392 - 4 Triathlon Myths That May Be Holding You Back
Follow the Purple Patch Podcast at:
APPLE PODCASTS - SPOTIFY- AMAZON MUSIC - GOOGLE PODCASTS - YOUTUBE
Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!
On this episode, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon and Max Gering discuss common myths in triathlon training. They debunk the notion that athletes need 15-20 hours of training per week for an Ironman, emphasizing quality over quantity. They highlight the importance of individualized training plans, including over-distance workouts and strength training. They argue against the myth that older athletes must slow down, citing examples of athletes who improved with age. They stress the value of high-intensity training, strength and conditioning, and proper recovery. Lastly, they argue against the myth that more zone two training is always better, advocating for a balanced approach to training intensities.
If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out at info@purplepatchfitness.com.
Episode Timecodes:
00-1:59 Episode Promo
2:27-6:51 Intro
6:55-end Meat & Potatoes
Purple Patch and Episode Resources
Learn more about being a Coach: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/careers-page
Fast Track Run Squad: purplepatchfitness.com/fasttrackmarathon
Check out our world-class coaching and training options:
Tri Squad: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/squad
1:1 Coaching: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/11-coached
Run Squad: https://www.purplepatchfitness/com/run-squad
Strength Squad: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/strength-1
Live & On-Demand Bike Sessions: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/bike
Explore our training options in detail: https://bit.ly/3XBo1Pi
Live in San Francisco? Explore the Purple Patch Performance Center: https://center.purplepatchfitness.com
Everything you need to know about our methodology:
https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/our-methodology
Amplify your approach to nutrition with Purple Patch + Fuelin
https://www.fuelin.com/purplepatch
Get access to our free training resources, insight-packed newsletter and more at purplepatchfitness.com
Transcription
Matt Dixon 00:00
Hey folks, it's a cracker on today's show. In fact, I'm going to get put on the hot seat. I've got Max Gehring joining me, one of the purple patch coaches, and we're talking about myths in triathlon. And guess what? I don't know what's coming, but before we get into the show, I've got a very special opportunity, because, well, what's it been about 18 months or two years ago, we added two new coaches to the team, and guess what? They're two A players will Turner and Matt's Geron, who's joining me on the show. It's that time again. We're growing and we have another special opportunity. We are looking for an assassin of effectiveness if you want to become not a lone wolf, but a part of the purple patch coaching team, mentored directly by me as a part of a team that not just coaches individual athletes, but has an imprint on the hundreds of athletes that are on the tri squad and other squad programs. And then this is the place for you. We have high expectations, but we couple it with massive support. In fact, as a team, we speak every single day. We have a daily stand up, we catch up, we define our mission. We see where people need support. We are a high functioning team. And you can do this from anywhere in the US. And so if you head to purple patchfitness.com, scroll down the page, go to the careers, and there's the job description. Check it out. And maybe, if you're listening, share it with a coach that maybe is got their own coaching business, but is sick of being the lone wolf that wants to be a part of a high performing team. It's a wonderful opportunity. It's absolutely full time. And so reach out if you're interested, or maybe send it to someone that you know might be we're looking for the A players. We are a high premium performance organization, and so we want passion, excitement and the absolute thirst to help people get better. Alrighty, thanks for listening. And of course, we'll put the link in the show notes and enjoy today's show. It's a great one. Take care. I'm Matt Dixon, and welcome to the purple patch podcast. The mission of purple patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential. Through the lens of athletic potential, you reach your human potential. The purpose of this podcast is to help time-starved people everywhere integrate sport into life.
Matt Dixon 02:28
Matt and welcome to the purple patch podcast as ever your host, Matt Dixon and today, well, folks, I get to be a little bit lazy today, although at the same time I'm on the hot seat because I get to hand off hosting this show to purple patch coach, Max gehrin, Max, welcome back to the show. Thank you. It's been a
Max Gering 02:49
minute, as they say, since I've been on the show. I'm excited to be back.
Matt Dixon 02:52
It has and and this one today is your idea. In fact, I I know what's coming, but at the same time, I have no idea what's coming so far as the specific questions, you're putting me on the hot seat a little. You're going to test probably, my memory, my expertise, see whether I really do walk the walk, rather than just talk the talk. So why don't I hand this off to you? Let you introduce the listeners. What we're going to do today, and then we'll hit the meat and potatoes.
Max Gering 03:20
I guess. Let's do it. And as you tell us when we lead meetings as purple patch employees, you expect it to be poignant. You expect it to be memorable, meaningful, funny, all of the above. So hoping that that's what we get today in this in this episode,
03:35
I'll do my best. This stemmed
Max Gering 03:37
the idea stemmed from I'll take a step back, in addition to being a coach of purple patch. And so that means I have one to one athletes, and then all of us on the coaching team. We're the same coaching team that support all of our squad athletes across all the different programs. So for listeners that are new to purple patch, that means try squad run, squad bike, squad, strength, squad. So the whole lot, we're the coaches that support them via consultations, online support, so on and so forth. In addition to that, we all have different roles. Part of my job is I get to have Needs Assessment calls. So a lot of times, it's either listeners from the podcast or incoming athletes, and they stop by my virtual office before we chat, we talk about what they've done, where they want to go, and we help map that approach. I then take that information, I share it with the rest of the coaching team so they can get that individual support on their journey in those needs assessment calls. A lot of what we're doing is resetting the mindset of the athlete to map out a new approach. Right? The reason why people come to us and why people seek change is because they understand that if you keep doing the same thing, you're going to keep getting the same results. They want to do something different at the same time. That's challenging, because you have to break certain beliefs that you've helped so today we have four myths, as I like to call them, that are recurring themes I talk about in these. Assessment calls, and I thought it'd be really valuable for our listeners, our triathlete listeners in the audience, to go through these myths so they can as they shift from where we are now, if you're listening to this, when this comes out, from preseason to race season, to really help them dial things in and accomplish their goals. So that's what we've got.
Matt Dixon 05:16
It's going to be fun and and you making sure that I exist under a pressure filled world. Have not told me what those myths are yet, so I'm gonna get some honest, raw reaction as a listener, because I think you're gonna, you're gonna ask me the questions. I will say, by the way, you do a fabulous job and and it's so athlete first, consistently we get feedback of the athletes that do reach out on this show and elsewhere, I say, hey, if you'd like to reach out for a complementary needs assessment, you'll speak to a coach that is you max and and you do a great job. And as you listen today, for folks with Max has identified four you, and I will find out what those four are over the course of of the coming 20 or 30 minutes, I guess. But, but if you do have your own follow up questions, if you do want to dig into your journey, see how you can crack your performance recipe, achieve your goals. Max is the guy. And so if you listen today, and he's leading, if you want to reach out just, just head to info@purplepatchfitness.com, ping us an email, and it will be Max, who you're going to spend some time with. And as we always do, it's absolutely complementary. So that's, that's what we do. And Max, you're, you're able to take the hosting away from me. I'm okay. The one thing I won't give away is the meat and potatoes and so I get to say to everyone here, I'm not going to give that over to you, ladies and gentlemen, it is time for the meat and potatoes.
Max Gering 06:57
All right, let's dig in myth number one, Matt, you wrote an entire book about this just over 10 years ago. So the big question for the listeners and for you right now is, does this stand the test of time?
Max Gering 07:11
Do you need 15 to 20 hours to train for an Iron Man every week and to be successful in an Iron Man
Matt Dixon 07:22
The short answer is, no, it's I should have guessed this was going to be the first question and and it's a great question. I think it's fundamentally the most important one. As soon as you ask that question, the first thing that sparked into my mind I remember, many years ago, speaking at a very large triathlon club in Southern California and and that same question actually bubbled up from from a guy, Bob Babbitt, who you will know, and he asked me that exact same question. And I said, Oh, how many in here believe that that's true, that you need to train 20 hours a week to get ready for an Iron Man. And in the audience, 150 odd people, the vast majority of them, put their hands up and I said, Okay, relative to all of your life demands that you have with family, friends, everything else, kids and your roles at work, who here has 20 hours, 25 hours a week to train for an Iron Man, and about three people put their hands up. And so my response to that was, so everybody else in here is doomed for failure. Of course, it's not the case. Here's the challenge with the preconceived notion of having a fixed number output of training hours period, it doesn't matter what it is, I believe that that is a really flawed away approach to train an athlete for any endurance event, having it as an outcome, an output of a fixed number of hours. And that's because what we're trying to do as a coach and what the athlete is trying to do is to maximize the amount of high quality training that's appropriate for that athlete and for what they're training for, maximize the amount of training that they can do while it yields positive adaptations and training is a stress and we exist as busy hobbyists, if you want to call it that, people that are doing this spot, not professionally. We exist by adding a training stress amongst a big bucket of stresses that we have to manage across all of life. Work demands, travel, family, etc, and that is a living, breathing thing called life. And so if you have a starting point of trying to hit a fixed number of hours that typically progress over the course of weeks, and then you have a Recovery Week, etc. It looks very pretty on a spreadsheet, but life is not a spreadsheet and all that. Is the athlete dumps training on top of life, and it creates a competition with all of life's demands. The body is very, very good at absorbing stress. It's not very good at differentiating types of stress. So whenever you just dump more more more training on top of life, it ultimately becomes maladaptive. And so as a shift of that there's there's a cure, a lens for coaches that are guiding athletes, or athletes that are training for these events, which is okay, let's first look at the life structure. And I always think that the vast majority of at of amateur athletes have an optimization challenge, and this changes by week. Most people have a pretty regular, realistic set of training hours that they can probably fit in in any given week without compromise of life, family, work, etc. So what's my regular but also, what's, what's the ebb on this particular week? Is life really flowing and extra busy you might need to do less number of hours? Is it ebbing and you've got a little bit more capacity, you can do some more hours. So the first question is, how much can I logistically fit in realistically with the rest of life's demands? The second is of that training, and it better be all of it can the body absorb and adapt to? And that's the key thing. Because what we're not looking to do here is maximize training hours. That's not what it takes to be successful. We're looking to string together weeks and weeks and weeks of maximal training effectiveness. And so that's the optimization challenge. Athletes don't improve because of what they do. This is a really important that they don't improve of what they do, they improve from what they can absorb, in other words, hitting the right training of which the body can adapt and get stronger to, and when they can string that together, not in one week, not in two weeks, but in multiple, multiple months, that's where we start to see great things happen. So that's my big banner headline news on that myth.
Max Gering 12:17
I like that answer. I really like that point at the end about athletes get better about what they can absorb. And I think you highlighted two things, which is something that we always need to think about as coaches, which is, there's what can my life absorb, and there's what can my body absorb? And sometimes you're doing less because of your life not being able to absorb it added stress, needing to spend extra time with the family, extra time at work, and sometimes it's because of the body. Both of those are valid reasons to dial back training. One thing I would like you to touch on I think will be beneficial, is this is not a less is more approach. So it's not doing less for the sake of doing less, because that's the best way. So as we always say, when you're getting ready for an over distance event, when you're getting ready for an Iron Man, when you're getting ready for a marathon or for a marathon or ultra, whatever it may be, you do need to do some over distance training. Do you still recommend that athletes think about this on a week to week basis, or do they zoom out a little bit and say, Okay, I have this event. How can an athlete make sure that they're getting in big chunks of work when they are time-starved.
Matt Dixon 13:24
Yeah. So firstly, coming back to your first point, which I think is really important, this is not less is more. In fact, I would, you know, if there are T shirts that I would love to make the very last on the list would be outside of htfu, would be less is more. I can't stand that. I think it sends absolutely the wrong message. Less is not more. More of more is good as long as it's effective. So we are always looking to maximize that. And in fact, in purple patch, proof in point, if you have a professional athlete, we have coached many, many of them, life demands are really low, therefore we can, in that case, have them train more hours. The least number of hours that a professional Ironman athlete under purple patch would do is somewhere between 18 and 22 hours. And those were the athletes that tended to do better on more consistent, slightly lower athletes in that level. And so the Tim Reid, someone that won a world championship, the SAM Appletons, one of the great warriors of triathlon, incredibly successful, won more races than I can count versus we had other athletes that their body could absorb more, Laura Siddle, Meredith Kessler, that we actually dosed up. And so it's not about less is more. I think that's a really important message. It's about having the greatest impact, impact consistently relative to life demands. And that's the big unlock to your point as well. There is a reality. If you're getting ready for 100 mile running race, or you're getting ready for. Iron Man, you're getting ready for even a marathon, some over distance work is necessary. It's really valuable. And so on a week to week basis, you're having within a relatively narrow spectrum ebbs and flow of training hours. But we do want the opportunity to take advantage of the moments where you can go longer. And typically what that means is, when we're coaching athletes, when I'm guiding an individual athlete, I look to unlock the week to week recipe, but then I really like to come up a level and say, Hey, let's have a look at your corporate calendar, your family calendar. Let's get with the important constituents, your partner, your kids. Let's look ahead and let's identify 1234, opportunities, four weekends where we can block them out and say these are going to be kind of Iron Man weekends where you're going to either have a big opportunity for an over distance day on a Saturday, and maybe a shorter Sunday, or maybe two big medium days where you're going to do something challenging on Friday, and then bigger Saturday, Sunday, where we can get you Iron Man specific. We can do some simulators. You can go and ride 456, hours, plus you can go and run off the bike. You can go and do a big run the day after. The key though, is, is that doesn't happen and shouldn't happen every single week to be successful in the big context of life, and so some big picture planning is really, really important. I would, I would absolutely agree I
Max Gering 16:30
love that. And I'm not going to ask you, how should someone structure the week, because that is an individual question. And if you're listening to this episode, that's exactly what we talk about in the needs assessment calls, which is, given your circumstances in your life, your strengths and weaknesses, and what you need to work on, what's the best structure of training for you, given the amount of hours that you have so that email us and have a chat with me if that's something that you want answered for you. So we're on to Myth number two question that I get all the time is, am I going to be doing an FTP test in my first week of training as a one to one coached athlete, or a tri SWAT athlete? And then the follow up to that is, if I'm not, how are you going to prescribe me training? How am I going to know that I'm doing effective training? So that's Myth number two, FTP, and I don't think that it's FTP is useless. That's that's not the myth. But I want you to break down a little bit about, do you need to consistently test your FTP to train properly, and is your FTP improving a sign that you are Iron Man, ready?
Matt Dixon 17:39
Okay, good. And if I may, I'm going to take a step back and provide some context on this as soon as I because I think it's important for listeners to have the the grounding on this, say a little bit. And there's, there's a lot in the media at the moment, particularly with the the Norwegian athletes and their team of scientists that are around them, a lot of infield blood lactate testing. There's programs that are doing monthly FTP assessments at the moment, which I'll explain why I think that that's happening. There are coaches that ask athletes to do you know, every four weeks, every six weeks, FTP assessments. I'm a trained exercise physiologist. I have a master's degree in clinical physiology. I've probably administered more than 1500 blood lactate assessments, probably 1000 vo two Max assessments via gas exchange. I've done a lot of field testing. And when I actually very first started coaching, I had, I was a partner in an in an organization where central to everybody coming in, and it was a cycling program based in Mill Valley in California. The very first thing would do is send them through a battery of physiological assessments that they would go through every six weeks. So so that was the backbone of our program. We would have them go through vo two Max. We would have them go through a couple of different blood let take assessments. As I moved to coaching pro athletes, I over time, started to
Matt Dixon 19:28
lean on blood lactate and FTP assessments less and less and less because I saw a couple of challenges. Firstly, unless you can be in the field and very, very consistent on an almost daily basis, with the athlete side by side taking on the spot assessments. There was a massive flaw in the overweighting that occurred on a single assessment that occurred on a Tuesday in March. Eight of which, then, for the next two months or so, we were aligned with these magical zones in a fixed number that led the athlete to think, pass, fail if I'm unless, just arbitrarily, if I'm not between 180 and 220 watts, I must be doing something bad. And then there's this distinct black line between 220 and 230 when now I'm in a different zone. And that's just not how physiology works. It's a really chaotic and dirty, turbulent set of different variables that is much more going white to gray into black, and is also really impacted by different stresses, fatigue, training, accumulation, sleep, hydration, status, fueling, etc. And so if you have a team of scientists around you, and your whole life is training like a Norwegian professional athlete, then it's a fantastic system to have around you to get some quantifiable data and feedback, to understand the patterns of how you operate under fatigue, different environments, heat, cold, etc. And you can really build a profile and get very specific. But even those guys, by the way, do a lot of their training by feel. And so I saw a lot of the challenges, and I know this is long winded, but I think it's worth addressing. I also saw the behavioral shifts of athletes, where they no longer trained with any trust in themselves. What started to evaporate is a sense of inner pacing, inner self management, responsiveness to what was happening in the body. And they became slaves, for lack of a better phrase of the outputs, What's my output in pace? What's my output in power, pass, fail. And it started to make it so binary that the athletes were actually getting athletically dumber. And that's that that became such a catalyst that, no, I'm not a Luddite. I believe in in measuring outputs, measuring internal cost, heart rate, starting to build that as an understanding, as a framework, but only in the same way as a pilot flying a plane has dials to help them, but still they're flying the plane. And so to get to your question, if an athlete is coming in and has has no compass at all, no understanding of where their sort of starting ranges or metrics are. We're not going to put them onto our bike platform that is reliant on this number to at least have a gage and say, just work it out. Guess it's a good opportunity to do an FTP assessment there, just to have an understanding. And you can do a part of that, but once you have that baseline, people need to understand that FTP is is moving up and down relative to fatigue on any given day. And so I would much rather an athlete generally focus and train on the input. What is the focus of the session, what should it feel like? How should I go through this and start to build that self trust and then look and be like, What's my output? And so if, if I asked one of my athletes, if you asked one of your athletes to do an FTP assessment every single month they'd fire me. And in fact, if they didn't fire me, they should. It's insanity, and the only reason, and there's a big impact. That's a negative, by the way, if you're going to get valuable data in FTP, it needs to interrupt a couple of days of training before and so over the course of the month, you're losing an opportunity for high value training because you're doing some ramp assessment or some other assessment. So periodic is fine for those athletes that either need it as a gage or maybe something is changing where we think, okay, let's have a check in. But every month, the only reason you're doing that is to feed a computer algorithm, that's all it is. You're just feeding an algorithm, but it's not helping you get better, and it is not and I think this is a really important thing. Specificity is not precision. There is no precision in human physiology. So build trust in yourself. Start to build an innate understanding of what sessions should feel like, and then use the data and metrics as feedback guideposts information to help you improve that. That's I know that's a long winded answer, but it's the truth. I think
Max Gering 24:56
it was a good one. I'm happy with it. All right. And I want to add, because you mentioned something interesting where it changes day to day. I know that you do this with your athletes. When you talk to them. Think every coach at purple patch does with their one to one athletes, and we really trying to get our SWAT athletes and things like this is oftentimes I'll write into workout descriptions to my athletes, if I know that they're coming off a travel or a busy time of life, feel free or okay to drop your FTP by 567, percent today in this bite workout, focus on the intent and then describe what. Make sure they understand what the intent is, and getting an athlete to understand that dropping your FTP in a workout is not a failure. And at the same time, if we haven't tested their FTP in a little while, I will have athletes will say the opposite, which is, if you feel good after one or two intervals, I want you to really push. And in the platform, you essentially go red, showing that you're past the prescribed effort. Push past your FTP, raise your FTP for the day, and that's going by. Feel that's very those are the, as you said, the athletes getting dumber. Are the athletes that are able to do that, drop it when they need to drop it, push when they need to push. Are the smartest athletes and the athletes that tend to
Matt Dixon 26:10
perform the best. Yeah, call it athletic dumbness and athletic IQ, you know, high athletic IQ. I'll say a couple of things on there, and I think it might be helpful for an for listeners to hear a quantifiable sort of case study, as it were. But I want to borrow a quote from a good mate of mine who's been on the podcast as you know, Steve Magnus, who I think it's a great a great cue that we now use at purple patch a lot, which is to say, hey, I want you to win the workouts, so you shouldn't be failing workouts. Let's let you use, Let's marry that quote with a random set of intervals that we're doing. Imagine if we're doing six by four minutes at around your functional threshold. So zone four effort, very, very strong, maximal, steady state, whatever we want to call it. And let's just, let's use an imaginary case study. Somebody's power at zone four is, give or take, around Functional Threshold, around 250 watts. And I'm saying number so that I can remember them and their heart rates around 150 great. So when you approach that, many athletes say, I've done my FTP assessment. It needs to be around 250 and my heart rate should be this, winning the workout and doing that session successfully. What we're looking to do is to hit an intensity in which, over the course of the four minutes, physiologically, you can stabilize. It's very strong, but sustainable. And so you shouldn't go till failure. So if you do the first and the second interval, and you are doing it right, because it's precision, it's high specificity, I'm hitting my 200 watts, but it is absolutely terrifyingly hard. You're blowing up in the fourth minute. You look at your heart rate, and it's 159 163 168 and your perceived effort is nine out of 10, and you can barely finish the first interval. You're not winning the workout. You're not actually at zone four for that day. Oh, but I am Matt, because my power is 250 and I did that assessment three weeks ago. That's where you need to have the courage and the sense to say, You know what, for one reason or another. Life prior training, maybe fueling sleep, whatever it is that's not the output today. So how do I make it really effective? Maybe today it's 235 and it's 240 and you're still winning the workout. You're giving the body the right stimulus today to elicit the adaptations. And that is a really valuable session, and that's the important thing that people don't understand. It's not a bad day because you didn't hit 250 instead, it was 240 it was just a day that, for one reason or another, you didn't feel great, but you still provided the stimulus the body can still grow, versus if you do 250 and you're fixed because of some assessment, and you blow the gasket, that is a failure. That's a really bad day of training, because it's going to have a long tail impact, and you're ultimately in zone five. You're blowing up, you're going to failure. So that's what when we talk about winning the workout. That's just one little example of how you might think about it.
Max Gering 29:30
I love that really good way to wrap it up. And people, if they haven't listened, if you haven't listened to that episode you had with Steve A while back, we can even put it in the show notes, because it's a really good episode about part of workouts and as athletes get into the season and do harder workouts, there's a lot of just great nuggets in there about how to mentally manage and how to train your mind to to win workouts. So link that in the show notes. All right. Myth number three, we're moving on. To kick this one off, I thought that there's no better way to dispel this myth than with numbers. So before I tell you the myth, maybe you'll guess it. At the end of this I want to share some stats from last year race season of athletes at purple patch and see if it gives it away. Going to tell people's age, and I'm going to tell you the results. So we had Lila in the 50 to 54 age group with a lifetime. PR, at 70.3 Wisconsin. She was fifth in her age group with a bike and run. PR, going to 43 on the bike and a lifetime. PR, in a 70.3 of 157 on the run. We had Pat, 60 to 64 age group, with a lifetime PR 435, 32 for his overall race result, winning his age group with a bike of 225, and a run of 141, again, 60 to 64 age group. I would love to do that at 31 we have Jeff, 50 to 54 age group, going sub five hours at 70.3. Oregon, with a 230 bike split Bob, 50 to 5055, 59 again, going sub five, 448, with a 230 on the bike and a run of 148 and lastly, we had James just turning 50, with an Iron Man, PR to Ironman, California, going 926, biking in 434, 10, and 10 seconds faster per mile. Then he ran in an iron man when he was in his early 40s.
Matt Dixon 31:32
All right, what's the myth? The myth is something about age probably getting getting slower. Age is my guess and and I'm going to add one more of mine in there, because I'm really proud of him. Pat, you mentioned which one of mine, but Panos kakulos as well, which consistently has run his best marathon in his late 50s. He's been an endurance athlete for the last 20 years and won his best half Iron Man consistently over the course of the last couple of seasons in his late 50s, faster than what he was doing in his in his early 40s. So I bet it's about age you hit the nail on the head.
Max Gering 32:11
The myth is that older means slower, and that as you get older, as an endurance athlete, you have nothing else to do besides lawyer expectations and focus on just enjoying and being grateful that you get to race.
Matt Dixon 32:25
There's a legendary purple patch athlete, one of my favorites, good who originally actually was in the NFL. He played, unfortunately, the burden for him is he played for the Seattle Seahawks, which we all hate. The Seahawks, of course, because we're in the Bay Area. But joking aside Joe Terry, when he first joined purple patch, he he came to me as very busy executive, and he said, Look, I'm I'm turning 50. I'm assuming my goal should be just to not slow, slow down and and he reminds me frequently, almost every year of my response, which was really apropos for the response of this myth, where I said f that you're going to get faster, and he had interviewed several coaches, and I was like, No, we're getting faster. Why are you lowering expectations? Let's get faster. And he has continued to get faster racing all over the world. Iron Man races Half Ironman races strong light ball just done an amazing job, coached by me, coached by another coach, now on the tri squad program, and continued to evolve and take this approach. It is an absolute myth. There is a certain point where that myth does become a reality. We have some great athletes. This year we had an athlete 85 years of age. He did go a little bit slower in his marathon than he went at 75 and he was frustrated with us because he'd Uh, he's lost 15 minutes. But that's a pretty cool story. There is a certain tipping point, but it can come way later than people imagine. And and I think that the key thing, particularly for athletes that have been doing the sport for a long time, you know, 10 years plus. The truth is that the way to get faster requires an involved approach to training than what they used to be successful for them when they're in their 30s or 40s. And what that means is typically not just chasing hours and and instead having, at the very centerpiece, two main things. Number one, strength and conditioning. That's very important. I'll add a third, actually, strength and conditioning. The second thing is a higher dose of of high intensity training. That should mature athletes do very good of that. And I'll add sort of Hill reps on that. So the strength endurance stuff that we do on the bike, the low cadence, short, high intensity, mature athletes, VO, two, Max, is plummeting if we don't address it. And so it's a really good thing to actually keep that up there. So high intensity throughout the season, coupled with strength, that's high, high, high, high, high value. And then the third is really embracing many endurance athletes, natural challenges is recovery and needing just a little bit of additional downtime, spacing out the harder sessions on a week to week, so trying to only go really hard a couple of times a week, and giving a bit more space between them, being a bit more cognizant of post race, having that extra two or three days, being more patient as you return in, really prioritizing sleep. And sleep quality can be more challenging as you mature, because of waking up multiple times a night, and people just tend to sleep less. So really understanding and evolving your recipe around your opportunity to recover, and knowing it does take a little bit longer, but if you can get those three pillars in place, it's amazing how much stronger people do and how much faster people get. It takes some courage, because it's not the same recipe as it was from 10 years ago, and it is less reliant on just layering miles and miles and miles hours and hours and hours. The worst thing a mature athlete can do is just go out and accumulate zone two training. It's just absolutely the worst thing you just some Zone Two is right, some smooth endurance is right? But it's very low return for a mature athlete, in context to strength, high power and, of course, added recovery. That's my thought on that.
Max Gering 36:51
That's great. One thing I wanted to follow up and ask you about is, if you could touch a little more on Hill reps. I know that's something we do a lot of in purple patch. Why? What about Hill reps is beneficial for obviously, all athletes should Hill reps are beneficial, but specifically for mature athletes,
Matt Dixon 37:07
well, and it's on bike and and run, I would say, so let's actually address run first. Yeah, that's us
Max Gering 37:14
referring to run beneficial.
Matt Dixon 37:17
Yeah. I think you know, as as we mature, our muscles, tendons, ligaments, get a little less elastic, and we start to lose strength naturally. So that's one of the things that really drops off if we don't address it. So strength training is an important part of that, but it's a pretty high risk to have an athlete do a lot of speed work, going to the track and doing high, high speed you see, the muscles are just more prone, no matter what we do, to just getting the tugs and the niggles and the pains and all the time, we're fighting this battle where it's not just bone density, it's, it's it's muscle contraction and strength is just wanting to lower. And so for a more mature athlete, there tends to be a bigger, bigger ROI. If you're actually putting them against a gradient, it's not only going to promote good running form, but it's a very much a strength based activity. And so, you know, in running, they say Hills pay the bills, and strength training is speed work, but it is really true with mature athletes. I think that's a really good ROI so, so we tend to do a lot of high frequency running with a mature athlete, as we do with all of our athletes, they universally integrate walk breaks into training and racing, particularly as you go over distance, so that they're not doing high risk fatigue inducing running with poor form. And then, rather than doing a bunch of high speed work, we do a lot of strength based work on the hills. And then the same applies very simply. We spent a lot of time on the show talking about strength endurance and the purple patch special sauce, etc. It's just a really, really good ROI on bike training for everyone, but it tends to be the absolute unlock for endurance, for mature athletes, when you're doing high talk, so a lot of load on the pedals. So it has to be stronger output, and you're doing it at lower leg speed. So 5055, 6065, revolutions per minute. It's a really effective dose of training for those types of athletes. I love it.
Max Gering 39:27
And the one thing I would add that we didn't mention is nutrition. Think something we see with a lot of our athletes that are getting faster and stronger as they age is they're doubling down on nutrition. They're doubling down on post workout fueling with carbs and protein, and they're just paying better attention and eating more intentionally throughout the day. All of those athletes that we named in the beginning of this section this myth, are focusing on their nutrition, and I think it's something that a younger athlete can get away with a little bit more. And as you age, you. Just can't get away with having poor nutrition. I know that when I go visit my parents, my dad listens to the show. So Dad, if you're listening, I see what he eats when he gets off the trainer or finishing a run. And you know the conversations of you need to have protein in there. You need to be hydrating better. My mom having coffee first thing in the morning before she has water. Two hours after waking up, has water. Those little things that we talk so much about become extra important as you age. It is
Matt Dixon 40:25
such a good point. Max. It's so true. And in fact, like that of the of the folks that you mentioned, Pat and penos, you know, they both, for the last five years, absolutely doubled down like it becomes, it genuinely does become the fourth discipline, you know, it genuinely does. And I would actually say there were five swim, bike, run, strength, and then six recovery, let's let's keep going. But nutrition is so important. And I would say on that list, almost every mature athlete at purple patch leans in and tends to utilize fuel in the team at fuel in. I think they're fantastic. We've obviously got a partnership with them. We can put the links in the show notes, but it takes the guesswork out. And it is very difficult for a mature athlete with ingrained habits to be like, goodness me, this is how much I need to be consuming, and it's really surprising. I always talk about one of the big mistakes that many endurance athletes make is not consuming enough calories to support their training load. It's really, really challenging for more mature athletes, they need to eat a surprising amount of calories to support that training load, and it needs to be the right calories. The the range of of sort of flex gets more narrow, and so you're exactly right Max, like the vast majority of athletes that you name, I know several of them are on the fuel in program. It's really powerful. They tend to be, you know, sometimes starting with one of their individual coaches or going straight onto the co pilot program, and it's just a really powerful tool so that that's a good place to start with your nutrition, if you're listening as an endurance athlete. And we'll put the link in the show notes. It is you hit the nail on
Max Gering 42:13
the head there with it's they're shocked by how much they need to eat, like most, like a lot of things. It's a combination of a mindset shift, understand, understanding and then, and then practical habits. So that's that's stuff, yeah, alrighty. So that's the myth of older athletes needing to resign to get slower. Myth number four, our final one, you touched on this. We talked about this. It's relevant to the first question about 15 to 20 hours. And then it's just mentioned it now with the older athletes, but the big Zone Two is zone two always better. And preface this, as we talked about in the beginning, with the number of hours, is we're not talking about professional athletes here. So for busy age group athletes who want to get better results with fewer hours, is more zone two always better.
Matt Dixon 43:07
I mean, it's amazing. How, how long have athletes been doing endurance sports? I mean, for for years and years and years. I guess we can maybe go back to the Olympics, yeah, so And suddenly, now, in the last five or seven years, we discovered zone two, and it was the unlock of all magic performance. And of course, I'm being facetious. I joked a couple of months ago with a very well respected coach to say, you know how long you've been coaching because of how many cycles through the fad comes back up. It's blood lactate again, and then it dissipates and it goes back. Well, we've just gone through and are going through another zone two fad. So whether we're calling it zone two, conversational exercise, base training, foundational training. It's ultimately not the unlock. Here's the truth, if you're a regular human being or you're an endurance athlete, there is high value that a good amount of your training should be at a conversational effort. It should be at four or five or six out of 10 effort, or even less than that, sometimes, and there is high value that's no matter, no matter whether you're doing five hours a week of exercise or 35 hours a week of exercise. As you increase your total number of training hours, the ratio of Zone Two is going to increase. So if you take a 25 to 35 hour a week, professional athlete, cyclists, runner, who, none of them train run, obviously, 25 hours a week, but cyclist, triathlete, I guess, is the different. Is a better analogy. You. So they're going to have a higher total number of hours that are at zone two. And that's because the body is limited by how much zone 345, higher intensity it can absorb without breaking. And so the thing that stays relatively fixed is the zone 345, and so as we start to shrink the number of available training hours to what most of our athletes have, 678-910-1112, hours, the number of appropriate zone two is going to be less than an absolute number that zone two is good for foundational endurance, good for muscular resilience, good for bridging between the really demanding, high intensity workouts and an enabling consistency. So Zone Two is a good thing. It's valuable. But the myth that starts to occur is that specific, and we talked earlier about the murkiness of the physiological sort of phases, of grades, of going through intensities to think that that is the answer is, is a myth. In other words, I would argue that every athlete, every week should touch every intensity should there should be plenty of very, very easy work. Let's global IT. Zone one, there should be a good amount of Zone Two, conversational, smooth effort. There should be some medium intensity. We should have some harder work, and there should be some very, very high intensity. And almost every week of the season we should hit all of them. How much of each is dependent on where the athlete is in the season, and then also what the specific demands in the last X number of weeks getting ready for their race. Are they getting ready for Olympic distance or half Ironman or Iron Man Triathlon context, that's a dependency as well. And so I would say that zone two being the Holy Grail is a myth. But that doesn't mean that I'm anti zone two. The body prefers variance, every intensity, every week. Don't think it's the Holy Grail. Instead, what I prefer is, what are the performance driving high impact sessions, typically two to three for an athlete, any given week, they tend to be more challenging or sometimes super over distance, so there's a lot of Zone Two, but tend to be the more challenging, higher intensity sessions, then in the hours left over, the rest of that work is zone one, very easy, or zone two for the most part. That's a really simplified way of thinking about it, and and so no more is not better. It just needs to lean in. It's a part of training, and Matt's nothing else. I love it.
Max Gering 48:03
And you mentioned zone one. I think that that gets overlooked, especially when it comes to the soul filling workouts. I think when we have athletes that are really time-starved, you have a high intensity, and then you have a lot of zone one showing up as these soul filling days, this chance, as you said, to bridge the gap between the harder workouts and have some chance for decompression and absorbing the overall stress
Matt Dixon 48:25
of life. I think this is a I'm so glad that you brought that up. It's, it's masterful Max, because this is, if there is a secret of our success with these you know, we work with, obviously, a lot of very busy people in high demands. You go back and listen to the Jeff Dolan podcast, where he's responsible for 85 countries and regions under Starbucks international expansion, traveling all over the place. How does he qualify to the World Championships, PR and an Iron Man while he's doing all of that? It's crazy. It's this. I think this is a part of it. Well, there's two things, number one, great coaching by Nancy, and his ability to be coached. And he talks about that in the show. We'll add it in the show notes, but it's also building a different relationship. And so let me say this. I think this might be the most important thing we say today for really busy people that are looking to improve their performance. And that's very simply put, we all as athletes are ambitious, and we view training as getting stronger, fitter, faster. So you're applying a training stress, and that can be zone 2345, or more, and you're doing sessions that are challenging, stressing the body to force adaptations. If you're really busy, a busy mom, a busy parent, a busy executive, whatever it is, there's a different relationship when you approach your workout, when you look at it, and I love to call it soul filling, and typically pretty low on structure. When I'm working with someone that I prescribe that let's just make it up. An easy two kilometer, low stress swim, a light 40 minute easy run. And I want it to be zone one. I'm, by the way, I'm not tracking metrics. I just want it to be soul filling the lens that you look through, a long winded way of getting to this bullseye right here. The lens that you look through is, I'm doing this workout to process stress. Movement is stress processing. And so when you if it's low enough intensity. So whether that's a walk for someone, whether it's a very easy run or a one run with walk breaks, you need to keep it really, really easy, because that's the thing that's building your capacity, that's the battery recharge. It's not just bridging workouts, it's processing stress from all of the other stresses in life. And if you buy into that, and you lean into the easy being easy enough, you're going to unlock the magic word of any coach, consistency. And if you can get consistent, then you're going to enjoy it more. You're also going to get faster, and that's what we're looking for.
Max Gering 51:12
I love it. And Matt's going to wrap up myth number four, folks, so that there you have it. Those are our four myths. And not to turn the end of the podcast into a promo, but I would like to say that as you listen to all of this, if you're a triathlete, obviously, you know one to one coaching exists in the triathlon world, but we talked about a lot of things where, if you're not having someone make these decisions for you, tell you when to do more zone Two, tell you when to do less, more intensity, less intensity. That means you need to make it by your make those decisions yourself. And I don't know of any other program that exists where the athlete is empowered and drives the wagons, as you say, to be able to make the decisions themselves. So that's what's really cool about tri squad, from a coaching perspective, is we get to work with athletes, but we see the athletes be able to take all this information and actually make these decisions on a weekly basis, so they're in control of their journey. And as you say, it's consistency. It's a huge unlock, because they will learn how to manage their effort, they learn how to manage their training. And really it does wonders. So that is our tri squad program, if you listen to this episode. And then on top of that, if you enjoy this episode and you want to chat, you want to dive into any of these topics deeper. Info@purplepatchfitness.com,
Matt Dixon 52:29
you can schedule a call with me. It'll be a lot of fun. It'd be great. Well, Max, I got my last thing here. How did I do? Did I pass the test? I know you have high expectations, so did I clear the bar of meatyocity. You did this was fantastic. I would do it again. We all need a little validation every day. So hey, have a thank you so much, and thank you to the listeners. That was a lot of fun. I think we're going to do this again. It's great. Format, really different. And if you have questions, feel free to reach out, obviously, to info at purple patch. Finish to have a conversation with Max, but if you'd like us to also cover something on the show, reach out. Let us know info at purple patch fitness. Just let the team know that these are some subjects and topics that you would like to hear from us on the purple patch podcast. And as ever, I hope you stay healthy. Have a lot of fun, and it always helps if you share this episode with someone that might find it helpful and give us a positive review. We appreciate it. We'll see you next time. Take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Triathlon myths, training hours, Ironman, FTP test, athletic potential, strength and conditioning, high intensity training, recovery, nutrition, zone two training, age and performance, soul filling workouts, tri squad program, coaching team, purple patch podcast.