409 - How to Build Your Ironman Off-Season
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Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast. In this episode, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt and Coach Max discuss strategic approaches to the triathlon off-season through various athlete case studies.
Training Strategies
Matt and Max analyze several athlete profiles to provide guidance on transitioning from race season to the off-season.
Injury Prevention: For athletes like "Rachel" who struggle with run durability, Matt recommends a mindset shift toward building tissue resilience rather than chasing cardiovascular fitness. This involves high-frequency, low-intensity running and avoiding training under fatigue.
Raising Performance Ceilings: For experienced Ironman athletes looking to improve bike power, Matt suggests using the Velocity platform for terrain management and performing high-intensity, short-duration intervals (VO2 max work) to increase engine size.
Strategic Focus: For athletes feeling "cooked" or burned out, the coaches advise filtering out social media noise and focusing on a single strategic pillar—such as building a "platform of health"—to ensure long-term consistency.
Multi-Sport Integration: Max emphasizes viewing triathlon as one sport with three components, using swimming and cycling to build an aerobic base that supports running without increasing injury risk.
Coaching Philosophy
The discussion highlights how Purple Patch applies performance principles to both athletic and professional environments via the Wind Cycle program.
Team Culture: Matt shares insights from working with USA Triathlon, noting that high standards and coachability are essential for both world-class athletes and corporate leaders.
Sustainable Growth: The coaches advocate for the "Sunday Special" method, where athletes plan their week by prioritizing life commitments (family, work) alongside training to manage variable workloads effectively.
Holistic Approach: The off-season is framed not as a gap in training, but as a unique phase focused on joy, strength building (squats, deadlifts), and non-triathlon activities like tennis or skiing to prevent mental burnout.
If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out to info@purplepatchfitness.com.
Episode Timecodes:
00-:29 Intro
:35-end Meat & Potatoes
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Matt Dixon 0:00
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 once again, well, I get to welcome him back. I'm excited. Welcome back to the show, Super Max Goering. How are you?
Max Gering 0:41
I am good, Matt. Thanks for having me back. I'm excited for this one. It's an exciting time of year for Purple Patch.
Matt Dixon 0:46
For folks that haven't heard our episodes together, Mats is one of our key cogs in the wheel at Purple Patch. Is a champion of every athlete. That's a member of Purple Patch. Also a stellar coach, and we work with each other every day. And we've started to really enjoy these episodes. But what's going on in the world of Purple Patch? I guess before we get into what we're doing today, I'd just love to hear what's going on and how everything's going.
Max Gering 1:11
Things are good. It was it was a good holiday weekend. We're recording this after Labor Day, and the week's already off to a great start. I think one of the exciting things that we're really working on now as a coaching team is we are revamping our Kona camp, and this is going to be our 15th annual Kona camp. So it obviously started way you've you've been going to Kona way before I was at Purple Patch and even knew what Purple Patch was. But we we met last week as a coaching team to talk about the schedule and talk about how we can make it even better. So there's really exciting stuff going there, and we still have some some open spots.
Matt Dixon 1:45
We do. We got I think I think three open spots right now. But yeah, just for the listener to make it a little more interesting, you know, these are super immersive camps, and we get a lot of what I like to call repeat offenders. So people that come back to the camp. So we typically go two or maybe three years in a row with stuff that works. We're always looking to tweak and evolve, but repeating the schedule in many ways, and then we really try and do a rethink and evolution, and really freshen it up and say, okay, what are the elements that are absolutely fantastic? What are some areas that we can maybe improve and go again. It's all under the mantra of evolve or die. This happens to be one of those years where we're we're doing a complete revamp again, taking keeping all the good stuff and evolving it as necessary. But they're always my favorite years because it's the brain trust of all of the coaches reflecting on the last two or three years, one of the elements that we want to build on. Where can we refresh? And it's always really stimulating to go through that. And we've got some very spicy surprises this year, so it's going to be a pretty different experience, I think, for the the folks, even even some of them that have been 15 years in a row. We've got a couple of athletes that will be every single year, they never miss, so it's yeah special.
Max Gering 3:03
So if you are interested, by the way, you don't need to be a Purple Patch athlete to come to Kona Camp or any of our other camps. So our Kona camp is in January, the end of January. So if you are interested, just email in info@purplepatchfitness.com and say you can just write Kona one word, or say you're interested in Kona Camp, and I will connect with you or connect you with Coach Nancy, who is our fantastic camp manager, and we'll get you more information on that front,
Matt Dixon 3:29
which would be great. Then, of course, it's 70.3 Worlds this weekend coming. We've got a large group of athletes there. I've got a few of my disciples racing in Nice. Really magical race there, so it's going to be terrific. Best of luck to every athlete that's racing 70.3 worlds, and a little special special extra source to the Purple Patch athletes, of course.
Max Gering 3:50
Yes, and then Matt, what's new with you in the world of Wind Cycle? We started to talk this morning as a team about a really fun and interesting engagement that you and the Wind Cycle team are working on. So I think it'll be valuable for listeners to get a little update there.
Matt Dixon 4:03
Yeah, we well for everyone listening, we we talk every single day. We're mostly a geographically dispersed team all over time zones, but we have our daily stand up every single day. Team culture is a really important component to us, so we we like to catch up on what we're all doing and what's going on, what the mission and focus is. So yeah, this morning we spoke about the wind cycle program. The the heat is on in a really good way. We're actually tomorrow morning launching a big multi-week program with a large organization, which is one of our simulator programs where the team we've got a group of actually 50 in the program going through, and they're looking to cement many of the practices and habits that we know help drive better capacity, better energy, etc. But it's really a simulator because we're we're putting in conditions to foster better team connections, and we're also coaching their leaders to be better coaches. These. Are always high-impact programs. They're a lot of fun. They take a lot of energy from us, but it's really worthwhile energy, and they have good impact. And the good thing about these is that we make sure that we do baseline assessments across every aspect-the physical, the mental, and the team conditions-and then we reassess at the end of the program so we can show impact. So that's going to be over the coming weeks. That's going to be a lot of fun, and then September is very very busy for us. We've got four engagements in September. It's going to take us to various parts of the country. Luckily, it's domestic, but we're going to be in Park City. We're going to got one in San Francisco. We're also going up to Vancouver in in British Columbia, which is going to be a terrific time there, and then we're heading off to just outside of Atlanta. We're doing a women's only conference where we're leading the whole program for female leaders, all of a part of a certain private equity organization, and that's going to be incredibly inspiring. And those are really fun because it's going to be all of those will be led by myself and Kelli together up on stage, and that's going to be really really fresh and different from us. So so it's going to be a lot of fun. So we're really excited for that, but we are very busy getting every single detail locked in because these are these are very important engagements for us.
Max Gering 6:21
That's fantastic and super exciting, and I think it's important to note that it's something. One of the reasons why I found it really valuable as a coach for Purple Patch to hear about Wind Cycle and learn from you guys about how you're developing developing it is because it's not athlete conversion therapy. It's really hearing from you about how you're taking all the lessons over the years, and helping leaders integrate it into their life and business to help them show up better and lead better and impact the business. So it's been fascinating from not only a coaching standpoint of helping my athletes, but I think it's also been really good for us as a coaching team of yeah the way we do things internally at Purple Patch, and that's I guess the eat your own dog food type type things. That's been really good for us. Yeah,
Matt Dixon 7:02
it's it's worth hovering on there because I I um I was just on a call with USA Triathlon thinking about team culture and um and looking at LA 2028 and then beyond that 32 of how can you really drive and elevate the standards, the team culture, etc. And we're sharing what we've done with our Purple Patch pros, but then extending it into teams, and ultimately performance is performance. So taking all these lessons in one arena and applying them across multiple arenas, you see what the patterns are, and and you also start to really self-reflect on what great coaching is number one, but also what great coachability is for the athlete or the team member, and actually infusing that across teams and organizations is really really interesting. So, being on the the USA triathlon sort of group call, it was myself, Mark Allen, and just sharing our insights over high standards, so it was it was really good fun. It's been a busy week already.
Max Gering 8:07
It's it's good. So all of you listening, you are all already ahead of the curve by being a listener of the Pearl Patch podcast and and thinking about the ideas which we talk about. So on that note, I think we should dive in because we do have a lot to cover today.
Matt Dixon 8:21
Yeah, what are we doing? Tell the listeners what we're up to.
Max Gering 8:24
Yeah, so last week you recorded an episode by yourself, our intro to off season episode, which was really fantastic. And we got a lot of questions at the end of the episode. You told people to ask it, writing the questions that they had about off season, and we had several athletes that are non-pro patch athletes book calls with me, wanting to get help wrapping their minds around where they are right now in their athletic journey about making this transition from race season to off season, wanted help mapping out. Okay, what do I do now to set me up for success for my big goal that's in 2027, whether it be June, July, whatever. And so I thought it'd be really valuable for us to go over a few of the key athlete case studies,
Matt Dixon 9:05
yeah,
Max Gering 9:06
situations of people that that emailed in. So what we'll do is I will read information of athletes that emailed in that I've met with or I'm going to meet with. Obviously, we'll keep it fully anonymous, and then we'll go through what our general recommendations are for for each athlete, so everyone can learn from their situations.
Matt Dixon 9:22
Hopefully, be helpful to not just those folks, but I'm sure. And any time we do case studies of any nature, if there's one, there's many. Is always the mantra, you know. So, so hopefully, us unpacking some of these individual cases can have broader themes. So, so it's all in the meat of potatoes here. But before we dig in, just a quick note: some of these athlete questions resulted in athletes deciding to to make the big jump and and join our most popular program, Tri Squad Purple Patch, and and a couple also have joined our one to one coaching, taking up the long. Few spots there. I think we've only got two or three spots left in our one-to-one coaching globally, but but also others left. I think with calls and you you were sharing this on the daily stand-up, Max. Others left with with just a better path forward and and an opportunity to say, yeah, this is what I'm going to do, and decided not to join Purple Patch, and that's great too. I think that's really, really important that these conversations that you have are absolutely pressure-free. We are not a heavy sales organization per se, but I do want to point out as you listen to today's episode, if you have further questions, if you'd like to discuss our off-season training block, which kicks off officially September the 28th. Although, of course, for athletes that are racing later, they can integrate seamlessly. We handhold you through that process after your last race of the season. But if you're interested in in joining and then reach out to us, we can set up a complimentary call, go through all of the strategy, etc. we would typically recommend joining a week or two early, so somewhere around the week of the 14th or the 21st. Get going, and then we can dive right into off season. But Mats, I think you're still open to have conversations with people. They just need to email info@purplepatchfitness.com, and they can set up a complimentary pressure-free chat, and it will be helpful if nothing else. And then we'll we'll make sure that we get on the right program. Yeah,
Max Gering 11:29
yeah, and we'll also put that link for the call in the show notes of the episode. So,
Matt Dixon 11:33
of course,
Max Gering 11:33
there as well. So I think to to set the lens, a refresh about what you talked about last week for everybody is we're talking about all these case studies under the lens of our mission as a coaching organization with helping athletes is helping people unlock consistency and sustained high performance, and we really think about year over year progression with our athletes. So breaking the mold of just going from one race build to another, and how can you make triathlon, make marathon training a sustainable and enjoyable part of your life to unlock your your your highest potential, and so that's really the lens of which we think about off season. That it's not a gap between seasons. It's different training. It's fun training. It's unique training. But that's the lens in which we're going to answer all of these case studies today.
Matt Dixon 12:19
Yeah, that that's a great framing because it's, you know, as I said before, as I said last week in the show, it is actually the most important phase of training, and and what I mean by that is it's the it's the place that you do all the preparatory work, that is the springboard to greatness, and if you miss it, it really is hard to come back from in many ways, so so so I always love off season and I love talking about it and it's why we place so much emphasis and so it's should be a lot of fun. But we are looking, we are answering today through the lens of off season. Let's do it. I think you're going to put me under the spotlight on the hot seat here, so I'll I'll do my best.
Max Gering 13:02
All right, let's dive in. So I'm going to read information about one of the athletes that that I met with last week, and we'll call her Rachel. So here's some background on her. Swimming is currently my strongest discipline. I enjoy cycling and am comfortable building bike volume. Running is my biggest limiter. I need help with run durability and injury prevention. I'm a slower runner and have had recurring overuse injuries when I've increased my running too quickly. So building run durability safely and very gradually is a major priority. For context, her goals she has an early season half marathon where her goal there is obviously health, but also to get faster. And her big goal of 2027 is a 70.3 in June. For for context, what she wanted help with was figuring out how to structure structure the next nine months so I can build towards these goals consistently without doing too much too soon, getting injured, and peaking too early. I followed pre built training peaks plans last season that were great when life was perfect, but would love guidance on how to adjust training when real life happens. Illness, a sick kid, mixed work, missed workouts, travel fatigue, etc. I sometimes struggle with knowing what to skip, what to move, and when I should simply let a missed workout go rather than trying to make it up. I want to build a strong aerobic base this fall, prepare appropriately for my races to arrive healthy, strong, confident, and prepared to have a great race. She also wants to work on strength and body composition, so that is what we're working with here.
Matt Dixon 14:32
Well, I think the the first if if I'm allowed to go first, the I think the first thing here is this is incredibly common, and and I think a part of the pattern. If we go back to last week's episode, and I'm going to give some some very specific advice here, which I hope is okay. But I think where people run into a lot of problems is launching in January. After a less than preferable off season, and what happens there is they're like, okay, I'm getting ready for in this case a June half Ironman, and suddenly that's a pretty short five months of training into June six months of racing, and along the way you got a half marathon. That's our case, and the natural thing for any coach and any athlete to do is to ramp pretty quickly to say, "All right, I need to build muscular resilience. I need to build cardiovascular conditioning. I got to get going here. And most injuries occur when the ramp is is too fast or too aggressive in terms of either total volume of, in this case, running, or intensity and volume, and those two things are absolute killers. And so we should first let the mindset. I mean, this is a non-negotiable. The only way I'll say that pretty definitively that Rachel is going to break this mold is with a great off season, and the first thing I'm going to start with is mindset. The mindset is firstly, if you have more time, you have the luxury to actually build an approach where, and this is going to sound really counterintuitive. Let's just say September 28, but all of October, all of November, all of December, I would be executing running without the mission, the goal of improving your fitness, improving your speed, improving your power. Just completely put it aside. So I'm not, I'm not looking for validation as an athlete, me coaching, or us coaching Rachel, we're not looking to get faster here. All we're doing is preparing the body to be able to absorb load when we do want to dial it up. And so, a really so the mindset is really really helpful here, which is I got three months, 12 weeks where I don't need to care about getting fitter. Now, the funny thing is, you will be, you know, you will be getting fitter. You will be building resilience, but it's a really empowering mindset to have. The second thing is, what's the actual goal? Every athlete thinks about. I want to build this base. I would actually, from an injury-prone athlete who's lacking durability? I think about it less about heart and lungs, cardiovascular system, and more about tissue resilience, tendons, muscles, ligaments to be able to be ready. And so, under that same banner, build the chassis. And the best vehicle to build the chassis is number one. Never take a bad step, so you don't need to run under fatigue, and you don't need to run with declining form because of fatigue accumulation. You can actually run with the best version of your running form that you can, and take walk breaks between, and typically really take an approach of a little bit of something every day, so far as running so high frequency with a lot of it being easy. That's that's really really valuable. And any speed or power work that you do doesn't need to be daunting or terrifyingly hard. It's about activating the dialog of brain to muscles, and really getting a little bit of power in there, and that's very very safe. So think about all of your running not actually being, you know, leaving you at the end of the day destroyed, tired, fatigued, which is the validation that athletes have to say I'm improving, but we remove that for off season. So I think that's the vehicle. Then you can have the more gradual ramp, but it's coming in front of the wave rather than chasing behind the wave. So so that's the first thing that I'll say. I've I've got more, but I don't want to just hog each. Is there anything else that you would add to that?
Max Gering 19:00
No, I think that's a really good point, which is you're gonna get faster by not focusing on getting faster. Then my question for you is just, how would an athlete like that? How would you recommend? At what point would they work in strides on flat or hill? Would they do that right away in off season typically, or if an injury prone runner, would you have them wait a few weeks to prove that they're ready?
Matt Dixon 19:19
No, I think you can. I think you can do it early, but I think you do it with a a ton of recovery. So you might do it. You know, a 10 second stride to activate. You might go and run another easy five minutes before another one. It should never accumulate fatigue. So never do anything that creates you know big fatigue. I would maybe wait on the hill power stuff, the higher power, and just give it a couple of weeks. But but generally, throughout the off season phase, it never needs to be hard. I think that's important. What what you do have, Rachel, then, is a whole bunch of other modalities that you can build the engine. And you can build greater conditioning. There is nothing daunting or risky about doing short, high power stuff on the bike or in the swim. And ultimately, your heart is a pump, and so we can do it through other modalities. And and the other thing that if you do that and you keep the running really, really calm and generally easier. It's going to give the body a greater ability to absorb and really execute well the strength and conditioning work. And the strength and conditioning work is obviously a great partner in technique development, in resilience and durability, and also in body composition, by the way, so this is a great time to really do that. So, so that's really helpful. The second thing that I'll say is because none of these elements of training that we talk about are creating long tail fatigue, so you shouldn't be fatigued, and you shouldn't even need to train as much. You've got a high degree of flexibility in the programming, so you can really say, "Hey, if I every day just need to get into this rhythm, and occasionally, obviously, not being able to do it because life is busy or what busy or whatever, it's it's much less anchored or much less rigid, so far as the perfect recipe, it is much more plastic in what you can do. So it's much easier to plan and build the training within the context of this variable life. It's really really helpful.
Max Gering 21:39
Yeah, no, I like that. On top of that, this is we're gonna come back to this a lot, which is the Sunday special. So for for this athlete and for any athlete of the like, think it's this is the time that you rebuild your relationship with managing your training via the Sunday special. So it's planning your week and understanding what's a priority this week, even if you're able to do everything because training loads a little bit lower in the off season, it's building that habit of looking at your training on a weekly basis through the lens of what's key. What can I add in if I have more time in my life? And you do that now when you don't have the pressure of training for a race. Make it a habit, and then when you have the pressure of training for a race, you have an easy system to manage that pressure, so that's what I would add there. And then, yeah,
Matt Dixon 22:24
and just just one more thing on that's really important. When we're doing the Sunday special, this is broadly for everyone. It's three elements. One of my non-negotiables in life that's really important. You know, kids, family, doctors' appointments, holidays, etc. These are really important. What are my priorities on whatever I do for work, and lining that up, and what can I actually strategically push back, and then how do I integrate this training? And over the to your point, over the course of this year, planning like that is going to set the habit and the practice. You want to have room to grow, particularly in the training element, and so hopefully you have a bit more flex and downtime broadly on that.
Max Gering 23:02
Yeah, the only other thing I'll add before we move on to the next one is about swimming because she mentioned that swimming is a strength of hers and one of the things she's she's best at. In the off season, we do want to work on our weaknesses, but we don't want to ignore things that we're good at and things that we enjoy. So continue to swim. I would recommend an athlete like this not have the mindset of oh I'm great at swimming, I don't need to work on swimming or vice versa with any other discipline. Lean into the things that you enjoy doing that that bring you joy in the sport because that's going to help you ultimately truly unlock.
Matt Dixon 23:31
Should be super fun. It's also beneficial beyond swimming. So we don't swim as a triathlete just to get better at swimming. We actually swim because it's a great low risk cardiovascular conditioning. So absolutely do it. Yeah.
Max Gering 23:45
Alrighty, let's do case study number two. So, Matt, thanks for last week's episode. It could not have come at a better time as I just finished my season and am a bit lost. I love triathlons and have completed several 70-point threes and three fulls. My goal is to push myself and get better, but not necessarily podium. Emailing in because I'm feeling frustrated. I've been very disciplined with training for the past few years, but feel like I am getting slower. I am not particularly time-starved and typically have 10 to 12 hours a week to train. I would really like to improve my bike and run to achieve 11 and a half to 11 hour on a full Ironman. My best so far is 1250. I know I need to improve my cycling if that is going to happen. I struggle both from a conditioning perspective and with power. My challenge is the Iron. My challenge is the Ironman I want to do is in July, so I'm not sure what I should be doing now to work on this. Plus, I live in a place on the East Coast where even when the weather is good, roads or not. So I need to do a lot of my cycling inside.
Matt Dixon 24:46
Yeah, that's again pretty common. Yeah, the I'll say a couple of things on that. The the very worst thing to do. Right now, for this athlete, is just to say I've got to build my base. I've got to ride all at zone two, so therefore I'm going to spend four hours every Saturday riding at zone two. The joy extractor, you know that's that, and that's not going to really yield. I think that particularly as this athlete is an Ironman athlete, so they are doing miles outside in the summer. I'm assuming of which many of them are endurance focus. Over the course of the spring and the summer, living on the east coast, they're getting good conditioning and good aerobic base on that. So, what do we do in the winter? And I think it's a great opportunity to do a few things. Firstly, and and a lot of this is dependent on how many opportunities they have to ride in a week. Again, number one, and other other activities. But let's say that they get to do three rides in a week. Well, the first is yes, you do need to do some zone two and make it as interesting as you can, because we want to touch every zone. So zone one, zone two, it's really good. And if you get a little bit of a bonus ride in the week, where you can sneak it to four rides, terrific. More is more. You're not massively time-starved and so I would add a bit of of zone two work. I would really anchor on stuff that many many triathletes, particularly Ironman athletes, miss. It's like, how do we actually raise the ceiling here? Well, you are ultimately getting ready for an event that you want to be a better butter burner for. You want to have good conditioning. You have really good durability. But at this phase of the year, this is an opportunity to raise your ceiling, and it's also the opportunity to work on craft. And so, in your indoor sessions, the first is you need to have purpose and intention, and not ride mindlessly. The whole reason that we ended up going to, and I'm going to do a little bit of a promotion for this platform globally, that we got persuaded to invest in financially and drag our athletes that didn't want to do it at the start across to the velocity platform is it makes people better cyclists. Period. It is an unbelievably powerful educational tool that is vastly superior to any other platform. That's my belief, and it costs us 1000s of dollars every month to integrate it when we never had that expense before. We did it for our athletes because we know it makes it better. Under there, you'll go into that at least a session, if not two a week. This athlete really wants to think about how do I get not just my fitness up and my power up, but how do I get more speed return for the fitness? And through there, doing very specific sessions on the trainer where you're wholly invested and starting to understand terrain management and how to better stand out of the saddle, even though you're locked on a trainer, these are things that are going to help you go faster when you do get back outside. So the first thing is terrain management, and you might add more color to that when we get there. The second thing is go polar opposite to the demands of Iron Man, and so in the off season we do a lot of work that's super high power, building on the size of our engine, keeping it really simple. A lot of VO2 max work and a lot of short interval training at maximal output with a lot of recovery to bring more muscle fibers into the usable mix, so that then when we build the conditioning, we're able to make use of that work, and so a lot of short, sharp shocks. We do that a lot, and at least once a week, you want to do short sessions, very high intensity. So this is the type of work.
Matt Dixon 28:52
Yes, do some zone two, do a lot of craft work where you're really thinking about pedal stroke posture and burning those habits, sitting in TT position and getting comfortable, and then working, just broaden out the perspective to not I'm an I am an athlete, but I just need to be a better athlete. And to be a better athlete, I need to generate power, and I need to have the biggest size engine possible within my chassis, my body, of which then I can train for the specific demands of my race. So that's what we do over the course of it. And then one more thing to add, and I'll rebound it back to you: strength training, absolutely critical in the in the off season for this athlete. Really, really strong building the potential to build better power, and this needs to be very consistent for the athlete at least twice a week, and it is real industrial strength training: squats, lunges, deadlifts. This is real work. This is not core TRX class Pilates. Those things are great. They're really good. They're fun. You can do it. But this needs to be hardcore strength training with a ton of protein following, great hydration, etc. So those are those are my quick snapshots.
Max Gering 30:13
Yeah, I'm happy you mentioned velocity because that was the conversation that I had with the athlete, which is this person. This isn't the first time this has come up in a conversation where people have talked to me about I'm stuck at X miles per hour in all the Ironmans I do, and immediately it goes to talk me through how you approach riding your bike outside, and it becomes very clear that often athletes that are stuck, they feel that they're stuck at X miles per hour, whatever it is for them, and want to be faster, is they're not thinking about how to properly ride the course and how to really ride their bike-it's not something they've worked on. So I think that terrain management is a huge unlock for for athletes.
Matt Dixon 30:48
So at our center in San Francisco, we're we're bringing on a couple of new cycling instructors. One of the cycling instructors is the very first pro athlete that I ever coached, Mats Tyler Stewart, and and for folks that have a long memory in the sport, Tyler Stewart was a fearsome bike rider. She was by far and away back in the day the fastest bike rider in triathlon at the Ironman and half Ironman distance. She was absolutely fearsome. And this morning I was having a discussion with her because she has coached indoor cycling for 20 years, and and I said to her, "This is a little different. Every session that we do has a story, and a big part of how we coach this on the Velocity platform is you need to first, as an instructor, understand what the story is, and what I mean by that is, this platform is connecting riders to how they ride outside. So our success when you're coaching people through this is how does this correlate to how you're going to be a better bike rider outside? Terrain management specific intervals, and that's how we frame it. You need as an instructor to understand what success looks like for the athlete, and then you need to pardon the the language. You need to coach the shit out of that. That's what you need to do. And her eyes lit up because that was a big part of how she became good. She's incredibly strong. She's got a huge engine, but she's an incredibly smart bike rider that knows how to work the terrain to get bigger spiel. She was like, "This is so much better than back in the day, us doing it on compu trainers. And she was like, "Boom! This is the platform. She came to a couple of the bike sessions already of me coaching, and was like, "This platform's a game changer. It's absolutely huge. So yeah, I think it's absolutely critical for this athlete.
Max Gering 32:41
Yeah, and the other thing I would add, just because I think this is relevant for a lot of people that came to like when speaking with this athlete, is under fueling. A lot of people show up to work out and feel like, oh, I can't put out the power that I want to, and it turns out that people just are not eating enough and eating with enough intention in their day-to-day life. In off season, every time of year is a good time to bring more attention to your fueling, but off season, when you have a little bit more capacity to focus on overall habits and you're not just locked in on the race, is a really good time to think about making sure that you are fueling properly. Whether it's doing it on your own, working with fueling like a lot of our athletes do, but I gave this athlete a specific challenge of really paying attention to their fueling around their key bike sessions with the idea that I think it's going to really help them put out better power and then give them confidence that the training is working and so it'll be interesting to touch base with this athlete in a few weeks and see how that's made an impact.
Matt Dixon 33:33
Yes, great.
Max Gering 33:35
All right, case study number three. Thanks so much for the opportunity to chat through my training. Sorry in advance for the long note, but I thought it would be helpful ahead of time. I'm 43 years old, based in X. Not going to say that to keep anonymous. Have completed two full distance Ironman races and one DNF. I just finished my last race for the year, a 70.3. It was a good year, but I'm feeling a little cooked. Most of my training so far has been fairly self-directed, and while I've proven I can complete challenging long-distance races, I want to move from simply finishing to training in a much more structured and progressive way. My main goal is to build towards a strong 2027 season with a full Ironman as my key race in August, while improving a lot of things here, my aerobic base, body composition, swimming efficiency, bike and run performance, nutrition recovery, and race execution-essentially everything about being an athlete. My biggest challenge is turning the training I already do into a coherent long-term program while balancing a full-time career and normal life commitments. I'll skip ahead here. I need help seeing the bigger picture, adapting when life happens, and understanding what will actually make me better and what is just noise slash content I'm seeing out of context on social media. Thanks again for the podcast. It's really helped me believe in myself and see myself as an athlete, and has me excited to discover how good I can become.
Matt Dixon 35:00
That's a great one. I'll rebound again straight away. I think everything there, sort of two things that come up. Firstly, just at the highest level, is a dispersement of focus. Everything that was highlighted there in wanting to improve is great, but it's very very difficult to disperse focus and work on everything at the same time, and that's where athletes often end up spinning their wheels. So it's much much easier as an athlete if a you give yourself more time. Number one, so go through a really balanced off season. That similar to case study number one, you're not necessarily just chasing at least overtly fitness, fitness, fitness, but you're actually creating a strategic plan in which everything builds on top of each other, and you're filtering your focus to focus on the things that are going to give you the biggest yield and and compound each other. So, so number one is you want to have a really smart strategic plan. As a part of that, you need to filter out the noise, and so really getting a trusted resource. Whether this athlete ends up getting a coach, ends up being a part of Purple Patch, and saying, "Okay, this is you know, or elsewise, this is how I'm going to follow, because it's it's so hard to achieve ambition and to get better in a vacuum alone, it's so much easier when you can partner with a coach or a team and say, "All right, remove some of the noise. I'm going to input off of my experience, my background. It's my body. I lived through it, so that's important. The voice, but I'm also going to filter out the noise and focus on this. And then, secondly, it's a lot more fun to do it when you're with other people and a team that you can share the journey with. That you can ask. You start to have very, very similar challenges. A part of the reason that we're doing this show. And so, for me, the first thing you know, Matt's, you've always heard me talk about this. Every ingredient might be great, but when you mix them all together, it can be a really bland chicken casserole. And so, particularly as this athlete is a little cooked, a little tired, and that's normal, it's like let's strip it down to its basics. Let's make sure we're giving you enough restoration and recovery, and let's actually set the plan up right strategically, where you're only focusing on things that can build traction, momentum, mini victories, that then you can layer on. So that that's number one. Number two for me is the running. It's whenever I hear I need to build my base, I always get worried because the athlete is immediately thinking, and and I understand it. It's just worried for the patterns I've seen of other athletes. Building base for many people thinks bigger miles, more is better. It's going to all be zone two, but I'm just going to accumulate time. And the barometer of success is getting validation of specific fitness metrics. And I think that's a mistake. This athlete has got an Ironman later in the year. We need to get this athlete to midsummer and them still being physiologically, emotionally fresh and excited, of which then they can train specifically for the demands of Iron Man, and so I would turn the metrics off. I would not be chasing huge amount of hours. I would be chasing frequency, and it's a very similar pattern, a very similar pattern to case study number one, so that that that would be my initial lens. So happy to or excited to hear your thoughts on it.
Max Gering 38:48
Yeah, I'll pick up where you left off, which is I think something I've really learned since working with Purple Patch is truly understanding that this is not three sports. It's swim by Brun. It's one sport that has three components of it, and helping athletes understand that the training they're doing outside of running is contributing to the improvement of their aerobic base for running, and so encouraging athletes to not just just count in a vacuum the amount of hours or miles you're running a week, and saying this is you know the predictor of my improvement with running, and really helping people understand how the swim session you're doing, how the bike session you're doing is going to make you a better runner. If we're also doing enough running and enough neuromuscular work in the off season, such as strides and hills and so on and so forth, and so that's something I I talked a lot about with this athlete. I don't know if you want to touch on that, but then the other thing, the conversation that we had is, I said you, you know, you deserve the right. You you've earned the right. You've shown yourself that you're deserving of coaching. Like they're like I want more structure, and I think that you know people take this hobby. It's a hobby, and they take it very very seriously. And I said, what's your what's your hesitation? Whether it's with us or with somebody else, you know you've proven to yourself that you're. Really committed, and you sort of cross the threshold where you were you're committed, and it's been really fun. But now it's starting to tip to the other side, where that commitment is causing you a little bit of stress, and you're getting a little bit of diminishing returns on your commitment. And we can remove all that, as you said, by by going on a journey with somebody. And it doesn't have to be one to one coaching. That's why we that's why we Created tri squad, but I think encouraging the athlete and helping them see that they are deserving because of coaching and because they are an athlete and they deserve guidance was really eye opening for them.
Matt Dixon 40:31
Well, coming hooking onto the the running comment, you know, I I always enjoy when when we put out there a little bit deliberately, a little bit antagonistically of you know X Y Z, Chris Harris ran 256 and he only ran 20 to 25 miles a week. But of course, there's that hidden layer there. And he did master swimming twice a week. Andy did strength. Andy did some really high intensity bike trainer sessions that all built to his running readiness. David Fossey and 257, same thing, yeah. So you know, it's it's it's one of those nuances. So your point on global conditioning, swim bike run, leverage, multi sport, high high value, and then I absolutely love. I've never said that, and it's absolutely right. You've earned the right for coaching, and you know the the interesting thing. I get asked a lot of questions around the top business people that I obviously work with, C-suite executives, etc. and then the Purple Patch pros, absolute world-class athletes, world champions. What quite often, what what are the common threads, or or what sort of highlights it? What's it like to work with ABC person? And the the number one thing, the number one thing across the highest performers that I've had the opportunity to work with is high coachability. They they really embrace coaching, and and a part of that the desire to improve. And it's very, very difficult to continue to learn, evolve, and grow if you're just looking into the world wide web of noise, miscommunication, confusion, bro science, and everything else. So, we spend so much time and energy on this stuff that's really valuable, and self care is not selfish, but it all gets amplified for even more benefit if you've actually got a trusted partner along the way. That's for sure.
Max Gering 42:28
Yeah, super stuff. We have one more case study to go over, and here it is. Matt, thanks for last episode. It gave me hope, but I am now uncertain about how to channel it. I completed three Ironmans and two 70.3s from 2022 to 2024. I stopped because life got busy, and I think I just burned out. It would have been helpful if I knew about the podcast then. Anyway, I tried to get back to racing this year, but wasn't successful. Every time I ramp up training, something flares up. Usually, a hamstring or my body just doesn't absorb training, and I end up feeling like I need to shut it down. The start-stop training routine has made it hard to make progress.
Matt Dixon 43:07
Oh, this one reminds me so much. So one of one of my favorite athletes that I've I've ever had the chance to coach, Jenna, who you know well, and I'll tell you about Jenna a little bit insofar as before I met Jenna and she became a part of Purple Patch, she had an accident. She got actually got hit by a truck, and and a part of that ramifications was a lot of physical challenges in the injury and the repair and everything. And she was training for an Ironman when that happened. She went on a whole journey, but when I started to coach Jenna, and she was a part of Purple Patch, it was a repeated cycle of injuries and niggles that were emerging from stuff from the the spine that obviously correlates to hip flexors and hamstrings and shoulders and everything else because the spine is the is the literal backbone, and and we set the lens for her. This is now three years ago or so. And I said, look, over the course of this year, when you think about what success looks like, I'm going to define success for us. And it's not about can you qualify to X, can you finish an Ironman, all of this stuff, it's that we finish this year, and we could look at each other, and you could say, "I can go and do whatever the f I want. Like, and and if that means at that point I want to go and race for an Ironman, I want to race a half Ironman, I want to do a 50k a road marathon, whatever it is, your body can go and do it. That is success. That's going to define our coaching along the way. You can race. You can go and do some half Ironman, half marathons, whatever you want to do. But this is success, and that was the driver for us. And it shifted perspective. Now she's wonderful athlete, incredibly smart, and really coachable. We had great success along the way. She did race a couple. Half Ironmans, and she did really well, but we never trained for the race. We trained for health, we trained for resilience, we trained for unlocking, and it actually freed up a little bit. And she created this what I call platform of health. And then the next year, said great, I'm going to go and race an Ironman. She had a cracking Ironman first time she won her age group. Just incredible experience and a real inspiration to a lot of the Purple Patch athletes. This is exactly the case when athletes come back and they start getting into cycles of injury. It is understandably incredibly frustrating, and sometimes we need to not lose our ambition, not diffuse our dreams, not to turn our back on our purpose and what really gets us out of bed in the morning to go and do this thing, but actually say I need to chunk this up and make a little mini victory, and for the next period of time, I'm only going to build a platform of health, and then, what do I need to do to achieve that? And that's different for every athlete. That's why being coached and using and leaning expertise around in this case, if you know, coached by us. Okay, let's think about your body. Let's think about what you've done before. What do we need to do? Let's create a strategic plan because if you can be successful on that, there's two things. Number one, it's good physically; you're more durable. Number two, it's incredibly empowering mentally because you go through multiple months without getting injured, and that evidence creates confidence and belief. You start to trust your body a little bit more. So then, when you start training for something, you can actually do training without that ongoing fear. And and number three, it's a really smart pragmatic way to train because if you've unlocked consistency, that's the magic word of performance. So it's all built around that. And and typically for this athlete, right back to case study number one, super easy, super short, high frequency running, really good prehab and rehab mobility work, a lot of strength and conditioning, and don't chase fitness, chase health. I think that would be my number one thing that I think about.
Max Gering 47:20
Yeah, I love that. The only really thing that I would add on top, just globally around off season, because you said mentally chunking things and mentally chunking your journey, I think that's a really good reminder for what off season is for athletes wherever you are. If you fall into any one of these four case studies or something else, is this is a chunk of training? It's a training block where you can really approach it with curiosity and excitement in a new way, without trying to prove something major to yourself. That's gonna you know show you that you're ready for something, for something afterwards. And I think there's something really freeing about approaching it with that mental chunking it mindset. And the last thing I would add is I spoke with this athlete, and one thing I said is I don't have all the answers. That's not my job as a Purple Patch coach. But we do have is a fantastic team of coaches, and one of the things I do in these calls is it's it's an intake. In the event that someone works with us, my mission is to be able to build out an athlete profile, understand. Okay, you should talk to Coach Will about this because he's fantastic with that. You talked to Coach Nancy about this, Coach Brad about that, and so that's one of the fun things that I get to do in these calls with athletes is really understand who's sitting in front of me and who's best equipped to help them from the team, and that's the conversation I had with this athlete. So it was a lot of
Matt Dixon 48:34
yep,
Max Gering 48:34
a lot of fun.
Matt Dixon 48:35
Yeah, absolutely tremendous.
Max Gering 48:36
That that wraps it up. The only other question that I wanted to highlight here, which one of our athletes wrote in, which is about integrating non-triathlon activities in off season. So the question is, I want to integrate some non triathlon activity into my off season. It's a time of year when I have space to actually play tennis with my partner and friends. How do I thinking? How do I think about incorporating more social fitness sessions into my training during this time of year, the goal isn't to be super competitive, just to have a good time with my family and friends.
Matt Dixon 49:05
No, you must be deadly serious, trafficking. You must extract all joy. You cannot be doing this; otherwise, it's not dedication. Fantastic! Get out, go play, go and do that stuff, and and and the key is just you know whether it's skiing, cross country skiing, hiking, pickleball, tennis, they're all activities, and we just want to be cognizant. So they might not be directly specific, but you should have a lot of freedom and a lot of fun, and you can shrink your commitment to the total hours of triathlon, but you're still doing all of these global hours, and that's something that we really help athletes with the whole time. We have so many squad athletes that come on board, have these things that they love to do, and in one consultation we build their week recipe, and it's empowering. You're like, wow, I actually can have it all. And and all it does is, by the way, infuse even greater excitement when it's like great. I'm either going to you know dial down my tennis or my pickleball or whatever it is to just once a week, or stop doing it now as I'm getting ready for my race, and the body and mind is really ready to go. So you absolutely should be doing that.
Max Gering 50:22
There we have it. That is our episode number two in our off season series, folks.
Matt Dixon 50:27
Good fun. We're excited for the weeks ahead going into it. I'm going to think we're going to carry on talking about off season every every week all the way through till the end of September. So, Mats, I appreciate it. It's always good fun, and I guess we'll see you on tomorrow's daily stand-up at Purple Patch.
Max Gering 50:45
Yes, we are. Thanks, Matt.
Matt Dixon 50:46
All right, cheers. Take care. Bye, guys. Thanks so much for joining, and thank you for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing. Head to the Purple Patch channel of YouTube, and you will find it there, and you could subscribe. Of course, I'd like to ask you if you will subscribe. Also, share it with your friends, and it's really helpful if you leave a nice positive review in the comments. Now, any questions that you have, let me know. Feel free to add a comment, and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey, and in fact, as we commence this video podcast experience, if you have any feedback at all, as mentioned earlier in the show, we would love your help in helping us to improve. Simply email us at info@purplepatchfitness.com or leave it in the comments of the show at the Purple Patch page, and we will get you dialed in. We'd love constructive feedback. We are in a growth mindset, as we like to call it, and so feel free to share with your friends. But as I said, let's build this together. Let's make it something special. It's really fun. We're really trying hard to make it a special experience, and we want to welcome you into the Purple Patch community. With that, I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy. Have fun. Keep smiling. Doing whatever you do. Take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Off-season, Ironman, Training, Resilience, Durability, Coaching, Mindset, Aerobic base, Strength training, Cycling, Swimming, Running, Nutrition, Recovery, Performance