397 - Overcoming Injury and Turning Obstacles into Opportunities on your Performance Journey
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Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!
On this episode, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon discusses the importance of resilience and coaching in overcoming setbacks in athletic performance. He emphasizes that athletes who come back stronger often do so with the right perspective, support, and a smart plan. Dixon shares his personal journey from failing to make the Olympic team to becoming a professional triathlete and later a coach, highlighting the value of health and holistic training. He outlines three comeback scenarios: overcoming injury, failing a goal, and returning after a long break, using examples like Sarah Piampiano's recovery from a femur fracture. Dixon stresses the importance of mindset, leveraging strengths, and seeking professional guidance to navigate challenges effectively.
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Episode Timecodes:
00-:54 Episode Promo
1:34-5:30 Intro
6:05-25:49 Coming back from injury
25:50-34:41 Missing a big goal
33:45-end Falling off the wagon
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Transcription
Matt Dixon 00:00
Today's episode is all about setbacks, but here's the truth, the athletes who come back strongest really do it alone. The Comeback isn't just about grit or toughness. It's about perspective, gaining support, accountability to help you be sensible on the journey, having a smart plan when emotions are high and confidence is maybe sometimes shaky. That's where coaching and community comes in at its best. And at purple patch fitness, we've helped athletes navigate injury folks that have missed goals burnout or rebuilding after a time away in the sport. And we're pretty darn good at it. We've been doing it for more than two decades. And so if you're at a crossroads on your journey, and would like guidance on the right next step. Why don't you reach out for a complementary needs assessment? We'll send you through a consultation that can give you advice and guidance on the journey, and if we end up being the right fit for you to partner in your journey, well, that's all the more great. And so reach out info@purplepatchfitness.com We'll be delighted to set up a consultation for you now. 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.
Matt Dixon 01:16
The purpose of this podcast is to help time-starved people everywhere in a great sport into life. And welcome to the purple patch podcast. As ever, I'm your host, Matt Dixon, and today we're going to talk about comebacks. Everyone listening to the show today is going to have a different why. I wonder what yours is. Is it competition? Maybe health and longevity, perhaps maintaining a bit of sanity in the chaos of life. Maybe you're looking to proving something to yourself. All of these Whys are valid. There's not a wrong answer here, but at the core, there is something that unites all of these answers, and it's about something bigger than getting across the finish line. It's about how your commitment to sport and that journey has an impact on the rest of your life. For the better, sport is powerful, and in many ways, you could argue it's the ultimate arena, because it is full of jeopardy. It's really challenging. It promises to challenge you. In fact, I would argue that the challenge is the curriculum. It's not an interruption. It is the journey that is powerful. And along that journey, as we know, progression is never linear. There is always going to be setbacks. You're always going to venture down the cul de sac of failure, the hard days, the moments that just don't go to plan. But the good news is those moments is where the real growth lives. And that brings us to today, because every athlete on a long term journey is going to face these challenges, it's a by product of doing something that meaningful to us that facilitates growth, the setbacks, the personal comeback stories that follow. In fact, purple patch, as an organization, was born out of a personal comeback mine. Here's something that I don't always lead with, but it's really relevant today. It's kind of a comeback story in itself. Our whole organization as an athlete, I chased big goals. I was a swimmer trying to make the Olympic team. I didn't, and then I went on to become a professional triathlete, and I struggled. It didn't go the way that I wanted, and it wasn't because I was lazy or even really lacking talent.
Matt Dixon 03:44
I was just driven by a more, more more approach. I drove effort, hard work, consistently at the challenge, but I ignored many of the elements that now I understand for your long term performance and what happened to my professional triathlon career, it ended in chronic fatigue. You could label it a failure, and at some point I had to face a real question, Am I just going to turn my back on this ball, or am I going to take everything that I learned through this negative fatigue inducing experience and make something of it? And that's when I chose the latter, not continuing as a competitive athlete, but as a coach, and everything at purple patch has grown from that decision. When I started to coach, I was determined that my athletes would build their performance on a platform of health. I prioritized nutrition, select strength, sleep recovery, as much as the prerequisite grueling swim, bike and runs, I went against the norms of the sport, to much criticism. I was labeled a hack and a quit and a snake oil salesman, but my mission was to build a different way to sustain high performance in World Class endurance sports. Why do you tell your. This because that moment of having to choose how I was going to adapt, recommit, rebuild through a different lens, that's a comeback story today. What I want to do is break down three comeback scenarios to help you if you're ever faced with similar situations. The first is overcoming and bouncing back from injury, one that many, many people have gone through, if you're a committed endurance athlete.
Matt Dixon 05:27
The second is failing in a goal. It happens even to the best of us. And the third is coming back after a long break, or maybe the fact that you've fallen off the fitness, health or performance wagon. It's all in today's great episode that we label the meat and potatoes. All right, ladies and gentlemen, it is the meat and potatoes, and the first thing that we're going to talk about is coming back from injury. For me, there's only one story to kick this off, and that's a story with one of the purple patch pros, Sarah piampiano. Some of you might be familiar with Sarah. She was a fearsome racer, but she went through a real journey of progression. In fact, when I started to coach Sarah, I said, I will only take you on if you're willing to, quote, go on a journey your first two years. You're likely not going to be competing as a professional athlete. I don't think you're ready. And while many other coaches said, Hey, you should go pro straight away, I said, I want to build you up for a career of success. And to her credit, she was patient, she committed. She went on a two year journey, and when she was ready, and boy, she was ready, she turned pro. She rose through the ranks over the next couple of years, and got to that point that she was just edging towards world class performance, I felt like she was ready to win an Iron Man. Win a half Iron Man. And you know what happened? A catastrophic injury. Iron Man, Texas, three quarters of the way through the run, her leg went, it was a break of the femur, that's the upper part of the leg, that big, beefy bone. And in fact, for an endurance athlete, this can be in many times career ending, it was absolutely catastrophic. It was the worst thing that can happen. And I knew at that moment that she was facing at least 18 months before she was really going to be not just back at the races, but back thriving at the races. And after some moments of grief and naturally being incredibly upset, she took a professional approach to it, perhaps better than any athlete I've ever coached. And Bear this in mind, this is an athlete that is wholly invested in professional triathlon, swim, bike and run. She's worked incredibly hard to build up a family of sponsors to support her on the journey, and suddenly it stripped away. For the next six months, very little activity. She really can't do much at all. In fact, she's now at risk for losing all of her sponsors, because it's a tough world. And you know, with a question mark, is this athlete ever going to come back to the standard? It would have been easy for Sarah just to mentally collapse, but her superpower was the mental game, and what Sarah did was control what she could control.
Matt Dixon 08:46
She couldn't run, she couldn't bike, she certainly couldn't swim for a couple of months. That's everything stripped away. But here's what she did. She focused her energy first on providing value to her sponsors in a different way, obsessed on maintaining the relationships. How can I bring impact and how can I build value so that I don't ultimately get dropped? How can I also take this time to redesign and work on my brand and my influence so that I can raise my profile a little bit as a professional athlete, obviously, very important. And then thirdly, how can I reflect and completely evolve elements so that this type of thing doesn't happen again? It was a complete rebuild of her daily nutrition and fueling, her strength and conditioning, program, her technique in swim, bike and run, and gradually, over time, with patience, she put a team around herself to build mini victories to progress back, and after a year, was back, swimming, biking, running, training, after 18 months, ready to race and race well, and in fact, exactly 18. Months after this injury, she won an Iron Man race for the first time. It became the catalyst this catastrophic event that severely threatened her whole career in professional sport. It became the catalyst of growth in many ways, I believe it is the backbone, the reason, of why she went from good to great to then world class, and what occurred over the next three to four years was her playing in a whole new arena, multiple top 10 finishes at the Hawaii Iron Man World Championship. Multiple Iron Man wins the second fastest us female ever. And it would have been so easy, just to be frustrated, just turn you back, lose your sponsors, give up on the sport, but it became a lever point when you're injured and you're committed to sport, really committed. It is incredibly tough. It's one of the hardest things that you're going to navigate as an athlete, whether you're a Sarah pian piano competing at professional sport, or whether it's an important hobby to you, where you're just dedicated to your craft. What happens to most athletes? Well, the first is a loss of trust in your own body, the thing that's already always got you there suddenly isn't there, and that's incredibly destabilizing. You feel behind you're chasing. You've set goals, they're important, the race you're building to, that fitness that you've worked so hard to earn, it feels like it's evaporating in front of your eyes, and you're powerless to do anything about it, something that you love that stabilizes, that creates a framework for the rest of your life is taken away from you. Again, this loss is real. We shouldn't minimize it.
Matt Dixon 11:49
And the strangest part is that injuries can also sometimes, for many athletes, almost make you feel crazy, because overall, you feel healthy, you feel good. But there's this one thing, this stubborn little thing that's stopping you from doing what you want to do, and that disconnect between feeling well and not being able to train well. Frankly, it's maddening. And so before we get to the practical stuff, I do want to ask a question. Is the injury that you have trying to tell you something, I think it's worth noting, that's the fact that most injuries, unless it's an impact injury, but the vast majority, and let's put it under overuse injuries, most injuries don't occur out of nowhere. They're usually a result of something that's already out of balance. This could be too much training load, not enough recovery integrated into your training. Maybe you've ramped up training load too quickly. That acceleration from zero to hero is a big catalyst for injury strength work that got skipped. All of these warning signs that so often are ignored. You see, the way that I view injury is the body's honest feedback mechanism. And athletes that skip reflection upon injury just focus on I need to get back to my own ways. They tend to get injured again. They fall into the injury cycle. Remember the Sarah pimpiano story, catastrophic injury, but it happened for a reason. It was an overuse injury. It was terribly unfortunate, but Sarah needed to look back and say, What am I doing with my recovery? What am I doing with my fueling? What am I doing with my nutrition? Is my strength appropriate? Is there something technically that I need to evolve? And these are the components that you look at. And so whenever we do get injured, the first thing I'll say is that it's an opportunity to evolve your overall practice, to genuinely pause and look at yourself and say, Am I doing everything that I can do to fuel, pardon the pun, a healthy, performance driven body, this is your chance to fix the root cause, not just the symptom, and I think that's important. So what can we do around an injury? Come back? The first is mindset. I think this is the key foundation everything else builds from here, the combat post injury, whether it's a little niggle, whether it's something a little more catastrophic, hopefully not as catastrophic as Sarah's broken femur, but it's never a sprint. It is the beginning of your new chapter. And so I would reframe your rehab process with the idea that every choice to push or hold back is either investing in your next chapter or borrowing against it. And a lot of people naturally think I'm injured. Oh, my Goodness me. Everything I've worked for is. Going to evaporate. But here's a key thing to understand, is that when we get injured, fitness doesn't evaporate. It doesn't just dissipate.
Matt Dixon 15:09
There are some components that we lose. The first type of fitness that you lose is just neurological, the brain firing in great synchronicity with the muscles, and that only takes a few days to regain. The second is the higher intensity, our vo two Max, and that's going to drop, but our foundational endurance and resilience, we've got a long lead time on this. And so as you think about injuries, I always try to stabilize athletes mindset of Don't worry. You're not going to lose everything that you've put in. The tide might go out a little bit, but the tide doesn't take that long to come back. So unless it's an injury that takes you completely out of commission from doing anything for multiple weeks at a time, you have an opportunity, and we don't need to panic. And so with that, the worst thing you can do in an injury is be stubborn about pain. A lot of people have a hard time conceptually conceptualizing this as, let's talk about pain as it relates to injury. A little bit. I have a nice rule of thumb, a coaching rule of thumb, and all of this is driven by peer reviewed research, as well as a lifetime being surrounded with medical experts, and it's a pretty good Gage for most injuries. And that's that as a rule of thumb. Yeah, just your rule of thumb. Anything that's less than a four out of 10 paint so you're aware of it, but it's not debilitating unless it's sharp, okay, anything less than a four out of 10, you're probably just getting a signal, but you're okay to carry on. Okay, so that's a good if it's just two out of 10, three out of 10, you can probably carry on with the modality that you're doing on that day, and that's a nice lens. Now, it doesn't mean you ignore it, if we feeling signaling, because pain is just a signal, but four out of 10, you're probably not doing damage. Where we do need to stop and prevent ourselves from doing that, modality is if the pain sensation creeps over the session, 3456, out of 10, time to pause, or if it's just above a four out of 10, pushing through is not toughness. It is a fast track to a longer set Matt's setback. So that's the difference between discomfort of hard training and a warning signal that something's wrong. Start to learn how to tell them apart. And I always say under the banner of this, it's much better to be a little more conservative than is aggressive. Really high value. The athlete that rushes back and re ings, that's the athlete that falls into injury cycles, the athlete that respects the process builds mini victories and stays sensible through to the time where it completely evaporates.
Matt Dixon 18:04
That's where they never have to think about it again. Being conservative through niggles and pains is not slow. It's strategic and it's valuable. Okay, let's talk about navigating injury as it relates to goals, because I always get a question around this, and it's a really tough one. If you've got an A race and you're injured going into it, you don't immediately pull the white flag and say, I'm out. If you're six, seven weeks out. There are many ways to get ready for races, even if one of the modalities that you're following is compromise going in, and yet with that, if you look and hopefully, this is where your coach, this is where it could be valuable to help you come out of the weeds, because emotions can really cloud judgment, particularly around injuries. But if an a race needs to move, move it. Don't chase a timeline that your body isn't ready for. And this is really challenging. It isn't art, but adapting the goal isn't giving up on it. It's giving it a real chance. And I see so many decisions where athletes drive and chase readiness, and don't allow the body to lead rather than the mind to lead, and this becomes catastrophic. And so with goal setting, as I know you're going to ask me, the question, first thing is, if you're injured, 4567, weeks out, it doesn't mean you're done, because sometimes you can overcome it quickly. With that being said, we have to do everything, all of the inputs that we can to control and manage the injury, but we have to enable the body to make the decision on whether we're truly ready to race, and if you have to shift the goal. Goal. Have the courage to shift a goal in the long term. Lens really valuable. So what else can I tell you about navigating an injury? Here's the first thing, and I think this is perhaps the most important thing I'm going to say about this. Lean into what you can do and doubled down on it. You've heard me talk on this show before about the value of multi sport training for various disciplines. In fact, we leverage it to help runners get ready for marathons and half marathons. The beauty of multi discipline is that it doesn't just force the brain to take on different challenges. Really good for executive function, really good for skill development, but it becomes a really valuable tool in injury. Think about a triathlete. You got a little niggle, some pain, you can't run great. Get on the bike. Hang on. You can't bike, either bike or run. Here it comes. Let's get aquatic. We're swimming. You can't do all three. Walk, strength train, whatever it is, lean into the pillars that you've neglected. Make sure that you're driving strength, nutrition, sleep, recovery, but always look at the whole pot of everything. And if one thing is taken out, it doesn't mean that regression is the next obvious choice you can progress while removing a modality. And so in other words, the injury window is not a waiting room. It's an opportunity to build foundations in other areas that ultimately can help you become more complete when you return if we remove injury from the equation.
Matt Dixon 21:42
Just to give you some context, here's a simple little outline of something we do all the time with our professional athletes. If we have a professional athlete that is a weak swimmer over the winter, months, four, multiple months, 234, months in a row, we might place a heavy emphasis on swimming. They're not injured at all, but we know that we need to shore up that weakness, because in professional sport, you can't be a weak swimmer. And so 50% of their training hours would sometimes be swimming, and that's a lot of swimming when you're going out and riding your bike outside. And you know what happened? They improved their swimming. But you know, what else happened that's really relevant every single time after that project, they became a better triathlete that season. Following it never impacted their bike and run, run performance beyond it being positive, and we can draw from that experience in World Class sport and apply it to injury. If you're out and running, it doesn't mean you're going to become a worse runner. Lean into swimming, leaning to biking. It can be a catalyst, and sometimes it's just the muscular recovery that you need. The last thing I'll say is stay connected. The worst thing in injury that you can do is isolate now we can't talk about this without mentioning coaching. It's really valuable. I can't tell you the instinct of athletes that say I'm injured. Oh, I don't need coaching anymore, because I don't need a special plan. Injuries have a funny way of making athletes go quiet, they pull back from their training partners, their coaches, from the community, that makes the injury feel bigger than it is. And in fact, it's the reverse that you should be doing. This is where leaning into coaching support is critical. It's one of the things that makes our tri squad program so unique, because when we have our athletes that do get injured, and we don't like them to get injured, and we have a really low instant rates, but it does occur, and when we see athletes that leverage coaching calls during those challenging times, they not only get back faster, but they emerge with confidence and clarity and get better results. And so drive back in and if the worst happens and you get injured, be pragmatic. Be conservative, leverage what's around you. Realize that you're not going to lose fitness. But most importantly, lean into team, your training partners, your coach. And I tell you what, I'm just going to make the statement, it's really, really tough to navigate an injury in a vacuum. This is where coaching, real human coaching, helps, because a coach's role is to help you get the most out of yourselves, and the way that you do that is through the great times, but also through the challenging times. That's injury. Let's have a quick break, folks, just a quick pause in today's episode, because the conversation around setbacks and comebacks is exactly why coaching matters so much when athletes hit adversity or injury or Inca. Consistency or loss of motivation or even a disappointing race, the biggest mistake is often just trying to solve it alone. But at purple patch, fitness coaching is about helping you adapt, rebuild confidence and create a sustainable path forward where you get predictable results on repeat.
Matt Dixon 25:17
Equally important as well, it's about being connected to a team and community that have got your back when things are tough. And so if you're looking for support, clarity, or simply want to explore what the right next chapter might look like for you, schedule a complimentary consultation with our team. It's pressure free athlete first, and built entirely around you succeeding. Long term info, all right, enjoy the rest of the show. All right. Number two, sucky race. Big goal didn't happen. Catastrophe. I'll tell you what has happened to me. Remember, I told you I tried to make the Olympic team. It didn't happen. And so this could look like a lot of things as we're talking about this. Maybe you don't hit your PR that you want to hit on a race. Maybe you blow up in the run of an Iron Man. Maybe you miss your marathon goal by just that little painful margin, or your DNF in a big Ultra It happens to all of us, whatever the specific scenario, the emotional experience is remarkably similar, but also so is the path forward. Whenever there was a pro that I coached, or any champion in sport, they have failed, and I think it's worth remembering this, professional athletes have failed many more times than us mortals. They race a lot, they train a lot, but those setbacks often became the most important catalysts I'll never forget Jesse Thomas, 70.3 World Championships. I genuinely felt like this was the time that he was going to build into at least a podium finish. In fact, I thought he could win. It was a catastrophe, but that experience was a catalyst for him to then, just a couple of weeks later, decide to take on an Iron Man. He took on the most challenging Iron Man in the sport, Iron Man Wales, and he won the race. Three months later, he went and raced Iron Man Lanzarote. What happened there? He beat Jan Frodeno. He won the race. It was the catalyst great victories, because he learned something about the journey, and it fueled him overcoming setbacks and goals. This is a part of sport. It's not going to be just progression and progression, improvement, improvement. It's not inputs and outputs, effort rewarded by Victory every time. This is the lens that we do on this section. A bad race is not a dead end. It's a data point. It's what you do with the data point. That's everything. And so let's acknowledge what actually happens after a race like this. Let's face facts. It sucks. It does. You've invested months into this, the training, the sacrifice, the partners and family, perhaps that have supported you, all the anticipation, then it doesn't go to plan, or maybe it goes wrong. Sometimes it's out of your control, sometimes it's in your control. But everything you feel in that moment and all of those emotions, that's okay, that's important. This is not a call for you to just say, doesn't matter.
Matt Dixon 28:23
Forget about it. Stuff it inside. That would be so very British of you. Ah, stiff upper lip. No emotions needed. It shouldn't all of that disappointment, that frustration, that anger, sometimes the self doubt, the questioning of why you even do this, it's a natural response. It's a genuine loss. And I would ask you, ride the emotional wave. Feel it. Feel it. And this can last 2448 72 hours a week. It's devastating, and it's important that we feel those emotions. And so the first thing I would say about a bad event like this is feel the wave of emotion. The second is within 24 hours, though, quickly do a hot debrief. If you don't have a coaching partner, you're doing it solo, the ideal person or the the ideal scenario is you do have a coach. This is the raw, unfiltered debrief. It's important that you very quickly just outline while it's fresh, remember you're not solving anything here. Okay, this isn't this hot debrief, as we call it. This is an opportunity to solve anything. We're not looking for victims. We're not looking for anyone to blame. It is just a very informal conversation and process. It could be with your training partner, a trusted person in your life, ideally, a coach, if not, write it down for yourself, but don't only focus on what went wrong. That's the trap also. Highlight in this, and I'll say it in the cleanest British way I can within this bucket of shit. What actually did go? Well, write it down, because it's never all bad. There were moments of execution, decisions that you did make, well, things that you training delivered on. Name them, and then, yeah, what didn't go to plan? And we're not looking to solve anything. Just get it out. Because when you get the good and the bad in there, we're going to be revisiting then write that emotion. This one happens later. Once you've settled down, you've gone through and you have a little bit more clarity. 2448 72 hours, little time has passed. You get a little distance. We know that distance helps. Now you're looking to create a more clear picture with less emotion. Zoom out from the race itself. Look at the process as a whole. What did your training actually look like for the 10, 1216, weeks going on? Go back relative to your situation. Were there gaps? Were there warning signs? Maybe you glossed over them. Maybe you were leaning into hope rather than real strategy. Did you do well on your fueling? Did you recover enough? Were you burning the candle at both ends? In other words, you do the same again, but with more depth. What did you do really well in the lead up and in execution, relive the moments, also objectively, not to fire blame across but what did you or the program not do as well? Where did we fail to execute? This is where the real lessons live, and these lessons are what make the next attempt very different. This is what you need to document the wins and the areas objectively that you can improve on. Don't call them failures, just things that didn't go well or you failed to execute to your best of ability. And with that information, you can now plan forward and evolve. It's all a part of the journey. And if you need to take a break, that's great, but then step back into it, and as you go into training, if you go back and just do it exactly the same way, well you're gonna probably get a similar result. The only debrief that has value is one that changes something, and I am not suggesting that you automatically change your training partner, change your coach. It's critical that we look inside and say, what do we need to evolve? Where's my ownership? Where can I improve? Don't just have an emotional reaction. I need to throw more work at it. But actually, what are the areas? And look at your schedule and say, what are the one, two or three evolutions that I'm going to make in my program? Now this is a great point that maybe you need to look for outside help.
Matt Dixon 32:54
Is it that you do need to finally lead into coaching? Do you perhaps need some nutritional support? Do you even need a brain mechanic, a sports psychologist? If your race has gaps, your performance has gaps, and you've got a clear, objective understanding of where you went wrong last time, we can fill those gaps. Then it's getting back to work on the process. And the process is where all the lessons apply, the growth applies, I promise you, I have never met an athlete that has become a champion that hasn't gone through multiple opportunities of growth because of catastrophic races. All right, the last one to tuck into the long break and falling off the wagon. All right, this might not apply to you right now, but it is something that we see from our coach, particularly who's leading the strategy course. And so it's worth mentioning here. This is if along the way, your structure just fell off the wagon, maybe you've had a really busy week period at work, and it just hasn't ended, and suddenly you think, Well, I haven't been looking after my health. I'm not performance driven, or a family commitment took over, or you just turn your back on it. Maybe add a drop of motivation and commitment, and it's just turned into a long stretch of falling out of love. That's normal, that happens to the best of us. But before anything practical, let's make sure that we define how do you come back? Because most of us as human beings remember the vision of who we are when we are firing in all cylinders, and when you decide I'm going to come back to that, it feels a long way off, and we want to get back there as quickly as we can, because we know that's what we're chasing. But this the biggest mistake is to accelerate that. We talked about injuries earlier, and I said the ramp up in load is one of the biggest catalysts for injury. We need to avoid that at all costs, and so. So the first thing I would say, if you're coming back, is own your start line, the real start, like start line, not where you wish you were, start where you're at now, and own it. And from there, this is what's going to be successful for you, engineer progression, design wins. You see, as human beings, we are hardwired to view things in the negative. Okay, it's a survival imprint, and this is peer reviewed. So how do we start to build a little bit of confidence in ourselves? A little bit of enjoyment, a little bit of motivation and commitment. It's when we feel progression. Seriously, commitment, enjoyment of the process, confidence, motivation, it all evolves when we feel progression. As a coach, a key aspect when we talk about the art of coaching, and when I talk to leadership teams or other triathlon coaches, I say a big part of our role is to actually design the wins. Engineer progression. I like to build sessions where athletes are going to win the workouts, not where they fail every time, because failure creates a crisis of confidence. And so I engineer how we structure the sessions, how we structure the weeks, how we build the workouts, so that an athlete from their starting point can feel like, Oh, I've made a little progress. Because when that happens, it's a positive, ah, that's good progressing, and it becomes a flywheel.
Matt Dixon 36:42
And when you start to build mini victories on top of each other, it starts to cycle. And we start to get that sense of movement, that sense of improvement, and we're going on the journey. And so shrink your big goal, you need a framework to do it. But it's critical, critical. The instinct is always when people come back, sign up for something huge. It must be big and valuable, but it's not a must. If you need a big goal, that's great, but give yourself time to genuinely start from your start, line routine, before performance outcomes. When you have a framework that you can stick to, and it fits into life, and you can keep it simple, repeatable and consistent, you're going to create the flywheel of progression, and it's going to build your confidence. It's going to build your commitment, and before you know it, you're going to be successful. And so if you're coming back, the goal of the first new week for a few weeks isn't just fitness. It's about building momentum. Small wins that stack on top of each other. I don't care if you're getting stronger, fitter, more powerful. I'm looking for you to build routine. And once it is routine, you're going to turn around and
Matt Dixon 38:00
say,
Matt Dixon 38:00
Oh, I actually feel better. Now. We want to make it a stretch. And so this is stuff that isn't so hard. It breaks you. It's just enough challenge that it's going to keep you engaged, but also enable you to be successful. And this is valuable. The other thing, the final thing that I will say around coming back is, if you're coming back after a long break, tissue resilience will have eroded, and so don't just train the heart and lungs. Strength is central for a comeback, not just in sport, but in future performance across life. You want to become durable, so leverage the opportunity now across any story, any story of overcoming challenge and setbacks, there's a common theme. It's coaching. It's not going alone. I can't underscore this enough if you're coming back from injury, from a setback, with a butt race, a little bit bummed, or, of course, coming back from the wilderness. Coaching is key. Don't go alone. The role of a coach is to help you get the most out of yourselves. And when challenges arise, that means course correcting, managing yourself, and it's incredibly tough to do in a vacuum. I've talked about it before, but setbacks are a natural part of the journey, and anyone chasing big goals and looking into tapping their human potential, well, you're going to need a partner in that. And so if we look at the best of the best in any field, they're able to turn obstacles into opportunities. They're also always, always, always, not just gritty and tough and committed, but coachable, they follow a plan, and they don't go it alone. And so if you're a crossroads in your journey, you're not sure where to go and how to approach your next chapter, we're here to help. One final thought before we wrap up. Every athlete loves the breakthroughs the PR. The finish lines, the big wins, terrific stuff. But the reality is that real transformation occurs through the setbacks that we've talked about today, the injury, the missed goal, the season, where maybe life gets messy and momentum disappears. These moments can either pull you away from sport or become the catalyst for your next level of growth, the ones that are most successful, there is a repeatable pattern, and that's the ones that stay connected, that lean into support. They rebuild with patience and purpose, and that's why coaching and community are such a central part of what we do at purple patch fitness. If you're navigating a challenge right now, or just simply interesting, what could be the next chapter for you? We'd love to help reach out for a complementary needs assessment and a consultation with one of our coaches. It's not about the hard sell, it's no pressure, just a smart conversation to help you move ahead with confidence, structure and support. Info, purplepatchfitness.com, and as ever, if you enjoyed today's show, feel free to share it with someone that might benefit. And of course, a positive review is always very well. Thanked. All right, have a super week. We'll see you next time. 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
comeback, injury, setbacks, coaching, community, athletic potential, mindset, progression, resilience, nutrition, strength training, goal setting, emotional response, support, comeback scenarios