Episode 247: Resetting the Barometer of Success - The Right Goals for the Biggest Gains in 2023
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What does success look like to you in the coming year? For many athletes, the answer to that question is often anchored in a single metric: Speed.
We all want success, hope to get faster, and want to improve, but without a focused approach, it’s easy to lose sight of what you’re trying to achieve and how to achieve it. The dogged pursuit of a faster finish can lead to frustration and even injury, but taking a step back to see the bigger picture can help accelerate your progress and unlock the right training recipe for you.
With a new year looming, now is the time to reframe your goals and define success. In today’s episode, Matt outlines how to broaden your perspective in order to reset your barometer of success and identify the right goals for you to hit your biggest performance gains next season.
(2:05) "When we think about training for something, it's natural for athletes to just get drawn into faster, faster, faster, qualification, podiums, wins, whatever the metric might be... But what if we broaden our perspective on what this journey is all about? How about we think about a different way of progression, one in which you can always feel rewarded, you can always get something out of the effort that you put in, you can feel like you're progressing? Oh, and on top of it, ultimately, you end up getting faster and faster and faster than you can probably ever imagine."
In this episode, Matt discusses:
Building a Sustainable Training Recipe
Avoiding Injury
Upskilling Knowledge and Understanding
Improving Craft and Technique
Building Good Habits Around Nutrition and Recovery
The purpose of this episode is to assist you in reframing your goals to help improve focus, energy, health, and happiness in sport and broader life.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 03:43 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
03:50 - 06:17 - Matt's News-ings
06:25 - 42:54 - The Meat and Potatoes - Episode 247: Resetting the Barometer of Success - The Right Goals for the Biggest Gains in 2023
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Full Transcript
Matt Dixon 00:00
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.
Matt Dixon 00:21
Hey, folks. Matt Dixon again, and let's talk a little bit about InsideTracker. Because as we edge towards the holidays, it's a fantastic time to get a little bit grounded, start to set yourself up for a great year of performance over the course of the coming year. And one of the ways to do that is to get really precise in your focus around your nutrition, your training habits, maybe some potential supplements that you might take. But how do you know what your best approach is? I'll tell you what, it's not about just going to the store and getting a multivitamin. No, the way that we do it is we take a look inside, by gathering your biometrics and aligning them with the assessment, analysis, and recommendations from the team at InsideTracker, we get really precise with our athletes and you can too, it's a wonderful route for you to start to ensure that you can build your best performance, whatever your goals are, on a platform of health. All you have to do is head to insidetracker.com/purplepatch and we've even got a magic code for you. It's Purple Patch pro 20, that's Purple Patch Pro two zero, and you get 20% off everything at the store. Alright, with that, let's get on with the show. It's good one today, we're gonna get really grounded.
Matt Dixon 01:40
And welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast as ever, your host, Matt Dixon. And today, I want to get grounded, I want to get aligned on the vision, the mindset that can set you up to not only thrive, to achieve the goals that you want to achieve but also to ensure that you have fun doing it, that it amplifies the broader perspective of life. When we think about training for something, it's natural for athletes to just get drawn into faster, faster, faster, qualification, podiums, wins, whatever the metric might be. And the mindset for many athletes is well, it's tailored by what the media has told us, the more you put in, the more you get out. Well, that's kind of true. But the dirty secret is that progression is never linear, at least in the metric space. You are sure to set about achieving a lot of great success, but at the same time, you're going to have some pitfalls. You're going to have some adversity, you're going to have obstacles that you have to overcome. But what if we broaden our perspective on what this journey is all about? How about we think about a different way of progression, one in which you can always feel rewarded, you can always get something out of the effort that you put in, you can feel like you're progressing Oh, and on top of it, ultimately, you end up getting faster and faster and faster than you can probably ever imagine. That's what I'm talking about today. The mindset of being grounded when it comes to achieving your goals. If you align with a smart performance mindset, I promise you that you can set yourself up to achieve massive rewards, and also truly enjoy the performance journey. So today, what I want to do is tell you how. I want to help you remove the shackles of expectations while enabling you to go through the ceiling that you never thought was possible. And that's what we're doing today. But just before we get cracking, I do just want to do a very quick snippet. It's time to bring back Matt's News-ings.
Matt Dixon 03:50
Yes folks Max News-ings. We haven't had this for a couple of weeks now, but I did want to highlight something because this is the time of the year when athletes across the world are thinking about 2023 goals. They are setting up their season. They are always also often contemplating - Who is the right team? Who is the right leadership? What coach should I work with? Is there a transition of coaching? Should I maybe get a coach for the first time? And of course, I highly recommend that you consider Purple Patch. Because if you're listening to the show, we're probably quite aligned in mindset in spirit what we're looking to get out. And ultimately that's integrating sport into a time-starved life so that you not only excel achieve, know your goals but also build a really robust platform of health and amplify the version of yourself that you are at life work friends, and family. And we can do that in many different ways. And between now and the end of the year we've got a rather lovely special and that is join any of our squad programs, we have running squad, we have cycling squad, we have of course triathlon squad to set us out on the journey And if you're already coached, you can even join just our video strength-based programming, yes, standalone, strength and conditioning to hop on and act as your backbone of your endurance journey. And if you participate and get involved before the end of the year, we're going to add on some consultations for you, you can get a free personalized one-to-one consultation, very good value, and help you set out your season plan so that you can really take advantage of us the Purple Pppatch coaches, helping you frame your journey and making sure that you are focusing on the good things, it's all at the website, all you have to do is go and set up and sign up. And of course, what you can do as well. If you'd rather have a conversation to see if Purple Patch is up for you, we're happy to set that up. It's complimentary, and 15 or 20 minutes to understand your situation and your needs, and we can guide you to the best program. All you need to do is head to purplepatchfitness.com, or of course, email us and we'll just set up a complimentary and of course no pressure call that's at info@purplepatchfitness.com. All right, guys, let's hold hands. This is a good day today. Barry, we're going to let you off the ukulele. We're not doing word of the week. But what we are going to do is start to think about our holiday dinners because it's The Meat and Potatoes
Matt Dixon 06:25
Yes guys, it is the meat and potatoes. We're starting to think about setting up performance in 2023. We are starting to think about setting up goals and how you should do that. And you might even be considering what is the right coach or program for you. So rather than just providing education today, I'm going to build the whole of today's discussion, which I think will emerge to be highly educational, around the mindset that you should take and how you should measure your success over the course of the coming year by simply telling you a story. So if you'd like to get more comfortable, pause the podcast go, and pop your pajamas on you can come and sit on my knee because I am going to tell you a story about Carl. Now Carl is a athlete of mine, and we started to work with other with each other just six months ago in June. And I've got to say Carl is a super guy, I really enjoy working with him. It's been a rewarding relationship so far. And as many of my athletes are that I work with on a one-to-one basis, he's time-starve, he's juggling the many logistical stresses that most of us face and he's got a very busy job. He even has some business travel. He's got a family with two young kids and of course at the same time, he's highly ambitious in his sport, which happens to be triathlon. If we want to understand the story a little bit about Carl, we need to take a step back, almost pre Purple Patch and think about some of the logistical challenges maybe some of the baggage that he brought to this coaching relationship because what's happened over the last six months is really an evolution not just of performance, which has started to evolve and improve, but also the way that he approaches and sees the sport. And I'm hoping that his story can be a litmus catalyst for you to start to take a similar journey for yourself. And so let's look back at the old Carl. Now, Carl is undisputedly a very smart guy, but when he came to Purple Patch, he was absolutely frustrated with his lack of progression. He had completed five Half Ironman distance races, which by the way, is a good accomplishment in itself within the context of his life, and those five races all had some ups, had quite a few downs and throughout the whole journey in training and in racing, he was consistently setback with niggles, injuries, devastating cramps and much more. And so he never really got a runway of consistency. He was never really fluidly training and in turn never really felt like he had any sort of performance predictability, as I like to call it. Now throughout this training, as soon as I started to work with Carl, it became very clear as well that he was consistently under-fueled. And the reason for that is he acknowledged is he was chasing trying to get lighter. He had in his mind a theoretical race weight that he believed if he could train really, really hard and at the same time get lighter and lighter and lighter, retain and improve power and speed while having a lighter chassis to actually have to drive and then, of course, the results would be absolutely huge. But ultimately, as we're going to find out that was not the case and it never really is the case. And so, as he met his five Ironman - Half Ironman races every single time he approached with hope and a real belief in what his potential could be, but ultimately his race day performance didn't match his theoretical or believed trained potential. And of course, that becomes really frustrating. And so as he went along his journey, just like a bull in a china shop, Carl races, and really just charged at the races. This one has to be better. He didn't really have any understanding or thought process around really strategic pacing.
Matt Dixon 10:26
He certainly had never even considered terrain management, how he was riding on his bike, different muscle recruitment, even his fueling, and hydration plan was a little haphazard at best. It didn't have any raced craft behind it, he had the very simple mindset, which is common, which is I'm going to put in a whole bunch of work, I'm going to dedicate my life to this and what should come out is the reward for that work, the more you put in, the more you get out. And endurance sports, ultimately, and maybe, unfortunately, are a little bit more complex. It's not really that journey. And so of course, Carl, and this is the important part of this - all of this wrapped up where his barometer of success, how he measured success, was relatively narrow and simple, but all too common. And that's - did I go faster in each discipline, and overall? And so it was all about speed return. Now, each one of his races brought different challenges. He had a downriver swim in one of his half Ironmans. One was in open water in the open sea. The rest of them were in lakes, he had some flat races, some hilly races, some cooler races, some hot races, but to Carl, it was, "Am I getting faster?", period. That's what I want to measure. That's the measurable data and that's what I'm looking for. And his only tool of measurement to look at this outside of his race results was pure data. Is my FTP, my Functional Threshold rising? What's my max power? What can I hold at a sustainable pace? Results, results, results.
Matt Dixon 12:03
And yet I get it. Okay, this is really common. And yes, we want success. We all want that. We hope to get faster and it should be a part of the equation. You want to improve and that's absolutely appropriate. And the dirty truth is that if you want to achieve your goals, especially if you're looking beyond just completion, and then we must get faster. And so that is a central part of goal setting and performance measurement. So let's not dilute that. Let's not make a claim that that's not an important result that we're chasing. And in fact, it is, of course, naturally a big reason that anyone might choose to engage in a coach because they want that coach with expertise with experience across broad populations to help them individually ultimately get faster. But that's not the end of the game. And like Carl's journey, while it was ambitious, he ultimately went about this faster, faster, faster approach with a highly regimented approach. He absolutely suffocated the joy out of the journey. His hobby ultimately was becoming a second job. And his confidence in himself, while bullish at the start, had slowly ebbed away, to becoming mediocre to low. This was a real challenge for him, it was harder. I thought, if I just worked hard and dedicated myself I was gonna get faster. And so therefore every race became a gorilla, a gorilla that he had to fight. This was a test, was it working? I'm sure many of you guys watching or listening can align with that, can understand that, that racing became not something to look forward to, but a test of almost his self-worth. So what does all of that really mean? Well, as we sit here now, six months later, in December, Carl and I are six months, half a year into the performance journey, which in the big picture actually is not very long. And he has now just recently completed his sixth Half Ironman distance race. And the results were good objectively. He moved up in his typical age group rankings. In fact, he moved up into the top 25th percentile, and that's really good for Carl. Overall, his general improvement, his race, finish time, improves 17%. That's measurable, of course, relative to his faster prior race. So that's great. But if we went to the days before the race, Carl had completed some really, really good training in and inside, he felt like he could go even faster. He believed to himself that he could break five hours in this thing. He ultimately went five hours and 18 minutes But this was new Carl. Old call would have been anchored to pass, fail, faster, slower 4:59, or bust. But Carlos actually evolved in what the litmus of his success is. And that's what I want to unpack here.
Matt Dixon 15:18
Because when I started coaching Carl, Carl was undoubtedly in a rut, it's pretty clear from looking back as we just did. He was frustrated with his gains, he was absolutely obsessed with unlocking his training recipe. He was cycling through injuries, as well as fatigue. And he had an almost religious approach to eating - lighter, lighter, lighter. And he certainly didn't draw any of the benefits that I like to talk about as some of the most powerful components of the sporting journey. He wasn't achieving improved focus in the workplace, heightened energy, happiness in broader life. All he was focused on is getting faster, getting faster. It was a mechanical joy at best. And so when we started coaching, I said to Cole, what would you like to accomplish? And very quickly, the first phrase of the first thoughts out of his mouth was, okay, I've got a December Half Ironman, and what I want to do is break five hours, very simple. And you might say, yeah, that's objective, I want to go under five hours. I haven't been anywhere near to that so far. But that's my goal. That's what success means to me. And so I paused. And I asked Carl, why do you do this sport? What are you looking to achieve out of this? Forget about the times for a minute. Why do you actually do this? What do you get out of it? What do you hope to get out of it ultimately? And after some thought and consideration, Carl came up with a list of four main things, we filtered it down - there were about 20 but he did ramble a little bit.
Matt Dixon 16:57
And the four main things was that number one, he just absolutely loved the challenge, the competition, the whole puzzle of it all. The second thing is that he really loved the multi-sport element of triathlon. Because while he was a pretty strong bike rider and a pretty good runner, swimming was his weakness, and he really liked the multidisciplinary approach. He thought it broadened his perspective, and it really created a performance challenge for him to tap into. And so it was very clear that he just loved the fabric of the sport. The third element of why he did it was more simple. And that's that he felt like he could really be a good role model to his kids, that taking on tough challenges and committing to something in which you can get rewards, it's a good thing, it's a healthy thing to go for. So he wants to be a little bit of a role model. And then finally, he acknowledged and really believed in his role professionally, as well as in broader life, that being really fit and healthy is absolutely essential for him to thrive across those areas. And so it was a performance enhancement tool outside of the sport. So now, we were getting somewhere. Now we were starting to move the performance needle. And so I suggested that with Carl we bought, build the coaching journey around these four elements. You like the challenge, and you want to upskill and get smarter, you love triathlon - the multidisciplinary approach of it all. You want to be a great role model, and you want to achieve the benefits that go well beyond just getting faster. You want to actually amplify health build a platform of performance for yourself and your own other endeavors in life. And so why don't we build it around those elements? Because the dirty truth is, and this is important, and many people don't realize this. The simple fact is in endurance sports and in many other things in life, your performance is never linear. It's not a direct relationship between the effort that you put in and the results that you achieve. There's always going to be obstacles setbacks, a little regression, sometimes for a magnitude of different things, particularly when we start colliding the sporting journey with the chaos and the demands of life. We're not building a bridge here. This is physiology, and we are playing a game of stress management. And so the goal is broader than that, to open it up and get progression over the longer term which of course can still achieve great results. So if that's the truth, it can be disheartening if your only measurement of success is linear progression in a pure performance standpoint, in just getting faster and faster. So we should take our lens I said to Carl, and while we can't measure all of those four elements, how much of a role model you truly are, how much there is a direct connection between your sporting journey and other life, it's still a really good consideration and way to look at things. We realize that results and speed is measurable. There are other elements that are factors of success. And so we still want speed. We're not diluting hopes, we're not lowering expectations here, but only focusing on that can be distracting. It can also be confidence-eroding and even limiting. And so I asked Carl to take on a short-term interventionist mindset, six months from June til December. And we were going to try and deploy a different approach as we went into that half Ironman. As I like to call it an intervention of sorts. No matter how the race was going to go. My hope was that for Carl, I wanted to try and build a platform of which he could get so many lessons and an evolved mindset, and some really consistent good value training, that at the end, as we record right now, he could have a platform to launch from for a bigger project as he went into the next year. And yes, of course, the journey always continues because the finish line of any race is never the finish line of your performance journey. And so over that six-month project, which he said he would go hand in hand with me and come on the journey, my hope was to achieve the following.
Matt Dixon 21:30
Now it's a list number one, I wanted him to build a recipe that was sustainable in his life. So I wanted to try and dilute the fact that this performance journey felt like a second job, and instead try and create consistency. Over the course of the six months, one huge factor of success was going to be to avoid all musculoskeletal injuries. Remember, he's always beset with niggles, I said, we want to remove those from the equation. And that means being a little bit more conservative on the training. For the first time in his performance journey - could you be six months injury free?The third element was to upskill. I wanted him to upskill in his knowledge and understanding of the training process, I wanted him to execute every workout as I intended. And I wanted him to start to build an understanding of how he could manage his training, and the fatigue that he was going to experience throughout that training, whether it came from the actual session or sessions themselves, or from a lack of sleep, or a deadline at work or a family crisis, whatever it might be, but start to build up his knowledge and autonomy of how to self manage.
Matt Dixon 22:50
The fourth element was craft, I wanted him to go on a journey to actually really improve how he was doing swim, bike run, terrain, management, environment, management, started to become aware outside of the pure metrics. And then finally, I wanted him to take on a journey where he was actually supporting the actual training with really good habits, particularly around nutrition and recovery, as I talked about, he was under-fueling and under-eating relative to training demands. So I wanted him to try and get to a place that he was eating suitably enough calories, that he could feel energetic and strong in his body, that it would help reduce the injury - list that we had before - that he had really positive daily energy, that he could show up to sessions ready to take on board the intervals or hard work that I surely would provide him. And he could start to really dial in an understanding of how he was going to approach fueling and hydration during a race. And so that was a huge platform for me. And those were the barometers and the anchor points of where we were going to distill or disperse his focus. That's a pretty big list. But it's actually not quite as daunting as it might sound. Because essentially, this broader perspective helped Carl to not only effectively prepare for his half Ironman, but it started to set the lens on what he should focus on for his future development and growth. Because we can't have Carl steal or rob from future Carl. We want to have the efforts now building in and evolving and being additive to future Carl. So if we summarize that in a more succinct way, it's pretty simple. Let's go back and just make it really snackable as it were.
Matt Dixon 24:46
Number one, I want to call over those six months to find his recipe so that his journey could feel more sustainable. Number two, I wanted him to become a smarter athlete, where he can elicit some control on what actually works for him. Number three, I tried to reduce friction, and of course, a lot of the frustration that comes with injury cycles and fatigue setbacks. Number four, I was hoping that he could develop his toolkit and understanding of how to use his fitness to get ultimate speed returns. And ultimately, I was making the connection for the bigger rewards truly trying to build a platform of health, energy, and an amplified life. So you want to know, now you're desperate, you're getting itchy in your pajamas? Aren't you what actually happened over the six months? Well, we didn't actually chase that original goal that he talked about five hours, five hours, five hours. We weren't anchoring success around percentage improvements. We focused on our list. And it was really, really targeted. Every single session that I prescribed, it had a purpose, I wrote a focus at the top, just as I do in every Purple Patch session. By the way, this is the intention of the workout. This is why we are doing this, it's important for you as an athlete to understand that. My goal was that Carl would execute to that purpose. And that might be doing intervals on a bike and hill repetitions where he was doing very strong, strong, challenging work at low cadence, while holding really good posture and being quiet in the upper body. On the flip side, it could be going on a really easy soul-filling, metric, free, joyous run in the woods. It's not just about purpose and going harder, it's actually sometimes going really easy and decompressing and allowing the session to be valuable for general cardiovascular and tissue and tissue resilience, but also at the same time, allowing him to decompress from the rigors of life. And so every session having a purpose and ensuring that Carl understood and executed to it. And we went through and went down our list in a very similar way. This is how you post-workout fuel. This is what you talk about with daily hydration. This is what you're doing for sleep management. And he committed and he stuck with all of the key habits that we talked about. He threw away the bathroom scales. He focused on feeling. Am I strong? Am I energized? Am I positive in my mindset? Am I producing good power in training? Those were the things and the measurements of validity, whether he was strong, but not necessarily light. Now, in addition to this, the final element, and maybe this is a Purple Patch special and secret sauce here. But Cole really leaned into an embraced our video coaching. He is geographically dispersed, meaning he doesn't live in San Francisco where I live. But he came and he embraced the video coaching, how to do the strength and conditioning properly, what to think about and how to sit with pedal stroke and posture while he was going through biking intervals, and the list goes on. He even joined us in an in-person camp. And he embraced the in-person coaching experience with myself in the Purple Patch coaching team. And in fact, and this is why Carl is a part of the story. He managed to break the obsession with pure power and pace. Instead, he started to focus on Yes, the metrics in the background, but also, and more importantly, feeling rhythm, terrain management, trying to yield speed from the effort that he put in. He kicked off a journey of how more than how much. He started to get smarter.
Matt Dixon 28:41
And the results of all of this were exactly what I hoped he stayed for six months injury free. That in itself is a success. Because we're starting to get something somewhere with his recipe. His training was incredibly consistent. He started to avoid the big pitfalls and peaks and valleys of fatigue. Instead, yes, he had fatigue but he also (inaudible), but it was much closer to the mean. He just locked it off consistently. And I started to realize that he was becoming smarter because he started to ask different questions. He started to report a sense of control, across training and of course life. And most importantly, you know what he started to have - fun. He started to enjoy the journey. He started to find reward. It wasn't a test. It wasn't a second job. He didn't obsess a tool about race weight, and I never asked him about weight because I never do with an athlete. We stopped talking about it. Simply building good habits and him getting the reward of feeling comfortable in his body, strong in his body, powerful, consistent in training, lack of fatigue, lack of injury. That's enough. Because out of that comes your superpower becomes belief. And that's the driver. And that's what happened with Carl. So he improved. On top of this, he got faster in training, swimming, biking, and running. They all improved, faster, faster, stronger. And here's the important part of his story. His race day performance, just a couple of weeks ago, it was good. Good G-U-D, I think that's how you spell it don't you? But neither Carl or I felt like it was a day that really knocked it out of the park. The truth is that Carl was right, his trained potential would have gotten very close at under five hours. And he was more than 15 minutes outside of that. So a year ago, Carl would have looked at that and thought this is just a pure failure. Despite the progression, remember, he was 17% improvement on his prior race day. But at the end of this race car was beaming, and rightly so. Because what we achieved was a huge success in the broader perspective, because now Carl, after a little break, can launch into 2023. And he has a platform of health. He has improved energy. He's smarter and has greater knowledge. He started the journey of improving his technique and skill, and the superpower of it all, the most important thing - He's confident. He believes.
Matt Dixon 31:40
And so what Car really did here is quite simple. It's what I like to say, a Purple Patch. He just embraced the journey. He took the long view. And he will, I promise you this, he will thrive. Because the broader perspective is the super fuel to it all. Now, I think that he can build off of these lessons. And I think he's got a much greater chance of staying healthy, energized, joyous, and progress in his race craft. And of course, in his training execution. And as he does that, he's going to be able to absorb more work, more challenging work. And as a byproduct, he's going to improve, but I think he's going to improve more than he could ever imagine. And that's it, folks. This is it. And that's why I wanted to tell you the story, because in the long term, at the end of the six months, he got faster, and that's good. But even if he hadn't have got faster, in the next two years, Carl is going to get faster than he could ever have imagined. I bet if I said to Carl, six months ago, what would you love to do? If you just close your eyes and say, how fast would you like to go? I bet he would say I would love to go under 4:45. I think Carl can go under 4:15. And I mean that sincerely. That's how good he is as an athlete. But ultimately, that's not the measure of success. And truthfully, that wouldn't be a success to go 4:13, an hour or more faster than he's been just a couple of weeks ago, if it will, it came at the detriment of the other components of life. And that's what success should be guys. This is it. And so what I want to do out, of Carl's story is try and finish with a little bit of lessons and perspective.
Matt Dixon 33:36
I want you to frame your journey ahead. In success terms. They say that this is the results business and it's kind of true, it is a results business. And in the world-class level, the litmus of success is in titles and championships. But is that really it? Isn't coaching about helping athletes maximize their performance potential without actually doing any harm? To ensure that even at the elite level, the athletic journey is one that is one of fulfillment of personal challenge and growth and leaves every single athlete evolved athletically but also as a human being. I believe that that is what high-quality coaching is. When my athletes finish their pro careers, I hope that they go on and still love their sports, participate in the sports because that in many ways is my job done. World-class performance can and should be achieved on a platform of health and your performance, You, well, assuming that you're not listening as a world-class athlete, you're not even chasing world titles. So you can benefit from the sporting journey in a broader set. You actually chase in many ways more.
Matt Dixon 34:52
And so I encourage you over the course of the coming weeks before we go into next year. Ask yourself why am I doing In the sport, you might be a little bit of a Carl, at least the old Carl. He told me that he wanted to break five hours. And you might be anchored on that. But I encourage you, just like Carl has just done, evolve and broaden your lens. Come up, and think about how you can improve, find your why. And then open up your perspective. Look, remember Carl loved the challenge but he also wanted to amplify performance in life and become a great role model. So by focusing here, he actually broke the frustrations that were holding him back on his speed. And so I would encourage you to think about success in a broader set of categories or buckets. You can think about it in these terms. Let's first start with what the main focus is - performance metrics. Yes, that is one of your goals, one of your success measurements, getting stronger, faster, fitter, etc. Great, that's number one. But number two, you can measure your success by improving your race craft, your tactics, your toolbox of skills, how you navigate terrain. And that's a really interesting intellectual journey. And it ebbs out - enables you to enjoy the different disciplines of your sport, whatever it is. You want to try and elicit a sense of control of yourself a little bit of autonomy. Do you start to actually learn about your training, so that you can understand what works three for you? So already, we've got three right in the box. Now, let's talk about upskilling, your habits, your sleep, your nutrition, your fueling, and hydration gets smarter around that not so that you achieve race weight, but so that you can super fuel your body, and you can get really, really good energy from it. You can look to try and see your measurement of success is not really quantifiable. But how much did I enjoy the journey? Am I loving it? Is this fun? Because you should be rewarded by taking on this challenge and committed by something that's really rewarded emotionally and really, really fun. The sixth component, am I developing confidence in myself? Am I starting to elicit some control over myself as an athlete? Am I starting to appreciate what it is right for me? Number seven, your role? Am I actually able, by taking on this journey over the course of this coming year, to actually amplify my role? This can be a very selfish and narrow endeavor, I want to get faster. Or you can actually amplify your actual role in this sport, am I able to help others, inspire others be a role model to develop a positive influence for the folks that you care about? That becomes incredibly rewarding. And if you become that person, that's a great reward in itself. And finally, am I able to develop over the course of the coming year, better resilience and adaptability, muscular skeletal resilience, breaking the injury cycles and the fatigue valleys that you might face, but also, emotional toolkits to help you overcome adversity, enable you to navigate and meet stressors, and thrive through them. Because this is the part of the journey that is sport, and life. And so you might as well improve in that asset. These are all buckets, where you can make measurable and identifiable gains and improvement. And with that, across those buckets, even if you have a bad day, you can look at it and find satisfaction and passion and reward. Even if there is a bad race along the day. Even if your sessions aren't quite what you hoped that they were, even if that you get to meet sickness a week out of your race. And so if you take on this, and you broaden your perspective, I today can give you a promise. If you listen today, and you're inspired, or at least if it slaps around the face a little bit and it forces you to pause and think I am going to leave today with a promise. If we have two athletes, we have Carl, who improved 17% objectively and finished his half Ironman with the bigger perspective. Or we had Carl B the retain the old narrow, the sledgehammer view, and still claw that very same 17%. 5:18 Half Ironman over six months, there is only one of those versions of Carl, who is going to be sitting here in a year's time, not only healthier, and happier, but much much faster. And you don't need me to tell you which version of Carl that is. And so if If you take this on board, and you apply the lessons and the perspective that I'm talking about right here, as you go into next year, I promise that you will be on your way to enjoying the journey more. And if you love it right now, that's super good news, because we are talking very aspirational love, you're going to get more awards greater rewards from the journey, you're going to actually have the gift of inspiring others along that way, you will become a magnet of hope and inspiration. And on top of it, you will find your very best performance. By getting fitter, stronger and faster, that will happen. I don't just believe it. I know it. That's what happens, folks. Because this is what we've been doing for the last 15 years. Yes, we've produced 450 Pro wins and podiums. We've had multiple, amateur and professional world champions. But more importantly, we have helped many, many more, find their perspective, their performance recipe, and their best performance within the context of life. And I hope that you find that part really appealing. I'm going to see you next time. Have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun. Enjoy your holiday parties. Take care.
Matt Dixon 41:22
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
carl, journey, race, faster, athletes, success, coaching, performance, training, life, patch, purple, improve, achieve, sport, mindset, half ironman, goals, build, ultimately