GetMaccaX12.mp3

Hey, it's Ben Greenfield and you're in luck because today's guest is bringing you his underground training secrets that he used to literally get to the top of triathlon and win Ironman World Championships multiple times. Now, if you're not a triathlete, don't worry, you are going to be able to benefit from a bunch of the workouts and the resources that he shares. And I'm also going to throw in a few big bonuses for you right now. The first is this. My special guest and I are going to be talking about a workout guide that he's written. If you happen to get that workout guide and you post a video of you doing any of those workouts on the facebook.com bgfitness page, I'm gonna hook you up with a copy of the Super Health Diet book which is a perfect hand guide, a perfect nutrition resource for you to rely on as you're going through these workouts. The next thing that I'm gonna give you is if you go to the show notes for this episode and you share this episode, I'm gonna have a little button there where you can share this EP using something called Raffle Copter. I'm going to put you into the raffle running for a free flip cam video. And when I put that free flip cam video into a box and send it to you, I'm going to put a hundred bucks of cold hard cash in there as well. But you got a share on Rafflecopter in order to get that. And the show notes for this are going to be over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com to allow you to do that. Okay, the next thing I'm going to give you is if you get the workout guide that this guy is gonna talk about and you send me your receipt, I'm going to hit reply and send you my brand new ebook which is called the Become Superhuman Resource Guide. I'm just gonna send that straight to you. All you gotta do is forward me your receipt. And then the last thing is if you are a triathlon dominator or you use Tri Rift or any of my other training programs, don't worry if you pick up this workout guide that my guest is gonna talk about, I will teach you how you can work any of these workouts into any of my pre existing programs. And as you know, all of my programs come with a private forum and email access to me. So all you got to do is ask me and I'll show you how to work these workouts in. Alright, I'LL shut up now and quit talking. And let's jump right into today's interview. Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield and I have a complete animal, a monster of triathlon on the call today. The guy's won 200 plus races around the world since the 90s. He's the only person ever to be an Olympic course and an Ironman world championship or champion, as well as recently an ITU long distance world champion. He's got 12 Ironman victories, more than any other male out there. The guy's broken eight hours in Iron man more times than I even know and he's even been ranked as the ESPN's World's Fittest Man. Chris McCormick is on the call with me today. Maka, how you doing?

All right, Ben, how are you, mate?

I'm doing fantastic. I'm stoked to have you on the line because you've, you've generously offered to, to fill the listeners in on some of your secrets when it comes to how you get the fitness that you've obviously got. So thank you for coming on the call.

Oh, too easy, too easy. I guess I've been doing it for so long, so it's, you know, I've been seeing you around the world so many places. We caught up in Nevis last time, actually. I saw you in Kona, actually.

Yeah, well, we saw each other in Nevis and I think Japan and then Kona of course.

Mate, we're all over the place. This sport takes us everywhere.

That's what I love about it. So you have, you've been doing this a while and you obviously know some of the secrets when it comes to putting workouts together. But before we even get to some of your secret sauce, there are obviously mistakes that people make, age groupers, pros, people that are triathletes or people who are just working out. In terms of top mistakes that you tend to notice people making when they put together a workout, what are some of the mistakes that you see?

Well, in individual workouts, you know, it's not so much, I think it's just the mix. And I talk about a triathlon mix in the sense that how you run sessions together and more so you know, the volume you're doing when you're running those sessions together. I think as triathletes where we're definitely the style of athlete that thinks more is better. And I think that the most common mistake I see with a, with a lot of amateurs that they don't factor in the simple fact that they've got families For a lot of them, they got work commitments and they just don't get enough bang for their buck out of the sessions they're doing. They're doing a lot of volume because I think numbers will add up and with volume comes success. And that's not always the case. And for a lot of them, and I've spent a lot of time over the years with some of the best pros in this sport. We train less than a lot of the amateurs, but I think we do a lot of the stuff right. So I think it's just a little bit of a, you know, just. They just don't know how to get things right, get the mixes right. And I think they listen to so many sources as opposed to trying to understand what's best for them, working out what works for them and then building, you know, a program with an expert that works for them ultimately in the long run.

So when you're looking at putting together a workout or a week of workouts, do you have like a philosophy that you approach things with when you, when you decide what you're going to be doing for swimming or biking or running or weight training or anything else?

Well, I try. Firstly, I sort of set it a little bit of a skeleton. And what I mean by a skeleton is that I give myself in a week, say a key session on every day that I want to hit. And that's basically the bare minimum. If I was just to do a skeleton program for the week, it would get me through fitness wise to be able to race any race. And the rest of the stuff do is, I wouldn't call it fluff, but the rest of the stuff is add ons. So I sort of set a skeleton sort of program together and then I add sessions around that and I think, you know, it's been successful. You got to be very, very flexible. You know, as triathletes we're doing three sports and you know, the fitness feeling of doing three sports is phenomenal. I think that's why so many of us are drawn to the sport. But you've got to be very, very careful in the accumulated fatigue that comes from doing three sports. So you have to have a little bit more flexibility than say just the pure runner or the pure cyclist or the pure swimmer because we're adding all those sessions or all those sports together. So a little bit more flexibility in your program. And that's why a skeleton structure tends to work the best. And if you set those sessions, key sessions for the day and you are tired or you're Flat or you run out of time, you just nail that key session and you can drop the other session you might have seen set for that day. But flexibility in a training program for triathletes is key.

So return to this idea of the skeleton philosophy and kind of basing your training day or your training week around key sessions. Do you have, I mean, do you have a database of key sessions that you're drawing on when you're putting together a skeleton week?

Well, 100% depending on where I am in, in my racing season or the season I have definitely the sessions I run to that have been successful me in the past. Successful for me in the past. And you get to know that over the years. So, you know, for me in particular, Mondays, since I can remember, have always been a day that's focused on strength. So I have a whole range of strength workouts that I can do and you do like to mix those up. But you know, Mondays is always a strength orientated day for me. Tuesdays I tend to look for some speed or something more cardiovascular as opposed to muscular. And Wednesdays I tend to go more aerobic, something longer. And Thursdays I tend to go a little bit more on the recovery side. Saturdays, for example, are very race intensive workouts and you tend to repeat that in some degree or another throughout the whole season. And you just change that style of session and you know, to do a strength session, as you know there's thousands of ways to build strength, be it for the bike or the run or the swim. And it's just picking those and pushing them into the program when it works for you, depending on when you're racing next or where you are in your, in your season.

So you just basically got certain days and they're almost like buckets and you drop your goal workouts for the day.

Into that bucket to some degree. And I do work off a lot of, you know, I say this to amateurs a lot because I do a lot of conferences around the world. I'm talking to tri clubs and stuff all around the world. And as a professional we have the luxury of not necessarily having to abide by a seven day work week or a seven day week. So a lot of people like to run seven day cycles. And as pros a lot of us are running 10 day cycles so we don't have to do the same thing on a Sunday. Every single Sunday I run a 10 day cycle and that enables me to get the sessions in that I want to, that I need and then repeat again where for a lot of Amateurs, you just don't have that luxury because you're fitting things around work schedules. You know that your friends go out on a Saturday and you like to join that ride. And the social component of fitness is important. So you know, when you're working on a seven day structure, you definitely need to be a little bit more flexible, especially early week when you tend to do a lot of your volume. On the weekend when you're not working, you know, early week, you can be a little bit flat and the flexibility definitely needs to be there.

So let's say somebody's listening in and they want to set up basically a skeleton week like you recommend. And they're, they're not a pro, they don't have tons of time and they can't do super long workouts. Can you kind of run through? I want to run through like your, your top swim session, your top bike session, your top run session in terms of just like getting the most bang for your buck as far as, as far as what you do. So let's start with swim. What would you do for a swim session as far as like one of your key sessions that you think just gives you a ton of benefit?

You put me on the spot, but a good set. Probably my favorite swim session is a set that we got out of my old swim coach in Australia, Dick Kane. And he's coached Olympic champions, he's coached myself, Craig Alexander, McKeely Jones. Some of the greatest triathletes have come out of Dick's swimming pool in Carrs park, just south of Sydney. And he, he created a session that over the years we called the Elevator. And the athletes actually called it the Elevator. He used to just give it a simple name. It was basically a set of two hundreds, but we used to call it the Elevator because it used to climb and just kill us by the end. And it was a set of four hundreds. And we used to do eight by 50, two by four hundreds, two by 400. And you'd repeat that. The first 50 meters would be flat out. Then you do another 8, 750s on a set cycle. And then you do two four hundreds at race pace and we repeat that eight times. So it was a very, very long set. And over the years we adjusted that for, you know, I got older and I didn't need to swim as much. And I'm thinking I don't need that kind of intensity. When I was young, we cut that back to two hundreds and it's a session I use weekly. Every single Monday I do a version of the elevator set. And it's, you know, I'll do four 50s, two 200s, and the 50s will be first 50 is flat out, three 50s steady, and then the 200s at race pace. And then it'll be the next set will be the 250s flat out, you know, too steady. And then two two hundreds at race pace. And the third set will be the 350s at max effort. And this last set is obviously the four 50s at max effort. And that's why we call it the elevator. You're constantly stepping up the lactate with the hard 50s. But the key is to try and hold those two hundreds at as close to race pace as you possibly can. And it's a good form finder because you get to really see those 200 times drop off towards the end. And you know, if you're finding some good swim form when you can maintain that 200 pace the whole way through the set. And mate, I can tell you right now, I do this session with Crowe in Australia. We do it, you know, we swim in the same squad and both of us look at that session in particular as a key marker for where we are now in our swimming. It's probably one of my favorite sets. It's mentally very, very easy. You knock it out and there's multiple variations of the elevator set. But that is probably the meat and potato session that we would nail on a Monday.

Nice. I love it. And for those of you who are listening in right now, if you're out bicycling or running or something like that, don't worry about furiously writing this down or trying to remember it. I'll make sure that I put some of this stuff up on a website for you so you can access some of the Macca's secrets. All right, how about the bike session? What's a favorite bike session?

I'm all for riding up hills. I think with triathlon where it's a strength specific sport and you've got to look at bike riding in triathlon on how it affects the next discipline, the run. And so very, very strength specific work I like to do on the bike. There's a lot of stuff you're going out with your friends, doing and putting up some volume. But my most favorite set is always strength efforts up a hill. It's a 12 minute climb I have in Sydney. I've got another one here in Los Angeles that I use. Gradient of about 5% and I 5 to 7% and I do over gear on it. Most athletes do some style of strength Set on the bike very similar to this. I think as triathletes we do have a tendency to do too many. I keep it pretty simple. Three or four of them, 12 minutes, it's 48 minutes. If you do four of them, it's 36 minutes. If you do three of them, you're looking at a cadence of around 70, 65-70 RPM. I always do it on the time trial bike, always do it in the aero position. And you're really trying to focus on muscular torque. When I say that, you're not really revving the engine. It's all about muscular torque, building strength. And that's why the gradient's important. You don't want it to be too steep, but you really want to feel that quad work, that glute work, your hamstrings work in the back end of the pedal stroke. Pedaling nice circles. And for triathlon in particular, especially for Those guys doing 70.3s and Ironmans, you know, we can get away with a nice pedaling technique for the first hour. High cadence. But all of us gravitate towards bigger gears as the races move on. Ironman in particular. And science shows that after two hours we definitely start looking for the bigger gears. We rely more on torque than cadence to put out the same power. Anyone who's using power will realize that. So a strength set is really important for that back end of a bike ride. And if you've got the strength and you lay that out in a good strength session, strength bike set, it'll really correlate to the back end of your bike ride, which is where you lose most of your time in a triathlon. And in particular will set you up for a great run. And that's the key. Most people are like, oh, I don't run well off the bike, I need to run more. We all know that running well off the bike comes from being strong enough on the bike to give you the run leagues that will enable you to run well.

Interesting. You see a ton of coaches these days having athletes practice spinning up hills, going 90, 95, 100 rpm up the hills. I've even recommended sessions like that to athletes. So this is a, this is a more unique approach of literally almost like mashing up the hills as a strength building session for long climbs.

Yeah, well, I just think, you know, you look at anybody and I think, you know the old Tour de France videos with Lance Armstrong running that high cadence. Everyone suddenly started spinning around for years looking for using their engine, using their heart and lungs. To put out power. And that works for short periods of time. And Ironman and long triathlon events. Over time we all gravitate towards you look at Sebastian Kienle. You even speak to Chris Lieto, who I spent a lot of time with in Kona this year on training camp, who's probably the best cyclist in triathlon. He's moving towards bigger gear, bigger gears. At the end of the bike ride. He found that you're just revving out too much to hold that high cadence. And you've got to have the muscular strength to put out that torque. And torque is key in triathlon. And we used to get a bad name for years that triathletes mash big gears. But ultimately we gravitate towards that because we need to have that strength to set us up for the bike ride. And you know Brett Sutton, who's trained, you know, he trained Chrissie Wellington, he's, he's trained, you know, the Olympic champion. He is a big gear philosopher. And, and there's method to his madness. You know, we used to laugh at him, but to some degree, with, you know, my own studies and my own looks at things, I, I see method to his madness. It's not as stupid as, as I used to think.

Yeah, it makes sense as you explain it. It's just something you don't, you don't see recommended that much.

Yeah.

How about running, you know, especially for, you know, like age groupers who aren't out there doing two plus hour runs or maybe you want to squeeze in something, something shorter. Do you have any favorite run sessions that you find give you a lot of bang for the buck?

I think. You know, and this is something that's come relatively new to me. I knew a lot of athletes that used to use these treadmills. I'm going to talk about treadmills and I never really use them a lot. I never liked treadmill running. And you know, when I made a move across from Ironman to have a crack at this London Olympics and I was looking for leg speed, we really started using treadmills. And I remember thinking, these are a waste of time. I'd rather get out on the road. It's boring. And for a lot of people here in the winters, treadmills become a part and parcel of their winter training program. But I think you get a lot of bang for your buck out of your treadmill because for two reasons. Number one, you can control the speed so you can play with the gradient without changing the speed so you get a better feel for Building strength at certain speeds. I think about a 3% gradient is equivalent to running on the road. So anything under 3% is a little bit like motor pacing on a bike ride. So you can use those gradients under 3% to really work on your leg turnover. And that was what I use this, the treadmills for. In particular, going back to the Olympic distance stuff and racing the draft legal racing on the World cup circuit was trying to get that leg speed up. And on an aging athlete, that was hard. And if you go and do that on the track, you can have a lot of muscular problems. You break down and you know, we just not. I just couldn't do it. But I found on the treadmill I was able to get my run cadence up. I was really able to bang out some good interval sets on the treadmill and the fatigue wasn't so great that I couldn't back up the next day and do a set, you know, do another run session, which is key. It's about banging sessions together, being consistent with your work. So treadmill sessions are good and a great one would be, say I call it a session called Roly Polys, which is, you know, you set a target time if it's in the winter or it's before a race. For me, if I was in mid race season, I'd set my, say, my 10k race time, I'd set the pace at say three minutes, a k for example, and I would do 10 minute intervals at that pace with a big. And I would only control the gradient every two minutes. So after two minutes, if I started the gradient at 4%, after two minutes I'd say take it down to 2%. Now if I go down on the gradient the first time, the next two minutes I have to come up. You can't go down twice, you can't go the same direction twice, which is why we call them Roly Polys. And that is the most amazing session. I only discovered this session with the Aussies this year. Last year on camp, the Aussies training for the Olympics in Axle Laban. And I use that religiously. And the bang for my buck I got out of that was amazing.

Yeah. And for people who don't train on treadmills, it's a really good point that you brought up. You've got lower ground reaction forces. You bounce back from those workouts. I mean, what you just described is a tough workout, but you bounce back from that way quicker.

Oh, big time. That was the one thing that I noticed a lot was the recovery post treadmill And I was able to run the next day. There's that awkward feeling when you first get on a treadmill. And I was definitely one of those people because I didn't utilise them a lot in my training prior to the last two years. But once you get on top of that leg turnover and you get a feel for, for the treadmill, because you're really using more of your hip flexors as opposed to your hamstrings, you start to be able to take that new running field, focus more on your technique and you can take that onto the road over time. And it's very much like I say, it's very similar to motor pacing for a push bike rider. For a rider. Or swimming with flippers in the swimming pool. Swimming with fins. It's a great way to pick up that speed without hurting yourself.

Awesome. And for those of you listening in, I am going to have links to some more sessions from MACA coming up. I'll let you know where you can grab them. But I want to ask you about strength training, Chris. I know that you've got one unique form of strength training I saw on your website called Sportoga, which I'm guessing is a mix of strength training and yoga, but can you kind of explain what that is?

Well, you've got to have a guy I've been working with probably my entire career, MG Mick Gilliam, we all call him MG in Australia. He looks amazing. If you see him, he's the quintessential good looking, 52 year old bloke who is very, very vain. He's a lovely guy, one of my best friends and he's been working with me on strength and conditioning and preaching this into me since I was a 22 year old junior athlete. And he was forever trying to get me in the weight room and saying, you know, especially as you age as an athlete, I need to get you in the weight room. And I was always very reluctant to get in the weight room because I always felt lethargic and flat after, especially in season after doing weights. So he was a big time yoga guy and he was always preaching yoga to men, but I didn't want to get in the room and try and hold these poses because I just couldn't do it. And over the years he sort of morphed all his yoga school and he created this form of his form of sports yoga and it was very, very strength orientated, had mixes of Pilates, all these yoga schools. I don't know the name of the yogas he studied and he Created these yoga moves that aren't like yoga, but they are, but they're very strength orientated, they're very good for flexibility and range. And especially as I've aged as an athlete, I used to laugh at him when I was in my mid-20s going, oh, you'll never get me doing that stuff. But it was definitely something I gravitated towards when I hit my mid-30s. I thank him all the time now because to some degree I think it's kept me in the game at my age. Now at 39 years of age, I'm very, very strong. I'm very body aware. And it's much more. You have to see it on video to understand it, but it's much more using your own body weight, using your own range and really working on understanding how to fire those muscles and use those muscles. Because we really lose that ability over time. We just lose that body awareness. And he targets getting that body awareness back first and then building strength in those areas. And for me in particular, and I've said it to his face, so this is in 2010 at the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii, the year I won when Andreas Raylert caught me. Mick called it before anyone that I would win the race. And he said if you look at my hips and he can slow it down, I was body aware, I was able to keep stay over my hips. Raylet was all over the place, even though he's the young guy closing in on me. And Mick is convinced, and I am to some degree now too, that it was all that work we did with control. You know, core is the big key word nowadays, but core control and understanding how to fire everything and use everything to get the most out of myself. And I ultimately kicked away from a guy who's six or seven years younger than me, the world record holder, and win a race that everyone had sort of written me off at that point in the event. And I attribute a lot of that to sportega and Mick's mixed range of exercises. I keep telling him he needs to come up to the United States and show people he's a genius and it's a very, very nice form of exercise.

Yeah, I'd love to try one of those sessions out. And for those of us endurance sports geeks who are watching your buildup in ITU and training for the Olympic team, I think there are a lot of people kind of waiting for you to pop injury wise and it didn't seem to happen. And it sounds like the Sportoga kind of paid off for you.

Yeah, I've never had a real injury in my career that's left me out of a season. And that's, you know, pretty much every pro has missed a big chunk of the season because of an injury. It's never. In 20 years, I've never had an injury that's left me out of a season at all or left me out of racing. So I think I've been very, very lucky. And, you know, you feel blessed sometimes. You meet certain people in your life. And Mick has become sort of like a big brother to me in some degree. He's 14 or 15 years older than me, and he was one of those first fitness geeks in the 80s when personal training and fitness wasn't as popular as it is today. And he's been so obsessed with understanding things to do with his body that he really drilled that into me at a very, very young age. And a lot of us used to laugh, but I was always listening and listening. And he'd get me in the rooms and he'd make me do these things when I just want to go out and ride my bike. He'd be like, trust me. And a lot of those athletes we're training with back in the day, and actually, you know, Crowie spent a lot of time with. With Mick as well. Crowie knows him very, very well. And a lot of those athletes that were laughing aren't around anymore. They're injured. And it's quite ironic that both Craig and myself, you know, approaching 40, and we're still at the top of the game.

Yeah, there's obviously a huge amount of triathlon workout knowledge in your head, Chris, and I know that you've. You've recently launched what you call 12 of your most lethal and effective triathlon training sessions of all time. I'll be sure and link to it for folks in the show. Notes to this. But it's over at getmacca x12.com There are. I don't even know what half of these workouts are. You've got one called the inhaler and one called the Lung busters and the accordion, and all these different workouts, as well as a bunch of bonus workouts. What was the idea behind you putting this together?

Well, it was quite bizarre because I got right into this social media over the last few years. I enjoyed Twitter and Facebook and I always trust anyone who follows me on Facebook. I always tend to answer people's questions because I enjoyed that a lot. You know, I'm always answering stuff. And, you know, we. We decided that we try and build a database and ask people out there what they were after. What is it? Nutrition advice? What, you know, like, is it how to train for an Ironman? And we're putting this up on the Facebook wall and answering questions all the time. And every single person was like, give me a secret session. What's a session that no one else is doing? And I used to say to people, well, there isn't really any secret sessions out there. I think there's variations to sessions. But there's sessions that work very, very well for a lot of the pros. And I can tell you a lot of the sessions that the pros are doing. And a lot of people are pushing me to, well, please give me those sessions. What sessions are you doing in particular? And I found it difficult to write that out. I'm trying to put it on my Facebook wall or put it in blogs. And I thought, you know what? The best way to do this is just to film them. And so we went about on, you know, Scott and a few of the guys travel with me, as they do every year on all my training camps. This year, we're in Switzerland prior to the Olympics, and we're in Sedona in Arizona when I was doing a bit of altitude work. We're out in Kona on my training camp. And whenever I did one of these sessions, we just filmed it and I explained what I was doing. How you do it, this is when you would do it. These are the common mistakes. This is why I do it. These are the other athletes who have done it. This is where it came from. Give it a go. And we did that with 12 sessions, and we did four swim, four bike, four run. And that's how MX12 came about. And it was really a push from the community, from the people that were following me, going, please give us these sessions. And I kept people informed the entire journey. I'm like, hey, guys, we did a session today. We filmed it. This is, you know, and they were like, oh, this is going to be fantastic. And we had the three bonus sessions because, you know, a lot of my trainer, Terenzo, who I train with a lot, he's like, well, let me tell you, one of my sessions, you know, there's a session. So we went and filmed him doing one of his sessions he does up here in Los Angeles. And, you know, and I really wanted to get Mick mg, the guy I was just talking about with Sportoga, onto the video. So I got one of my friends to film Mick talking about Sportogo and how some strength and conditioning work you can do at home for every triathlete. Some of the sessions we do, and so we got that up there. And then I wanted. A lot of the feedback people were wanting was for open water work, how to swim in open water. Because a lot of triathletes, a lot of people come into our sport, are first timers, are a bit apprehensive about the open water. So I went down to Jerry Rodriguez here in la, who's probably one of the best in the world, and sat down with him with a camera and said, all right, tell everybody what they need to do, what the mistakes they're making in open water. And we filmed one of those sessions. We got a lot of information from him and we just put it all together and we called it MX12 because it was my 12 sessions. And we're really happy with it. It was a very, very enjoyable process for me. I loved the role of being on the other side of the camera and feeling to some degree, like a coach. And when I was talking to the camera, I was trying to think of the information that I expect from my coaches when I'm sitting down with them on the track myself. And. And I found it very therapeutic. I enjoyed it a lot and enjoyed the filming and the products. Been. It's amazing. I'm very, very happy with it.

Yeah. From the people I've seen who have kind of tweeted about using it, it looks freaking amazing. It's just. Are you literally walking people through the workouts, telling them exactly what to do?

I walk them straight through. You know, I start every single workout with, this is the workout. This is where I got it from. A bit of history on it. This is how you do it. I take you down to the track or to the pool or on the bike, and I do it with you. I say, okay, this is exactly how you do it. These are the things you got to focus on. These are the common mistakes that people make when they're doing it. Make sure you're aware of this, this and this. You know, I walk you through. I basically walk you through the entire set, and then after it, I give you a wrap up on the entire thing. And I really tried to be attentive to what I would want. That was the key for me. If I sat down, you know. This year, I worked a lot with Darren Smith, a coach I've known for many, many years, and he took Lisa Norton to an Olympic silver medal and a world championship this year. And Sarah Groff, he took it to a fourth place I was in camp with them and I really looked at the way that, you know, what I expected from Darren when we were planning sessions together. And I tried to really put that into video form for people at home because it's very, very difficult to. You know, I've always found with Internet coaches or coaches, that relationship's imperative and, you know, trying to make sure that you tick every single box was how I looked at every single session we put together on MX12. And I'm really, really happy with it. And as you said, the feedback has just blown me away, you know, on my Facebook wall. And a lot of people on the VIP members list are just like, man, that is unbelievable. When's the next one coming? Give us another one. We want more sportoga, we want more bike work, we want more sessions. That. So it's really giving me an insight into what people are after and. And it's just people love it and, you know, it's always pleasing when that's the case.

So let's say for some strange, unknown reason, somebody's still on this call and they've never done a triathlon before. They're just kind of getting started into fitness. They're a complete first timer. Is this something that they can take and run with, or do you got to be able to ride a bike for three or four hours to be able to jump into one of these?

Not at all. And that was a good question because that's what I really sat down with the guys filming it. And I said, okay, what we need to make sure we do here is grade every single session we do. So the basic fundamentals, whether you're a first timer or a professional, are the same. So when the common mistakes, what you got to do, the fundamentals are the same, but it's the actual duration of each effort that I'll change. So we talk about each session, but I put out PDFs for the beginner, for the intermediate athlete or the advanced athlete, and change each session accordingly. But the actual fundamentals of the information are identical to everybody. So even if you can't ride a bike, those sessions, there's two sessions we do on the indoor trainer and, you know, they're ergo sessions, and they're great sessions for a beginner anyway because they're really good. There's a lot of focus on technique, a lot of talk in there on why you do certain things on a bike, the way to sit on a bike, the what muscles to fire and, you know, even the pro guys, and there's a lot of guys that have given us feedback. Athletes that are, you know, at the pointy end of these fields. One of the guys who used the product, Chris Stanton's a world champion and he was like, man, that was wicked. I don't like to tell you this much and I know Chris quite well. He's like. But I actually learned a lot from that. So I was like, oh, that was really cool. And a lot of the feedback too is from athletes who have only done one or two triathlons and they took a lot from it. So I was really attentive to that in every single session we put together.

Yeah, I mean, if you're listening in, even if you're like a crossfitter or a weight trainer, a lot of this stuff can really blast away body fat and blow up your metabolism. I've always liked triathlon style training, swimming, cycling, running, and even this Sportoga looks pretty interesting as a way to kind of overcome a fitness barrier, even if you're just a weight trainer and you're not into triathlon. So. And I'm personally signed up for Ironman Canada and plan on picking up a bunch of these sessions myself for some of my secret weapons. So what I'm gonna do, if you're listening in, is I'll put a link to this over at getmacca x12.com that's getmacca x12.com and you can go grab these workouts and you've. You've got a bunch of bonus videos as well, right, Maka?

Yeah, we do. We put a whole bunch of bonus stuff up there because I really try. Like I said, we. For me it was important to get the feedback and just give people what they want. I actually enjoy it. So a lot of people are like, oh, what can I do during the winter? What are some sessions I can do? It's getting colder and I train indoors. Are there any more treadmill sets you can put together for me? So we just threw a couple more of those up over the last few days. I just filmed them at home. I was here in la. I said, hey guys, let me nail some sessions for people because a lot of people are asking. So we just threw those up and said, take them and have a look at them. So you'll see I enjoy it a lot. I'm enjoying that side of. Because it's always, I guess being an athlete is so selfish. You're always so self obsessed, looking to improve yourself. I've actually enjoyed trying to help others get fast because we all do it for the same reason. So it's, it was a very therapeutic thing.

Awesome. Well, if if you are listening in and you do happen to grab this, I would highly encourage you to head over to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Facebook page. Because for those of you who get Maca x12 and end up using it in in your off season training or in your triathlon training, I've got some contests coming up. I've got some sweet video cameras for you as well as some cold hard cash I'm going to be giving away to those of you who get through some of these workouts. So be sure to head over to facebook.com bgfitness if you get this and you use it and you can grab it over at getmacax12.com. So Chris, this is awesome. I'm stoked to try out some of these workouts and I want to thank you for coming on the call.

No worries mate.

All right, so as a reminder, you can grab that program over at getmacca x12.com that's getmacca x12.com and macca is spelled with two Cs. Get M A C C A x12.com and remember, if you share this episode over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com using the little raffle copter button over there, then I'll put you into the entering for a free flip cam video and 100 bucks of cash. If you post a video of you doing any of Macca's workouts on the facebook.com bgfitness page, I'm going to hook you up with a copy of the Super Health Diet book. I'll mail that straight to your house if you email me your receipt. After you get the guide from getmacca x12.com I'll send you my brand new Become Superhuman Resource guide. And then finally, if you are a triathlon dominator or you use Tri Rift or any of my other pre existing workouts or training plans, don't worry, you can still pick up these workouts and I'll show you exactly how you can work them into your program just like I'm doing. So until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com and GetmaccaX12.com have a great week.

Sam.