Episode 282: The Travel Toolkit – Everything You Need To Know To Arrive Fit and Fresh
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Making sure you're primed and ready for your big race is essential, but planning correctly to avoid the negative impacts of travel on your performance is just as crucial.
In this week's episode of the Purple Patch Podcast, Ironman Master Coach Matt Dixon provides a toolkit with a strategic approach to travel that offers guidance on pre-race preparation and best practices for a healthy and prosperous race day.
If you're planning a trip that involves time zone changes, whether it's a short shift or a longer stay, Matt offers helpful tips to prevent jet lag and adjust quickly. He provides advice on what to pack, what to eat and when, what perks and practices you should skip when flying, how much sleep to get before and after you arrive, and how something as simple as wearing shades can help you set your internal clock.
Matt’s actionable steps can help you check all the boxes prior to departure to ensure you arrive at your destination rested, stress-free, and healthy so you can be ready to perform at your best, no matter why you're traveling.
Also, be sure to check out Matt’s recently published white paper on Sustained High Performance. In it, Matt combines his two decades of coaching observations with current empirical research and direct insights from high-performing C-Suite executives. He lays out a roadmap to amplify performance at the highest levels of business leadership. Click here to download your free copy and access Matt's extensive experience in coaching individuals to the highest level of performance in world-class sports, executive performance, and corporate leadership.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 04:54 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
05:01 - 11:25 - Matt's News-ings
11:32 - 59:21 - The Meat and Potatoes - Episode 282: The Travel Toolkit – Everything You Need To Know To Arrive Fit and Fresh
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Full Transcript
SPEAKERS
Matt Dixon
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 00:25
Folks, this show is all about performance. And sometimes we talk about athletic performance. Sometimes we talk about how you show up in bigger life. The key is at the heart of it is a set of practices and habits that can try and deliver you to sustained high performance. One of the tools that we use for our athletes, as well as for our busy executives, or people just looking to feel better and do the things that they love to do and do them well, is InsideTracker. And the reason for that is that we can take a look inside at biometrics and combine the findings with the expert advice from the team of scientists at InsideTracker to try and get precise about what you should focus on. And that strategic roadmap will deliver you with the right focus on the things that will move your performance needle no matter what arena you're chasing. Now, you don't need to be a Purple Patch athlete to take advantage of this, It's a great tool, no matter what journey of performance you're on, all you need to do is head to insidetracker.com/purplepatch, that's insidetracker.com/purplepatch, and we've got a sneaky code for you PurplePatchPro20, that's gonna get you 20% off everything at the store. Now, if you're not sure how to integrate InsideTracker, but you're interested, feel free to reach out to us at info@purplepatchfitness.com, We'd be happy to help you out and give you a little bit more insights into how we leverage the tool with a broad swath of the athletes that we help. Alright, I hope you enjoyed the show. It's all about travel today, it's going to be a useful one. And so here we are the show.
Matt Dixon 02:05
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. As ever, your host, Matt Dixon, and today we're going to talk about travel. In fact, I'm going to help you build a toolkit to manage travel. Now, there are multiple ways that we can talk about this, but I've decided to break it up into three distinct sections. The first section is where we're going to talk about the preparation and execution of travel leading up to races. So that's clearly for the athletes in our audience. There is so much importance that goes into making sure that you train your booty off, and get ready for prime racing, but it doesn't come unraveling because of the negative impact of travel. And so we've got lots to say on some of the strategic approaches that we use with our athletes to try and help them arrive at the race site and be ready to toe the line both fit but also really fresh. We're then going to broaden our horizon a little bit, I'm going to talk about two more scenarios. In section two, we're going to dive into jet lag, and how you can mitigate the impact of time zones. Now this is going to be the focus where we're talking about leaving home base getting to destination and as quickly as you can, adjusting to the local timezone. And there are lots of scenarios for that. You could be traveling for business and vacations, you could be traveling for business where you're going to stay there for an extended time. Or of course, you could be traveling and get ready for a race. And so that's going to be section two. And finally section three, we're gonna dive into a little bit of a shorter-term travel scenario. And this is going to be particularly appropriate for folks that are maybe traveling for business - scenario in here, you're leaving home base, you travel across time zones, but within 24 or 48 hours, you're going to return to home base. And so in that scenario, you want to perform when you're at your travel destination, but you want to remain in your local timezone. And it turns out, there's a whole bunch of strategies and tools that you can do to try and offset the negative impacts of travel, but ensure that you can still show up and perform with whatever you're doing in that travel destination. And so those are going to be the three sections. Now what I thought I would do is I would just jump right into it. I was going to bypass Matt's News-ings this week. I was going to let Barry have the week off of his very sore fingers and allow him to put His ukulele down and not do word of the week. But we've received this week quite randomly, several questions around our live video bike coaching and on-demand coaching I should add to that and so I am going to just wedge in a little bit of a tutorial around the video bike coaching because so many of you guys have been asking and so with that Barry, we are just going to sneak in here a little slide in Matt's News-ings
Matt Dixon 05:01
Yes, folks, Matt's News-ings. And it's true, this week we've happened to have a little bit of a minor avalanche of questions about our live and on-demand bike coaching. And, and I'll lay out the questions for you. And as I read them, I thought, wow, there's a little bit of a ripple of interest in this. Now, you would have heard me over the show, talk about our live coaching and on-demand coaching that we have, and we leverage for all of our Purple Patch coached athletes when they're individually coached, or on the squad program. But these are the questions that we've got. And I'm going to pack them all in and sort of go through them piece by piece very, very quickly and give you a universal answer. Because if the folks are writing and asking, then it means that maybe there's a broader interest in this. The first question was, do you need to be a Purple Patch athlete to participate? The second was a couple of questions that were received around how the program is structured a little bit, as well as what bike I need to participate. That's a great one that I want to cover. And then finally, we've got a slew of questions around how it is different -- how it's differentiated from Zwift and TrainerRoad, some of the other apps that are out there that link into the smart trainers that are now so popular. So for Matt's News-ings, I thought I'd just cover off on them very, very quickly. So the first question do you need to be a Purple Patch athlete? Well, as a Purple Patch athlete, these bike coach sessions, are two-way video, so I can see you at home, I can give you feedback, and actually coach you through the session. And of course, you can participate live or on-demand, so at a time of your choosing, they're integrated into your programming. And so in other words, you don't -- there's no additional expense as a Purple Patch coached athlete, this is actually central to how we coach. But we do now have, very quietly we actually didn't make a big hoo-ha about it, but we do have the option for self-coached athletes, or athletes that are -- don't need a coach or athletes that are actually coached by another organization but can leverage these bike sessions. And so it's just a standalone subscription, very affordable, where you get access to all of the on-demand sessions as well as the live sessions. So that's just on the website will pop it into the show notes. But yeah, it's absolutely available you do not need to be a Purple Patch athlete to participate. And it's a great program, you can take advantage of my coaching and our coaching team of coaches to help you become a better bike rider. What bike do you need, You can actually do these sessions on any form of bike, Your Gucci approach, the best approach, is if you have a smart trainer or smart bike, one in which you can integrate and leverage the software to its optimal sort of capabilities on that, but you can do it on any bike on a bike trainer. As we'd like to call them dumb trainers, or quite sneakily, a lot of people do these on spin bikes or, whisper it, pelotons as well, ignoring the very good-looking peloton instructors instead of having to deal with me and leveraging the the sessions. Now in those scenarios where you're not connected to the software, you're actually utilizing the video component, you're not just tied into the software, but still highly effective coaching. The program is structured, and a lot of people ask about this in a structured and progressive way. So that's the big differentiator, I think. And that's the fact that this is not à la carte, you don't just come into an ecosystem where you need to pull different workouts off a shelf, you're really sort of buying into a curriculum that evolves over the course of a season. And what that does is ensure that we can break through plateaus, and ensure that you're going on almost an educational and training curriculum to get you better and better and better, where you have your best riding at the right time of the year. And so it is sort of running in parallel to the Purple Patch methodology. So whether you're an athlete training, or whether you're looking for someone to be someone who just wants to show up and beat your friends on the weekend when you're enjoying riding your bicycle outside. This is a program that you're buying into not just a software package where it's a bunch of really good high-quality workouts. And I think that's important. So, the last question was how it differentiates between things like Zwift and TrainerRoad. They're great platforms. They deliver really good workouts, highly specific. There are community elements to them and that's great, but this is a very different thing because this is more like bike school. This is where you're actually getting coached. And so not only are the workouts high quality, but they go well beyond a series of intervals. We're actually teaching you to become a better bike rider outside. So how to leverage your gears properly, how to navigate terrain, how to foster the right pedal stroke, and then you I've actually coached through the workouts no different than if you showed up to your local master swim workout or your local track session, where it's actually coaching. And that's how you actually amplify the results of this. And so I think that's the biggest differentiator that if you actually want to be coached, where you're getting feedback, and you're being driven to actually become a better bike rider, and develop the skills and techniques that you can go and apply on your bike riding outside, this is what you're getting with that platform. So that's why we don't tend to leverage TrainerRoad in Zwift. And we really buy into this because this is small-group coaching. That's what we're looking to do and that's my job as a coach. That's the Purple Patch coaching team's responsibility to make you a better bike rider. And it doesn't matter if you're a triathlete, if you just live it love riding your bike outside, and you want to beat up on your friends on the weekend. This is by far the most effective way that you can leverage indoor training, efficiency, and safety, but also become a better bike rider for your events, and your riding outside. So that's the big sort of chapter or the big overview of it all. I hope that answers your questions. But without further ado, Barry, I want to get cracking on this because I've got a lot to say about travel. So here we go. Without further ado, it is, ladies and gentlemen, this week's travel-focused meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 11:26
Yes, it is the meat and potatoes. We're getting ready and I've been rubbing my hands with excitement for this one. It's a great subject. And I think it's one that really does positively impact all of the Purple Patch audience listening. And so let your ears perk up for this one because I think you're going to be able to draw quite a few tips out of this. Now we're going to break this down, as I said in the introduction, to three main sections. The first is we're going to really cater to the athlete specifically. So if you're training for an event, a marathon, or triathlon, the Iron Man World Championships, whatever it might be, and you've got travel, in which you have to get to a destination, and in my mind, I'm thinking across time zones, but it doesn't necessarily mean across time zones, but the key is that you want to offset or mitigate the negative impact of travel stress and show up with 100% of your hard work and training, to be able to be a flourish and not be impacted by negative travel. So we're going to talk about preparation and some of the tools and strategies that we go through. And then in section two, And section three, we're gonna dive into a broader perspective, where we're going to talk about jet lag and then we're gonna talk about some travel tips when you're actually going to dance into a destination, perform in the destination, but remain on your local timezone at home. So those are going to be the three sections. Let's start with our athletes, if you're not an athlete, hey, I think you might still benefit from this, but also section two, I promise you, we're going to get into that jet lag. And that's going to be appropriate for everyone.
Matt Dixon 13:11
So let's talk about athletes preparing for races in which those races include traveling to the destination, I think the first thing that we should do is frame success. So what we want to do as an athlete is you want to arrive at the race site. And you want to mitigate the negative impact of the stress of travel because it is a really high impact. It's a high stressor. And you want to be in this place ready to thrive despite being in a foreign environment. So that's what we're trying to achieve for her. And so we've got several elements of that, Firstly, is the actual direct impact of travel stress itself. And that can be crossing time zones. But it also equally can be the fact that you are probably spending many hours in a static position, not a very good functional position, in a car or in an airplane. So that's the typical way that people obviously travel to races. So we're looking to offset the physical component to this and the muscular-skeletal. We're also looking to maintain prime performance readiness. And that's with some specific training that you might do, How do you actually leverage the training that you're doing to keep you really sharp and ready to be activated? And then ultimately, you want to toe the start line with all of your physical resources. So that's full hydration status and full substrates. In other words, you want your energy stores topped up so that you are able to bring your very best self. And the one final component is you want to have all of that done with your equipment race-ready. And that's obviously a big thing for folks like triathletes who sometimes have to pack their bikes into boxes and get to the destination, unpack it. We want all of that equipment race-ready. So that's really important. So if we are going to tackle this thing of arriving at racing the journey begins before you actually depart your home base. Now let me start with a story here, okay? I remember many years ago now, arriving at the first of the multiple training camps that we did for our pro squad. Now this one was in Scottsdale, Arizona, it was at the end of January. And we had about 10 professional athletes there. We also had just one single amateur athlete, a guy called Brian. And Brian was a father. He was a very busy executive and he just so happened to be a heck of an amateur athlete, and I decided to invite Brian along, I thought it would be a great addition to the team. So here we are a squad of 10 Pros, one amateur, and 11 athletes globally. We stood at the driveway of the home base, our main house that was going to be the base for the 10-day camp down there in Scottsdale, Arizona, it was a crisp, nice morning. And in the driveway, the athletes were busy preparing their bicycles and all of their equipment, we were heading out on the first ride of camp. And I stood there and I observed the scene. And very quietly, I caught the attention of all of the athletes, and I said, Hey if you could please rack up your bikes, what I want you to do is I want you to head inside to the kitchen. And I was, of course, granted or viewed back with a look of amusement. We are getting ready to go on a bike ride, why was I asking all of these athletes to rack up their bikes and go back inside? And while their eyes clearly questioned me, they did as I was told, after all, I'm the head coach. So what followed for me once were in the kitchen was a rather wordy lecture around a very simple concept. And what I explained to these athletes was that if I watched them in this kitchen where we stood, got out a chopping board, got out carrots, and chopped carrots, it would inform me a lot about their approach to all things in life. And I said to them, how you chop carrots is how you do everything in life. Now the question is, you might be thinking, why did I talk about athletes chopping carrots when they should be out riding their bikes? Well, you remember that driveway and I stood there and I surveyed the scene? Let me tell you what I saw. I glanced around and made a very interesting observation. There was only one athlete of the 11, who had anything resembling a clean bicycle. And you know who it was? It was Brian our amateur athlete, the busiest person amongst all of us. The pros, I looked around, and their bikes were caked in dust, dirt, chains that were unclean and so much more. Every single bicycle was screaming out, getting ready for the mechanical issues that lay ahead. How you chop carrots is how you do everything in life. And so if you show up to a race, or a training camp, in our example, with a dirty and unserviced bike, that's going to only radically increase your risk of a whole bunch of frustration and potentially very expensive mistakes. And so the first step, if you are going to arrive at a race, and you're going to be traveling, the first thing you want to do is ensure that all of your equipment is absolutely dialed in in advance of departure. You should have clean and serviced gear, you should pack spares of anything that can break. And you can ensure especially if you need to box your bicycle that it's done with real care and attention. Now, what you can do, as a little pro tip from me is you can take my approach, which is to persuade someone else to build and pack up your bike for you. That's how I chop carrots. I like to outsource it. But the concept is there. This concept extends to a bunch of pre-travel aspects that you actually have, as an athlete, complete control over but also can clear mental clutter and stress. And that's a big part of it. You can't undo all of the physiological distress or stress that occurs with travel. But you can declutter your mind and you can simplify life. And so get the equipment dialed in. That's number one.
Matt Dixon 19:44
Number two, you want to get onto the laptop or your desktop and you want to set up a fantastically simple Google spreadsheet or the equivalent software. I'm not necessarily attached to Google, but you want to have a spreadsheet and that should be your home base for everything that involves this race that includes travel. That's including all of your travel information, your reservations, car rental, flights, hotels, everything. And including in there, your rough, while flexible, daily schedule of everything around important race day or details, such as when you need to check in, transitions and drop off, registration location, and everything. having a central place is going to be so helpful. And then I encourage you to share it with all of your travel partners and friends. that's going to be a really helpful thing because what you're doing there in a component where you're going into a foreign place, including travel, with a whole bunch of logistics, is you're putting a framework and structure around it. And I can't overstate how helpful that is, for even the most Free Birds among us. That's really important.
Matt Dixon 21:01
And number three, I'd really, I'd really encourage you to book travel that supports your physiological system. Okay, in other words, book travel can have the smallest imprint and minimize stress. So what do I mean by that? Well, you might want to think twice about booking that 5 a.m. flight departure, especially if you live an hour or more from the airport. because 5 a.m. doesn't sound that bad. But that is a two or 3 am wakeup. So immediately, you're shooting yourself in the foot so far as recovery time. I would also aim if at all possible to try and skip red die overnight flights if possible. Now, if you're traveling from the US to Europe, the highest likelihood it's going to be overnight. But if you can minimize red-eye even if it's a little cheaper, even if you think oh, I'm not going to lose a day, I would rather lose a day and travel across day flights, if at all possible. And if you're driving, then you might want to think about a similar concept. Don't just get from A to B through hard work and toughness. If, be willing to extend the trip a little bit, integrate some breaks into there, even having a little bit of an easy run or a walk break in a nice town or destination, stopping for a nice full lunch break. Or even having hotel breaks breaking a big one-day travel into two days. If you can do it. It's actually marvelous at minimizing musculoskeletal stress and emotional stress. And it becomes really important. And we should think about how much time and effort we've invested for the weeks and months ahead to get ready for this race, just to undo it because we're in a rush to get to the destination. If you can add a day, if you can add a few hours of travel but make it more stress-free, it's going to have a material imprint on how you show up to the start line. Really, really important. Very simple stuff, but really beneficial. All right, now, we talked about Home Base.
Matt Dixon 23:10
Point number four is to schedule your life. As a person, I tend to be a little bit more of a free bird, I like to go with the flow. And that's I think, absolutely fine. Having a certain amount of structure that fits you in life is a beneficial thing. And we're all different on that. But occasionally, in certain situations, having more structure, and more organization can be really beneficial. And when you're traveling to a race, that is one of those examples. You want to remove the guesswork, you want to limit the stress. And I think that as you leave to head to a race, plan everything. Now you realize that with a plan, similar to a fueling plan in your race, you're going to then work the plan, you're going to have to adapt, it's not going to be checking the checklist and getting it exactly right. But putting some structure in thought of when you're going to do your training when you're going to do registration, where you're going to have your reservations for dinner and so on, getting that organized upfront, and get everyone aligned, it's going to help you stay on rhythm. And it's going to remove some of the chaos that often is synchronized or lined up with a race event. Things get busy. You've got to prepare your equipment, you've got to get registered, you want to do your preparation and your training. If you can have it organized, it's going to help you and that means that you can remove that nervous energy from the days prior. And you can invest that energy into your best race day performance.
Matt Dixon 24:52
Finally, bring some of your creature comforts with you. What I mean by that, well there's lots of things that we as athletes tend to really like as a part of our ritual at home. You might have some specific foods that you really like, and you love them, but maybe you can only get them in your hometown or your village. Well, bring them with you. And perhaps you like to use on a daily basis, some of your special powders and potions. I don't know what they are. And folks, I'm talking about the legal kind here. But things like protein powders and supplements, anything that you like to include in your daily routine, why don't you put them into baggies and bring them with you? And finally, even consider bringing your pillow from your bed at home. Yup, research suggests that having your own pillow can actually foster improved sleep. Something around the scent of it that brings familiarity to us. But it's really good to have if you're going on a long car journey, or as a passenger on a long-haul flight, really beneficial to be able to help you have a nice little bit of downtime on those adventures. And so that's a really good way to organize the mind, free up capacity, but also look after the body. And ultimately, look travel creates really, really big, physiological and musculoskeletal stress. And so we want to offset it.
Matt Dixon 26:16
So beyond those logistical sides of things, what else can you do? Well, there are some things that you can do to limit and offset that direct muscular skeletal, and physiological stress. Number one, probably primary is hydration. Maintaining a full hydration status is good. And we want to actually enter any event at full hydration status anyway, so that's really helpful. And so you want to drink plenty of fluids. I would recommend that most of those fluids have some electrolytes, you don't need to overload, but some electrolytes to draw it into the Intercellular Hydration, as we like to call it. And you might sort of think about this and think Ah, but every time I drink too many fluids, when I'm on a car journey, I have to stop at gas stations that are more frequent basis. And I just want to get there. And I don't like getting on a plane too much. But those pitstops are performance enhancers. You're shifting body positions, you're opening up the hips, you're changing your posture, and ultimately, that's a good thing. And so that's an opportunity to circulate blood, shift the body position, et cetera. So that's a really good thing.
Matt Dixon 27:27
The second thing is keeping the snacks going. Now, this changes in section two, We're going to talk about this if you're crossing timezone sometimes, but if you are going to snack, it's really important that you try and prepare healthy snacks, mostly protein-focused. More importantly, try to avoid too many sugary carb-loaded snacks. So you don't just rely on gas stations for these. Because we really want to reduce the consumption of lots of sugary and sweet snacks, things that are just spiking the blood glucose, instead of keeping it stable, plenty of protein offsetting some of the negative impacts, a really good strategy to help it.
Matt Dixon 28:10
And finally, helping the body on arrival. And this is where really easy training comes into play. If you're traveling to a race, and you arrive at a destination, one of the first things that you want to do is get the blood circulating. There are a few scenarios here. If you get to the race site, you get to your destination, and it's pretty late. So it's early evening, you might not have time for proper training. So what you do want to try and do in that scenario is go for a walk, even if you're arriving at 9 or 10 pm, A 15 to 20-minute walk, circulates the blood, it can do wonders, it just calms the body down. On the other hand, if you're rife with plenty of time, then it's terrific to get in some very easy training. Now we have runners that are listening, we have triathletes, we have all different sorts of sports. Let me give you an example. You might just go for a 30-minute easy jog. And that 30-minute easy jog might include a little bit of activation. We'll talk about more of that in section two, but some 32nd pickups to speed to try and tell the brain Hey, I'm here and I'm ready to perform. And we're going to use those in activations. So that's going to spark the dialogue between brain and muscle really, really good. And finally, if you arrive when no session is possible, you have a 1 AM arrival time, that's where a little bit of sense needs to be put into action. You just need to get to sleep. In that case, first thing in the morning, go into a very, very easy training session. Very low-stress, not hard at all, and really smooth. Let it flow in and then go and have a great breakfast to restore your energy stores and your hydration status. Really easy, okay?
Matt Dixon 30:02
So those are the key components for the athletes. And if you plan ahead, and you plot your days leading into the events itself with good organization, you really are equipped to limit the negative impact of travel. And of course, then you can focus your mind on race prep, getting ready, and all safe in the knowledge that you're bringing all of your fitness, but also your freshness to race day. And that's how great performance starts to happen.
Matt Dixon 30:32
So with that in mind, I think it's time to expand our mindset. Athletes, I gave you full-blooded attention for the last 10 or 15 minutes, but it's not all about athletes in today's show. So let's expand and let's go to part two. In part two, we're going to dig into travel in which your goal is to be firing on all cylinders, at the local timezone of destination. Okay, so that's what we want to focus on here. So to ensure that we're in lockstep here, let me give you a couple of scenarios that we'll come back to as we talk about this. A couple of different scenarios so that we make sure that we're speaking about the same thing. So imagine my friend Jimmy, my friend, Jimmy lives in LA, and he has to travel to London. That's a big trip okay? There's about an 11-hour crossing, eight time zones. So it's an eight-hour time difference to go through. And the reason that Jimmy is traveling there is he's going to be in London for five to six days, where he's got a series of really important meetings for his work. And so what he wants to do is shift as quickly as he can to the local timezone, London Greenwich Mean Time, the Queen's timezone, ladies and gentlemen, or I should say the Kings now, and he wants to bring his best self to those meetings. So that's a great example. We can also in here talk about Jenny, another one of our athletes that we coach Jenny is based in New York, and he's going to be traveling to Nice in France, and she's going to be racing a triathlon. So of course, she wants to perform her best in the race that is just four days after arrival. So she wants to limit the impact of the physiological stress and get race-ready, and performance-ready to race local timezone as quickly as we can. Within four days, she wants to bring her best physiological self. So you've got an athlete, you've got a busy traveling executive, and they're both looking to shine and bring their best cognitive self, their best energy to things that are important to them at the local destination. Very simple. Alright, so what we want to do here is we want to shock our circadian rhythm, we want to convert them to in this scenario, European timezone -- Nice, France, or London, depending on whether we're talking about Jenny, or Jimmy, super.
Matt Dixon 32:49
So let's do the travel playbook. What we're going to do here is we're going to break it down into four sections, what you can do around meals and hydration, what you can do about movement, or training, we're going to talk about Jenny. And then the third section is going to be about supplements and light manipulation. Really important. And finally, Daddy's little extras. Yes, a few things that we can add on top of it. So four sections meal and hydration, movement and training, light manipulation and supplements, and finally, the extras.
Matt Dixon 33:19
Let's dive in with meals first, because it turns out that what you eat, when, actually has a pretty big imprint on your ability to shift time zones. And so if you really want to get strategic, we want to think about this. And the approach in our scenarios that we lay out little case studies, actually begins well beyond or well before when you get onto the plane. All right, so let's use our scenario here. Let's pretend that we have an afternoon flight, that's going to be we're going to build it, and that the concepts are easily applicable or transferable to other times that you might be departing. But in our case study, we're leaving in the afternoon. Now what you would do in this scenario, as a part of the Purple Patch, travel toolkit is you would get up and you'd have a nice quality breakfast, and quite commonly that will be after your morning training session. Okay, after your exercise session in the morning. A good thing to exercise, we'll come to that, but have a really good quality breakfast. So that might be something like eggs with avocado, and an inner tortilla with a whole bunch of fruit. It might be a big bowl of oatmeal with some protein powder and a cacophony of fruit and maybe some yogurt, nuts, and some other components. So a really big hearty breakfast. Then you're going to have a very light lunch, more protein-focused. You might have some greens like a salad with some chicken, maybe some nuts and other components. And you want to make sure that you consume that nice light lunch at least three hours before you get onto the plane. And Here's the headline news, those are going to be your last calories before you arrive to your destination. So at least three hours before you get on the plane, you have a nice light lunch. And then you're going to start doing something and a whisper it, you're going to do something that you don't hear me recommend very much, you're going to start fasting. Yes, Matt Dixon said fasting. You can hydrate normally, you can maintain your regular hydration status. But I'm going to have you fast before and all the way through the flight. Alrighty, now, if you get really hungry, then it's absolutely okay to have some light snacks. But I would rather you lean into things like turkey jerky, and nuts, rather than very carb-heavy, very sugary snacks. And you absolutely want to avoid that big plane meal. Okay, we want to put you as much as we can into a fasted state as you get onto the plane.
Matt Dixon 36:05
Now, throughout the plane ride, the big journey where you're crossing time zones, on the flip side, you want to hydrate like a camel. Now, I would prefer you to have added electrolytes into there. But you want to make sure that you continually hydrating even if it means that you're going to wake up and go for a pee quite a few times. Now a couple of other components that are going to be helpful, I would actually bring forward your caffeine in the morning, If you tend to like caffeine, it's absolutely fine to have it with breakfast. But in this scenario, I would try not to have any caffeine after about nine or 10 in the morning. Alright, so if you tend to have an early afternoon, or a lunchtime cup of coffee, remove it for this day of travel, that's really important. And the fasting component is important. And it goes without saying that means that on that plane, even though you're trapped in a tube, even though you're bored, and even though quite often, they're giving it to you for free, you're going to avoid alcohol. Okay? Because alcohol is just an additional stressor and it's a suppressant. You're going to go through the whole of this trip well-hydrated, and you're going to arrive at your local destination. And soon after you arrive at your destination you are then going to have, and you're going to be eager for it, a quality meal. And that meal should synchronize with the timezone of the local destination. So in other words, if you arrive at 7 am, then you will have a really hearty breakfast. If your plane arrives at 1 p.m., you will have a really high-quality lunch, and you want to try and make it as nutritious as you can. Now the reason I'm recommending, and I've seldom recommended fasting, the reason that I'm recommending fasting is that the fasting experience, combined with a local meal at your local destination actually stimulates and kickstarts your circadian rhythm to transition to the local timezone in a much more effective manner. And so you're accelerating your transition into that local timezone. It actually shocks the body a little bit, not as a standalone, but it is one of the tools that we leverage. So fasting is really helpful. Now, it's not easy. I often do this if I'm traveling to Europe, and I sometimes struggle with it. Because I'm just sitting up there and delivering a meal, I'm trapped, and I'm just like, I'm gonna do the meal. So I get it. But, this is the optimal scenario for you. So if you're serious about it, it's going to actually help. The second section that we talked about then is movement. What should we do with Exercise and Movement? Well, I mentioned it before, it's a wonderful thing to get up in the morning, your day of travel, and do a nice morning workout. Now I would recommend not doing anything too difficult or hard. So you don't want to be doing really hard intervals but getting a good sweat on is really positive. And as ever, post-workout fueling is critical. So that's where you have that nice big robust breakfast, get up, maybe have a little snack if you want to, particularly female athletes, then go and do your workout, and then boom, the big breakfast and get on with the day. All right? That's going to be really helpful. You're then going to have as much good as you can good sleep on the plane. We're going to talk more about that later. And then when you arrive at your destination, I want you to move to the destination. Alrighty, now this has to be low system stress, but it isn't all easy, because we actually want to stimulate the central nervous system at the local timezone. And so if you're a runner, an example might be 30, 40, or 50 minutes easy, but a series of what we might call activation. 20 to 32nd pickups going very very fast, not enough to induce fatigue, but really kickstart the system. And that's going to help be another tool to shock the system into the local timezone. Alrighty, so movement on arrival is really good. Case scenario -- arrive, as soon as you can, get to the hotel or wherever you're staying, kickstart, get moving, and then have that really robust, nutritious meal, which you're going to be hungry for, which is terrific. Okay, great. So that's how you do the movement section of this.
Matt Dixon 40:26
What about the supplements and light? Well, if you are traveling overnight, and then you've got two options that you might add, again, I wouldn't overdo this. The first is some magnesium, that's going to foster better quality sleep. Now a good, and I don't have any official partnership or anything like this, but Pillar Nutrition makes a really good magnesium product, You might think about that. 350 to 400 milligrams of magnesium, two to three hours before you get on that plane. So maybe with your lunch, remember that nutritious lunch that we talked about? Take a little bit of magnesium, you can go to your local health food store, your Whole Foods wherever it is, and just get a nice calcium magnesium supplement. High quality. Have that before you hop on the plane. That can foster better sleep quality, at least as much as we can expect when you're lying on a plane. And then finally, melatonin, people often ask me about this, and it's absolutely fine. It's a personal decision. It's available over the counter in the US I'm not sure if it's available over the counter in the UK in Europe. But melatonin is not a bad tool to use in the toolbox. Some people report feeling very drowsy afterward. Other it that other folks report having absolutely no impact whatsoever. But melatonin is another option for you to try and help bring yourself down and facilitate a little bit of better quality sleep. But beyond that nothing special -- good hydration, wouldn't change a thing, wouldn't go into the medicine cabinet to really get much more than that.
Matt Dixon 41:57
What's more important in this section is what you're doing with the light. And this becomes a really powerful tool when we combine it with the movement we talked about and how we approached mealtime. Okay, this is important. And if you're really into this stuff, you can actually go out and you can purchase some specific glasses that help with light manipulation. And it can also alter the filter. So maybe you're sitting in the plane and you have a lot of light. If you actually want to bring that down or perhaps early in the flight you need to do some work on your laptop or the iPad, you can wear these glasses to put you in a quote darker environment and block out some of the blue light. And that's ensuring that your optic nerve is not receiving daylight signals while you're sitting in the plane when at your local destinations in the middle of the night. So if you can, if you want to, you can actually purchase some glasses, They look a little funny, but if you don't mind and don't care what people think about how you look, that can become a tool. Either way, it's going to be helpful if you can aim to shift light exposure to align with the local timezone that you're chasing. So where you're going to be arriving at your destination? It doesn't need to be exact, but if you can try and get onto the plane, and when it's dark at the destination timezone, you make it as dark as possible in your environment. And then when you arrive, get out into the daylight, get out into bright light, and tell your eyes and your brain, It's daylight I'm here, this is where I'm at. And that's going to help stimulate the brain to understand I'm actually in a different place right now. So on a plane, you can also do this with eye pillows, something that you can cover your eyes and set yourself up for nighttime sleep as much as possible. So those are the three main categories that we talked about here.
Matt Dixon 43:55
What are some of the extras and a few other tips that you can put in here? So firstly, planes and cars, are a little bit of actually the one environment where compression socks are beneficial. So if you are traveling long haul for multiple destinations, compression socks are not a bad idea to wear. They can actually help with venous return, avoid some of the swelling that can occur on a plane, or on a long car journey, can help with circulation so it's not a bad idea to wear compression socks. Now a public service announcement here. Where compression socks are not cool is when you're wearing shorts and you have to walk through an airport. And so if you do choose to go to an airport and you're wearing shorts and you decide to wear compression socks, would you mind please doing me a personal favor and just doing a little bit of audit on yourself and ensure that you're not wearing any apparel that has Purple Patch logo on. Thank you very much I'd really appreciate it. But anyway, compression socks are a component. a second little extra, your pillow. We talked about that but actually bringing your own pillow, onto a flight or onto a car, can actually help you get better sleep in an environment that is not conducive for really good sleep. So that's the thing that if it's logistically possible, it's great. And then you can use that pillow in the hotel or the Airbnb, the VRBO, or wherever you're staying, just don't forget to bring it back with you. Otherwise, you lose it, and you don't get to use it on the way back. So really important, really beneficial.
Matt Dixon 45:32
And then finally, if you really want to dial this in, if you're really serious like Jenny is for her trip from New York to Nice, where she wants to show up and race, and then you can actually start to shift time zones while you're still at home base. So an approach that Jenny might use here is a gradual shift in her bedtime and waking up. And that's about 30 minutes every night, for the four or five days before she leaves for her journey in our scenario from New York to Nice. So in other words, she'll start to go to bed 30 minutes earlier. And then the next night, 30 minutes earlier again the next night, 30 minutes again, and of course waking up 3030 30 minutes earlier on wakeup. And that's starting to shift her body clock before she even gets on a plane. And that can be powerful, no more than about three, four, or five days that you have just stagger it 20 to 30 minutes, but she's gaining a couple of hours of timezone. So if it's possible that will have a noticeable positive impact on your ability to transfer and adapt to the local timezone.
Matt Dixon 46:44
Now, a final thing that I do want to add is just sleeping on planes, we know it's not conducive. But when you get on a plane, particularly let's come back to Jimmy who's got that long haul flight, he's going to be traveling from LA to London. If it -- the way that many people approach this is to get on the plane, maybe watch a movie, wait for the meal, maybe watch the rest of the movie, and then slowly in the middle of the flight, say it's time to settle down, and then falling asleep and waking up in London in our scenario very, very drowsy. I would if possible, try and shift that forward a little bit. Get on the plane, lay down, get your pillow out, and try and sleep a little bit earlier, maybe an hour, or 90 minutes into the journey, get the sleep done early. Because of that sleep, while it might feel like an early bedtime for you at your home destination at your destination where you're arriving, that's going to be in the middle of the night. So if you didn't get the sleep done early, and you can catch a four, five hours, where you really get sleep early in that plane, you might wake up most of the rest of the plane will be asleep. But you can wake up, put on your little headlight and maybe you do some work or some reading or then watch that movie. But it is the morning time at your local destination. So that's a really important tip for you.
Matt Dixon 48:10
So our final section here folks. This is a pretty meaty travel talk that we're going through, but we need to go through one shorter scenario for you. And that's part three. And this is about travel when you're looking to retain the timezone of your home base. So this one's a little shorter, a little more simple. But this is really focused on the management of light, some of your eating habits and movement again, Okay? So let's let's talk about a classic scenario here. Traveling, where folks are maybe doing a short business trip: You're going from LA, you're heading off to New York, you're there for 24 hours, you're heading back to LA. You're not looking to actually get to the local timezone here because, within 24 or 48 hours, you're going to be back in your local timezone. See, we want to show up and perform in the timezone destination, but keep ourselves at our home base on our body clock side of things. So let's just go through a few tips on that, because I think it's going to be useful.
Matt Dixon 49:11
The first thing that will be addressed is meals. All right, so let's remember, in this scenario, there's no fasting. Travel delivers massive systemic stress. And when it's a short trip of 24, 48, maybe up to 72 hours, you've got double stress. The trip there and very quickly the trip back. And so we're looking to try and mitigate that stress. That's the first thing. So we've got to equip our body to perform. So in order to do that, I would first avoid hard exercise the 24 hours before. Exercise is great. Avoid hard intervals in the 24 hours before, but then bring in the meals or the eating habits, you want to first think about hydration. That's a really important component and the reason for that is that your systemic health and your immune system actually lean on a full hydration status to be running at an optimal level. And the reason for that is your nutrients are circulating around the body via a transport system, which is your blood. And when you get dehydrated, it's a little bit like putting a traffic jam in that transport system. It doesn't deliver your nutrients and the components that are necessary for a strong immune system as effectively. And travel facilitates dehydration. If you're in a plane that's a little bit like being about 9 or 10,000 feet of altitude. You're going to get more dehydrated. And so we want to avoid dehydration because indirectly, it's going to suppress your immune system and add an additional stressor. Hydration, hydration, hydration, really important. Getting up. Those pee breaks, those pitstops, are really beneficial for everything we talked about -- shifting body position, circulating blood, etc. And in that hydration, add a few electrolytes to that.
Matt Dixon 51:07
Beyond that, your eating is pretty simple. If logistically feasible, here's a way to think about it, I want you to eat at the wrong time. That's a nice way for you to remember it, I want you to eat at the wrong time for where you would typically eat at the destination, in our scenario heading from LA to New York, eat at the wrong time of New York. Although there is not really a wrong time in New York, it's the city that never sleeps. But what I mean by this is that if at all possible, try and keep your meal times at slots that are close to when you would have meals at your home base. Now, that might be sometimes I'm feasible because of business meals, et cetera. But the more that you can have your meals at times that remain at your home base, the more that your brain will be tricked into thinking that it's still there. I realize it's not always possible. But if you can do it, it's really helpful. And this takes a little bit of planning ahead. And you need to persuade your brain that you're going to keep it on that timezone. And you can try and do that as well, by actually shifting your phone and your clock in your computer and keeping it at local timezone. So they auto-populate new time zones, but you can adjust it and say I want to be in this time zone, You can do that in the settings, that's going to keep it there and keep you on local time. Just don't miss the business meetings that you have to be prepared for. So those are the components that are around mostly meal planning and time zones and trying to trick the brain. Now we want to talk about movement, okay? As I mentioned, keep exercising and lower stress. So there's nothing wrong, in fact, it's really beneficial to move the body when you are exercising, but while you're there, I wouldn't think about ramming hard training into your business travel. Instead, I would think about doing lower-stress stuff that can facilitate feeling better. So we're not going to do hard intervals, we're going to do feel-good stuff. Most of you folks know that I call that soul-filling. And so in other words, it's a decompression tool, where we're just circulating blood in a more rapid movement. To facilitate the dishwashing effect that comes with it really, really big, we have to appreciate that two-way stress in a short period delivers a big hammer of stress. And so we want to meet that by supporting the system with hydration and good quality eating. But we're also going to do it with low-stress exercise. That's really important.
Matt Dixon 53:48
The final component is light. And this is key. Okay, now, the only part of your body that has a direct connection to the brain is the optic nerve in your eye. And so this is your teller of time. And light is a key component. Before we had our phones and our watches and everything else, we relied on the time of day, and the optic nerve is the great setter of your circadian rhythm. And so the more that you can manipulate your light exposure to remain associated with your local conditions at home, the better it's going to be for you. Now, don't obsess over this. And I realize it's not all practical, but it's the target. So if you're really cool, you're one of those cool guys, you might be out at the destination timezone and it might be sunny and you're wearing a really dark pair of glasses because you want to keep things a little bit dark and you might even if possible, be wearing them inside and have to balance that with the factor of walking into a business meeting in sunglasses, not cool and not necessarily recommended, but you get the point it. On the flip side, you might need to sometimes keep light exposure very, very high in your hotel room, even though it's getting dark outside so that it's keeping the body on that exposed light. And so the more that you can keep conditions from a light perspective like they would be at home, the better equipped that you're going to be that you're slowing down the transition to local timezone and you're keeping yourself at that home base.
Matt Dixon 55:29
These areas are going to assist, but I should finish with the simple explanation, you're still gonna return home tired. And the reason you're gonna get home and be tired and feel a little wonky is it's really stressful, a trip both ways over the course of 24 to 48 hours. And so we can't stop you from feeling tired with travel but what we can do is offset some of the stress, reduce some of the risk that comes with sickness, and other components like that, and equip you to actually still shine and perform when you're actually at the destination, which is important. So when you do get home, then you get moving again, then you get good quality meals, then you try and get right back onto it. And before you know it, you're going to be firing on all cylinders, once again.
Matt Dixon 56:21
So folks, that's the travel toolkit, I hope it helps. Next week, we're going to kick off something that is a three-part series, We're going to do everything around the offseason. Now you don't need to be a training athlete actually to benefit from this. This is going to be three shows in a row that we talk about our approach and the importance of what we label Q4, or offseason. most of the competing athletes are starting to wind up they're racing by the time they're entering October or November time. And we actually kick-off, for our lifestyle athletes, for our hardcore training triathletes, we kick off a really important component. And for this year, we have completely, from the ground up, reimagined what that means. It is a completely redeveloped approach to our off-season training. So whether you're looking to show up and do the things that you love really, really well, or whether you're very dedicated to becoming a better athlete with highly ambitious goals next year, these next three shows are going to be really fun, and really enjoyable, but most importantly, educational. So have a good one. If you are traveling soon. I hope that this education and educational lessons help you. But more than that, stay healthy, connect with others, and keep supporting one another, and we'll see you next time. Take care.
Matt Dixon 57:49
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 on YouTube, and you will find it there and you can 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 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. 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 on 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, and do whatever you do. Take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
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