405 - Beyond the PRs and Podiums: Lessons in High Performance Under a Busy Life
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Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!
On this episode, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon and Coach Max discuss the lessons from the Oregon 70.3 race, where 75 Purple Patch athletes participated. They highlight the importance of coachability, adaptability, and community support. Notable performances include Adam's 75-minute PR despite personal challenges, Stephanie Go's second-place age group finish, and Suki's resilience after a technical issue. They emphasize the value of specific, thoughtful training and the mental game, such as viewing pressure as a privilege. The conversation also touches on the impact of night shifts on performance and the importance of integrating sport into busy lives.
If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out at info@purplepatchfitness.com.
Episode Timecodes:
00-1:29 Episode Promo
2:04-end Meat & Potatoes
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Transcription
Matt Dixon 00:00
Hey folks, Matt Dixon here. Just before we get going with the show, it is like the world's best candy store of performance today. There are so many stories. We're going to unpack lessons of a recent race that I was at, Oregon 70.3 in Salem, Oregon. We had 75 Purple Patch athletes racing across every level, from first timer to comeback stories to unlocking performance as a mature athlete to very top podium races, you're going to hear these stories, and as you're going to enjoy, every single one of them is packed with a lesson for you to take away. Now I know what's going to happen. You're going to be more inspired for your own journey, but you might also have questions. So here's what we're going to do with this show. I'm joined today by Coach Max. Max has offered to have a performance discussion with anyone listening. If you'd like to unpack your own journey, maybe get some advice around how you can unlock your best performance in the back part of the year. Simply email in info at purplepatchfitness. com. Just say I'd like to have a chat with Max. However, which way you'd like to say it, he's going to set up a strategy call with you. And look, if Purple Patch ends up being a great fit for you, super will get you aligned on the right program. But more importantly, we want to make sure that this episode can fuel not just inspiration but action for you. We want you to be successful, and so it's absolutely complimentary. Reach out to us, info@purplepatchfitness.com. And without further ado, enjoy the show. It's a special one today. 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. And welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast. As ever, your host Matt Dixon, and today, well, we're going to do something completely different, something we've never done before. And I'm going to hand it off to my co-host for today, as ever, the wonderful Mats Geren. Welcome, Max.
Max Gering 02:19
Thank you, Matt. It's good to be back on the pod.
Matt Dixon 02:21
I I get to I love these episodes. I get to sit back and relax a little bit and just really pontificate. You're going to guide me through the day, but why don't you why don't you tell the listeners what we're going to be doing today?
Max Gering 02:33
Yeah. So things have been very busy at Purple Patch. I haven't been on the podcast for a while, and as I say, better late than never. So at this point, it was already two weeks ago that we had our team race up at Oregon 70.3, and we have not yet had a chance to recap here on the podcast all of the amazing performances that you got to see because you were up there for the weekend across the team, across all levels of athletes and different types of stories. So I really wanted to dig into that today, and the the catalyst for it was we were in a team meeting discussing the results from the podcast, and it was really a reminder for me as a coach about why we do what we do. And I think what really struck a chord is the team of coaches really take their job to heart. They really understand the responsibility that they have as coaches to guide athletes on their personal journey. You know, people have our athletes are very busy, and in general, people have very limited ancillary time outside of work and family. And so, when people really entrust in us, their the limited free time they have dedicated to this hobby that's important to them, when we were going through the results as a coaching team and discussing them, you could really see the excitement across the coaching team, and it was a reminder of how much everybody cares. And I thought it'd be really cool to share some of the inspiring stories that we have talked about within Purple Patch, and so that's what we want to do today. And obviously, with the lens of drawing lessons from these stories, not just focusing on the you know the podium or how fast an athlete went, but draw some lessons so that the listeners can see themselves in these stories and use it as inspiration and education to keep going on their journey
Matt Dixon 04:14
and hopefully action and and for you guys listening that the reason that we've chosen Oregon is a couple of times a year, we designate races as team races. So we had 75 athletes racing at the race, which is pretty incredible and a great time, obviously, for everybody to get together. And I think just to reinforce your point in that conversation that we had, the lessons that are actionable-they were really varied. This this is not a puff our feathers and say, hey, this is how many PRs we had and world championship qualifiers and and podiums, etc. That that those were a plenty. That's not really what it's about. Is it's the lessons behind those stories that are really varied, and and some really fun things. So we're going to talk about coach. We're going to talk about cracking the code. We're going to talk about recovery. We're talking about performance under pressure, and even navigating adversity. Yes, Suki, I'm talking about you. So I guess I'm going to take a step back, and we'll do the meat of potatoes right into it. And I'll let you lead because I know that you've got a structure and a flow, and a few people that you think we should highlight. So I'll let you. I'll let you guide me on this one.
Max Gering 05:23
All right. So let's let's get into it. I think before we do, you know, we go through the list of athletes and different results. Want to talk and hear your thoughts a little bit about higher level. How was the weekend? You know, lessons that you learned or things that you were reminded of when it came to the sport and the power of team and coaching.
Matt Dixon 05:42
Yeah, I think it's a nice, and I suppose I mentioned it's you know it's one of our team races, so we encourage athletes to sign up. We had athletes all over the country, and in fact, the world that that chose to venture to Salem, Oregon, and and I think the genesis for for all of us, many of our coaches grew up in in team sports or individual sports that somewhat are team, and and I'll give an example for that. I grew up a swimmer. That is by definition a an individual sport. At the same time, you're always training as a part of a team, so you're going on a journey with a group of people, particularly in high level club swimming, and then when you get to obviously college, it's very much team focused. And if we go all the way back to the Purple Patch Pros, we took a team approach to performance to get outsized performance. And so while triathlon is an individual sport, if we're seeking even the best results for ourselves, it's much more likely that people are going to thrive when they're not doing it in a vacuum alone, and outsized performance often emerges when you put a team around you, both a team of experts to support you on your journey, whether it's your physical therapist, your nutritionist, your coach, etc. But also when you have a team and community, and Oregon really represented a great opportunity where our athletes are all over the world. They're training in in literally across every time zone that we have. We have I can't remember the exact number, but something like 85 countries represented under the Purple Patch umbrella, and it's absolutely amazing for people to choose to come and do a race, and for myself as a coach, be able to put faces to names and actually see them, and and meet up before the race on course. You could, I could feel the camaraderie and and and the all of the silly language that we have, the secret, and I'm probably guilty for most of it. Impress me, don't depress me. And talking about Panos's ponytail that exists in there, and people meeting Panos for the first time-all of these things where there was camaraderie and support on course, but also having people that did these extraordinary things because they weren't there alone; they were there with others and human beings.
Matt Dixon 08:09
Whenever we are a part of something, whenever we feel like there's a little bit of a team element, we tend to up level, and it's something that's innate in us, and ultimately it makes it more fun, and and and there was this really overwhelming sense over the course of the whole half of the half of the weekend of this is really fun, this is really meaningful. I'm part of this team, and actually I'm more confident going in. It was very calm the day before the race, and so for many athletes it was a very very important day for them, but there was a real calmness of yeah, I'm going to go and give this a crack. I'm going to see what happened, and then at the book end, it happened to be on the day of the World Cup final. Now I was in misery because England weren't in the cup final. They should have been. They let it go, but that's a story for another day. But it still became this great bookend to the day, where win, lose, or draw, everybody got together. We rented out a bar in Salem, wonderful place that looked after us, E. Wallace, and and we got to bookend it before with just this great celebration. So the meaning of the weekend, there was a through line right from putting the feet on the tarmac in in Salem all the way to when we exited, and and it left I think everybody departing that weekend with meaning behind their performance and why they are doing what they are doing, and ultimately we always say this short this sport should be in addition to make your big life bigger. It was the clearest and biggest representation of that that I could possibly imagine. So that was the weekend for me. That's that's it's almost hey podcast done. That was why it was so special.
Max Gering 09:56
I love that, and I think something that I remember you saying in the. Meeting that really stood out to to piggyback on that is the lack of ego that you saw within the community and and you mentioned camaraderie on the course and one of our athletes who we'll highlight later in the show Stephanie Go, who's been on the podcast who I'm deeming the Pearl Patch Tri Squad goat and I will be I'll I'll die on that hill arguing with other coaches, but she, you know, she's coming second in her age group. She's racing very fast. She is pushing her limits, yet she makes an effort to cheer for everyone in the Pearl Patch kit that she sees out on the course. So as locked in as she is, she's also so focused on uplifting the community, and she's very engaged in our online forum in the Pearl Patch Hub, being a really you know source of inspiration and positivity, and I think that really highlights that whether you're going second in your age group and qualifying for worlds, or you're doing your first time, 70.3. There was this you know meeting of the minds, and people got to share experiences before the race and give each other advice. And I know from different athletes I've spoken to, you know, those little pieces of advice they got from the more experienced athlete end up really being helpful, and so I think that it's rare that you don't have ego in a group like this of such ambitious athletes.
Matt Dixon 11:14
Yeah, like like you strip it all away, and ultimately, what's the common thread? It's the desire to improve. That that's ultimately the spirit Stephanie is. I mean, you know, it's hard to argue against her. She's a very busy, busy emergency room doctor. She's a mum of multiple wittersatters, and she's got about 678, hours of training to do each week. And she's consistently on the podium and going to world championships. Incredible athlete, but more than that, she's selfless, and that's great. I'll tell you all the vignette. You know, we had our pre-race meetup, and you know, 75 odd. Every single athlete spoke. By the way, everyone introduced themselves, where they're from, etc. The athletes that had done the race before, we had multiple first-timers. We had multiple first-timers at this race. Everyone that'd done the race before provided advice. Their one piece of perspective. So it wasn't just me pontificating. That was great, but I got to go around and introduce and say, "Hey, Stephanie, go. You might have heard her on the podcast. Oh yeah, I remember that. Chris Harris, you might have heard him on the podcast. A great episode. David Fassar, you might have heard him on the podcast, and go around, and so many of the people, the athletes that have been on this show, happen to be live in Salem, and that was really additive for people because then they got to talk afterwards and say, "I listened to you. I can't believe your story. That was really helpful, and it creates that bonding. So it was, it was, it was a great opportunity, and exactly what you talk about with community and the power.
Max Gering 12:43
That's that's it. People that have the desire to get better. I'm gonna give one shout out to an athlete of mine who I know is gonna be listening. She's in. I think this really drives it home. She's in her 70s and she's still working to qualify for Boston. And every time we talk, she wants to know why we're doing what we're doing. She wants to know what resources I've been, you know reading up on and what new knowledge I have to share with her so she can learn keep getting better as a runner, and she's in her 70s. And then we also have athletes that are joining us in their 20s, right out of college, that want to qualify for worlds or do their first Ironman. So we have you know such a broad spectrum of athletes athletes at Purple Patch in all stages of life, and they are really unified by just this desire to tap into their potential. Yeah, was great. Wanted to share that. All right. Before we keep going on this too much, I wanted you to talk about. I know that you also did some work with the Iron Man XC program when you were there, and I think it's really, really timely because it's stuff that we talk a lot about with Imperple Patch and with our athletes. So I thought it'd be valuable for you to touch a little bit on what you did with them?
Matt Dixon 13:41
Yeah, that's one of their key races as well. So the the XC program within Iron Man is it's called the Exclusive Challenge. It used to be called the Executive Challenge. It's it's effectively a little bit of a white glove service, but but really what it's designed for is the people that have very very demanding jobs, in which time is their biggest limiter, and we have a long-standing relationship in helping and supporting many of their athletes. So there's a through-throw, and it's really a wonderful program. Actually, you talk about ego. There's very little ego in the program and the participants, but I was there basically to support them along their journey. We we happen to coincide with me being at Salem, and so I said, "Hey, I'm happy to help out and and talk to the athletes. So we beyond taking them on some pre race runs, looking at the swim and all of the natural stuff like that, helping them make sure that they were set up in transition. We had some educational sessions first on race readiness, so helping them think about the course and how best to distribute whatever the fitness they had, and you know, 80% of these people were not Purple Patch coached athletes, and so helping them with my perspective on race readiness, as well as some individual support, I walked them to the swim. There's about a one mile swim. Very early on the race day morning, talking about mindset, talking about racecraft, helping people individually. But I think the the most important role that I had is these people were typically in the C suite, have very demanding roles, and and I wanted to help them realize that by them taking on this challenge of training for a half Ironman, many of them train for Ironmans as well. It's really, really good for their health, but it has a bigger role because we find ourselves right now with these people already under massive pressure and demands, logistically, tangibly, as well as of course external pressures in their roles at work. We're navigating this huge change of AI, where it's happened very, very fast, and it's seismic, and it's also a little bit like the Wild West. You know, we we know the world is changing, similar to the Industrial Revolution, but no one can really predict what it's going to look like in a year, in two years, let alone six months. And so, in order to thrive in an environment of change, we need a couple of things as human beings, and and these people are feeling the pressures of this just as much, if not more, than anyone else, because they're responsible for how we actually meet in this time as an organization, and and we need as human beings a couple of things.
Matt Dixon 16:24
Firstly, you can't navigate change and enormous pressure on a bedrock of exhaustion. So helping them tie the dots of your training for this, not just to get ready for your race, but to give you the physical capacity and the resilience to actually show up really well in this enormous high-pressure environment, the second part of it is the mental game. And actually, as you go along this journey of Iron Man training, and you're going through all of the setbacks, all of the changes that you need, the focus, the prioritization-these are all skills and traits that are necessary to perform under pressure in any arena, and we are under this incredibly high pressure right now. So the journey of Iron Man directly correlates to you being a better leader, to you showing up really well physically and having the mental toolkit to go through. And it's more than that; it's neuroscience. It actually molds the ability of the brain to stay focused and on task, and so this was a really, I would say, powerful salon in a way that we did with the executives, an opportunity for them to join the dots of this journey of sport has a bigger role than just I finished, I qualified, I did a PR. It's actually fueling readiness across life, and of course that is really accessible. The reason that I want to talk about on this show is you don't need to be an executive to actually borrow from this. Physical challenges help us perform better in life. Period. They are visceral in their learning.
Matt Dixon 18:02
They help us from a physical standpoint show up better. They also mold the brain to perform under pressure, and that is a superpower. And so, we talked about this with the XC group. We then also said the reason that I want to talk about this is for you as individuals, but more than that, you want to go home and think about this and how can you equip your teams not to convert them to do an Ironman racing, but to apply some of these principles to become challenge driven in life, so that they can become better in their roles. How do you create high performance cultures? It's not an accident. So we did a lot of work on that. It was really empowering. It was really, I think, intriguing for many of the listeners. And hopefully now they can go and take some of those principles and apply it to themselves, but also to their team. So that was that was the biggest sort of slice of cake work that we did with the the executive challenge this weekend.
Max Gering 19:01
That's fantastic. I know we don't want to turn the whole episode into this, but I think it's worth, you know, you know, mentioning. You talked about you can't thrive under pressure on a bedrock of fatigue, and we our our listeners are training for various challenges. What are some of the mistakes that you see teams, people in their teams, make when it comes to daily habits and practices that, without realizing, are putting them in a position where they are operating in a state of fatigue and not able to show up the best versions of themselves, both in training, but then again for people that are not athletes, just in their daily life.
Matt Dixon 19:37
So I think that I think that the the biggest thing, if if we shine the light more on the physical rather than the mental game, I think that the the the biggest pervasive performance killer is falling into the trap of thinking pure toughness and willpower is the. Recipe to help you perform over the long term, and that's one of the like. And I don't want to talk about David Goggins too much, but he he brings a lot of good. At the same time, there's a little bit of a balance of challenge of rah rah rah tougher, harder harder harder. That's actually the undoing of many people that are motivated because they think that you can throw more and more hard work at a problem and it's going to yield results. I'm a great example of that failing as a professional athlete. I was very tough and threw hard work at it. I ended up in chronic fatigue. At a lower level, there's this low simmering burn that's occurring because people think both in terms of their sitting at the work at the desk working hard, and then also just layering on more and more training. Think it's going to create a catalyst. The real recipe is saying, "Hang on, I need to embrace downtime and recovery in a really tangible way, and I need to prioritize sleep, and I need to think about the stuff that's going to be a eustress, proper eating, proper hydration, as valuable as the prerequisite. Yeah, it's tough, and I've got to show up every single day. And so many people think about forget about taking little breaks, ingesting in a pragmatic way opportunities to recuperate, and over time, there's just this slimmering cliff erosion of energy that before they know it, they're walking around in a fog of fatigue. High performance is no accident. World class athletes, the best, the champions, have a couple of things. Number one, they're really coachable, and we might talk about that a little bit today. Number two, they're masters of recovery and self-management. They're all freaking tough. Okay, they all work hard. That's easy, but they're masters of self-management, and that is no accident. And so, if you want to thrive in any arena, you better become a master of recovery and self-management, and you better surround yourself with people that can support you on the journey and guide you because toughness ain't going to get you there. You got to be tough anyway. You got to balance that with some sense.
Max Gering 22:11
I love that, and I think it's a really good segue to talking about our athletes because we're going to go through a whole list of athletes right now that had exceptional results. And it's important for listeners to note: none of these are professional athletes. These are everyday people, busy, ambitious people that are doing this sport of triathlon as a hobby on the side, in addition to their demanding careers and robust family life. Yeah, and within that, within years, we're going to have athletes that have overcome certain challenges in their personal life. People that have overcome internal struggles, coming back from injury, whatever it is, all of these athletes have been able to go on the journey and find success in a sustainable way. None of these stories actually are one and done successes. What's really interesting about the athletes that we're going to talk about is this is not most of them. It's not the first time they've raced. It's not their first season with Purple Patch, and they've achieved an unlocked sustainable high performance, which is really the gold standard of what's what's really hard to accomplish. So that's what we're gonna dive into now.
Matt Dixon 23:15
That fantastic, yeah. I'm looking forward to this. We'll yeah. How many we get into? But everyone has a little, a little nugget of of inspiration and education in there for people to mention on.
Max Gering 23:26
So the first one had quite a large PR, and you got the chance to spend some time with him on on the weekend, which was really fantastic. And he's a tri squad athlete of ours named Adam. And I'll let you take it away because you have really the context on the story. But he had a 75 minute PR at Oregon,
Matt Dixon 23:44
which is amazing. And and with Adam, if there was a chair shared by me, I was I was sitting watching Spain dismantle Argentina, which was great. And in the bar afterwards, and he came in, and the joy from inside of him when he said 75 minute PR, and it was amazing. That's great. That's he's a tri-squad athlete, but I think the key thing with Adam's story is that that didn't come because he just threw a whole bunch of more work at it, and he said, "Oh, I'm just going to go from 10 hours to 15 hours a week, and I'm going to work. It came amidst amidst of huge change and challenge, and I think that's the part that I really love with this story. He had a loss of a parent in the last year, changed jobs and roles, and change is always difficult. We know for both him and his wife, he had to move twice over the course of the year, and so when we we always talk on this show about the body being an incredibly smart mechanism, but the one thing it's not great at is differentiating different sources of stress. This is a guy that had. Amplified external pressure from everything outside of sport, and the key point of him, and this is self-reported from Adam, is understanding and embracing that, and building a recipe in which he retained the core of the training, the key sessions, but was highly flexible or adaptable in his mindset around how much training every single week would he do in the more supportive sessions, and it's easy to hear that on the podcast.
Matt Dixon 25:32
It's a different thing to put it into action to say, "Hey, this week I'm only going to do these sessions accumulating to eight hours because I've got a whole bunch of other custard going on, and this week I'm going to be able to push the throttle a bit more and be highly responsive based on this living, breathing, amplified sources of stress that you've got with moves and job transitions and family challenges, etc. And he carved his way through, and he he really highlighted the value of ongoing coaching consultations that he went through with one of our coaches to help him stay out of the weeds, stay focused on what he can control, and just go into the race with no expectations. And and you would argue if life goes boom, well, but you're probably just trying to hold on here, but he didn't. He kept the through line of consistency, and the result was an unlock. and And that's really it's such. I'm so glad that you chose to bring up Adam first, because it's just an incredible, inspirational story of like, yeah, you can. Life is hard sometimes, and it can push us back on our heels, but if you lean in and you stay focused and you keep adaptive and you're brave, you can really unlock some amazing performances. And so he's he's a great story to begin with.
Max Gering 26:54
Yeah, the only thing I would add to that is for for listeners is I think a good lesson to draw from it is not throwing in the towel when life gets really hard is exactly what you said, and those weeks-the weeks that you're starting the new job or you have the move or you're dealing with the loss of someone close to-like those weeks, training is obviously not the number one priority. But sticking to some sort of minimal effective dose so that you give yourself a chance to be able to ramp up when life flows a little bit more and you have more capacity, you can double down in a healthy way and not be concerned about injury. And so, I know you've mentioned this to to us as a coaching team. You said sometimes, you know, the best progression one week is just not is preventing regression. Yeah, that's that can be a valuable mindset when you think about going on the journey over the course of a year.
Matt Dixon 27:40
And no, I'd add to it. You know, it's it's really amazing to me when people, you know, say, "Oh, I'm I've injured myself, and so I'm just going to stop structured training, or "I'm I've got to move across the country. I'm going to stop structured training. I've got to change in my role. I'm going to, you know, change structure training. I remember Jeff Dolan, who we're going to talk about because he was on the podcast, it took a big, major role, a big promotion in Starbucks. I'm going to stop structured training, and it's like that is the exact inverse of what you should be doing right now. You want to be leaning into structured training. It's not that you stubbornly keep the level the same, but you need the framework because that can be your stability and your efficiency. And when people do that, navigating through, they're always successful. And when people say, "You know what? I'm going to put it to the back seat and I'm going to quit now, we we see them again three six months later, and they've regressed dramatically, and they've got to start the whole project again, and it and they are never in more control. They are never happier. They are never more energetic. They're always worse off. And it's like this is the time to lean in. So I think if we don't get any other lesson in today's show, that when when things turn to custard, you need to be brave and adapt the approach, but you got to keep the approach. That's the key thing, and I think that's the real spirit that we're looking for.
Max Gering 29:08
Amazing. Alrighty, number two, Steph, go. So we have to we have to mention her performance. She came second in her age group, time of 444, and she qualified for worlds, which she won't be going to because she already has a very busy race schedule with some pre-planned races. Two things I wanted to to get your thoughts on when it comes to her performance is number one, she shared in her race report internally that one of her mantras for the day was "You don't have to feel good to perform well, and so I'd love your thoughts on what that means and the power behind that, and then I also think it's worth us covering that this is an athlete who's had a lot of success, and with early success or success in a career can come increased pressure and anxiety and expectations. And I think it's worth talking about how to manage expectations going. Into a race when you when you put a lot of how to not put expectations on yourself that that will limit your performance. So those are two things.
Matt Dixon 30:06
Well, let's start with the expectations first. I think that you know there's a saying that many listeners have heard, which is a wonderful saying. I think it was Billy Billie Jean King that first said it, which is pressure is a privilege. So in stephanie's example, she has got the external pressure that she feels internally of, oh my goodness me, I've had success because of her prior successes, and so it is a choice that we make how we view that external pressure, and that's the same for all of us. External pressures are there, and they can come from demands, expectations, prior successes, etc. But champions view those as a privilege, as an opportunity, a sign that you're actually in the right arena. And the world's greatest athletes feel the same as we feel with race anxiety, elevated heart rate, sweaty palms, but they had trained their brain to greet those sensations as signals that the body is priming for great performance. There's some great research from Dr. Aaliyah Crum out of Stanford that takes two groups and thinks about external pressures. One group, before being put under challenge, is shown a whole bunch of videos of stress is harmful, is debilitating, it messes up and scrambles up your brain. Another group is shown different videos to say this stressful situation is a challenge, a growth opportunity. It's going to help your body prime to do better, and then they put them in challenging situations. And the group that view the stressful situation that have been trained to do so greatly outperform the group that look at it as a negative. In addition, the physiological response is different. The brain function stays function stays focused. We keep the what's called the prefrontal cortex online. That's where your executive function occurs, your decision making, and this is something that we can train as human beings. So in Stephanie's case, it's like firstly greet that feeling of this is an opportunity, rather than oh my goodness me, what happens if I don't do well? That's the narrative that you can choose to tell yourself or not tell yourself. That's really key. The second thing that you talked about, which in Stephanie's case, you don't have to feel good to perform well. That's exactly it. In fact, we always talk to our professional athletes, and leading up to an Ironman, the Hawaii World Championship, and they can say, "Oh my goodness me, I don't feel great. Well, I don't care.
Matt Dixon 32:53
What's that got to do with anything? And it shifts their perspectives because their brain is trained. It's like you're right. Actually, great performances quite often don't feel great. People have a mythical belief that a wonderful personal performance emerges from those days in which you just feel great. I've only ever seen one athlete feel great from the start of the race all the way through to the end of the race and just have one of those magical dates. That athlete was Chelsea Sedaro when she won the Hawaii Iron Met, and she said to me personally, "I just felt unbelievable all day. I never had a dip. I was like, 'Well, that will never happen again in your life, and that's amazing. It's wonderful, and she became world champion. Fantastic, yeah. But that vast majority, Tim Reed is like, oh my goodness me! I thought I was going to have to DNF. He became world champion. So it's you don't have to feel great to be great. That's the truth. How you're great is showing up physically and cognitively energetic and doing the work to prime the body to go and perform on the day, and then the body uplifts.
Max Gering 34:05
Yeah. To and as you you've said before on this topic is don't let your mind dictate what the body can do.
Matt Dixon 34:11
Yeah.
Max Gering 34:12
I think that's a it's along the same lines another mantra that someone can remind themselves in in a hard workout or in a race to really drive that home.
Matt Dixon 34:19
Yeah, and and I will say, in the middle of the race, when things start to feel rough, people the if the mind goes down into the gutter, I promise you the body will follow. And so, if the body is going down that way, your mind has to stay focused on where it wants to go. If you follow the body down that, you're going to go down into the gutter, and that's the end of the race. You know that's going to be a long, long journey back if you let both mind and body go. So that's that's trainable, and that's that's a bit of toughness. It's good.
Max Gering 34:50
All right, Suki. Now this is another Purple Patch athlete, 427. Yes, Oregon's a down river swim. Still a fantastic result, and I won't give away his age here on the. Podcast. I also don't know his specific age, but he's not in his 20s or 30s. This is a guy that is getting faster as he gets older. Came six in his age group, and that's really really awesome. But something that he shared is that he hit a bump in the second half of the ride, and his whole front mount with his hydration system and computer completely broke, and every time he then wanted to drink and fuel, he had to really slow down, and it hindered his ability to ride. And so he talks a lot about really just focusing on what you can control. So I thought that was worth worth highlighting and talking about what that means, and then just to also give more context about what he shared. He said his goal for the race was to give his best effort, stay present, and keep showing up in the moment that he was in, controlling only what he controlled. There was an idea I kept coming back to all day: find the quiet, not when everything is going perfectly, but when it isn't. When the race starts asking questions. So just hearing your thoughts about focusing on what you control and what that means.
Matt Dixon 36:04
Well, I'll tell you, Suki's age because he's the same age as me, is 52. But and the reason that's annoying is because he he looks vastly younger than me and much better looking. But at the same time, he I think he's exactly 52. But controlling the controllables is the right thing here. It's interesting. The day before the race, across the 75 athletes, I asked for one unifying commitment, which is once the gun goes off and you jump into that water, they all got swept down the river. From that moment till they cross the finish line, things are going to happen on your day. Okay, it's not going to go perfectly in all likelihood, we don't expect to have the Chelsea Sodaro factor. We're going to have things that that go wrong. No matter what happens, I want you all to commit to get from A to B as fast as you possibly can, and you're going to hit adversity. So that's a great example where no one could anticipate that the whole of his front end would explode, and that hinders ultimately his opportunity to do his very best performance. But it is performance within context, and it could so easy be, and you know, oh, it's frustrating, and it's blah blah blah blah, and just allow that brain to go down. This isn't my ideal day, and and he didn't. He stayed really calm.
Matt Dixon 37:23
And even when he finished, I happened to see him right when he crossed the finish line. I've got a great picture of him smiling slash grimacing, but he didn't say, "Oh, my front end exploded. He was like, "That was a good day, and and I know in context, and it was really good. It was quite interesting. I saw a young athlete, not a Purple Patch athlete, but a really young athlete who has room to grow, very much at the top end of the field. And I happened to see him. He had a little bit of a spill on the bike, not physically limiting, but he cut his elbow. I'd happen to see him three or four times on the run course, and every time I saw him going past family or friends, he was, "I crashed, blah blah. Look at my elbow, blah blah. And he's there, and he was running, and oh, I've crashed, and I'm not like it's not ideal. He crossed the finish line. I happened to see him cross the finish line. I crashed, and that's really understandable. But it's a mistake of youth because he didn't maximize his day in context. He allowed an an unfortunate situation to completely derail his performance, and so it's not as big of a growth opportunity for that athlete. Now, he looked like he was about 22, so I understand. I probably would have been the same. I'm not judging him in any way. I'm just saying that that's a growth opportunity. To for lack of a phrase, there are T-shirts where shit happens, and when it does happen, we need to train the body and mind to adapt. And Suke is a great example of milking a good performance out of a challenging situation.
Max Gering 38:59
That's great. I really like that story about the athlete. I think there's there's a lot to learn there. You give power to what you focus on. Exactly, 100% This last story before we get into some of our one to one athletes, there's not that much to discuss here. I just wanted to mention we had an athlete who raced for the first time in a little while after coming back from an injury because injuries do happen, and she had a hard race. She shared that this wasn't, you know, this wasn't the best race that she was looking for. It was a tough race. She was really proud of her effort. And what I wrote down to myself when prepping for the podcast was racing is hard, and that's okay. And it's also what makes it so special. And so to wrap this one up, it's just for people listening: when you have a tough race, it that's not a bad thing. And when you're racing and it is hard, it's not a bad thing, as you said. It's not a sign that you're that you're struggling. You're you're actually putting yourself in in the right arena. That is the beauty and the beast of racing. And so I just wanted to,
Matt Dixon 39:52
yeah. You're talking about Kara here, and I was so proud of her, and it's so great. She's gone through a long journey, and. And this, for me, was a no lose situation. You have come back and re-entering the arena, and you're in the right arena. And and I hope Kera gets to listen to this because, to echo your point, yeah, it's really freaking hard. Yep, it's really hard, and it comes with great jeopardy, and that's the beauty. But the key thing is, you're in the arena, you're testing yourself, and now you've done it. You can grow from it. We don't have to have utopia every time to get massive value out of it. So rather than viewing when you come back, the first race being tough, celebrate that you're back in the arena. Learn from it and then grow. It's a great opportunity and it's a it's a wonderful story. And and actually, I think you know for me when when we came back and we took we highlighted her as one of our special athletes. So it's a matter of perspective. She sort of like wow it was hard and I didn't quite do what I thought we viewed as a coaching team, fantastic! You're back in the arena. Let's go get it from here. Let's go do it. You're you're great, and you're you're sort of, you know, cut the arm open. It bleeds Purple Patch. That's what I like to see.
Max Gering 41:14
Love it. Okay, so now we have some athletes that are your your athletes. So these are going to be fun to highlight, and you'll be able to speak a little bit to their their training and what they're doing that helps them succeed. So the first one is mr. mr. Panos, who has PR
Matt Dixon 41:27
Panos Panos Kakulis. I'm actually going to put two athletes together and couple them up, and they they get to follow a relatively similar program. Makes it easier for me. I just blindly copy and paste their programs; they won't ever know. But now, I want to, if possible, highlight Panos and Pat Romano. Panos late 50s, Pat early 60s, long time Purple Patch athletes, and you know Pat very very close. He had a massive smashing PR here last year. Came back to the race very, very close to that performance again. 61 years of age, and and Panos 58 APR at the half Ironman distance. And these are not newcomers to the sport. They're not in that initial sort of vortex of oh number three. I'm getting faster every time. They've been in the sport for 15 years, they're getting faster as they mature, and and their great performances. Pat went through a little bit of fatigue today, and we had to really adapt how we went about his running, and and shifted. And it was a great sort of partnership in I've coached Pat for 16 years. How do we unlock your running speed as you're starting to mature? And it it ended up being a shifting training stimulus rather than strength base. We did power base in his run, and it brought his running back up to speed. So that was a real sort of story of thinking outside of the box and keeping creativity going, even though he's so many years in partnership with me. But both of them together, I think many people will ask, how the world do you coach two people to keep getting faster when they started in their 40s with you and are now into their late 50s, into 60s, and they're still getting faster. And it comes back to one thing for me, which is coachability. And both of these guys own their own journey, so they have a lot of agency. But but we often hear people when they join Purple Patch, and if I'm interviewing them for coaching, where they're considering being coaching for myself or one of the teams, quite often you hear people say, "I'm really coachable, and when they say that, typically they're not, and I don't mean that in in a mean way. I think that quite often when people say I'm really coachable, they believe that being coachable is simply doing what you're told, and it's not. The opposite of coachability isn't being uncoachable; it's being passive. That's what I think. It's being passive, where you're just waiting for this coach, me, with little pixie dust sprinkling on, so you get faster, and it's a performance killer. It's a productivity killer. It's a results killer, and you know.
Matt Dixon 44:30
Often, I assume, by the way, in the corporate space, it's also a career progression killer. You need to have agency in your coaching relationship. You need to own it, and you need to be productive in that relationship. And both Patterson Pat are prime examples of that, where they bring ideas, they bring curiosity, they have this undying thirst for mastery, ongoing improvement, and curiosity, ongoing learning. And these are very. Very very successful people that always want to learn more, always want to understand more, and the common thing, exactly the same as world class athletes. And I can't believe I'm comparing these two guys to world class athletes: humility, humility, and that's so. So it's all anchored in how do you get these people faster? They're getting themselves faster. They're highly coachable, and coachability means owning your journey, not being passive but being proactive. So I wanted to highlight them because it's incredibly important, and it is joking aside. It is the biggest aspect, and I would say the greatest parallel of high achievers to world class athletes. The athletes that I coached at the professional level that were the most successful were the ones that were incredibly hungry, a little bit of talent, and highly coachable. That's the difference. Highly coachable, and that is always the one. They own their journey. They stayed hungry, and they converted lessons into action. That's the accelerant of performance, and that's why those guys keep getting faster.
Max Gering 46:05
I love that, and maybe they'll listen to the episode and they'll hear all these nice things about them.
Matt Dixon 46:10
Oh, I'm digging a grave for myself, but I will say, by the way, you know Panos, who is an annoyingly good-looking man, and he's from my hometown as well, so it makes it worse. But he had his ponytail in it, and he he'd braille it. Looked lovely, so people got to sort of touch the ponytail of Panos. Which, if you're in Purple Patch, you know what I mean by that.
Max Gering 46:33
Love it. Okay, so we still have some some more Matt Dixon athletes to go through. So we have some really awesome performances here. Chris Harris, who's also been on the podcast before, a fantastic episode. If you are trying to go faster in your marathon, really worth listening to. And if you're battling any sort of challenge with fatigue, also worth listening to. And we'll link the episode in the show notes. But here, 70.3 Oregon. He his first time in the top 10, I think. Right. So we came seventh in his age group with a massive breakthrough and finished the race in four hours and 26 minutes. I don't know if there's anything you want to highlight about his his journey and his training.
Matt Dixon 47:10
Yeah, it's a do not miss episode, the Chris Harris episode, going through real fatigue, almost giving up on himself. Ended at the end of last year, not in a triathlon, but running under three hours, and Chris is six foot six or so. He's a big guy. He he runs a little similar to me. In other words, a donkey dips in cement and a 257 marathon at the end. This was the first half Ironman back. We talked about expectations before. He had a lot of uncertainty around this. He's a very very busy guy, really engaged father, and and a manager at a or a partner at a private equity company, and and this is just the the cherry on the cake, absolute unluckily performance, never stop believing, never stop solving. Very very similar to Panos and and Pat, where just high high coachability, fantastic, and to see him go to the world, run under 130 off the bike, and and go 426 is just an unlock. And then and then I'll just bleed straight into the sort of pano some patch like them together. Chris Harrod and David Farsay, very very similar athlete as Chris in profile, a partner at a private equity company as well, and David's really interesting as well because he'd gone through some struggles, and and I would say with David less about fatigue, race performance struggles. He has done incredibly well.
Matt Dixon 48:35
Last year he was just under nine hours or nine hours in an Ironman, which is incredible, you know, averaging 10 to 12 hours a week, unbelievable performance. His half Ironman performance-it has been some time since he's really gone. You know what? I did great, and and and his run performance was left wanting, and the reason for that, at the heart of it, he just did Cordellane, was my coaching, and and I say this in a really strange way, but I was David when he joined a few years ago was 25th to 30th in his age group. He is now perennial top 10. He's gone through this huge performance journey, but he's very, very hungry, hungry to continue to improve. And I was upleveling demands and saying, "You are going to ride with the top people. You are going to not let people outride you. And Cordellane did that, but it was coming at this consequence. And I said, "It's okay that you're slightly over your skis, and you're going to have a hard time running off the bike, but when I lift it here, but it was starting to become counterproductive. So in this race, I said you're going to bravely just ride your ride. You're going to build in how you perform best in training. You're going to progressively build in, and it took a lot of bravery on the front part of this bike course to not do. What he'd done in his prior races, which is to go with athletes that went by him, he progressively built in and he unlocked, and he ended up. I think he actually was fourth in his age group, not fifth, but 419, which is you know for for a guy that's again a busy father, huge demands, massive travel, 10 to 12 hours a week of training, incredible unlock, incredible unlock, but also great athlete learning. And now this platform-he's now getting ready with Chris for Ironman California. So, can they unlock a great Ironman performance on a similar training recipe? That's going to be the journey. Great, great performances from them.
Max Gering 50:40
I love that story, and that's really valuable. I'm happy happy you shared that. So thank you.
Matt Dixon 50:44
Good stuff.
Max Gering 50:45
Okay, so I'm going to skip ahead here. We have an athlete who is also a local San Francisco athlete who you get to coach in the center, Matt, and great PR and great result. But I wanted to share something that he shared with us about his race. I think it's it's good for listeners to hear. So he wrote into us, "I'm really proud of this result. As the last time I was this fast, I had no kids and was training 15 to 20 hours per week, which he is definitely not doing now. Triathlon was my life. Now I have embraced the Purple Patch approach of specific, thoughtful training revolving around my routine of cycling and strength training at the center. I match my bike PR in Oregon and continue to be pleasantly surprised by how much bike fitness I have built in our Tuesday Thursday sessions. The best part is I'm having more fun with the sport. Major kudos to Coach Nancy.
Matt Dixon 51:33
Yeah, I got to speak to Matt for people that are listening that are part of Purple Patch. There is no justice, mr. Justice. This is who we're talking about here, and I think the thing that prevailed from here. So it comes back to our first story of noise performance as a throughline, despite life becoming more chaotic and more demands. So pre-existing Matt had certain demands. Those demands are now skyrocketed. Two very young kids have much more responsibility at work. He's training less. He's more adaptive, and with the great work of Coach Nancy, integrating sport into that life, and he's getting faster. But I think the most important thing is this journey, and this is the thing that he said this morning. He's like, you know, the most important thing. I'm really having fun, and isn't that a part of it as well? Well, winning is fun, going faster is fun, and that's great. But the sport itself is not a drain; it's additive to in life. It fuels how he is the fight. That's what we're trying to do. And you know, another that we'll just touch on this very briefly, but Jeff Dolan, who was on the podcast, start another Nancy coached athlete. Goodness me, you're lucky if you're coached by Nancy, but he's the big traveling executive and integrating the sport into life. He showed up last year. We talked about this race on the podcast with Jeff Dolan. We'll add it into the show notes again, another great episode. He shouted out to this race. He goes, "I didn't even know if I'd get on the start line, like literally, and because like he's traveling 85 countries, it's complete madness. But he said, "I'm excited and I'm ready to go. And lo and behold, he unlocked it. He finished this race. The noise and the business pressure is just as high now. He's like, I've worked out I can do it, and he wants to go and do an Iron Man, but he wants to go and do an Iron Man in the context of how he's learned to do it, and that's a great testament not just to him and his coachability. We come back to that again, but also the mastery of Coach Nancy, which is just incredible. We're lucky to have. Yeah.
Max Gering 53:41
One thing that Nancy shared with me actually about how she coaches him. So I asked her a little bit about what the training is like and what their process is like, and she said something that stood out to me that I wouldn't have expected. That they started to do this thing where the day that he travels and lands, he actually does a bit of high intensity,
Matt Dixon 53:58
yeah,
Max Gering 53:59
and shocks the system, and then the day after, he does some of that easier, soul filling zone one kind of stress absorption work that we we talk a lot about, and that really caught me by surprise. And I thought that was a really good reminder that there is not a one size fits all approach. If you find yourself in a unique situation where something's not sticking with your training, that's a sign. Reach out to somebody. Reach out to us. Have a chat because there's creative solutions to anything that you're going through. Yeah,
Matt Dixon 54:26
that's great, nice one. Yeah, last couple. Yeah,
Max Gering 54:30
yeah. Let's skip to this this last one here. Well, maybe maybe we'll do two more, but I want to start with this one. We have another coach, Nancy athlete, who has had tremendous year-over-year progression. Comes to our camp, really amazing athlete and great guy. He works night shifts, and so I wanted to hear you talk very briefly about how do you improve your performance and show up to race and have a great race when you're working night shifts. Some some quick tips or thoughts on on that because we have a lot of.
Matt Dixon 55:00
It's the same challenge as these incredibly busy executives that are traveling all over the world. You have to first. We we talked earlier when we were talking about the executive challenge with the bedrock of practices and habits. So if you if we isolate them and we say, "Okay, it's we need to do as much training as we can, lowering on as much training stress as we can, swim, bike, run, and strength, so that the body can adapt to them. And in support of that, you want to think about your daily hydration. You want to think about your nutrition, and we won't go into the details, but that's it. We want to make sure we're recovering enough, we need to think about sleep. We want to think about much of your activity processing stress, not just being harder, fitter, stronger, faster, etc. So these things that we have in our toolkit, the biggest thing that turns to custard that we can do nothing about is sleep. If you're on night shifts, sleep is going to become a stress on, not a de-stress, because you're losing sleep. What that means is you need to pan out and say my performance fabric is made up of all of these other elements, and if one of them turns to custard because an executive is traveling from LA to London, or I'm doing a night shift in a medical situation. I need to lean on the other elements to support my system as much as possible. Not just say, "Oh, well, there I'm going to just have a beer and I'm not going to forget about my hydration. So you, it's actually incumbent you do the other stuff excellently well. You know that that's the key thing, and then you have to be similar to what you talked about in Jeff's situation. You have to go on a journey to find your recipe of what works for you.
Matt Dixon 56:50
So at the end of the night shift, it might be a thing to say, "Hey, that's the time that I actually can hit some high intensity. Then I go and have as much sleep as I can. Then I do lower intensity, so I allow my body to recover. On the flip side, it might say I'm exhausted. I recover, and then before my night shift, I'm better on high intensity. There's no hard and fast rule on it. It's going through the journey to work to find out what works for you and your body. And I think that's one of Nancy's superpowers: is to not be rigid and say this is what our recipe is for you know this person on night shift. It's like what works for you comes back to coachability, Marlow. This is what's working. This is how it's feeling. Let's mold around there, and that takes weeks and months. But once you find it, boom, you can lock in. And and I tell you the biggest thing that's catastrophic is I'm going to take this training program. I've got all of this night shift and and changing schedule. I'm just going to dump it on top because that's the magic plan. That's where people get well. How do I say it so people remember effed up?
Max Gering 58:00
I love it. No, it's really helpful context and a good reminder. The last one, just very briefly, another one-to-one athlete of ours who came eighth in her age group, 453, had a had a great day. And something that stood out when I spoke to to her coach about what they'd been working on. I think this is going to be valuable for people. I'm sure there's a lot of people that struggle with this is this athlete stopped looking for validation in her ability to race hard in every session that she did going into her race, and that allowed her to execute the workouts to the intent that was designed for for that day. So that meant going easy when she needed to go easy, going appropriately hard when it was time to go hard, and she was able to show up to the race in the end, actually more confident than she was if she had looked for validation in every session. Plus, just she felt a lot better. So that is something that stood out. And then it's another just classic example of an athlete that decided to put a bigger focus on daily nutrition and fueling workouts, and therefore was actually able to tap into her potential and all of her ambition.
Matt Dixon 59:04
Well, yeah, to my Stacey here, and and it's been an unbelievable athlete progression, physically, mentally, performance wise, and one there's a difference when somebody arrives at a race, goes and races, and finishes a race,s and smiles. But underneath the veneer of the smile, there's maybe fear before the race or frustration under the race. There's a difference when someone smiles from the inside out. And as soon as I saw Stacey the day before the race, she was smiling from the inside out. She didn't have a big smile, but I could tell she's ready here. And at the end of the race, it was a genuine, authentic smile. And I think that comes from building confidence in yourself as an athlete. And that hasn't happened by accident, and it hasn't happened because of some magic supplement or some new. Training session, it's evolving and building a positive relationship because it's very very easy to say it takes courage to recover. It's much tougher to actually implement it and to bravely say I'm going to go on a journey. And my goodness me, she went on a journey and and you know she she joins the camp's unbelievable athlete progression, and and and I couldn't care less about. And I know she does, and and it's great. And I'm celebrating it. Where you come in your age group, what you qualify for, etc. That that's secondary for me. The athlete progression, whatever she chooses to do from here and out, she can build on it. She can grow. She can improve. And and if she carries on the journey, I think that in two years' time, we're going to see a very very different performance level up in the stratosphere. She's really really good, and and she's done the hard work for that. So it's it's fantastic to see.
Max Gering 1:00:56
Amazing, and we have done all of this. I hope our listeners will be happy in under an hour. So there you go, guys. I'm deeming the success note. I think this was really fun and really valuable. And my take home lesson is: I hope that people realize that we coach athletes of all different levels with all different goals, and there is no one size fits all approach. Obviously, there's key principles that we lean on, but if you're going on your journey and you're uncertain whether you're done racing for the year, whether you still have another big race, whatever it is, that doesn't matter. Really, feel free to reach out. We can schedule a chat, you and I, and we can talk through where you are and where you want to go, and really think through together what your performance recipe looks like to have you have a breakthrough season, so in a breakthrough race. So you can email in info@purplepatchfitness.com and just request a chat with Max in any way you want to phrase it, and we'll make sure that you get a link and we'll get set up on a call. So I love I love those calls. Sometimes you guys become Purple Patch athletes, and sometimes you don't. Either way, my my mission is to really make sure that you walk away with some valuable insights that will help you. So, if you're interested in that, info at purplepatchfitness. com, and we'll chat.
Matt Dixon 1:02:08
Thanks a lot, Mats. That was a great show. We'll see you next time, everyone. 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
High performance, Purple Patch, Oregon 70.3, athlete stories, coaching lessons, adaptability, recovery, mental game, team race, performance under pressure, sustainable training, coachability, race results, athlete progression, training strategies.