(sparse electronic pop music)
- Welcome back to the Triathlon Training Explained show
powered by TrainingPeaks.
Do you ever wish that you had more time?
Well, of course you do.
We'd all love to train for longer and more often,
but maybe we're missing a point here.
Well, I'm gonna be tackling that tricky balancing act
in working out how to optimize that time that we do have.
And with the help of specialist in this area,
Coach Matt Dixon, I'm going to be bringing you strategies
to help you optimize your training.
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This video isn't about how to break down your training.
Instead, we're going to be focusing on those areas
that are so often overlooked.
Now, it's a general sweeping statement,
but triathletes tend to be highly driven,
both in training and in work, which can be a dangerous mix
and something often has to give.
Well, Matt Dixon, founder of Purple Patch Coaching,
knows this all too well as he coaches
some high-flying businessmen and women to top results,
including overall Ironman wins and age group events.
Matt is really passionate about quality over quantity
and wants to reiterate the fact
that the goal of training isn't hard work.
The goal is actually to improve your performance.
So with this in mind,
you need to be patient and plan wisely.
It's methodology and mindset, according to Matt.
Well, we caught up with him over at Oceanside
to find out a little bit more about this theory.
(upbeat electronic pop music)
- Well, I think it starts with two things,
a methodology and a mindset,
but the word I would say first is integration.
And so what I see out there is
so many really aspiring, motivated athletes,
and they go to a coach or they create their own program
and they take their training program
and it's just dumped on top of life.
And ultimately, you can't be successful
if you are just, if just isolate
what you're thinking about all of the stresses in life
and then just simply, without actually considering
those stresses of life when you go about training.
And so so many people just chase x number of hours.
Their barometer of success is something
that is absolutely madness.
How many hours did I do this week?
And when you try and mesh that into a time-starved life,
it's absolutely impossible.
So the first thing that we do is
we talk about that word integration
and we start from the other end of the equation.
Let's look at the real landscape of someone's life,
and let's look at when they truly have time available
without compromising things
like post-workout fueling, sleep,
some social time, and time to be with their family
so they can be a wholesome person.
And what we have left over is a realistic block of time
that we get to work with.
Then what we have is an optimization challenge.
How do we now maximize that time
to give us the biggest yield within context of your life?
So that's the first component.
The second component that I think
is really important as well is not just,
particularly for a time-starved individual,
not looking at training as just swim, bike, and run.
And instead, actually committing to really basic habits
that are gonna support the stresses that they're under,
including their training, but also other things in life.
So we have on an equal playing field
strength and conditioning;
recovery, which is the magic word
that I'm obviously known for; and all of the habits
that would sit under from mere nutrition,
you know, hydration, fueling, and components like that.
(tranquil piano music)
- It can be daunting to think of triathlon
as more than swimming, cycling, and running,
but Matt makes a very valid point there.
It is a balancing act,
and one that we have to work out for ourselves.
A coach can only guide us so far,
and then we have to actually take that responsibility
to think about the bigger picture and weigh up
how it all fits into our overall lives and our training.
All of that said, sometimes, something has to give
and choosing what to drop can be tough.
I know, personally, that I'm guilty of keeping
the sessions I enjoy, but dropping the dreaded ones
or putting them to the bottom of the pile.
And usually, the dreaded sessions are the hard ones
and they're the ones that are going to make a difference.
Whereas, that long steady bike ride
I've got planned with my friends
isn't going to make me faster on race day.
So I decide to put Matt on the spot
and ask him how we should prioritize.
- Finding consistency would be the first thing.
And I know that that sounds really general,
but finding consistency is the magic word.
But the best advice I think I can give around that is
to not look at your training program
as just an accumulation of work.
So in any given week, we have every one of our athletes
take a step back.
We have actually call it the Sunday Special.
Before the week starts,
let's look at the landscape of your week
and let's see how busy you are,
and then let's look at your training.
And rather than just thinking
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,
what are the two days likely,
what are the key sessions in any given week
that are really gonna move the performance needle?
And so we actually have a hierarchy of training.
Those are the ones that we build the week around.
And if you're time-starved, those are the ones
that you should move around in the week
to make them unmissable because they're the key components.
And then you have a hierarchy of decision-making
because in support of them, we have workouts
that we, in a revolutionary way, call supporting,
and the design of those sessions is
to either facilitate recovery,
to have a general endurance or technical component,
or prepare for one of those key sessions.
And of course, those are the sessions
that if you can do them all, great.
It's wonderful.
Life ebbs a little bit, and you can get them all in.
But if life is flowing and you have to make a decision,
they're the ones that you'll either scale
or reduce some of the workload or ultimately eliminate,
and then you still have the specificity
that you can do to create the magic of consistency.
And so that's really the thing,
is get out of the weeds, get perspective, and make it sure
you've got a recipe that can hit consistency.
- In a sense, acceptance of the time we do have is vital.
Once we're honest with ourselves
and realistic with the amount of time we do have
to set aside for triathlon,
then we can focus on consistency.
And you need to remember
that we do triathlon for fun, in theory.
And I know it's easy for me to sit here
and make it sound so simple,
but it's easy to forget, sometimes,
that we're not actually pros and triathlon is a hobby.
But if you're not careful, mistakes can slip in.
- So the biggest mistakes
that we tend to see with all athletes,
but particularly time-starved athletes,
I think that there are two major mistakes.
The first is going too hard in the easy days
and so bringing the bottom up.
Because they're time-starved,
with the pursuit of making every workout count,
they end up making the easy run
a little bit harder than it should.
They end up chasing because they're just worried
that they're not getting enough hours in.
And, of course, what that does is dilute
the quality of those key sessions that we talk about.
But ultimately, it's gonna give 'em
a risk of fatigue accumulation.
And then the second component,
and it becomes particularly prevalent
when you have a lot going on in your life,
you don't have time to breathe, is post-workout fueling.
There's a whole component of that.
It's not just about restocking the energy in the muscles
or stores in the muscles in a component like that.
It's actually about energy management in the day
and making sure that you're doing
the high quality training that you're doing,
but then refueling following
to set the tone for the rest of the day
so that you can stabilize the stress
and have good energy management.
So those would be the two key things.
The third thing, the final little extra,
is looking over the fence,
having the stressor of, my friend Johnny's doing 20 hours
and I only have 12,
and thinking that that dilutes the ability
to actually be successful.
And ultimately, the truth is we have
a lot of amateur athletes that have done very, very well
all the way up to winning world championships
that are training for Ironman at 10 to 12 hours a week.
- Be aware of any potential pitfalls
and have a realistic strategy in place
that will help you have the best opportunity
of reaching those targets.
And I know we're not gonna as many hours to train as a pro,
but that doesn't mean we can't train as smart as them,
if not smarter.
If you're anything like me,
you're gonna want to have more time in the day,
not just for triathlon training, but for everything.
Although, I must admit, I'm very reassured by the fact
that you can become a top age group athlete in Ironman
with just 10 to 12 training hours a week.
But that does involve being brave
and trusting in quality over quantity.
Now, I'd love to know how many hours a week
you actually train and how that breaks down,
so let me know in the comments section below.
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And whilst we're talking about training with little time,
if you want to get faster running without training any more,
we've got a video on that just down here.
And if you want to catch up
with our other Triathlon Training Explained videos,
we've go the playlist just down here.