Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!

On this episode IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon highlights the achievements of Purple Patch in 2024, including qualifying over 50 athletes for world championships with an average weekly training of 10.6 hours, and 30 athletes for the Boston Marathon using a multi-sport approach. The organization also launched a leadership program, added new team members, and introduced the Performance Hub for better community engagement. Key events included a fundraiser for the Challenged Athletes Foundation, a team race in Santa Cruz, and transformative camps in Hawaii, Napa, and Greenville. Notable athlete achievements featured Jeff Dolan and Susie Orca qualifying for multiple world championships, and Jake, CEO of Fellow Products, excelling in various endurance events.

Dixon sets the stage for a fun and reflective episode, highlighting 24 key things that happened to Purple Patch in 2024. He emphasizes the importance of reflection for high performers and the lessons learned throughout the year. Matt shares his personal reflections as the leader at Purple Patch, discussing the organization's accomplishments and challenges. He encourages listeners to start planning their performance goals for 2025 and mentions the proven coaching programs available at Purple Patch. Matt Dixon reflects on the history of Purple Patch pros, highlighting the journey from coaching professional athletes to developing a high-performance culture.

 

Purple Patch and Episode Resources

 

Check out our world-class coaching and training options:

Tri Squad: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/squad

1:1 Coaching: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/11-coached

Run Squad: https://www.purplepatchfitness/com/run-squad

Strength Squad: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/strength-1

Live & On-Demand Bike Sessions: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/bike

 

Explore our training options in detail: https://bit.ly/3XBo1Pi

 

Live in San Francisco? Explore the Purple Patch Performance Center: https://center.purplepatchfitness.com

 

Everything you need to know about our methodology:

https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/our-methodology

 

Amplify your approach to nutrition with Purple Patch + Fuelin

https://www.fuelin.com/purplepatch

 

Get access to our free training resources, insight-packed newsletter and more at purplepatchfitness.com

 

Matt Dixon from Purple Patch Coaching emphasizes the importance of a holistic approach to performance, aiming for success beyond just race goals. He discusses the need for athletes to define their vision of success, align with their coaches, and create a roadmap for their goals for 2025. Dixon introduces the concept of a two-to-three-day performance retreat, focusing on education, workshops, and activities like hiking and kayaking. He also highlights the importance of foundational habits such as proper eating, sleep, and hydration. Dixon encourages listeners to start these habits now to ensure a smooth transition into the new year and maximize their performance journey.

He reiterates the importance of vision, road mapping, and foundational habits for achieving breakthrough performance in 2025. Matt encourages athletes to build their technique and skills to set the tone for the upcoming year. IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon shares an example of a time-starved CEO who wanted to train for a marathon but needed a broader perspective on performance

 

Purple Patch and Episode Resources

Check out our world-class coaching and training options:

Tri Squad: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/squad

1:1 Coaching: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/11-coached

Run Squad: https://www.purplepatchfitness/com/run-squad

Strength Squad: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/strength-1

Live & On-Demand Bike Sessions: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/bike

Explore our training options in detail: https://bit.ly/3XBo1Pi

Live in San Francisco? Explore the Purple Patch Performance Center: https://center.purplepatchfitness.com

Everything you need to know about our methodology:

https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/our-methodology

Amplify your approach to nutrition with Purple Patch + Fuelin

https://www.fuelin.com/purplepatch

Get access to our free training resources, insight-packed newsletter and more at purplepatchfitness.com

 

IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon discusses Purple Patch's Black Friday deal, offering a 50% discount on the first month of the Tri Squad program with a 30-day money-back guarantee. He emphasizes the importance of maintaining performance during the holidays while enjoying family time. Dixon advises prioritizing key work and training sessions, integrating them into daily life, and allowing flexibility in exercise modalities. He stresses the importance of not regressing, maintaining critical habits like hydration and sleep, and being creative with workouts. Dixon also highlights the need for a re-entry plan post-holidays to avoid stress and ensure a smooth transition back to regular routines.

 In today’s podcast, listers can learn to establish a Sunday Special planning routine before and after the holidays to get organized. Ramp back into training and work gradually after the holidays, rather than trying to catch up. Build a "buffet" of flexible training options to do during the holidays based on available time and access.

 Matt Dixon sets the stage for the holiday guide, acknowledging the challenges of maintaining training consistency during the holidays. He aims to reduce anxiety and frustration by providing actionable strategies to balance training and holiday enjoyment. The guide is divided into three parts: mindset, planning, and actionable tips. Matt emphasizes the importance of embracing and enjoying the holidays while maintaining performance.

 

Episode Timecodes:

00-2:42 Black Friday Deal

2:42-3:08 Podcast Introduction

3:08-13:23 Defining mindset pieces

13:23-26:29 Life Performance Tips

26:48-36:32 Practical elements of Training and Performance Habits

 

BLACK FRIDAY SPECIAL OFFER

Join our Purple Patch Tri Squad for just $75 (half off!)

Here's how:

- Visit purplepatchfitness.com/squad

- Select a Monthly membership

- Use the code BLACKFRIDAY24 at checkout for 50% off your first month of training

Offer valid through November 30, 2024.

 

Purple Patch and Episode Resources

Check out our world-class coaching and training options:

Tri Squad: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/squad

1:1 Coaching: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/11-coached

Run Squad: https://www.purplepatchfitness/com/run-squad

Strength Squad: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/strength-1

Live & On-Demand Bike Sessions: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/bike

 

Explore our training options in detail: https://bit.ly/3XBo1Pi

 

Live in San Francisco? Explore the Purple Patch Performance Center: https://center.purplepatchfitness.com

 

Everything you need to know about our methodology:

https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/our-methodology

 

Amplify your approach to nutrition with Purple Patch + Fuelin

https://www.fuelin.com/purplepatch

 

Get access to our free training resources, insight-packed newsletter and more at purplepatchfitness.com

 

Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!

Matt Dixon and Scott Tindal discuss the evolving landscape of nutrition in endurance sports, particularly in IRONMAN Triathlon. Scott, co-founder of Fuelin, talks about establishing a foundation of healthy eating habits, including 6-9 servings of vegetables per day, 2 pieces of fruit, and appropriate protein intake (1-2 grams per pound of body weight). Focus on sleep quality and aim for 7-9 hours of time in bed per night. Increase daily movement and non-exercise activity, not just relying on structured workouts. ​​They also mention in the off-season to consider stress management techniques and finding the right balance of productive stress. Follow IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon as he discusses the latest nutrition and fitness trends.

If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out at [email protected]

Episode Timestamps:

00:00-2:43 Introduction

2:50-50:00 Meat and Potatoes

Episode Timestamps:

00:00-02:46

2:50-End

 

Purple Patch and Episode Resources

Check out our world-class coaching and training options:

BLACK FRIDAY SPECIAL OFFER

Join our Purple Patch Tri Squad for just $75 (half off!)

Here's how:

- Visit purplepatchfitness.com/squad

- Select a Monthly membership

- Use the code BLACKFRIDAY24 at checkout for 50% off your first month of training

Offer valid through November 30, 2024.

Tri Squad: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/squad

1:1 Coaching: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/11-coached

Run Squad: https://www.purplepatchfitness/com/run-squad

Strength Squad: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/strength-1

Live & On-Demand Bike Sessions: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/bike

Explore our training options in detail: https://bit.ly/3XBo1Pi

Live in San Francisco? Explore the Purple Patch Performance Center: https://center.purplepatchfitness.com

 Everything you need to know about our methodology:

https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/our-methodology

 Amplify your approach to nutrition with Purple Patch + Fuelin

https://www.fuelin.com/purplepatch

Get access to our free training resources, insight-packed newsletter and more at purplepatchfitness.com

 

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.

 

00:29

Welcome to the purple patch podcast, as ever your host Matt Dixon, and today we are on part two of our coaches, conversations with Scott Tindal. Scott is the co founder of fueling, one of the preeminent influences in how athletes are fueling and hydrating their races across all endurance sports. And Scott is a pretty much a regular on the show now, and today, we're going to get back down to basics a little bit, because we're ending the year and we're all looking forward, looking to up level over the course of the coming year. And I thought would be fun to have Scott's perspective across three main areas. Number one, if you're an athlete seeking to up level your performance, what can you be doing right now to lay the foundation as it relates to eating and, as you'll find out sleeping as well. The second category I want to jump into is to gain Scott's advice and some simple application on what you should do if you are really focused on improving your body composition, some of the ABCs of that. And it turns out that you've got a lot of control on how to improve the area. And then finally, what is for Scott's perspective as it relates to longevity, making sure you're setting yourself up for the best quality of life for the years ahead. We straight outside of nutrition. There we talk about movement, sleep, stress reduction, and some key habits around both your eating and your daily hydration. It's fun packed. It's a coach's conversation, and it's really insightful. I think you're going to enjoy it. And so without further ado, I'm going to give you Scott dinner. But one small note as well, if you want to find out more about fueling, simply head to fueling.com/purple.

 

02:16

Patch, the team are always ready to reach out and help with any of your needs, you can also find all of the information on purple patch programming at purple patch fitness.com and if you want to have a direct connect to the team at fuel in or if you want to reach out to us directly and extend the conversation, simply ping us an email [email protected]

 

02:36

We'll be delighted to set up a complimentary consultation. But without further ado, I give you. Scott Tindal, it is time for the meat and potatoes.

 

02:50

It is the meat and potatoes. So here's a question for you. Are you an athlete that is looking ahead to next year and thinking, I want to take my performance to the next level? Or perhaps you're someone that really wants to improve your body composition, or, Further still, he's someone that wants to build a platform of daily energy where you want to set yourself up for a high quality of life for the years ahead, if you're any one of those people, or perhaps all three. And then this is the show for you, because I've welcomed back my guest. I would call him my master guest, because he's been on the show so much now. Scott Tindal from fuel in welcome Scotty. Matty, good to see you again. Last week, we had a nice chat about uh Kona and some broader perspectives on triathlon. Now we're going to expand our horizons a little bit, and I want to have some common advice as we start to enter into the end of the year, and most people are looking ahead. They're getting ready to commit to their New Year's resolutions and all of that stuff. But I want to get some general advice for you, and I'm going to go just very simply with three questions of, what should we focus on if you're an athlete, if you're looking for body composition changes, if you're looking for improving your longevity and daily quality of life and what you bring to your role, or anything that's important to you. Very, very simple stuff, really practical guidance and advice and and I will say, before we dive into this, we talked a lot in last week's show about fueling. We talked a lot about athletics, race fueling. Some observations around Kona. If you guys missed that show, I really recommend you go back. It was a treasure trove of perspective and and really interesting insights. Today, we're going to get a little bit more practical and and really rip the meat off the bone, as it were. And I want to start with talking about the athlete first and and let's

 

04:46

let most athletes at this phase of the year are in what we call off season, so it's a far away in the horizon that their race goals and their start lines are their training demands.

 

05:00

Levels are much lower. Specificity is actually probably lower. So far as not really training race specificity right now, they're doing a lot of foundational work. So as a nutritionist, what would be your recommendation for athletes thinking about charting their journey for higher performance. What should they be focusing on right now, in terms of eating, fueling, supporting training, demands, hydration, how should they an athlete think about it? Because most of them stop thinking about it. Yeah, I think it's a really good question. And actually probably for all three problems that you described at the start, my answer would probably be very similar, actually, but we can get into the nitty gritty of that. I mean, firstly, I think, reflect on what's happened in the season past, yeah, with either yourself or with your coach or with your team around you, and say, Well, where do we do well, where do we not go? Well, take the army Schwarzenegger approach. Cut, cut your pants off at the knees so you can see your calves at every opportunity and say, Well, this is my weakness. How am I going to develop that weakness to become a strength? And so, okay, you're that high perform, that athlete who wants high performance. Where was the high performance missing? Where are you going to direct your efforts to maybe you weren't strong enough. Okay, so what is the big picture of the macro cycle of the next 12 months look like? What's the overarching goal for that? And that's, you know, going to be a discussion. And then how does things, obviously, specifically, how does nutrition fit with that? If you need to build muscle because you're a bit weaker, then your calorie intake is going to be really important. You have to be in a caloric surplus. You have to be manipulating your protein and certainly your carbohydrates around your training to maximize the impact of that. So just want to pause that, because I think that's really important. If weakness, if general weakness, is an area to attack and you want to build strength. It's not just about going to the gym. It's not just about training. There is a nutritional component that are critical. You need to be in a surplus. I want to double underline that. So just just explain what this and then when you say manipulating protein, what do you mean by that practical? So, yeah, I mean and again, why? Even from a training perspective, I would counter that and say it's not just about lifting weights. It's it's lifting weights with a purpose, yes, with an intensity. It's with a focus. So, you know, if you want to have hypertrophy, there's a certain rep range, there's a certain set range, there's a certain rest period that you need to be focusing on. And everyone's so worried I'm going to get bulky, it's like, Oh, come on. Like, yeah, even if you did get a bit bulky, is that going to be the worst thing for you at the start of the off season, probably, you know, every triathlete or insurance athlete throughout the year is most likely, as you highlighted last week. You know, I've shrunk,

 

07:52

you will most likely either maintain your lean mass or probably potentially lose a little bit as the season goes Yeah. So don't be too paranoid about that. Look, in terms of structuring overall calorie intake is probably the most important thing, overall protein intake, in terms of across the 24 hours and the weeks and the months, is going to be super important. Same with carbohydrate intake, positioning it around your training. Yes, it's important. It's probably not the most important thing, not nearly as as important as with endurance training. That's pretty clear from what we're seeing the duration of the training sessions. Yeah, for most lifting sessions, you're not going to need to eat anything during this session, certainly taking in something before thinking about that, not going in faster. Again. It's not equivocal.

 

08:42

It doesn't mean you, everyone, will benefit from eating something going into training. However, the research supports, and certainly there's a correlation, if you do eat before a strength session, and this is certainly our philosophy at fuel in, eat something before, don't go in fasted. More likely you'll push more weight and you'll do more repetitions. What does that equate to? Probably better results

 

09:06

afterwards, making sure you're not you know, done to admit and fasting in and around strength training, if you want to again, increase strength and power and size, because if you neglect your body of fuel, protein, fat and carbohydrates, and obviously, total, that's total calories, then you won't get the results you need. So I think having a plan around a plan, you've got your training plan, you should have a nutrition plan. And I think again, I say this time and time again, I always laugh, off season, pre season, whatever you want to call it, oh, I don't need, I don't need nutrition plan. Are you going to eat? Isn't it easier to not have to think about the way in which you're eating and just follow a plan, much like you would with a training plan? Surely, that's just an easy way. We've got a.

 

10:00

Lot going on in our lives. Reduce the, you know, the guesswork, eliminate the decision paralysis, just get on with it. What's the one thing I'll say? And I was talking to Jonathan co founder about this, and it's, or I always go back to it. It's like, everyone wants this sexy approach to, like everything, and it's like, eat, well, eat with purpose. Train, well, train with purpose. Sleep, well, sleep with purpose. Like habit development, yeah, it's just not that cool, yeah, and it takes effort. You've got to be consistent with it to get the results. But when we see athletes do all those three things really well, you know, what happens? Great results. They improve. Yeah, it's, it's true. I want to broaden your horizon a little bit outside of, we went down the rabbit hole of of, you know, strength and building muscle. About a year ago, we had a conversation you had you said something really interesting for the athlete right now. You just talked about, there's so much stuff to be thinking about

 

11:09

in the middle of the season when an athlete is training for a race in the midst, by the way, because most of our listeners are time starved amateurs of life carrying on. They have this looming deadline. Training is at its highest intensity. You know, they have almost no time, and they're trying to crack the code of race fueling. We now remove that training a little bit less, a little less specificity on the training, at least so far as the race specificity, it's a great time. A year ago, you talked about, this is the time that you want to build the great platform of really high quality eating. Can you explain that concept a little bit like in off season, you want to get your daily eating dialed in when your caloric demands are a little bit lower. So just, just break that down, because I thought that was a real sort of unlock for many of our athletes last year. Ah, I see, yeah. I think in a lot of athletes don't eat well, well, a lot of people don't eat well. I think you've only got to look at the state of the world at the moment, whether it be the USA, Australia, or the UK or globally. So I think you know, what does that mean? I think again, bring it back into simple terms, yeah, aiming six to seven, six, probably six to nine serves of vegetables a day that no one's a vegetable. No one's doing it, no one's doing it. Look, I struggle to it's practically very challenging. Yeah, certainly can get to six lunch and dinner. Yep, can certainly just bulk out the plate with six, you know, six serves of veggies breakfast, if it is a cooked breakfast, throwing in extra a couple of handfuls of, you know, the spinach. Yeah, couple of handfuls of spinach, spring greens and whatnot. So that certainly increases fiber intake. Everyone talks about gut health. How do you improve gut health? It's not through probiotics. Even the research around probiotics is pretty scared these days in terms of showing clear evidence of effect. What seems to be showing effect is prebiotics. Prebiotics being fiber, certainly insoluble, soluble fiber, which the gut microbiome feeds on. That's what it thrives on. Where do you get fiber from you get it from vegetables. Even the research on fiber, like inulin, found in all these products, is a little bit iffy. So powdered, sort of fiber sources maybe don't do even though they say fiber, maybe they're not doing exactly what real fiber does, real real food. Yeah, like, that's the solution. Eat. Don't take a powder. Eat food. Tons of fiber. Eat real food. Yeah, so come to it. That's number one. Fiber, any fiber, fruit, vegetables, two, two pieces of fruit a day. Don't be scared of fruit. Yes, I always say no one got fat eating fruit. So fruit one of my favorite quotes as well. So there's fruit, there's number one, bedrock. Boil it down for it super simple, yeah, fruit and veggies, I think that's your mainstay. Now that's not going to that will provide great micronutrition. There is obviously some macro nutrition within that, in terms of carbohydrates. Certainly, leafy greens and those types of vegetables aren't going to contain a lot of carbohydrates, so you need to layer on top, but you can still choose other vegetables, potatoes, sweet potatoes, parsnips, root vegetables, beets, good layer those on top based on what you require, if you need more carbohydrates than that. Again, two sources, whole wheat breads, good quality bread, sourdoughs,

 

14:40

brown rices and a lot of that is dependent on your caloric expenditure, likes and training. Yeah, and again, if you talk, you're thinking of that second athlete who is maybe trying to improve body composition. Yes, calories matter. Yep, we're going to get into that. What about protein? Because what we're doing is laying the foundation. So we've got all these we've got fibers. It's.

 

15:00

Pressure, then you've got this throttling effect of that. Let's call it the more starchy carbohydrates you want to choose good quality ones. And that's dependent so that you want to think about that as a lever, almost where you you or a throttle. You throttle up the carbs as your caloric expenditure comes. What about proteins and fats? People are very interested in that, yep, and even just before that. So, you know, visually, when you're looking at either your plate is three quarters of your plate filled with vegetables, that's probably a good place to start. Or at least, you know, two to three fists of vegetables as well, if you, if you whichever visualization you want. So I think that's a really good place to start. How much of my plate is filled with, you know, fruits and vegetables is a good place then protein. I think protein is a really good place to start again from a foundational perspective, because you might be on low calorie or lower calorie intake again to try and improve body composition, but you can still take in moderate to high amounts of protein, which is still part of that calorie puzzle. So in doing that, not only you'll probably increase satiation, so your feelings of fullness, which prevents you hopefully snacking and taking in extra calories, if that is again, your goal,

 

16:16

you are hopefully improving immune function by taking in higher amounts of protein, which is going to be essential, because, you know, on a lower calorie intake, there is the potential for susceptibility to upper respiratory tract infections and whatnot, if you're continuously in a caloric deficit as a result of maybe too much training and things so. And again, male to female differences. Males may be a little bit more robust in terms of their ability to withstand that versus females, again, not going to get into the weeds of why that is. It's just what we observe,

 

16:52

protein for building lean mass, essential for retaining lean mass, essential

 

17:00

for bone health, essential. You hear tales of our increased protein intake, it causes leaching of calcium from bones. Actually, that's not the truth. Look at the research. The research says actually, those individuals who are taking more protein tend to have better bone mineral density. So again, from a habit perspective, taking in and plant protein fine. The difference, again, it used to be our plant protein is inferior to animal protein. Actually, it doesn't really, it's not really supported by the research these days, as long as you're getting the equivalent of total protein from plant sources as animal now, in order to get more of a challenge to get the plant protein means you've got to eat a hell of a lot more, and often with plant protein sources, well, what do they come with? They come with more fat, and in particular, more carbohydrates, which now makes it difficult if you're trying to keep total calories down. Yeah. So that's where the plant diet becomes more of a, not a struggle, but more of a puzzle, and certainly requires more planning in order to do it. Well, yep, because you can be a plant based, a plant based athlete, and eat terribly. You can eat Margarita pizzas. Yeah, you can eat Doritos. You can drink Coke and you can eat all the white bread in the world. Yep, you're a vegan athlete. Yeah, congratulations. You also eat like crap, yep. So again, foundational, good quality food, whether you're plant based or whether you're animal based, thinking about the quality, thinking about, then how does my calorie intake work with that. And then, what am I trying to achieve? So on, on, on a simple thing, you said, a nice sort of visualization of three quarters of plate or two fists of vegetables. Is there any algorithm or rule of thumb so far as just general people, what? What should they be consuming on a day to day basis, of protein? So hand of proteins and nice little hand in every meal that they consume. I mean, again, total size of the athlete now, yeah, but it's a good work. What you weigh in pounds?

 

19:13

Protein consuming protein in grams per day. That's a nice little look. That's somewhere between two and three grams per kilo, exactly. So I weighed just under 200 pounds. So therefore I'm aiming somewhere one, 150 to 200 Well, it's definitely 150 Yeah. You know, if you're, what do you say? Yeah, 200 pounds, 100? Well, I wouldn't like to say that much, no more like 193

 

19:33

so let's go towards so 190 to 210 Yeah, is your range? Think of ranges? I think everyone's like, Oh, I, you know, obviously we give, we give a target for someone. So, yeah, 180 grams for me, 200 grams for you, it's a target. If you get either side of that, 20 grams, let's call it 10% you're doing well, you're never going to nail Exactly. And I think again, like athletes, i.

 

20:00

Get messages from some athletes. And obviously we work with a type A personality, I think, and with triathletes. And,

 

20:09

you know, oh, I missed it by five grams. Yes, dude. Like, not only is tracking like, there's going to be some degree of error in tracking, whether it's your visual what you're doing from a weighing perspective, from the back of the label, that isn't 100% accurate trends, trends are important. So yes, hand of protein, the hand of protein, should weigh roughly 200 grams, which is what, seven ounces. Yep, something like that thickness of a deck of cards,

 

20:40

something like that on your plate. Okay, give or take, depending on how big your hand is, maybe weigh it the first time, chicken breast, one. But again, visualizing on your plate so big piece of protein, plant or animal, lots of veggies, you know, some fruit on there. Starchy carbs are layered in based on what you need, okay, and then just typically, the fat just take care of itself through the protein. So if you're an animal, if you are an omnivore, and you consume animal protein, there's a good chance a lot of fat will be maintained on there. Now, again, you can add good quality fats, so olive oils, avocado oils, avocado olives, omega threes through if you think of the Smash acronym, do you know the Smash acronym? No, no shock. I do. Actually, sardines, mackerel, anchovies, salmon, herring, best sources of mega threes. That's there's another, there's another phrase of that issue, which is called Hell on Earth.

 

21:41

I love my omega three. I like my sorting. So I recommend these a lot. Fantastic sources of fats in terms of omega threes, fantastic source of protein. Include them. You know, do you want to swallow a pill every day or several pills to get your Omega three core

 

22:01

intake? Or can you start consuming one of those five types of oily fish in your daily consumption? And I say to people like, try and eat fish once a day, and they're like, Whoa, I can't eat fish once a day. And I'm like, Well, you got three meals in the day. Why can't you? And then actually, if they start to build it into their habit, whether it's breakfast with some smoked salmon, some sardines, some tin salmon, some smoked mackerel, some pickled herring. Okay, well, there was five options for five different things. For breakfast, maybe you could do that in lunch. Obviously, don't want to be that co worker who brings in tin fish. I got told this by Mel, my partner. She's like, I went into a co working space, and she's like, I said, Oh, I'm gonna pack my lunch. Because I packed my lunch, because that's what I do. But she's like, I packed some sardines and that she just took them out. She would Don't be that guy. Don't be that guy. Be that guy. So probably if you do work in a in a an office space, breakfast or dinner at home with your smelly fish. But you can certainly bring it into your habit formation, your daily nutrition intake, eating more fish. I think it's a wonderful thing to include in your dietary intake. So that would be another habit that I would certainly, you know, start to instill from a food perspective, you know, where do you get your omega threes from? You can get a lot of it from fish, if you stick to those five fish in the Smash acronym. How about beyond the the athlete, and I guess, to finish the athlete with these foundational habits, if you really start to build in a really good platform of health as training demands go up,

 

23:45

is it? Is it a nice rule of thumb? I know it's not the bullseye, that as your training demands go up and you start hitting more intensity, more hours, basically, then you're layering on top of these habits. So these habits never change. That's your foundation of eating. That's just bad quality eating, and then the throttle is really adding calories on top of it with a probably a high ratio of carbohydrates. Is that a nice rule of thumb? Perfect, exactly. And that's exactly how we do it. To keep it simple, if you'll end so high to moderate protein, your fat tends to look after itself. Additional fats in as we discussed, as required base of good quality carbohydrates and fiber and whatnot. And then layering in so it goes from a red meal, as we would describe it, lower carbohydrate, to a yellow meal, which you've layered in some carbohydrates on top of the vegetable, from the vegetables that could be a piece of toast, yeah, breakfast, okay, that's another, you know, two pieces of toast gonna give you what, 30 grams of carbs. Great lunch, cupped hand of, you know, a cup of cooked brown rice. Yep, lay it in dinner. Could be some quinoa couscous. Could be a.

 

25:00

Rice. It could be pasta, but it's just layering on top of your foundation. And that's the simple thing. It goes from a red meal to a yellow, and from a yellow to a green, which, again, every athlete loves to see some green on their their plan. It doesn't mean green is pasta only. It doesn't mean green is pizza only it. You've got all these wonderful grains that you can choose from these days that you walk into any supermarket and before, I mean, you only had rice or pasta. Now you've got couscous, quinoa, Farrow,

 

25:35

amaranth. You've got all these different grains that you can explore, and they will provide you with great quality carbohydrates, lots of carbohydrates, fiber, as required. Obviously, you can reduce fiber in and around heavy training sessions and races, but on a daily basis, taking in large amounts of volume is going to help you with gut health, and that's important. It's going to help Everyone's searching for this, the average person takes in less than 15 grams of fiber per day, the recommended amount somewhere between 35 and 45 grams of fiber. How do you get that

 

26:13

good quality, good quality food? So I think if we extract all it, and I'll go into coach mode and just hopefully, as a listener, just remember this, which is, I think the biggest mistake that I see is that athletes, particularly, because we're focused on athletes right now, think about healthy eating, and then there is a light switch, almost like this, the other side of the moon, The Dark Side of The Moon of now I'm training. It's just carbs, carbs, carbs. So it's pizzas, it's fries, it's potatoes. Get the calories in, if you can just shift your relationship with that and think, no matter what is occurring, healthy eating, the bedrock those vegetables you talked about, tons of fiber, appropriate proteins, and then you layer on top of this foundation. That's why it's called a foundation, the additional carbohydrates from the world of sources that there are, that's where you start to get the unlock. And this is the time to get the bedrock right. This is the time you're not going to suddenly shift your eating habits when you're six weeks out of a race and you're thinking about this, I think this is the great time for habit development. And I mean, what I really want to stress here as well, there is not this notion of Clean Eating versus dirty eating. And yeah, Jan and I have had many conversations around this, like, what is clean eating? And he certainly is on that side of the spectrum that is very focused on clean eating, and yes, I believe in good quality food. It doesn't mean you need to exclude other foods at the expense of calories, if calories are required, however, for again, if we think back to the carbohydrate conversation around how much carbohydrates do a lot of athletes need, then it's similar to total calories for how much do a lot of athletes need as well, in day to day setting, if you're doing 20 plus hours,

 

28:14

probably even over 15 hours, yes, your caloric requirement is going to be much considerable. If you are this pretty typical, like, I don't know, but 15 hours, a lot of training for me with a full time job, I don't get anywhere near that these days. Like time starved somewhere between six and 10 hours exactly, it is actually interesting. Like, your energy intake can be majority of time accomplished with really great quality fruit, vegetables, good quality, proteins, fats and whatnot. Now in session fueling, don't neglect it exactly. And yes, there is this separation, but there's also this layering, realization that it's okay to eat, gels, drink, carbohydrate drinks, whatnot, high glycemic, processed, ultra processed carbohydrates in sessions that require it is you can eat all the vegetables and fruits in the world, but if you then don't fuel those sessions correctly, you're going to come unstuck. Eventually. You'll last for a while and then make people might be going, Oh, you look amazing, because maybe you are stripping down fat, but it will bite you in the bum eventually, eventually. And so fuel those sessions correctly based on the intensity of the duration.

 

29:35

Fuel outside of that with total calories, your macro nutrient breakdown, like we've described, with those foundational sort of elements to it, and when you combine those, that's when you see results. And I think whether you're in off season, pre season or season, it's again, it's just refocusing. It's just changing your focus to what you're trying to achieve. And you.

 

30:00

Yeah, that's again, coming full circle in this conversation. It's like nutrition is so central to everything that you're trying to achieve, so don't neglect it. Just because you don't have a race, yep, just because you don't have a race does not mean nutrition is now not a focus. Yes, you can pull back. You don't need to track everything's super hard, but at least have a structure, because that structure means that you don't have to think so much exactly, and it just allows you to get on with the fun stuff, training, sleeping well and eating well. So on a broader horizon, want to talk, and this still sweeps up a lot of athletes, but it's not athlete specific folks that are looking to improve body composition. You talked about a bedrock of great eating habits. Shift the conversation a little bit. You don't need to retread over a ground that you've already trodden over in the front part of the show. You talked about fiber, vegetables, proteins. What about any considerations for someone, athlete or otherwise, by the way, the key considerations and perhaps some of the pitfalls to avoid, if the goal, the mission is to improve body composition, what's some of your general advice for folks that are looking to actually improve their body composition? I think sleep's a big one. And I know that sort of sleeps always one of those interesting ones with nutrition. Is it nutrition? Not really, but it has such a strong relationship, as I've described before, with nutrition, that I think what we're seeing with the research as well, if you have limited amount of sleep, it will make you, or force your brain, to think about hedonistic choices, salty and sweet. So I think sleep is one of those unrecognized like key elements if you and it seems to have an impact on modulation or prioritization of fat as a fuel source versus, say, carbohydrates as well. So if you want to try and improve the ability to use fat as a fuel source, then potentially sleep could be one of those key elements to think about. So I think sleep and time in bed is not sleep. Yep. Okay. So if everyone tracking either with an aura ring, a whoop or a watch, I would, you know, suggest that look at your time in bed and at least minus one hour from that is, that's the typical, typical, that's what. That's an easy sort of thing. Okay, I'm in bed for nine hours. Okay, you get eight hours sleep

 

32:27

time. Now, you could talk about the the synchronization of circadian rhythm and things like that, and stages, but I think at least as a habit, to start with time asleep, yep, and even if you don't track, just use that general rule of thumb without going down a rabbit hole. No, I'm

 

32:45

not gonna You don't need to talk about it, but it is really a key consideration for a woman in perimenopause who, because of a host of reasons, has a really hard time

 

32:58

getting really good sleep quality and often, is sitting with the body, unable to get into a parasympathetic state, in other words, a really rested state. And I think that that has a correlation to a lot of the challenges around body composition as well, like just that connection of body and sleep is just constantly in a high stress environment. Yeah. I mean, I again, I haven't seen a lot of the research on that, so I'm not going to comment on it, but we can talk about perimenopause and menopausal women. So something about body composition, what we have seen in the research, and there's a cool study that came out of Sydney University, which looked at the reason, and again, I hear this from menopausal women a lot. I can't lose weight, I can't shift body fat. Look at your protein intake. Yeah, now when, and it seems obvious, the study came out that when menopausal women did not hit their high protein intake, and I think it was over 1.8 grams per kilo, byte, so high again, in that recommendation, where we push it, which is about one gram per pound. So at least look again that simple, think of whatever you weigh in pounds trying to eat that somewhere between that two and three grams per kilo body weight, which is what we push at fuel in if they don't hit that, what happens is, well, they will choose or reach for fat or carbohydrate sources of food. Now you think, Well, what else they're going to reach for? Okay, makes sense. However, fat calorie dense, the most calorie dense macro nutrient. So instantly, if you over consume or eat too much of that fatty food, calorie intake goes up. Carbohydrates, super easy to over consume total quantity of carbohydrates. So again, total calorie intake goes up. So it's not that it's nothing magic about this. Again, it comes down to calories when you neglect protein. Okay, again, it probably keeps you feeling fuller, but it has some other impact on, say, the thermic effect of food and slice bumps.

 

35:00

Metabolism, whatnot. But if you don't hit that, the problem is a cascading in from a practical element. And it's like it, I had to read the study about four or five times to say, get what they were saying. But it's that practical element you just over consume fatty and carbohydrate food types which pushes total calorie intake up, yeah, as now, does that apply to perimenopausal young females? Probably. Does it apply to young males and older males? Probably. So just think about that, the bedrock, if body, I mean, I guess the body one thing is, body composition is a goal.

 

35:43

Protein. Eat with eat with protein and your fiber on your and what does fiber do? Yep, fiber fills you up. Yeah. And again, are you hitting that 4045, grams of fiber intake per day? Hell no. Hell no. Now people aren't. Am I going to recommend that you go from 10 to 15 grams of fiber to 45 grams of fiber a day. No, because you're going to feel very full of some Yeah.

 

36:10

Build it up. Bit like carbohydrate intake on the bike or the run, yeah, build it up. Build up. Layer it in. So I say from a body composition standpoint, yes, protein we talk about a lot. It is super important, I think, from that perspective, what about dehydration? Because a lot of folks walk around like dried sponges, and one of the symptoms of dehydration is hunger. And so that must have an impact as well, because on daily life, most people forget about training. We're not talking about athletes here. Most people do not consume. We just came back from a workshop and the working with a leadership team. So these are high performers in life. And across the 12, people were working with the average daily consumption of fluids that they were self reflecting on in the weeks in tracking in the couple of weeks leading in was about half a liter to a liter a day, just not enough water, especially if you look if you're stuck indoors, in air conditioning and things like that exactly, might be losing a lot more fluid than what you think about. So, yeah, I mean, we it's interesting, isn't it? We have reminders in fuel, in for hydrate, and some people are like, I don't want that reminder in there. And we were thinking of making it optional, but actually we're going to keep it in as a mandatory just reminder, because it does actually, well, I shouldn't say actually, it does remind you, oh, actually, I haven't drunk any, and I'm thinking to myself now I've had two coffees and not one drop of water when we're sitting here without any water on the table for a run this morning. Yeah. I'm like, I am, actually, yeah. So I think fluid intake, and as you mentioned, if you are dehydrated, that could mimic hunger. So you go and drink a liter or half a liter of fluid, suddenly you're like, actually, I'm not that hungry anymore. Now, could it be boredom? The other thing to think about from body composition, you're sitting down all day, you're in front of the computer. Oh, there's a packet of chips or crisps next to you. What do you do? You eat it because you're bored and you're it's that bored, hunger. Get up, go for a walk, do some air squats, do some push ups, something like that. Suddenly you're like, oh, maybe I'm not. So there is there? I think there's a big psychological element. There's other impacts on body composition. For folks that are amateur athletes, I believe, where, you know, neat, yeah, non exercise, activity, thermogenesis, we we went through the with this leadership group as well, and we tracked and and we looked at the five folks that were consistently training to some level. And so there was one person that was really into group fitness. Okay? They did something every day, someone else, couple of folks that happened to be triathletes, etc, but their average steps per day outside of their one hour of exercise that they typically did per day was incredibly low. So they drove to the office, they walked to the office, they sat in the office. They're not burning any calories. They're moving around. It was unbelievable. It was three to 4000 steps a day. Then they would go and exercise an hour on the trainer. I think that's a factor of particularly in America, I would say, with the infrastructure at all the cities here and not set up for walking, etc, etc, that's probably another component. When you think about body composition, it's just increasing your daily movement, yeah. And I think separating,

 

39:24

you know, separating out exercise from activity, yeah, exactly. That is something that I tend to when, if I'm coaching an athlete is talking about that don't just you can do 45 minutes group exercise and then sit on the couch or at your desk the rest of the day, and again, working from home in post COVID, you get up from the bed, you walk to the shower, you walk to the kitchen, you walk to your breakfast table, you sit on the couch, but all up, you could look at your watch at the end of the day and go, Oh, 1500 steps exactly. That's not enough activity, even with a 45 minute exercise.

 

40:00

Size session, your actual total, again estimated, and again you can take pinch of salt with any estimation. Is that. I mean, it might only be 1800 calories for the entire day, but because you've sat in your house, you've got all these snacks around you. You sit at your desk eating that. You have your breakfast, your lunch, your dinner, you have a few snacks. Before you know it, you've consumed two and a half 3000 calories, and you wonder why, despite exercising every day, things aren't going the way you want. So

 

40:30

probably my take home for body composition is perception versus reality. Now, if you're struggling from a body composition perspective track like, do some favor. And I know the rest of your life, I know, but, and a lot of there will be the kickback, Oh, you don't need to track, no, actually account for what goes in your mouth, at least for several weeks, and be meticulous about how you're actually tracking that. And then you will start to realize, Oh, my God,

 

41:02

you know, four tablespoons of peanut butter on my toast in the morning. Maybe I don't need that. Maybe I don't need half an avocado on my salad. Maybe I don't need that. Again, portion control is really important, and

 

41:21

yes, there can be that argument that tracking can create all sorts of negative habits, and I don't disagree, however, it can also give great insight to an individual about what they're doing on a daily basis. And I think again, when it's managed and used correctly, it can be empowering. Can be completely empowering. And then, as we described, you can use other strategies, visualization techniques. As you get better, like I don't have to track every day, I can look at my plate and go, Okay, I've got enough veggies. I've got enough fruit. I've eaten this in a day. I understand the amount of protein around racing. Okay, I've got a specific purpose now. So it's horses for courses. If your focus is body composition, then dial it in until you get to the point where you're very, very comfortable and you are where you are from a health perspective, again, improvement in body composition is not just losing weight, it's increasing or maintaining lean mass as you reduce body fat, visceral component. That's a key component. I know we've talked about azem pick stuff like that in the past, and we won't go down that rabbit hole. I did write an article about this, which was recent Jan, and I talked about it was,

 

42:39

I think azem Pick is fascinating, yep.

 

42:42

However, the potential drawbacks on it is, yes, you lose rapid amounts of weight in the form of fat, but also at the cost of lean mass. Now, what does that do as you come off azempic and potentially go back up in weight, but that weight is gained in fat, but you've lost huge amounts of muscle.

 

43:04

That's where potential issues could come out in the long term. So I think it's a space to watch, and again, it's a rabbit hole. I'll give you my one minute perspective, and we'll wrap up, which is, it's fascinating, and the next 10 years, it's the first time in decades that obesity has gone down in America, mostly related to the GLP or azepic family of drugs. There's all sorts of interesting stuff emerging and emerging, and we don't talk about it with of what it's doing with clarity and cognitive function. And is there anything there?

 

43:38

I don't terms a negative in no terms of positives that you like, that they're starting to think that they understand we don't understand the long term potential risks of it. It's really interesting of this balance between long term health risks and long term benefits, when you're talking about a total population that is 50% overweight or obese, and beyond 50% well beyond 50% and I mean, look, 93% are metabolically unhealthy, correct? The biggest catalyst for anyone that is, I guess, the only recommendation I would have if anyone is considering this is like anything else, if you only think about it as the drug, as a catalyst for change, and then you are likely going down a cul de sac. It is a tool that for some people, might theoretically be useful, but it needs to come in, and this is one of the the frustrations. It needs to come in conjunction with serious habit change around a lot of what we talked about, nutritional habits, exercise, movement and daily activity, sleep, etc. And then for some people, there might be a case where you look at the guidelines for it, it's meant to be done in conjunction with lifestyle intervention that no one's doing. It's not a weight loss drug. And I mean, you talk about those interventions.

 

45:00

Patients that has to be what you eat on a daily basis, like and building those everything we talked about weights training like, my personal view is cardio is out the window. Yep, that point in time when you're on that drug, you are lifting heavy, repetitive weights for three to four times a week to try and retain or maintain or increase potentially lean mass, high protein intake to train again, try and offset any losses in lean mass with you all that are occurring and strength first you are going to come off this drug at some point. Yeah, it's expensive, but B you probably once you hit your goal, then you come off any drug for life, hopefully. Now, hopefully, like most dieting, you know, programs in that if you don't have the habits built in, lo and behold, you yo, yo, you bounce back. And it could be disaster, with negative consequences, as you said, because you might have lost lean body management. So it look. It's a get. I'm not an expert in JLP ones. You know, it's fascinating to read about. It's interesting to comment on. And I think there's going to be a lot more. I mean, there seems to be a lot more. I'm seeing research paper after research papers coming out, but we don't have the longitudinal studies at this point in time. We talked about hydration, all a bit key. We talked about protein. We talked about fiber. Is there anything else for folks that are just looking to improve the longevity piece?

 

46:30

Well, so the longevity piece, I think first and foremost,

 

46:36

things like intermittent fasting, fasting, all that. No, it's not a panacea for longevity. I think that's pretty clear. I think even some of the experts in longevity, you will have heard them, they've talked about their mistakes with intermittent fasting, fasting, intermittent fasting and time restricted fasting. It's a tool in the toolbox for those individuals. Again, most of the research is around metabolically unfit, overweight, male, female individuals middle age, and it has some impact on those individuals. Again, it's not clear cut the difference between intermittent fasting, time restricted fasting and caloric restriction pretty much the same when it's all equated in terms of energy balance. So

 

47:20

don't think that you have to do that to live longer. I think first and foremost, resveratrol, I was talking about this the other day, again, another, you know, stake in its heart. It's not some magic compound that's going to make you live longer, yeah, do you know what makes you live longer? Exercise, exercise changes, telomeres. It is the number, number one consistent thing by a country mile on terms of longevity and reduction of disease. Well, you're 70 are yes, I'm 72 and I'm co founder of the Marin chapter of AARP, and we have got a great society. It's a wonderful question, but you can impact like, I love how you know, like Bora Garmin, they all give you your age, yeah, don't they, yeah. Where do you sit on that? And look, it's a made up number metric. I'm sure they're using some algorithm to do it. But where do you actually sit? If you want to again, if you're tracking things, what does your age actually say on that, are you seven years younger, eight years younger, or actually, are you older? I read a report for a client of mine the other day. They're, you know, based on all their heart testing and their cholesterol and their blood sugar, isn't that they're 10 years older than what they are.

 

48:38

Now, again, that's a theoretical age, but telling. It's telling. So again, look at the data with everything that you because you're hell bent on living forever, which I don't know why you'd want to do that, but

 

48:53

look at what you're doing. Are you exercising daily? Doesn't have to be mad, but doing something. Are you exercising? Are you staying active? Are you eating, those foundational principles we talked about, and are you sleeping? That's it. Probably the only other thing from longevity is stress. Stress Management. Stress can be noxious and stress can be productive. Again, I think a lot of individuals hear the word stress and think it's bad. Exactly what is exercise? Exercise is stress on the body. What does stress do with the right amount of stress and the right nutrition, it creates adaptation in a positive way. So stress on the body, not allowing it to be too high, not allowing it to be too low, getting that balance right. Again, I can think of training peaks in particular, they do a nice little graph that shows you where your stress is and how it's relating to adaptation and where you should be going. I actually looked at it more recently. I was like, that's interesting. Is the bill towards the marathon? Pretty much been on point. Feel good. Stress gets too high, you get sick, you get injured.

 

50:00

And stress gets too low. You d train you. You get worse than what you're trying to achieve. So I think those four things, that's what will make you live longer. There you go. Great way to finish. Well done. Thank you very much, my friend. Thanks, mate. See you. And trouble back safe down under to the land of dirtiness, and we'll go from there. Thank you very much for being on the show, Scott, and thanks for listening, folks. We'll see you next time. Take care,

 

50:26

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, at purple patch fitness.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 you.

Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!

Matt Dixon and Scott Tindal discuss the evolving nutrition landscape in endurance sports, particularly in triathlon. Scott, co-founder of Fuelin, shares insights from the Hawaii IRONMAN World Championship, emphasizing the importance of tailored nutrition plans based on individual energy expenditure. He highlights the need for athletes to balance caloric intake with training intensity, noting that high-intensity athletes may require up to 120 grams of carbohydrates per hour, while lower-intensity athletes should consume less. They also discuss the importance of consistent, high-quality nutrition for overall health and performance during races and daily life.

Matt and Scott discuss the evolution of nutrition and fueling in triathlon, focusing on the importance of quality nutrition and total calorie intake. Scott reflects on his work with Sarah Pimpiano and the changes in nutrition and fueling over the years. The conversation highlights the importance of day-to-day nutrition and the relationship between nutrition, sleep, and training. Matt and Scott discuss the challenges of athletes consuming high amounts of carbohydrates and the importance of context in nutrition. Scott explains the relationship between power output, energy expenditure, and carbohydrate intake. 

If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out at [email protected]

 

Episode Timestamps:

00:-3:47 Introduction

3:47-9:20 Background of Fuelin

10:15-17:30 Nutrition Trends

23:00-44:28 Racing Nutrition of IRONMAN World Championship in Kona

 

Purple Patch and Episode Resources

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 Amplify your approach to nutrition with Purple Patch + Fuelin

https://www.fuelin.com/purplepatch

Get access to our free training resources, insight-packed newsletter and more at purplepatchfitness.com

 

 

Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!

Join IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon discusses the importance of reflection in achieving high performance, both in athletics and business. He emphasizes the need for athletes to assess their previous season to avoid performance plateaus and set goals for the next year. Dixon outlines a five-step reflection process: pausing to review past goals, identifying strengths, acknowledging growth opportunities, prioritizing key areas for improvement, and setting future objectives. He highlights the success of Purple Patch's leadership workshops and coaching programs, noting their effectiveness in improving performance. Dixon also promotes Purple Patch's one-to-one coaching opportunities and encourages listeners to reach out for support.

If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out at [email protected]

 

Episode Timestamps:

00:00-04:20 Episode Introduction

04:20-22:07 Meet and Potatoes

11:43-22:07 Five Tips for Sucessful Journey

 

Purple Patch and Episode Resources

 

Check out our world-class coaching and training options:

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Run Squad: https://www.purplepatchfitness/com/run-squad

Strength Squad: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/strength-1

Live & On-Demand Bike Sessions: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/bike

 

Explore our training options in detail: https://bit.ly/3XBo1Pi

 

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https://www.fuelin.com/purplepatch

 

Get access to our free training resources, insight-packed newsletter and more at purplepatchfitness.com

 

Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!

In this episode, we’re discussing what it takes to perform at your best—not just in the moment but over the long term. Today’s topic is one that is often overlooked yet absolutely essential for sustained high performance: reflection. Whether you're an athlete aiming for an IRONMAN podium or a business leader managing high-stakes projects, reflection is a crucial component of the high-performance machine. It connects important traits such as adaptability, coachability, resilience, and the ability to prioritize what drives results. You might be working hard, but without reflection, you’re not necessarily working smart or focusing your efforts where they will drive you toward your goals.

IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon emphasizes that reflection helps identify what works and what doesn't, ensuring continuous improvement rather than just short-term success. Dixon uses the example of Jesse Thomas, an athlete who won six consecutive Wildflower Triathlons but sometimes performed poorly despite winning. He also shares a business case where an executive's project failed, but reflection helped identify areas for improvement. Dixon concludes that reflection is crucial for adaptability, resilience, and long-term growth, urging listeners to incorporate it into their routines.

If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out at [email protected]. 

 

Episode Timestamps:

00:00-3:20 Episode Introduction

3:30-5:39 Reflection Framework

5:39-13:01 Jesse Thomas Story

13:01-18:29 Business Story

18:36-21:20 Poker Story

21:26-27:50 Application

 

Purple Patch and Episode Resources

Check out our world-class coaching and training options:

Tri Squad: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/squad

1:1 Coaching: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/11-coached

Run Squad: https://www.purplepatchfitness/com/run-squad

Strength Squad: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/strength-1

Live & On-Demand Bike Sessions: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/bike

Explore our training options in detail: https://bit.ly/3XBo1Pi

Live in San Francisco? Explore the Purple Patch Performance Center: https://center.purplepatchfitness.com

 

Everything you need to know about our methodology:

https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/our-methodology

 

Amplify your approach to nutrition with Purple Patch + Fuelin

https://www.fuelin.com/purplepatch

 

Get access to our free training resources, insight-packed newsletter and more at purplepatchfitness.com

Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!

Our mission is to empower individuals to reach their athletic and full potential. Today, we’ll discuss injuries— a common frustration among endurance athletes—and how to reduce your injury risk as you prepare for the upcoming season during the off-season. 

While this time can feel like downtime, it’s actually a crucial opportunity to build resilience and prioritize health. Injury prevention is a key factor for success, as avoiding risks leads to the consistency needed for high performance.

What you do in the coming weeks will lower your chances of setbacks without requiring excessive effort; approach it smartly and pragmatically. IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon outlines four simple strategies to implement. 

This episode features the story of Sarah Piampiano, a professional triathlete who overcame a major injury by focusing on sleep, nutrition, stress management, strength training, and tissue resilience. Dixon outlines four key areas for injury prevention: developing healthy habits like sleep and nutrition, incorporating strength training, building tissue resilience through consistent, low-intensity running, and adopting a holistic approach that combines these elements. He stresses the importance of consistency and patience in building a resilient body to prevent future injuries.

If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out at [email protected]. 

 

Episode Timestamps:

00:00-2:27 Episode Introduction

2:27-7:41 Meet and Potatoes–Sarah Piampiano Background

10:05-11:55 Habits: Work with Fuelin, Sleep, Hydration

10:57: How Sarah approached training

15:33-25:58 Habit Development

25:58-31:24 Strength Training

31:24 Tissue Resilience 

35:33 Putting it all Together

37:15 Common Pitfalls to Avoid

 

Purple Patch and Episode Resources

Check out our world-class coaching and training options:

Tri Squad: https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/squad

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Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast! As winter approaches, it's the perfect time to talk about indoor riding. When the weather gets rough, we take our rides indoors on the bike trainer. It's a great way to stay in shape and improve your outdoor riding.

This week on the PurplePatch Podcast, we want to share some tips to help you maximize your training on the bike trainer. Instead of focusing on the usual technical aspects of bike training like FTPs and critical power, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon shares practical skills to make you faster, smarter, and a true craftsman on the bike.

Matt takes us through the benefits and limitations of indoor riding to gain a better understanding of what indoor training offers and what elements of training can only be gained outdoors. Matt covers the different smart trainers available on the market, the three P's of indoor training: posture, pedaling, and power, terrain management, and the importance of end of range work and neurological conditioning.

Our goal is to help you get faster and have a great time doing it. If you have any questions or want to continue the conversation, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected]. If you'd like personalized coaching on the bike trainer, we offer complimentary sessions where I can coach you through a workout. It's a two-way video platform, so I can see your metrics and provide feedback. Just reach out to [email protected] to set up a session. It's absolutely free, and there are no strings attached.

Episode Timestamps

00:00 - 04:52 - Welcome and Episode Introduction

04:52 - 39:35 - The Meat and Potatoes: Weaponize Your Bike Trainer This Winter

Matt Dixon  00:00

 I'm Matt Dixon. 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 sports into their lives.

 

Matt Dixon  00:32

And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast, as ever, your host, Matt Dixon. And yes, it is getting that way. Winter looms, and therefore, we thought it was a good time to revisit indoor riding. Yes, it is the time of the year when we don't brave the elements and instead get inside, sit on the trainer for hours on end, daring and dreaming about when the sun comes out again. Look at the indoor bike trainer. It's a great workout, but it is important as it represents a great opportunity for you as a bicycle rider to uplevel your outside riding. If you do it right. There is no short-term success in improving your bike riding. But what I go through today is about as close as you can get to amplifying how you ride your bike outside by sitting inside, no matter how strong you are, no matter how tough you are. This is an opportunity for me to educate you today on how to weaponize the use of your bike trainer so that you can get more speed out of that toughness, that strength, and that fitness. Let me repeat that. What I want to try and do today is open up a guide where no matter how tough you are, how fit you are, or how strong you are, you get more speed out of it. That's our mission. That's why we talk about weaponizing the bike trainer. I'm not going to bore you today with the old, sterile stuff that you read in the media. I'm not going to talk about FTPS and critical powers and all of that. I want to give you some actionable skills that are accessible and that will yield a speed return greater than any fitness development you can gain. If you put the lessons into practice, you will get faster. You will also get smarter. You'll become a craftsman on the bike. And by the way, that's really fun because when you go out and train with your buddies, they're going to be very annoyed, and they're equally going to be amused at your newfound speed. What's he taking? Don't worry about that. Just get better at building your craft. Let's do it just before we get going, as now is the norm; we bring you today's show for free and promotion free. And so if while you're listening and you're thinking, Hmm, I'd like to maybe have a little bit of a taste of that, I want to continue the conversation, or maybe you have some follow-up questions. If you want to ask anything else related to today's topic, feel free to reach out. You can have a complimentary consultation where we'll chat with you about any of your questions. All you need to do is reach out to [email protected]. That's the email address. [email protected] and all of our programming can be found at purplepatchfitness.com. That's the website I will say today because we are talking about the bike trainer; I would like to extend a personal invitation to you if you'd like me to coach you through a session. Our video platform is pretty special. It's pretty unique. But the nice thing about it, unlike Peloton, which is just that one too many with rah rah rah, and hey, I'm happy to do a bit of rah rah rah occasionally, but this is two-way video. So, in other words, you can see me as I'm coaching you through executing a workout, much of which we're going to talk about today. But also scarily, perhaps, I can see you and your trainer, if you have a smart trainer, is connected to the platform, so therefore I can see your metrics. I can see your Cadence and your heart rate. If you've got a heart rate, monitor your power production, and I can control the grades and give you feedback. So that's the opportunity for me, no matter where you're at in the world, to actually coach you. If you would like to have a complimentary session where I coach you, feel free to do so. All you need to do is reach out to [email protected], and we will set you up with a session. You can come and join the crew. You get a flavor of both the coaching and a little bit of the fun, and even some people say stupidity because why not? We'd like to have a little bit of fun while we are taking your performance very, very seriously, and we can sort you out. So feel free to reach out to us. It is absolutely free, no strings attached. And if you don't like it, go on your merry way and continue on in your mediocrity. All right. Barry, the producer, thank you very much. Let's do this. We are going to get on with it. It is, ladies and gentlemen, the meat and potatoes.

 

Matt Dixon  05:01

All right, today we're talking about the bike trainer. So, let's set this up a little bit. Most triathletes, most people who ride their bikes when winter looms, go inside and sit on the trainer, and that's normal, but unfortunately, the vast majority of riders out there absolutely underutilize the opportunity. They tend to look at training with an indoor trainer as just a time-efficient workout. So it's time on the saddle where they're driving to boost their metrics, their FTP, or the elements that make up critical power, and they do intervals that are really hard, and typically, they execute it while they're either watching some gamification type platform or they've got a Netflix show or something like that, and they're just chasing avatars or watching crime dramas or something like that. But the truth is that they're missing a huge opportunity. If you know how to take advantage of the indoor trainer, you can get so much more out of it than just priming your physiology. So, the goal of the show today is to help you turbocharge your indoor riding in a way that actually delivers real-world performance benefits. So, using the indoor trainer so that you get better with your outdoor riding is a critically important component. Another message that is going to be woven into this is that no matter what your riding environment, the truth is that simply focusing on physiological metrics, such as your functional threshold or just your straight power meters, is a surefire pathway for underperformance on your bike. And so if you want to get faster, if you want to actually get more of a yield from your strength and fitness, and then we want you to go beyond the power, which is just a measure of output, how much work you're putting in and what you're able to generate. And so you need to go beyond the what's if you want to do that. And we want to think about becoming more efficient and more strategic about how you use your energy to ultimately give you what we're going for, which is more wheel speed. And so, yes, indoor trainers are highly valuable tools. They can improve your riding performance. They also bring improvements in safety and other components like that. But approaching your indoor trainer as a tool to upgrade your outside riding changes your whole mindset. I don't want your indoor trainer to just be a convenience tool. I want it to be something that actually helps you become a better bike rider. And so before we get in, I think that we should take a step back and say, well, that all sounds very romantic. That sounds like a wonderful investment. I should just do all my riding indoors if it helps me get better outdoors. But let's first highlight some of the limitations of riding your trainer indoors because it's not a solve-all situation here. Alrighty, we have a lot of people that only ride their bikes indoors, and then they go outside, and they race outside, and that is going to be a limiting prospect. And I understand and appreciate why it's tempting to always ride your bike in dots. There's no impact on traffic. It's very, very convenient. It's a time-efficient tool for training. And so I am all in on the bike trainer. But if you ride your bike trainer only, you are going to severely limit your riding potential as well. So, I'm speaking out of two sides of my mouth here. Use the bike trainer to improve your outdoor riding, but if you only ride it indoors, you're going to limit your riding potential at the same time. And we need to acknowledge that there are things that you just simply can't really develop and improve on a bike train. And so let's go through some of those first because I think it's important. The first is the bike trainer fosters an environment where you don't need to have situational awareness, so you don't need to have 360-degree understanding. There is a reason as you become a better bike rider, and the actual action is stabilizing and balancing the bike, shifting gears, and managing terrain. A lot of the stuff that we work on today slides into the unconscious or the subconscious, and then you have more capacity to understand the environment around you. The challenge is, if you never ride in the environment, you're never going to improve that component, and that can become actually more dangerous. There is a reason that the less experienced outdoor riders are the folks that tend to ride through the glass, that tend to hit the sticks and the potholes and tend to actually have more interactions with traffic, and that's because more seasoned riders have great situational awareness. So if you never. Get to that environment; you're never going to improve that component. So there is a safety component to actually riding outside a little bit, and you should consider that there are also many interactions with the machine itself, with the actual handling skills of a bicycle, that you just simply cannot Foster and improve on the bike trainer. And so how and when you're braking, balancing on the bike, managing different environmental factors, such as riding in the wind, even riding around corners, standing out of the saddle, really effectively. These are things that you can't really develop. Inside the bike trainer, you can apply some of the theoretical concepts. You can work on standing form, but to become a better bike handler, you have to ride your bike outside. And then a third component that I think is really important is that you don't get riding on an indoor trainer; at least, most of the bike trainer setups are many of the stabilizing muscles that actually come into play with outdoor riding. When somebody is on a static indoor trainer only utilizing the main muscle groups, they're not getting the stabilizing effect that occurs because the bike is always moving outside, and you are interacting with the different gravitational forces, the lateral forces of cut, of cornering, even keeping the bike stable in the wind, etc. And your core and stabilizing muscles are always engaging. And if you never use those outside, when you actually go outside, particularly if you're doing something like a half Ironman or an Ironman or a big Gran Fondo, you're going to get very, very stiff and tight. And that's going to have an interaction on how you're performing on the back end of the bike ride, or particularly if you're running off the bike. And so, don't undervalue the importance of doing some mileage outside of all of these factors. So ultimately, your best solution here for riding performance is to have a combination, or a mix, of some indoor riding and some outdoor riding because there are also, equally, some things that only indoor riding can truly provide. So, if we've talked about the negatives, why don't we shift gears and say, okay, the whole theme of today's podcast is weaponizing your indoor bike trainer? That's great. So what are the benefits? Well, I've already mentioned one of them. It is, of course, much, much safer, and that's really great. However, when you lack the requirement of situational awareness, that means that you can amplify the specificity because 100% of your focus can be dedicated to the action of the training. So rather than you thinking about traffic or random stops and starts with stoplights and things like that, inconvenient terrain changes when you don't want them, maybe some inclement weather, you have a highly effective environment to place all of your focus and willpower into the specific intervals that you might be doing, and that's a thumbs up. So, you get to have an increased specificity. You also have a safer environment. It's also a highly effective venue for structured workouts, particularly intervals because you can have a dose and response at a very specific timing that isn't necessarily influenced by terrain, wind, and other factors. So that's great. And you can also, interestingly, really isolate and dig into some very specific skills that are critical. The indoor bike trainer with awareness, with focus, with prioritization, is a great venue where you can actually foster and improve things like your posture, how you're actually sitting on the bike, whether that's in your time trial position or your road position, or how you're actually pedaling the bicycle. Yes, there is an art and a science to how you should be pedaling, and it's also a great place where you can learn the tools of the toolbox of how to become a better bike rider, particularly utilizing variance in Cadence, that's your leg speed and your gear selection. And so there are some critical skill developments that you can do inside that then transfer to outside, and that's great. And then, finally, the bike trainer is, of course, highly specific and particularly valuable for the time-starved athlete. Now, I'm not a massive fan of saying one hour on the train area equals two hours outside. I don't believe that one hour on the trainer is one hour on the trainer and two hours of riding outside is two hours of riding outside, but it is a particularly potent tool that you can use to get a great ROI on, whether you're thinking about skill development, interval training or anything else. And so when you weigh up when you have the combination of some indoor riding to really work on these environments where you can play. All of your energy and your focus on skill development in specific intervals are powerful. But then you want to take the mindset and the skills and the improved posture outside and apply it in the real world, where then you also integrate your situational awareness and your actual application onto the ribbony roads that you're going to go and ride outside. So that's your potency as you go from there. Now, if we go back to indoor trainers, they used to be what you would call dumb trainers. In other words, you would typically take the wheel off the trainer and you would lock it on either side of the axle. It would have a resistance against it, and you would shift gears and just simulate riding your bike. And, of course, what you get there is a different form of tension on the bike. You just do loads of intervals, and it's great. And so that's why you have the origins of things like pain cave because it's not very fun. It's not very variable, and it doesn't really apply to real-world bike riding. But over the last few years, everything has changed, and not everyone in the riding community is up to some of the things that you can do, so we still have, as an opportunity, a wonderful venue to do all sorts of intensity. We can do long and relatively boring endurance work outside. We can do very high-intensity, short intervals. We can do medium intervals, whatever it might be. So, with all of the specificity of classic interval training or endurance writing, you can do it inside. And that all exists, but now, with the advent of the smart trainer and some of the new platforms that are in play, you can actually apply real outdoor riding skills and Terrain Management that can be practiced on the smart trainer, and it's going to improve your power delivery, and thus speed through the variance of terrain, and that becomes the greatest yield. No matter how fit you are, no matter what your genetic gifts are, all of us are given a certain amount of visit of gifts, size of our engine, muscular strength, endurance, and resilience, no matter what our genetic gifts are and how much we work to develop over the course of time, our fitness, our power output, etc, the biggest yield that you can get for speed is becoming a master of the craft of how to actually take all of your genetic gifts and your hard work and your efforts. Therefore, your level of fitness has actually developed. How do you apply that to grades that are going uphill, where gravity is not your friend, cress, where gravity is becoming your friend, and downhill grades, then, when the wind is in your face, the wind is at your back, etc., how do you apply that fitness to give huge speed return, and these new platforms actually enable that, and that is incredibly exciting because that's where the biggest return of investment is. Whenever we see people become craftsmen on their bicycles, they leverage their fitness and power to the best of their ability. That's where they go from good to great, from mediocre to good. In other words, they uplevel, and that's a really powerful thing. And so it becomes a great opportunity. And it's only been for the last couple of years that this is really a reality, and we're sitting here right now, sitting in front of us with this opportunity to grow, to improve, and to learn on the indoor bike trainer, and it's passing many people by, that's the truth of it because we're stuck in an old school mentality of thinking about the bike trainer as just a venue to do intervals. And that's a shame because you can get a lot faster from just becoming a better craftsman, and then, of course, you layer the intervals on top, and you get really fast, and that's where the fun lies. So, let's talk about the benefits of indoor training. Well, just as I talked about, it teaches you how to maximize speed relative to your input, and that's a really good component. It also offers controlled conditions for riding, posture, pedal stroke, Cadence, and gear management. That's a good thing. It provides safe, repeatable feedback to enhance your outdoor skills, so you actually can get a yield of Am I doing it right or wrong repeatedly over a pattern, and it can actually help match your inner animals. I like to call it your intuitive sense of effort relative to a specific output or power. And that's a really good thing. And so it is a highly ideal venue to have any sort of specific interval, but also layer on outdoor riding, great. So, with that background, what are the Golden Rules for you this winter? If you're planning to spend a lot of time on the trainer, what are the golden rules for indoor training?

 

Matt Dixon  20:07

What should you focus on to make sure that you do weaponize it? Well, the first thing I'd say is to think beyond your power, your FTP, your watts per kilogram, and all of the output side; all that is is a measurement, okay, that's not the yield. So your success over the course of the winter is not just about more power, more power, more power, because that's a really challenging and incremental gain. Once you get up to a certain level of fitness at the purple patch, we focus on what we call the three P's, and that is your great posture on bike number one. So, in other words, oh, okay, how am I sitting on the bike making sure that you're not carrying unnecessary tension in your shoulders, in your neck, and you're sitting quietly, subtly on the bike with just a strong core where you're actually sitting there, no matter what level of fatigue, you look like a ballerina, poetic and so great posture. Number one. Number two, we think about great pedaling, the different forms of pedal stroke, and how you actually really think about maintaining a lovely phrase that I like to talk about, constant tension on the chain, not allowing any micro decelerations flowing through, and introducing variance into how you're pedaling depending on whether you're doing high force, to whether you're doing lower force, whether you're doing high Cadence or low Cadence, etc. So pedaling is the second one. And then finally, output, it's power. So you have posture, pedaling, and power. These are the components that we think about. And as we go through the key here, let's just go through each of them. The key is always riding great with great upper body posture. So, let's talk about posture. First. We think about this that starts with your upper body, always ensuring that your upper body and your elbows are subtle. You see so many people sit on a bike trainer with locked elbows, and they sit there with very stiff so from shoulder down to wrist, it is a straight pillar, and those become stiff, and that is a habit that many people integrate on the trainer. They're sitting outside. They just choke back, they lock the elbows up, and they're sort of resting on their elbows in many ways. The challenge with doing that is it's a little akin to riding, driving in a car, and removing all of the shocks, and you're bouncing up and down the road, so when you have locked elbows and your shoulders moving up towards the ears, it's very stiff. Firstly, not only are you reducing economy, it's actually costing you more miles per gallon in terms of energy, but it's also an inhibitor of number one riding safety because now you're bouncing up and down the road, and if you do hit a pothole or a stick, it's much higher, higher likelihood that you bounce off the bike, and that's not a good thing. But also, with that negative posture, it's impossible for you to do the following: go around the corner, stand out of the saddle, control the bike in the wind, and many other factors. So you are, by definition, just with that simple habit, poor posture, you are a worse bike rider. And so if the bike is static, the only way to ingrain that as a habit is every time you're riding your bike, inside, hold yourself accountable and build the habit of great posture. The upper body is very quiet and relaxed. Shoulders supple if you're in the time trial position, allowing the tension on your neck to drop down, allowing your ears to drop between your shoulders, so that you're more aerodynamic, and you get comfortable sitting in positions for a long time, and when fatigue starts to strike, you're able to retain really good posture. So that, in itself, is not only going to make your outdoor riding better and safer, it's going to help you navigate when you do go and apply those outdoor skills, standing, cornering, braking, riding in different wind, etc. And that becomes really important. The second P is pedal stroke, and we think about riding for the most part, you see a lot of more junior riders, less experienced riders, stamping on the pedals, making it very quad heavy the muscles at the front of the pedal stroke, but a better way to think about your pedaling. And, of course, this is on a podcast where most of you are listening to me and not watching me, so it is challenging to apply this education. And over the airways, as you want to call it that. But I'm going to do my best tip. The majority of your power in the pedal stroke comes from the upper muscles of the leg. So, in other words, your glutes, your quads, your hamstrings, etc., so everything from the hip to the knee and so, for the most part, the fulcrum of your pedal stroke starts at the hip and then your femur, that big upper that big bone, it's the upper part of the leg, all of the muscles surrounding that. That's your engine room. That's where the origin of your pedal stroke is. Most scenarios dictate that anything under the knee can just be a response from the fulcrum, which is at the hip. So, in other words, think about it like a garden hose outside when you whip it 10 yards down, which it just whips at the end there. That's what your ankle is doing. It's just tracing the origin of the pedal stroke. And so with the pedal stroke that you're applying when you're riding your bicycle. You can use that and employ and improve it so that you're getting, yes, you're always going to get most of your power from the front of the pedal stroke. That's where you're biomechanically most efficient. And there is going to be the pressure, but you want to even it out so that you can get constant application of the chain and so you're not just stamping up and down like pistons. In fact, your pedal stroke is more elliptical in nature, almost sliding back and forth where you're still getting most of the power from the front, but the retreating leg, the one that is opposing, also gives a little bit of an unweighting of that rear leg as it comes up the back so that you can maintain constant tension of the chain. One of the things you can do over the course of this winter is to become an artist of your pedal stroke. A great way to do that while you're riding is just to close your eyes and feel it under the arch of your foot. And you should feel this constant tension. There shouldn't be a chunk, chunk, chunk of your pedal stroke. It's more of a

 

Matt Dixon  27:07

and it's doing that. And the nice thing is you can get feedback on this just during the warm-up as you go through it. Don't worry about single-leg drills or anything like that. Just focus on one leg, then think about the other leg, keeping the opposing foot clipped in, and feel and think about this phrase: constant tension on the chain. It's going to help you. So if you can achieve those two things, which is upper body, really quiet, really supple, and then your pedal stroke, constant tension on the chain that's going to radically improve your efficiency, and that becomes really powerful. So just those two things, the two, first of the three, P's, posture, and pedal stroke are going to help your miles per gallon. It's going to help you get more output relative to whatever fitness you gain, but then the third, and remember, it's power. The third is really where the magic occurs, and it's built on the shoulders of great posture and great pedal stroke. Now, this is power, but it's not like what you might think because I'm not talking about just getting more power and being able to generate higher output, more what's on the screen; it's more the distribution of your power to give you speed return, and this is where you can add to your toolbox of yourself as a bike rider. So, let's talk about this now. As I discuss this, let me set the level here a little bit. In order for this to really be effective, you're going to want to have access to a platform that can simulate variability in terrain. The very best platform out there, by the way, is Velocity; that's its name. That is the platform that we use at Purple Patch Pro. Twenty of your training sessions are built in Velocity with videos so that we can coach you through these sessions. But the platform itself is Velocity; that's its name, okay? And it is, by far, I say this: I don't have any vested financial interest in Velocity, but I will tell you this: of all of the platforms out there, this is the only platform, and it is head and shoulders from an educational standpoint and skill development standpoint. There is nothing else like it. I don't have any vessel interested in them succeeding or not. It is powerful. It's the reason that we've integrated it, and I'm going to try and explain a little bit why on this so Terrain Management, the way that the platform works, and it's very, very smart. They have great algorithms here to simulate your rolling resistance as you're riding. And what I can do as a coach is I can shift grades, so 0%, 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%, so the degrees of the grade go up, and then we can have cresting and having descents as well. But it's not a light switch. It doesn't go from 0% to 1% because what the algorithms do is they understand the speed that you are riding simulated on the bike. And so if I go from a 0% grade to a 4% grade, if you think about what happens outside, if you're going from flat road to a hill, you're carrying speed, let's just say, 18 miles an hour riding along a flat road, and as the grade comes up incrementally, you feel the grip of gravity as it starts to work against you, and that tension on your chain increases As you're losing speed, and the hill has its way, and on the platform, it works like that, a little bit like a roller coaster going through and starting to feel the grade coming up. Conversely, if you're riding up a grade of 4% and you're going to transfer to a negative one or 2% grade, the same applies. You feel the tension releasing. Doesn't just release like this, releasing, and gradually gravity becomes your friend. So what does that mean? Why is that important? Well, no matter what output you're doing, just like you're riding outside, we get to help you learn how to use variants of Cadence, the proper utilization of changing gears, and the combination, of course, blending together gears and Cadence for you to actually navigate riding up a hill, cresting over the top of The Hill, riding through the dip of a roller managing to vary different grades so that you get a better speed return for whatever power you're riding at. And this absolutely smashes the myth, if you're thinking when you ride your bike outside, that you just want to stick to a single cadence, or you want to, as they talk about, flatten the course. In other words, no matter what happens with the grade going up downhill, you hold one power. It's a myth. That's a sure way to blow yourself to pieces or go very, very slowly. This is a way for you to distribute your power to the third P in a smart way to yield the best speed return. And so when you have simulated terrain like that, not only does it make it really fun, it's incredibly empowering. So, as I'm recording this show today, I just finished coaching a class where we had, in person, about 20 athletes because that's how many people sit in our studio in San Francisco. And then I had another 50 athletes or so globally, all over the place, two-way video. And we went through a moderate output, what we call zone three. So somewhere around a six out of 10, and their whole game was they had to keep the same power. But what I did was constantly vary the terrain, 0%, 2%, 4%, 5% negative, and 1%, rolling through that multiple times over the course of 13 or 14 minutes. And what we did there is that I want your output to be exactly the same, but you're not going to change gears, as what I was teaching them there is how they can manage their output by just using Cadence. Now, next week, what I'm going to do is I'm going to bring them back, and we're going to do the same workout, but I'm going to have them fix 85 rpm, and now the goal is the same zone three output, but this time, they're going to have to only change gears the whole time, so they're getting to moderate and manage their speed return through gears, holding the power exactly output. And then, of course, the third week, we combine it together. Now, I want you to try to get the best speed return and distribution of the work over this variable terrain to see if you can go faster using shifting power. When you're going downhill, probably slightly less power going uphill, a little bit more power, fat, pretty even power. Using gears and Cadence and what starts to occur as you go through this process and you repeat that educational process is why we call it bike school. You get faster because you start to learn, ah, I've got feedback loops here, and that is it. That's a really, really powerful tool. So, Terrain Management, I've gone on for five or 10 minutes now, just on this piece, but that's the third piece. So, the three primary tools that you have are to improve your posture. Improve your pedaling and distribution of power. Those are the three P's, and if you think about that, and nothing else when you go and sit on the trainer, you're going to get faster. So, let's just think about one other opportunity that you have on the bike trainer, and we call this the purple patch special source. But you can utilize it. You don't need to be a purple patch athlete, there is a great understanding of utilizing variants of Cadence when you're riding your bike outside. Most of the time, when you ride your bicycle, you're going to spend 90 95% of your time in a relatively narrow range, somewhere around 70 RPMs or revolutions per minute, up to maybe 95, and even in there, most of the time when you ride along the flat road, you can be somewhere between 80 and 90 rpm. That's pretty typical. Great. But there is a powerful training tool that you can do, best done on a trainer, where you work on what we call end-of-range work. And what I mean by the end of the range is, if your low end of that normal range is 60-65 to 70 RPM, upper range, 95 to 100 rpm, doing specific intervals at the low end of that range and the high end of that range. So, at the low end, we call it strength endurance. It is a powerful bridge between the strength training you do and the spike-specific intervals that you want to do, where you do consistent work at a very, very low Cadence. How low? Well, it starts from 60 to 65, goes down to 50 to 55, and even goes down to 40 revolutions per minute. It has very strong, high torque intervals and is the absolute catalyst for improving your riding performance, which is hugely important. Everyone should do low cadence work on the flip end, have neurological efficiency, and improve their pedal stroke by doing relatively low power and high cadence work. We call it neurological conditioning, which is really good for smoothing out the pedal stroke and is very effective. We

 

Matt Dixon  37:05

just do a little bit of that. It also becomes a tool. If you're ever finding yourself in a place where you've got a strong tailwind, then keeping relatively low power at high speed and being able to sit comfortably at 100, 105, or 110 revolutions per minute without your heart rate blowing up. You want to train it so you become better. So that's a real outdoor application, but the real catalyst that has low Cadence, strength endurance, and is powerful. So that's a lot of information, and you might listen today and think, goodness me, I haven't even thought about any of this stuff. It's really hard. If you have any questions at all, feel free to reach out to us, and we'll try and help you a little bit. But do you know the best way to really improve this experiential learning? So I talked about this at the top of the show, but this is a genuine invite if you want me to teach you this and then just hop in for a free session. Reach out to us. We'll set you up. We'll make sure that your train is set up. And if you have a smart trainer, particularly at your house, it's so fun and rewarding, but you're going to get faster, and if you can carry that away, then it's going to help you. And so much like in our webinar, where we offer everyone a free consult, and many, many people took us up. That's good for us because if we get to help people have a great off-season, as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, that's super for the sport. Helps people. And if we can help you understand how to weaponize your trainer, purple patch or otherwise, that's good for the sport. And so feel free to join me. It's a lot of fun, and it's a personal invite, two-way video; I don't think you'll regret it. Okay, just remember this as a final message: improving your fitness is not enough for this if you want to gain outsized performance gains, and then I encourage you to focus on mastering bike handling, your posture and pedaling, and Terrain Management and use it to enhance your outdoor riding. Become a Better bike rider. It's so much more fun than just trying to chase power. And if you want breakthroughs, this is it. We have a strong reputation with all of our pro athletes. We always used to get asked how you generate such great bike riders. This is what I'm talking about here. This is it. Because we weren't fitter and we weren't stronger than anyone, we just helped our bike riders distribute that power across the terrain, and that's the speed game. So, if you want to beat your buddies up the hills, this is what we're talking about. Upgrade your skills and get smarter, and it can give you a better speed of return. I hope that helps. I feel very excited to help you in the live bike class. We'll see you soon. Remember, reach out. [email protected], take care. 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 could subscribe. Of course, I'd like to ask you if you will subscribe. Also, share it with your friends. It's really helpful if you leave a nice, positive review in the comments. Now, if you have any questions, 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 improving us. Simply email us at [email protected] 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, 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, do whatever you do, and take care.

 

Welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. This new mini-series will reflect on over two decades of coaching top endurance athletes and executives. Join IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon as he’ll draw lessons from these individuals to help you achieve high performance in various aspects of life. These high-performance lessons will be integrated into monthly episodes over the next year. 

The first episode focuses on Australian triathlete Sam Appleton, who exemplified the trait of controlling the controllable. Despite a challenging two weeks leading up to the 2018 Ironman 70.3 World Championships, including illness and a nagging Achilles injury, Sam maintained a positive mindset and executed his race strategy. He placed 6th overall, demonstrating the power of focusing on controllable factors for high performance. Dixon emphasizes that this mindset applies beyond sports, improving resilience and reducing anxiety in athletic and professional settings.

If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out at [email protected].

 

Episode Timestamps:

00:00-3:52 Welcome and Episode Introduction

3:52-14:17 Meat and Potatoes: Background on Sam racing 2018 IRONMAN World Championships in South Africa

14:17-End: Sam's performance during 2018 IRONMAN World Championship Race

 

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Welcome back to the Purple Patch Podcast!

This is the final part of our three-part series on setting up a great off-season for athletes. We recommend checking out the first episodes of the series.

In episode one, we discussed the importance of the Off-Season and the need for a real break while also laying a strong foundation for the upcoming year. In the second episode, we delved into the specifics of our approach at Purple Patch, building on last year's successes while making necessary refinements.

We received positive feedback on the first two episodes along with some phenomenal questions from athletes like you. In this episode, Matt shares the top 10 questions we received over the last two to three weeks about the off-season. He breaks the questions down into three categories: Big Picture Questions, Off-Season Training Questions, and Nutrition and Body Composition Questions.

Matt covers a range of topics from health and energy improvements to maintaining weight during the off-season, rest days, training volume, and the use of AI in training programs.

We believe you will find this episode not only fun and interesting but also empowering, and hopefully, it will help you plan your off-season and set yourself up for improved performance.

If you have any thoughts, or questions, or want to learn more about our services, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected] for a complimentary consultation.

Episode Timestamps

00:00 - 02:52 - Welcome and Episode Introduction

02:59 - 22:39 - The Meat and Potatoes: Big Picture Questions

22:43 - 32:57 - Off-Season Training Questions

32:59 - 45:42 - Nutrition and Body Composition Questions

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