reset your lens, before charging into 2026 so we decided, let's bring this episode forward. Let's not wait until there's the noise of New year, new you. And instead, let's actually unpack some of the patterns that we're seeing with our needs assessment calls that we're doing with non purple patch athletes that are either garnering advice from us or seeking some form of programming with us. We've seen a lot of repeated patterns, and there's a lot of challenge out there, a lot of struggle, a lot of lack of direction. We're seeing stress, overwhelm, misalignment when it comes to training goals and integrating them all into life. Add this to the stresses of holidays, financial stress, awareness of maybe getting older. We're going to unpack some of that today. Family all trying to get back into the swing of things for the new year. And so we realized as a team, training shouldn't be another stressor in life. Instead, it should be fueling your energy. We don't want training to compete with your life demands. We want them to fuel your life demands. And so if you haven't mastered that perspective and strategy yet, as we're going into the holidays, goodness me, the new year and into the race season, it's probably going to be even more of a challenge. And so we thought, if we can nail down this now and then, you're going to be set up for success when you set the path to the progress and have a smashing 2026 and so with that, we're going to explore challenge, goals, strategies to fuel not just a great race, but a great race in life and a great lifestyle over the course of the coming year, it's all in today's meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 04:23
you. Yes, it is the meat and potatoes, and I got a recommendation for you as we look ahead to 2026, a big year of high performance, let's set the stage here. What I want you to do is avoid just chasing a specific event. Goals are great. Events set the tone, the pathway, the compass. But that's not what success is. I encourage you, as we lead into the end of this year to view 2026, as a progression, a journey over the course of all 12 months of the calendar. It so that we can sit hopefully, hand in hand and look back at 2026, in the rear view mirror and say that is the success that I was looking for, a year of journey, a year of high performance, I have evolved, not just athletically, but as a human being. Now in order to facilitate that, we need to make some smart decisions in your training journey. We need to try and reduce some of the stress, some of the missteps that come from. Goodness me, I've got so much to do. Panic response. We consistently see that when we set up the lens before we get going, as we have the opportunity to do today, we enable athletes to avoid some of the biggest traps as it relates to performance, decline and corrosion. In fact, I'm going to highlight one of them right now, the trap of chasing weekly miles or hours for time-starved, very busy athletes trying to accumulate a set number of hours just doesn't work. I also want you today, as we go through to make a commitment to yourself, not just to view the lens of 2026 being smart to been a journey, rather than just tracing an event. I also want to encourage you to set the lens of 2026 becoming a smarter athlete. Now, when you say a smarter approach to performance, the first thing that everyone assumes I'm saying is, less is more, but that's not, in fact, one of my least favorite performance sayings is, less is more because it's not more is more. The key is that what I'm saying here is I want you to get the most out of what you have and so what you can truly and pragmatically commit to your training and performance journey, maximize it.
Matt Dixon 06:58
I always like to talk about busy people having an optimization challenge as we hold hands and look forward in 2026 that's what I want you to embrace, a smarter approach, where you optimize the reality of your situation, get the most out of it, and that depends and evolves over the course of the year. It means that you've got to be intentional about your training, that you've got to throttle on and be really aggressive when appropriate, and you've got to enable a thread of consistency, the magic word of performance. And so when I talk about the lens of being smarter, it's not about going easier, it's not about doing less, it's about committing that word's important, committing to training appropriately, aggressively when suitable and intentionally when it is right for you. And that's what I hope to unpack and help you with today. A little bit structure is, ironically, not a cage, but an unlock. And starting now, I believe, is really, really important for you. Thirdly, the third big mindset that we want to tackle together is understanding what normal should feel like. This is really important. As you set up your very lofty goals and your challenges over the course of the coming year, realize that normal is not supposed to be fatigue when you're actually training for something, even if it's something you've never done before. Perhaps you're getting ready to do your first marathon, your first Iron Man, whatever that is, it's not normal to walk around in a fog of fatigue. It's just not. In fact, you should mostly feel great. You shouldn't constantly feel wrapped. That's not a badge of commitment. It's not a badge of performance. There's something wrong. It's a signal. And so as we hold hands and look forward in 2026
Matt Dixon 09:02
I'm looking for a year of progression. I'm looking for you to train with intentionality, with an optimization mindset. And I want you to establish the tattoo on your heart of the realization that if you're constantly tired, foggy, dragging yourself through sessions, it's a warning sign. That's a sign that the path you're on is going to lead you to probably showing up very, very fit, that's true, but also fatigued. And so this is the time to lay the foundation of appropriate training, long term lens, consistent habits and practices that fuel you're feeling really pretty good most of the time. And if we can do that, and then the chasing of the goals, the desire and the anchor point to do something special for yourself, it's a reality. It's additive. It fuels a bigger life. It should feel engaging. Empowering and energizing. That's what we're looking to get done. My analogy for this is always to take it into the business world, the professional world, and just imagine you're really ambitious, you're hard working, you show up every day, but you're a part of a team or a company that's yet committed, but it has no culture, it has no support systems. It's just asking for more, more, more every single day. It's pretty draining, yeah, but now imagine if you bring the same work ethic, the same ambition, the same desire, the same commitment, but you're a part of a thriving team. It's got a very clear vision, clarity of role, also systems in place to enable you to rejuvenate physically and mentally, so that you can bring your best every single day you work just as hard. It's not easy. Nothing that's worthwhile is easy, but your effort leads to results. You're not overwhelmed, you're productive. This doesn't make the journey easier, but it makes it full of positive results. In many ways, that's what we're looking to build, and that's what you're looking to build for yourself as you approach a 2026, year of sport, and it starts today, not in January. I mentioned at the top of the show that we'd had a lot of needs assessment calls lately, and we started to see regular patents, real athletes, showing up, looking for advice, trying to chart their journey, but with very, very similar, repeated frustrations. And so I thought what might be helpful here is to dig in to some of the most common challenges that we've seen very real athletes that we've been speaking to. And my hope is, as we go through these examples, you might actually see yourself, or at least a part of yourself, in some of these case studies, all under the umbrella of high performance challenge and, most importantly, potential. I've got three to go through, and I want you to see which one resonates with you, as well as understanding their key strategies so that they can fuel their 2026 success. The first one, and this is perhaps the most common, is what we might label the overwhelmed athlete. We've seen a ton of these lately, especially as we start to creep into the holiday chaos that's combined with a lot of the uncertainty in the world drops, job stress, different personal challenges that many, many people, all of us face to one degree or another.
Matt Dixon 12:40
Life is quite simply, pretty chaotic, pretty stressful. We are going through as a society, big change right at the moment, and what's happened to a lot of these athletes that we're talking to is their training has become a little bit of a competitor to the rest of their life, and in so doing is actually turned their back on structure. Training has become very, very consistent, and they arrive to the call looking for help. In frustration. They feel untethered in many ways. What's happened as life is amplified and stresses have built up over the course of the end of the year with no events to train for, the first thing to go has been the training plan these athletes. Understandably, by the way, I have massive amount of empathy. These athletes feel like structured training was adding stress. It was actually competing with and cutting into the really precious time and energy that they're trying to dole out to family, to work and to planning for the future, and that's understandable, but unfortunately, that really in many ways intuitive action to say, goodness me, I just don't have time to have consistent exercise, to think so much about how I eat, to prioritize my sleep and all of the other supporting habits that we talk about in the show so much and have time for that. Instead, I'm going to give my energy to my work, to my family, to my friends, to my future. Those are the non negotiables. That's where I need to place my focus. But interestingly, that approach, while it sounds smart, is full of unintended consequences, because the lack of framework, the lack of structure, is a little bit like being in a tent in a storm and you taking all of the pegs out and hoping for a good success. As humans, we tend to thrive in good structure and training can be that great structure, its anchor points, its predictability.
Matt Dixon 14:47
And so if life is chaotic and full of change and full of competing demands, we tend to only amplify the chaos if we remove the thing that is working as the backbone of structure. And it happens no matter how busy we are, no matter how many competing demands and what starts to occur over time, the first week, you feel a bit more freedom, you got more time. Pretty soon that time is full in just filled in with more chaos. And over time, people start to feel and these are patterns that we're hearing, confusion, guilt, a lack of progress, a lack of control. And that's not a great feeling, that's not high performance. And so with that, structure is really important. A framework can be really helpful. But on the other end of the scale, what we understand is that it doesn't mean that you should still be religiously anchored into a very, very rigid training program that's similar to something that you will be doing in the middle of your race season. And in fact, you shouldn't just rigidly stick with any plan, because it's also a truth on the other end of the scale that the wrong type of plan can be the big competition can add to stress. And so it is the right plan that's really important right now, and that plan needs to be fueled with the right mindset, if we start to see if you feel like you're the overwhelmed athlete right now, a new approach to your training where you're not just looking to get fitter, faster, stronger, more powerful, and instead looking at your plan and building A relationship to say, this is a structure for me where I can give myself every single day, whether I've got 20 minutes, whether I've got two hours, give myself, and I'll say it in my English way, a little bit of me time, in other words, exclusively for myself, To refill my own cup, recharge my battery. Yeah, you can do that, a moment of control of rhythm every single day, amidst all the unpredictable chaos and challenge out there, but something that can enable me to fill my soul, fill my physiological resilience to ensure that I have an even keel on the day, to reduce stress. That's a very different type of plan. It's also a plan that can be way less rigid in structure. It's one that can adapt to life demands. But it's there not just to drive better racing goals, but instead help you show up better every single day, be better equipped to manage all of those demands and uncertainty. And it doesn't have to take 10 hours a week of training to succeed in this.
Matt Dixon 17:57
It's really key look at the moment, I'm coaching several people that are in exactly this situation, turbulent uncertainty, with huge competing demands. And if I go back, as I did, to these athletes and look at their training peaks over the last weeks, you've got some weeks where they're doing three to four hours, other weeks that they've managed to get in 10 hours, and it's up and down, and that's okay. That's really okay right now, because at the heart of any given week, whether they're doing three or four hours, whether they're getting in 10, what they've got as the bedrock is the Speak key specific sessions that are really important at the moment, typically strength number one, but also a couple of key sessions that we identify that they can move over the course of the week, and it's very, very flexible, and it's really empowering to have this structure. We also in those programs, whether you're doing three, four hours a week, whether you're doing 10 hours a week, having sessions that are specifically designed to be quite low on structure, low on physiological stress, and instead refill your battery, physiologically and cognitively. These are soul filling sessions play, but they are incredibly healthy, and they are processes and cannibalizes of stress accumulation, and it's huge. And when we have got athletes to go through this journey with a very dynamic mindset,
Matt Dixon 19:35
it shifts from overwhelm to very chaotic, very challenged, hard, but in control. And sometimes that's a part of life. It becomes the tent peg in the storm. It holds the tent down, and as things emerge, there's plenty of time to rebuild from a solid platform, as life does. Settled down, we move into the new year, and you start to become race specific and driven. And so this is an incredibly empowering and important aspect. If you're feeling overwhelmed right now, it's ironically, and I want you to remember this if you're feeling overwhelmed, now is the time to lean in. Now is the time to build structure. It's flexible, it's dynamic, it's responsive, but it's a bedrock of control and capacity building really, really key the second archetype of an athlete. We are getting a lot of conversations right now around what we might label the rigid athlete, someone that leans a little bit more type A the personality that is a box checker, follows the plan no matter what happens. This is the plan. This is what coach gave me. I've got to do this program. If I don't, I'm going to be a failure and on. We all know it, they tend to be slightly engineer brained, metrics focused, performance obsessed, even when there's not a big race coming up. This is a pretty harmful mindset as it comes to this part of the year. Lisa athletes are quite often and many of the conversations we're having have emerged from the 2025, season, with a bit of frustration. Maybe they've been dissatisfied with their performance, or think that they've underperformed, something along those lines. They're probably navigating through a little element of injury or feeling flat, going into racist fog and fatigue, maybe a little bit of burnout, whatever it might be. But there is a belief pervasive when we start this conversation, that the way for them to navigate out of this is double down on commitment. The training plan is going to be the solution. No matter what else is happening. I'm frustrated. I didn't get the results. So it's time to go full throttle. And the time is now, if you're an athlete that's listening, that's underperformed in 2025 and you're figuring out right now where you can add more work, more volume, double down commitment, it's going to be tough, but that's not the path that I want. It's really important we build a year of progression.
Matt Dixon 22:21
Remember what we started with the show at the end of 2026, I want to be holding hands with you. Look back and say that was an amazing year. I felt great. Yes, I performed well in races, but I'm completely evolved as an athlete. And so here's my coaching lens. When you have that type of athlete, and that type of story is we want to put a hard line in the sand and say, let's set the lens and the definition of what is successful in the last couple of weeks of 2025 and probably the first couple of months of 2026 here's the thing that can break that mold and that cycle that's really empowering. Kelli, for the first two months of 2026 I don't want us, you and your perspective of what success is, me as a coach, reviewing your journey. I don't want us to be chasing fitness gains or performance gains. That's really weird. It's destabilizing to hear that. I don't really want you to think about getting fitter. I don't really care if you get any faster. We're not looking for validation of performance progression. It's really destabilizing, but it's important, and I understand the counterintuitive part of that. Here's the conversation. I want you to imagine this me having a conversation. This is what I might say. Look what we're looking to do here. And we're looking to first build a foundation, a foundation of strength. I want you to be really, really robust and resilient. We're also going to develop in your running tissue resilience. And the way we're going to achieve that is a lot of your running is actually going to be pretty easy, conversational, and we're looking to improve the integrity of your muscles, tendons and ligaments. And this is really liberating, because you don't have to really track your heart rate, your zones, your pacing. You can go and run in a conversational effort almost every day, frequently, and we're just going to inject a little bit of speed, not that hard, but just to activate the brain and muscles, and sometimes a little bit of an endurance run, just to fill your soul, remind yourself of who you're at on the bike, we're going to hit some short, high intensity. I want to develop the size of your physiological engine. And the way to do that is by going short very frequent high intensity, some might label it vo two MAX type sessions, because that's going to raise your ceiling. And when we do return to the very specific endurance and resilience building work in the spring, your body is going to be primed to get more.
Matt Dixon 25:00
More out of those sessions. So that's the one super high intensity. And in swimming, yep, you're a triathlete, we've got to do it. Let's focus on technique. Let's do lots of short intervals. Let's make sure that we show up to March feeling really fresh, but we've got a good, solid background of swimming, and it doesn't need to be that many hours, and that means that a ton of your training, it's gonna be pretty easy. It's gonna be really fun, because in nearly all of those sessions, we're not looking for specific outcomes as it relates to power, as it relates to pace, as it relates to heart rate. So you can track it if you want, but in the session, you don't need to be shackled by it, and it becomes a really empowering component the athletes that can take this on when they're not actually looking for validation, looking for progression, looking for fitness, fitness and speed. We're not trying to get you faster. We don't care about FTP progression. We don't want you to be race ready in March. What we're doing here is preparing your body so that it can train incredibly well and soak up your hard effort that's coming like a sponge. That's what we're doing. It's preparatory. Boom. It changes the lens. We shift from metrics to feeling, from analysis to consistency, from shackles to freedom, and it can dilute. It can really dilute the obsession.
Matt Dixon 26:29
And over the course of two months, knowing that you're having to, as a coach, going to have to tug them back, remind them, course correct them, make sure they come back. It's not going to be perfect. That athlete can emerge very, very resilient, fresh and with a new lens on training. So this is the great time if you're feeling like you want to make up for an underperforming 2025 now's the time to do it, but do it the right way. The final type of athlete that we've had a lot of conversations around is what we would label the mature athlete. It's been really, really common, big goals, plenty of ambition. I'm not done on my journey yet. I want to get faster. I want to enjoy the sport, but I'm getting frustrated. I'm getting down on myself. I'm getting slower. 55 I'm not the same anymore. It takes me longer to recover all of those conversations. The most common challenge that we see when we start trying to help these types of athletes is the same technique and strategies and type of training program that they leveraged for themselves 10 years ago are being utilized now that they're more mature in age, there needs to be an evolution in approach. There needs to be more thoughtful planning and a little bit of intention of understanding the reality of who they are. In fact, if you are a mature athlete, that no matter what your wisdom and experience, what might have worked for you 10 years ago is probably not the same stimulus that's going to get you to your results now. So this is the key here, is we don't try and help a mature athlete by preventing decline. I hate that mindset. You don't need to think about yourself as just going through the inevitable journey of slowing down. Chase performance. Be ambitious, go get faster.
Matt Dixon 28:31
The key though is we just need to shift the approach. We need to adapt the plan, to actually link it with the inevitable shifts in physiology, physiology that are occurring, you screw it. That's all it is, because, look, there is an unescapable truth. We do have a decline in muscle, elasticity of power, potential of strength, even a decline in mobility. And so that requires a different approach. We need to combat these realities and drive progression in a refreshed way. And guess what? This is really possible. We do it every single year, and it's why we've got so many athletes that are still getting faster into their late 50s and early 60s. Despite being 20 years in the sport, we've got lots of case studies that we can talk about this. This is incredibly common when we have these conversations, it's typically the same type of athlete. They're either self coached, and so they lack, understandably, the perspective and the big vision of Hang on. I know what works for me, at least I know what did work for me, but it's different now. So quite often, a shift in perspective and a shift in coaching can really, really help that, or they're in a coaching relationship that's just stale, where they've rinsed and repeated, rinsed and repeated the same program, and suddenly it's starting to not have the same impact. That's where a shift can be really, really positive. These three examples are incredibly common. They're also really understandable, because the truth is, to build performance progression, particularly amidst a really busy life, is not that easy, and it can be frustrating, but there is a solution for every case. So I want to finish the show just with a little bit of a lens. Let's talk about 2026, and let's break it. Let's shift from mindset to action a little bit, because the biggest track for athletes in the new year, planning all the different types of things that you guys will be doing is not taking action fast enough. So hopefully this section will help. We're going to take a moment to walk you through building your own action plan based on some of the very questions that we're getting when we talk to athletes as they start to plan their 2026 the first, as I suggested, is it's very, very important that we begin with the end in mind, what do you really want to accomplish in 2026 and be honest with yourself. Be authentic. Why are you doing this? Think beyond just your a race, we've got a lot of athletes that have registered for Iron Man California. That's great. We're going to take a big team there, and it will be fun.
Matt Dixon 31:14
But that's not your why. That's your goal. That's your target. What's your why? When we are hand in hand at the end of 2026 how will you know that you'll be able to look across at me and say, we were successful this year. I got what I wanted to get out of this year. There will be moments that your motivation is going to go up and down, and there's a big goal a long way away. Define what's driving you? That's number one. Number two is now shrink your focus. Think about q1 this is an incredibly important phase of training. I always talk about off season as being the most empowering and important phase and a catalyst for performance progression. It's true. Q1 so January, February, March is almost it's the brother and sister. It's still off season for at least in mindset. For me, it's still preparatory. And then we bleed into as we shift into the second half of the quarter, a little bit more of the resilient, speed, power threshold type work for most of athletes, it's always a really important phase of training to get one q1 so you know what success is in the big picture, vroom, what are the actions and behaviors that I need to put in place in the first quarter, 12 year program that's digestible, actionable and understandable, very, very clear. That's your next step in the progress, and that's really key, because my job over the course of the first quarter is not to prove to myself how many hours a week I can handle. Instead, what it is, it's about developing a really sustainable rhythm, a foundation, not a foundation in the classic sense of the word, but a foundation of good strength, good consistency and really, really good habits. I like to think about this, as I mentioned earlier in the year, of building everyday readiness over the course of q1 one of your barometer success is most days, I felt pretty good if you've done that, then your training is consistent and your training is under rhythm. So I want to repeat that, because it's important in q1 it's not about how many hours you can accumulate and hit maximizing and squeezing the sponge on that, but can you build training consistency in rhythm, where most days you feel pretty good by definition, you are likely following a smart training program. You are supporting it with good habits. You are fueling fitness preparation and fitness development without it being overwhelming. Okay, so we don't need to start the new year by chasing a goal, by hammering down, we want to lay the foundation of consistency. And you know what's going to happen without you realizing it, the fitness will sneak up on you, and that's the power. You don't want to feel the changes in fitness too rapidly.
Matt Dixon 34:18
That's a cause of burnout later in the year and huge injury risk. And so you want fitness to build in a sneaky way. That's the way to think about it. So what does that look like? Number one, for every athlete, strength in remains the bull's eye, at least two sessions a week. Every athlete, whether you're professional, whether you're a newcomer, build around strength. That's the bullseye in q1 every single athlete. Number two, really consistent training, a lot of it relatively easy. Number three, if you're a triathlete, hit the high intensity at least once a week. Really, really high power, short and in the swimming. Time, maintain technical development and a ton of short interval, fast focus. That's a good catalyst where you take no bad swim strokes. It's a very simple program, but that's a really key action to take, and if you do that, no matter whether you're doing a consistent six hours a week, a consistent 10 hours a week are consistent. 20 hours a week in the have room to grow at the end of q1, more hours to add, and you've got the ability to dial up the load, and your body welcome it like a sponge. I'm ready for the higher intensity, the tougher sessions, the greater volume. That's what q1 is about, laying the foundation of readiness for that, it's got two things so far, set the vision of success, dial in q1 the third is decide on a few key actionable tasks to get you started. I would recommend not starting till January 1. Inspiration isn't going to strike more on January 1, just because it's a shift of calendar and a new year at the end than it is right now. So if anything starting to infuse structure now is going to help you navigate and ensure that you're not starting feeling like you're in a hole January 1. So these next two to three weeks, it's a great time to lean in, and I would recommend just choosing one habit, one single habit, at the most two that you say, I'm going to start now. That could be as simple as I'm going to eat more than 100 grams of protein every day, breakfast, lunch, dinner and another snack. 3030. 30. There you go. 120 grams.
Matt Dixon 36:38
Or I'm going to make sure that I'm consuming at least three liters of water every day. It's a foundational habit to help with my energy, my brain power and my immune system help me get through those dark winter nights and, of course, the holiday celebrations. Maybe it's looking to do a really consistent bedtime, the number one predictor of good sleep, performance and quality, whatever the habit is, pick it, dial it in, commit to it, and start now, because the bedrock of habits are the things that are going to fuel the effectiveness of your training. So don't wait till the New Year and go, oh my goodness me, that was three weeks of torture. It was fun, but I'm in a hole. I better get going instead, build one or two actionable practices and then dial it in from there. And the final element I would recommend that you start now is one thing that is consistently proven to be the biggest unlock of control, capacity and effectiveness, the Sunday special, a reflective process where you start at the end of every single week, the start of the new week, to look back. What went really well this week, professionally, personally, athletically. What are the things that did well? I need to celebrate my successes. What are the areas that didn't go so well? What did I not get accomplished? And with those lessons, what is my mission for the week ahead? And start to unlock and calendar all of the aspects that are important to you, your habits and training, your personal commitments, whether it's with family, friends, social and, of course, your professional work that you're doing as you hit the end of the year, start it now.
Matt Dixon 38:18
Ensure that training and habits don't compete with life, but are integrated with life. It's a ruthless prioritization exercise. It's a sense of control when things are chaotic right now, and it's a catalyst for effectiveness. And burning that habit into practice over three weeks means it's going to be intuitive and a part of your life as you hit 2026, if you're not doing it right now, don't wait till January. Okay. The final thing I'll say is, if you are there, listening, frustrated, unsure, make a change. It's a great time. Don't wait for things to break, make a change. Now as a listener, because we tend to have pretty smart people. You might have heard of the beta paradox, or to be all American, on you the beta paradox? Yes. Dr Daniel Gilbert, this paradox is really interesting. People tend to stay in, quote, good enough situations longer than they should, because things aren't bad enough. So kind of suffering in mediocrity is the way that I would say. It is actually a psychological concept, and it suggests that people are happy enough with good enough sub optimal situations. What he labels the beta region, and they stay much, much longer than if things were truly terrible, because mildly bad, mediocre situations lack urgency, and so they don't prompt change. So paradoxically, things have to get a whole heck of a lot worse. Worse, more painful, more intolerable, maybe injury fatigue, whatever it is to actually trigger the motivation to seriously drive towards improvement. Don't fall for the Baylor paradox. If you're in a situation, whether you're self coached, whether you're in a sterile coaching relationship, make the shift now. Lean into it. Think about it. How many people do you know are comfortable in complacency? How many times do you see someone we think if they just changed, they could be a whole lot of a heck happier or better or on the other side, but instead, they wait. That's the beta paradox. Don't wait.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
2026 goals, performance journey, training strategy, stress management, needs assessment, smarter athlete, optimization mindset, consistent habits, strength training, high intensity sessions, mature athlete, beta paradox, action plan, training consistency, holiday break.