410 - Off-Season: Strength, Body Comp, Durability
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Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast. In this episode, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon explained how Purple Patch off-season training builds health, durability, and readiness for the next endurance season.
Core Focus
Four topics were covered: strength training, body composition, run-injury resistance, and maintaining structure during the off-season.
Off-season is intended to establish a foundation rather than pursue peak race fitness.
Training Guidance
Most endurance athletes should prioritize two 30–40-minute strength sessions weekly, using progressive heavy lifting with sound form; some mature athletes may benefit from three sessions.
Nutrition should emphasize individualized assessment, hydration, fueling, and adequate protein rather than chasing race weight.
Run durability should be developed through frequent easy running, optional walk breaks, short technical speed efforts, and patient progression.
Program Structure
Off-season officially begins September 28, with athletes transitioning after later-season races.
The off-season is a training phase within Tri Squad and one-to-one coaching, not a separate program.
No unresolved questions or blockers were identified.
If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out to info@purplepatchfitness.com.
Episode Timecodes:
:00-1:42 Episode Promo
2:10-8:30 Episode Intro
8:52-17:44 Strength
17:44-26:54 Body Composition
26:56-36:48 Run Injury Resistance
36:52-end Importance for Broader Life
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Matt Dixon 0:00
All right, team. Just before we get going today, once again today we are going to unpack off season, but this one's going to be one that you don't want to miss. We're going to really investigate some common challenges and also key features of off season that might just be the thing that you want to focus on over the course of the coming months to really unlock a better version of yourself, or maybe break some of the frustrating cycles of being a part of an endurance athlete, and so it's very educational today, and also it's quite a bit of fun. But if you're listening today, remember that our off season always begins officially right at the end of September, going into October, and so it's a great time to actually join now. If you want to join, get going on this program. This is the time that creates all of the foundation, all of the goodness, while delivering a whole bunch of flexibility. It's a wonderful opportunity to get become a part of our community, start to lean into our coaching team, get everything in order, so that when you hit the new year, you're not thinking, "Oh, new year, new me. Is instead you're thinking I'm going off to the races and I'm already ready to go and I'm ahead of the curve while also being fresh mentally. And so, if you'd like to talk about any of our programs, our squad programs, our one-to-one coaching, anything around any arena in endurance sports, running, cycling, triathlon, just reach out to us.
Matt Dixon 1:22
We're always happy to have a complimentary needs assessment call and give you some pressure feet advice to set you on your journey with or without Purple Patch. All you need to do is email us at info@purplepatchfitness.com. We'll set up a call, we'll see if we're a fit, and we'll make sure that we leave you feeling very empowered. All right, on with the show. It's a cracker today. I'm excited. 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 is our third episode this month, all focusing around off season, three episodes in a row off season. Can it be that important? Well, it is, and not to get too philosophical here. But when I started Purple Patch, it was all anchored on delivering world class athletes to the peak of elite sport. In other words, I had a pretty narrow lens. I want to coach world champions and Ironman champions. In fact, when I sat in a plane with Kelli, my wife, and was asked to write down what I wanted to achieve with Purple Patch, I said I want to evolve the way that endurance sports are coached.
Matt Dixon 2:57
And that might sound a little bit egotistical, but it all stemmed from the fact that I had actually driven myself into chronic fatigue as an Ironman athlete myself, despite having a pretty robust background in coaching and also a master's degree in clinical physiology, and I just felt there must be a better way. I saw so many people struggling with underperformance despite their commitment and their talent level, and I decided. Look, if we're going to deliver great, consistent performance at the very peak, athletes of the sport they need to do so on a platform of health. Well, guess what? Off season is a key part of that. That's the time that we set the stage systemically, hormonally, also chassis-wise, musculoskeletal and all of our tissue. This is the time that we set the foundation. If there is base training, it's off season, and it isn't just mindless zone one and zone two riding. It's a key part to actually unlock your opportunity to do all of these sports we love, particularly if you're in a busy life, do them all in a really healthy but also successful way. And by the way, it's also the catalyst to ensure that you break through next season and start to see at the end of next year a faster version of yourself.
Matt Dixon 4:14
And so, what I thought we'd do today is dig into today's episode and just focus on four key topics. We're going to talk about the role of strength training. We're going to discuss body composition because this is a wonderful time to actually have a little bit of focus on body composition if it's important to you. We're going to unpack durability, particularly around breaking the back of those cycles of running chronated injuries that occur so many for athletes. We want to break that cycle, and also why this time of the year, off season, is such a critical player. It matters well beyond your 2027 race goals. So we're just going to shine the light on those four topics. Nothing else today. Okay, so. Should be very fun, should be very informative, and hopefully a little bit helpful for you to set your perspective and your lens on how to be successful over the course of the coming months. Well, that's all in the meat of potatoes. But before we dig into that, I can't let a weekend go like we just had without shining the lights on our athletes, because there was a lot of rubber meeting the road today, we had a ton of athletes racing. Many of them were wrapping up their season and heading into off season. So I thought it might be a time to actually have a little bit of celebration around our athletes. Here's some pretty interesting statistics for you. Over the course of 2026, we counted it up, and this weekend capped off a year in which we've had athletes compete in more than 1000 different events around the world: North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Antarctica, yes, and even Australia.
Matt Dixon 5:58
Goodness me! This has included 5Ks, ultra marathons, sprint triathlons, all the way up to Ironman distance, national and world championships, gravel bike races, road time trials, swim runs, swim bikes, aqua bikes, open water swimming racing competitions, high rocks, and many, many more. And this weekend, in particular, it was one of those bigger weekends of racing. In fact, we had nearly 100 athletes racing across North America, Europe, and Australia, including 25 of those athletes. The 70-point-three World Championships in Nice. What a tremendous race that was! Here's the stats from the weekend: we had almost 21st-time finishers at half Ironman and Ironman. That's the one that always makes me sing. Fantastic! Almost 20 the first time that they've crossed the line on those big challenges. We had of the 90-plus athletes racing, we had almost 6058 PRs. That means well north of 50% The people that toed the line came home with a lifetime best performance. That was terrific. We enjoyed four world championship qualifiers. Three of them in the 70.3 world championships for next year. One of them in Kona. We had 10 age group finishers that were in the top 10, including four on the podium, and we even enjoyed a nice age group win at Ironman Wisconsin, which of course included a Kona qualification for next year. And so, all I can say for all of you Purple Patch athletes, well done to every one of you.
Matt Dixon 7:36
And I guarantee you, when we look at all of those athletes and all of those PRs, almost all of them, if not every one of them, enjoyed a really successful off-season with us. That was the key catalyst, and a big part of that, remember, isn't just keeping the training going. It's actually enjoying rejuvenation, enjoying a break, a lot more flexibility, and then integrating some of the key scaffolding to really set yourself up for success. If you want to dig into that concept more, and you missed the last couple of weeks of episodes, I would really encourage you to go back last week and the week before. We framed what off season is. Last week, Coach Max and I went through and discussed some case studies that can be inspirational. This week, we're going to dig into some of the core topics that are so prevalent in off season, and so without further ado, we're going to get going. It is time for the meat and potatoes. All right, team. So one by one, single topic, put it in the closet, move on to the next topic. That's how we're going to do this.
Matt Dixon 8:43
The first topic that we're going to discuss today, as it pertains to off season, is strength. So, right now, many of you guys are finishing racing. Maybe you've just finished your last race of the season, or perhaps you're extending into October, even November, and a few of you even scraping through races into early December. Well, if your body feels a little bit beaten up after this long season, let me tell you something: strength is the answer. And if you've gone through this season and for one reason or another you've had to navigate a niggle or some injury, strength is the answer. And if you want to go faster next year without falling apart in the back half of your 70.3 or Ironman run or marathon run, strength is the answer too. In other words, the bottom line: when you strip it all away, when it comes to off season, and you think about your dartboard of performance. Strength is your bullseye. In off season, it's not a supplement. A critical supplement throughout the year. In off season, it's not a supplement. Now, what I'm not suggesting here is that therefore, right now, you need to go and get a membership to Gold's Gym because it's time. For you to become a bodybuilder, it's not.
Matt Dixon 10:02
It also doesn't mean that you have to be lifting weights four times a week. What it does mean is that you're committing to, and when I mean commitment, it's not waiting for motivation. It's I'm committing. I'm rolling on this. I'm committing to two sessions a week. That those are the things because it's the bullseye you prioritize, even if life gets busy, and something else has to give for you triathletes. Swim, a bike, or a run in off season. Strength is the bullseye. Okay, you don't need three to four sessions a week to get the results that you want as an endurance athlete, and so two really good sessions a week is the bullseye. Two little caveats to that: if you're a woman, particularly a woman over 40, and if you're a more mature athlete, this might be the time of the year that you really anchor on three solid sessions a week. Also, if you have the luxury of time sneaking in supplementary sessions where you're focusing on mobility, core strength, and stability-15 to 20 minutes. The more, the merrier on that. But from a resistance training standpoint, as an endurance athlete, for the majority, two big sessions a week. Alrighty, I really want you to lock in, and you want to unlock over the course of the coming months, not next two weeks. I want you to unlock consistency. How long are those sessions?
Matt Dixon 11:30
Well, you want to have them ideally somewhere between 30 to 40 minutes. You can go up to 60 minutes, but 30 to more 40 minutes you can get a lot in, and that can include your warm up. Alrighty. So for folks that are really busy, the reason that we recommend 30 or 40 minutes is we want you to nail them consistently. And if I ask for 6075, minutes, you're going to start to find reasons why to skip them. And instead, go and do it. So what should you be doing? You're an endurance athlete. Maybe you should be doing light reps and doing 60, 70, 80 reps afterwards. After all, we want to tone the body. No, it's the reverse. We want you to progress. Firstly, we want to start from your start line, and make sure that you master the movements. But also, as your body can absorb and you can do it safely, I'll strip all the varnish away. You should lift heavy. So often endurance athletes default to light weights, high reps. Off season is the time to lift heavy with great form, good posture, and build strength and power. Why does that matter? What does it do for us as an endurance athlete? Well, firstly, it's really, really good for our health. It's really, really good for stress processing, functional living. In other words, we can play with our kids and grandkids. We can throw the luggage in the overhead. We can walk upstairs with holding onto the railing, it's really good for all of that stuff. It's really, really good for body composition. We're going to talk about that next. It's really good for your hormonal management.
Matt Dixon 13:10
It's really good for brain function. We need to lift heavy things, but it also has an additive benefit to actually your running and riding performance. All of the research shows this now. When we lift heavy, it has a direct impact on both your durability as an athlete and also your running economy. Now, my analogy for economy is always your miles per gallon as an automobile. It's not just about the size of your engine is how economical that engine is. How can we lower cost and strength training has a direct a direct correlation to boosting running economy. That's a huge part if you're looking to hold good form under fatigue in a half marathon or a marathon or an Ironman, or a half Ironman, it's really, really key, and so we have a two-pronged benefit. Firstly, it's a massive impact on laying the foundation for power production, running economy, and durability to go fast. Secondly, it's just great for you as a human being: daily function, body composition, stress processing, and you just becoming a better athlete, and so this is the time when you're not chasing speed, power, fitness, Ironman readiness, marathon readiness, etc. When you're not actually chasing that, you can focus on the dance stuff. Then we can build it in, and as the endurance focus goes up, and as you start training for races, it can become more supplementary while also being a critical supplement that it is.
Matt Dixon 14:50
Alrighty, so when you strip all this away and we think about strength training, it's not that if you strength train consistent. In off season, then you're good to net to go next year, and you can stop. Instead, it's I'm anchoring the habit right now in off season to set the stage for a year round focus on strength. So this is your chance to actually learn how to do the exercises, integrate strength into your routine, enjoy it, and reap the long-term benefits. Now we know that we have many people that listen to this show that are either self-coached or coached by other coaches, and so I do want to mention one thing. We've talked about this being a great time to join Purple Patch, and it is. It's true. Okay, great, but also we really respect people that are on their own journey, and we really love other coaches doing good work with their athletes. You should have a really clear conversation with your coach if you're coached with them, and ask them their expertise around strength training, because the vast majority of endurance coaches out there are not necessarily experts in strength, and so they'll often default to just YouTube exercises or just throwing a little bit of court or just making it up. We do have a standalone strength program that's specifically designed for endurance athletes that you can integrate into your own training. Okay, so we can integrate it into your training peaks. You can go year round, and it'll include all of our off season strength. It will include progression all the way through, including race build strength training that you can supplement. So you and your coach can supplement it into your program without diluting at all their coaching philosophy. If you'd like to do that, it's all video-based, so you get guided along in the exercises.
Matt Dixon 16:43
You can do it from anywhere. It's designed to be done in a gym or at home with very minimal equipment, and it really is an anchor point for you to be successful. So, if you're interested in that, feel free to reach out to us. Info at purplepatchfitness. com. You can also head to the website, head to strength training, and you can download it. I think of the Tom I led. It's like 54 bucks a month or something like that. It's very, very affordable and really high value for standalone endurance athletes that are not part of the Purple Patch ecosystem. If you are joining Purple Patch and you're a one-to-one coach, you're on any of our squads. That strength program is integrated, and of course, if you're one-to-one, then tailored and managed by your individual coach. So that's the headline news, but that's the discussion point on strength. If you have any questions at all, feel free to reach out at any time. No worries at all. Topic number one down. Let's talk about topic number two. This is a big one, body composition.
Matt Dixon 17:43
Now, you might wonder why am I talking about body composition when we're heading into the holidays and off season? We want to make a little bit of a step back here because one of the least favorite phrases that I have, and I have, by the way, after too many years of coaching, quite a few phrases that I don't like. I don't like less is more. I think that sends people down the path. I also don't like Times New Roman font. I don't like grown men that ride razor scooters. I have a lot of very strange things I don't like, but I really don't like chasing race weight, because those two things of getting ready for race performance and then deliberately trying to drop weight in the pursuit of going faster are like two trains going in opposite directions. Nothing good can happen, and so the reason we talk about off season and we think about body composition. Let's take a step back and mark this a little bit. Okay, you can make nutritional and health changes at any time of the year. So off season isn't the only time to do this, but it's a wonderful time to focus on these types of elements where we're building habits around good hydration, good fueling, good nutrition, when we don't have a myriad of other things that are filling our brain, we only have a certain amount, a certain amount of willpower as a human being and the ability to focus on things, particularly when we've got life's non-negotiables and commitments, and probably work non-negotiables and commitments, etc. But if you're in the height of getting ready for a big race, you're thinking about your training, managing fatigue, probably some prehab and and and post rehabilitation. You're thinking about your race strategy. You're thinking about equipment. You're talking about race fueling and nutrition.
Matt Dixon 19:43
So there is already so much information in there, and your body is under the highest physiological load of the whole year. Fatigue is creeping, and you're managing that fatigue so you can stay fit but fresh, and adding in a shift in behaviors around how you. Is not really an ideal time, and so now we remove a lot of that friction. Right now, you don't need to be thinking about race strategy and off season. Right now, you don't need to be thinking about getting fitter, stronger, more powerful. Right now, you don't need to be training as much, and so this opens up the door of opportunity to say, "Hey, this is a wonderful time when the mind isn't overloaded, the body isn't under the same physiological strain that we can anchor in some really good practices around nutrition and fueling. It's a really key part, and a big part of this is also from a physiological standpoint. When training stress is lower, it's actually an opportunity where the body has a much greater chance of feeling the positive impacts of the nutritional changes that you're making, because the body isn't always thirstily demanding fuel, fuel, fuel, fuel, fuel, and in fact, one of the biggest mistakes of endurance athletes is under fueling relative to training demands, and so when we remove the training load as much, the body's actually got an opportunity to say, you know what, I'm pretty good right now. I'm not risking low energy availability.
Matt Dixon 21:17
I'm not risking injury and burnout. I'm not trying to build my race fitness, and so therefore I have the chance to actually build good habits and reap the benefits. So off season is counterintuitive to many. Very much a great opportunity to do this. Now, how do you tackle this? How do you go about it? Well, the first thing I'd say is I would reach out for real expert advice and support. The best team I think in the world of endurance sports that are fantastic at this are fuel in Scott, Megan, and the team absolutely fantastic. They do projects around body composition in off season, and they are great partners of ours. They're fantastic. If you're interested in fuel in, and then just head to the nutrition section of the Purple Patch website. They're just the reason that we endorse them is we love them, we trust them. Most of our athletes use and leverage their services. There's no skin off my back. If you have a great local nutritional expert, fantastic. Leverage them.
Matt Dixon 22:24
This isn't a financial play for us. This is an athlete getting better and healthier play. That's what we're looking for. We can always talk to you about info at purplepatchfitness. com as well. But that's the first thing I'd say. But beyond that, general counsel and advice on nutrition and fueling is firstly there is no one size fits all approach to this, alrighty, and a lot of it depends on where you need to make the change. Some athletes are under eating protein; it's very common, and we see athletes that are consuming less than 50 or 60 grams of protein and radically increasing that can create a bedrock and a foundation of health. The baseline that we should be consuming on a day-to-day basis, the baseline, is north of 100 grams. But for someone my size, 195 pounds, I'm up there close to 200 grams of a day of protein, and I want to spread that over three good meals and snacks outside. My son's 140 pounds, 14 years of age. He should be eating close to 150 grams, if not 160, because he's a big training athlete now. And so the the rhythm goes along, one gram per pound. That's something that you might want to anchor in and build as a foundational practice in off season. Are you under hydrating? When you're under hydrating, one of the catalysts for that is that you tend to get cravings, cravings for sugary foods. Those foods that you take and are not necessarily the best thing for us, and also create energy crashes and create big insulin spikes as well. So is hydration a part of it? Are you under fueling post workout? So do does that throw off the nutrition for the rest of the day? And are you just simply not eating with intention and not winning your nutrition on a day to day basis? The point is that the first step is to do an assessment. Now, if you're really smart, you do an assessment with yourself, a little bit of reflection, and/or your coach if you have a coach. But I would really lean into a nutritional expert here, a dietitian or sports nutritionist that really understands the key things for you to focus on. If you're a Purple Patch athlete, we can help you with that. Okay, very simply, we always help our athletes with this.
Matt Dixon 24:49
Happy to have a discussion, map it through, and say, okay, it's not just oh, I'm going to focus on nutrition. I'm going to get limit my calories. It's building really good practices that create. Foundation of really good eating, that we can have the opportunity when you're under less training stress, that then you can sustain over the course of your training goal. The other part of it is just like any big goal, we want to focus on your daily actions that are going to move the needle. The only way you can identify those is understanding where you're going in the first place. So if anything's really challenging for you, perhaps overwhelming with the big topic, an emotional topic of nutrition, what I would encourage always encourage people to do is say, let's start really small. Let's start with one or two practices that are very attainable, and let's see where you go. So, if you're really aware that you're under-consuming protein relative to your needs, start there. If you're really aware that fruits and vegetables often take a back seat, and then get a scorecard, and over the course of every week, see if you can score a total of 30 different fruits and vegetables. That sounds like a lot. It is over the course of the week, so don't get caught in the broccoli and the Brussels sprout rut. That's what our family tends to get caught in. You want to have everything: pomegranate seeds, tangerines, grapes, berries, bananas, asparagus, broccoli. Everything get 30 different kinds every week. That's a great game. That might help you feel better. And just like strength above, what you talk about, this is one for the change you make in off season. That then you have the bedrock. That when you go into training game with real purpose and intention, and the and the drive starts to increase, training stress starts to increase. That's where you keep that bedrock, and you just layer on more and more carbohydrate, and hey, you're off to the races.
Matt Dixon 26:47
So that's how we focus on nutrition. The third topic today, one of my favorites, run injury resistance. Very trendy word right now. Durability. I tell you what: How many athletes decide to train for a marathon and end up getting injured? Well, I know the stats on it. Actually, it's more than a third. So, three to four out of 10 athletes that decide to enter a marathon end up with a debilitating injury. It's frustrating, yeah. This is a big challenge. Running is a weight-bearing exercise. Two feet off the ground, technically, with more than your body weight. In fact, two to three times your body weight going into the ground and reverberating up through the lower legs, through to the hips and low back every single step. So, it's no wonder that injuries are a part of the equation for so many athletes. But we can break the injury cycle. We can become an athlete that can actually handle higher running volume. That's great. Now we get questions about this all the time at this part of the year, but there is not. You don't need to walk around and say, "I just get injuries. I'm injury prone. There is a genetic, or maybe developmental through our childhoods of how we sit, walk, hike, do other sports, whatever it might be. There are some athletes that tend to be more injury prone. There are other athletes that tend to be more resistant to injuries. That's a truth, but that doesn't mean you're designated and you're stuck in there for the rest of your life. You can become more injury prone if you ignore the good stuff that you need to be doing, and you can certainly break the cycle. And so, if you are injury pro, put a marker in right now: October, November, December into January.
Matt Dixon 28:51
This is the time. Your overall mission is by February. You could sit here and quietly, simply say, "You know what? I could go and do whatever I want. I could go and do a half Ironman. I could go and run a marathon. I could go and run a 50-mile trail running race. I could go and do whatever I want, and I know I can do it with pretty good confidence. I'm not to get injured from the training. That's success. That's off season. That's breaking the running cycle. That's what we're trying to do universally for every athlete in off season. I'm trying to build a body that's ready for next season, ready to absorb the training for whatever you're getting ready to do, and enable you to enjoy the journey, be successful, get faster, and not get frustrated with injuries. It's key, and so this is the time to do it. It's very difficult to shift that body that you're playing with while also preparing for a race. So this is the time. Okay, you don't need to train for running races. Join a. Track club or anything else. What we need to do is have a multi-month patient journey. That when we launch into the new year, you've got a chassis, a musculoskeletal system that is ready to absorb training load in a really healthy and successful way. So here's a few guidelines in off season, and if you're interested in this one and you want to unpack it a little bit more, just set up a complimentary consultation. We're happy to talk to you and how to do it on your own. Okay, just reach out to us. It's no problem. Firstly, the vast majority of people you can run most days a week. Frequency is a gift of this, but your runs want to be pretty short, easy conversational effort. Most people, particularly if they're injured, including walk breaks, and some of those runs can be hill-based walking or hiking, and so you might be on a treadmill against a grade walking, and that counts as a run. But I want to load muscles, tendons, ligaments. I want to load almost every day, probably six days a week. The vast majority of it can be very easy, okay? Particularly when you start off season, so you can do most of your running at a conversational, easy pace, and that's really nice because it's more enjoyable. Okay, pain is not a barometer of success here, and it's also better at processing your stress from other other parts of life, and so that's really easy.
Matt Dixon 31:39
And then we want to infuse what I call some tech-based speed. So we want to teach the body to run faster with good form. But whenever you hear fast, many people balance that with hard. Bring out the bucket I'm going to throw up. It's not that, okay? It's not running hard. I'm talking about short intervals where you are graceful like a ballerina. You are supple, and you're hitting snappy, very very fast strides. Light on the feet, bouncing and rebounding off the ground hard and short enough that there isn't any breakdown in form, or any real cardiovascular distress. We're not training the heart and lungs. This is not threshold type work. We're training the rebound and power of the foot hitting the ground and creating durability. So how long is this? This is things like 10 to 15 seconds going fast uphill, not 3040, 50 seconds. 10 to 15 seconds. This is including 1015, seconds flash, and then easy between. Every one of them, a masterpiece done really, really well. Okay, now a couple of things to add to this, just to give you some color. It is okay to have one, two, or three of the runs a little bit longer, and so you might do some trail running or trail hiking and running, where you go a little bit over distance. You do it in rugged road off an ideally and softer surface. That's really good. It's really good for stability.
Matt Dixon 33:23
It's really good for the joy of life and the joy of running. We can include some of the runs that are stand alone that start to move up to 3040, 5060, minutes. That's okay. All very easy on walk breaks, and also not all of your runs need to be stand alone. So you could do a 10-minute run off of some strength, or a 10 to 15-minute run off of a bike, or even after a swim. That's one of your runs of the day. So there's a way to weave this in, where at least most days of the week you're touching running, without ever coming home going, goodness me, that was hard, and so that's how we do a running project. And the way you want to think about it is your barometer of success on all of this running training is that you don't really care about your running performance when you're doing this. We're not trying to get fitter faster. That's not what we're looking to do. I don't care how fast you're running these runs. I'm not looking to do assessments to see if your 10k pace is getting faster. It's none of that. What we're doing is preparing the body to absorb run training successfully, and so this is the time that we can decompress on: Am I getting faster as an athlete, and say I'm preparing to become an athlete.
Matt Dixon 34:43
And when you do that, what actually occurs is your durability builds almost like an envelope, and fitness comes behind you and whacks you around the back of the head. Because when you do start to turn it up in the new year, your body is ready, and you go, I'm used to this. And you actually feel great. That's why so many of our athletes race really well in the early season. It's because they're healthy and they've actually been doing some foundational work. It's actually like, wow, I'm actually more tissue resilient than I realized. That's the off season, right there. Okay. All righty, last one that we're going to be talking about here. This is the importance of off season in broader life, and I hate to do this to you folks, but it's going to be a cautionary tale. It's a little different, and I saved it to the end on purpose because this is especially relevant for you if number one, you're unsure how to justify following a structured plan, and over the mat next few weeks, you just say, "You know what? I just need a break. I just need a break. Or you're thinking to yourself, "So far out of 2027, this just feels unnecessary. Guess what? I've seen it hundreds. No, no, I've seen this 1000s of times. So many athletes. It's a common recurring theme. You're like, you know what? I'm going to stay exercising and structured.
Matt Dixon 36:07
I'm going to go invest in other parts of my life, and I feel liberated because I can just have more time. And then, butter bing, it backfires. You lose an anchor key for your performance across all of broader life, here's the key thing, and where this lesson really magnified itself, by the way, was and when we don't want to go back in our memory, I know was in COVID when that first happened, and everything shut down. What started to occur is people had an absolute implosion of anxiety, and it was incredibly destabilizing for all of us because we lost the framework and structure of our life. Well, guess what? Your sport can create an incredibly powerful and useful structure of how you organize your life, and so it creates a nice framework for you to be really successful in the other aspects of life that we go through, and so we see this all the time where people believe that they're actually going to remove the overhead of a structured training plan, and then going to say, "I'm going to stay exercising, and then after a week or two, they're like goodness me, I felt just absolutely destabilized.
Matt Dixon 37:26
It's the old adage: if you want something done, give it to a busy person. Here's the key catalyst for this: maintaining some structure, even if your total training hours are reduced by 3040, 50% is absolutely key to actually drive a positive impact on your energy, your cognitive function, and your decision making, your processing of stress, your mood, and even your sleep quality, and the research backs me up on this. When we have programmed, deliberate, structured exercise and training, people are more effective. Now, the people that we coach who excel in sports and in life quite often very busy in business. Business get this-they leverage the structure of training to help them be effective in other parts of their life. Those people, guess what the common theme is? They're highly coachable. So when they're unsure about how to make it all work, they don't just say, "What I'm going to step away. This is broken. Actually, reach out for help and say, "Hang on, how am I doing this? Because I really need to focus on family. I need to focus on my work priorities. But I understand that this has an important framework component of my life, and it's not quite working right now. How do we fix it? And so, as you think about if you're finishing this year and you're getting ready for the off season and you're desperate for it to come, I get it and it's important. But let me give you a call to action. Please, please, please keep a framework in place. Don't go rogue, because I see it time and time again, and it backfires on every single person I see. And those people come back and they say, "I'm detrained. I'm out of shape. It's time to get back on the wagon. I've got some goals I've entered in Oceanside, and then what happens? They throttle too quickly. They get injured and they get frustrated. And so now is the time to do this, where you keep the framework this year, but you also give yourself a break.
Matt Dixon 39:34
You can have both. All right, your team. Those are the four big subjects for me, Purple Patch Off Season. Mats has told me that people have been emailing in asking what the difference is between Off Season and Tri Squad. So let me clarify it. Off season is simply the time of the year and the training block that we're entering on our Tri Squad program. So the program is the program. We have athletes in tri squad. We athletes that are coached individually one to one, but under there, everyone, unless they're training for something upside down in another part of the world, everybody is moving into off season. It's the phase of training, and we like to put a start line so we can keep as many people together as possible. September the 28th. Alrighty. Now for folks that are still racing, what we then do is hand hold and integrate into them after their race. So we've got a whole bunch of athletes doing Ironman California, for example. That's in middle end of October.
Matt Dixon 40:38
We embed them into the program, or of course, back into their one-to-one coaches do it individually at the end of October, and so you can join at any time. But September the 28th is when we officially start. So if you join right around now, what we can do is onboard you with a coaching conversation, set you up, set your goals and strategy for you, make sure all the systems are in place and you're ready to go. Alrighty. So as also as always, if you're interested in a strategy call to talk through any of your training, we're happy to help you. Info at Purple Patch Fitness. And before I let you go, I just want to say, have a great week. Enjoy it. Share this with friends if you think that they might find it helpful. And as ever, a positive review is also always graciously appreciated. All right, team, take care. We'll see you next time. Cheers, guys!
Matt Dixon 41:28
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, strength training, body composition, durability, run injury, nutrition, fueling, hydration, protein intake, resistance training, muscle health, habit building, training structure, mental health, athletic potential