Podcast Episode #30: A Double Episode Super-Special – “Primal Reflex Release Technique” and “Psyche-Up” Tactics!

Podcast episode number 30 from BenGreenfieldFitness.com welcome.

To the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast, your free weekly audio exposure to cutting edge fitness, nutrition and wellness information. My name is Ben Greenfield and I'm an exercise physiologist, certified personal trainer and nutritionist. Each week I'll be bringing you information that goes outside run of the mill exercise and diet advice. We so whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to lose a few pounds, enjoy this week's podcast episode from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Welcome back podcast listeners. I have a jam packed episode for you today. This is actually a double interview, super special. We're going to be talking about a therapeutic technique that's sweeping the country as a fast and highly effective fix for troubling injuries, muscle spasm conditions, or any annoying or frustrating joint pains that you might be experiencing. And then we're also going to be conducting an interview with a sports psychologist and triathlon coach, Jolene Wilkinson out of Utah. This is a fast, fast, fast athlete who has some good stuff to say about psyching yourself up. So this is going to be one that is especially designed for you endurance athletes and triathletes out there. The second part of this interview. But the first part, first part of this podcast is going to be for anybody anywhere. I also have a few special announcements to get to. So without any further ado, let's go right into this Week's episode from BenGreenfieldFitness.com. All right, well, before I start into this week's announcements, let me say that my heart is broken because I have no listener Q and A this week. That's right, all I got were stupid questions from you people. No, actually I didn't get any questions this week from anybody either. Everyone who listens to this podcast is a rocket scientist and has no questions on nutrition or performance or weight loss, or you're being a little bit shy. So get out there, shoot me your emails. Ben greenfieldfitness.com Shoot me some comments on the blog and give me some ammo to throw back your directions so I can answer your questions and address the things that are important to you. And I do have a few announcements this week. I'm going to put links to all this stuff in the show notes. But the first is that some of you may remember that I had a knee injury about six months ago that I really struggled through up until I had a half Ironman triathlon a couple weeks ago in Pucan Chile and ended up being able to train for and not only train for, but also qualify for the world championships at that race. Well, I decided to get out there and tell the world the techniques that I used, how I did it, the training, the nutrition and the rehabilitation modalities that I personally use for my IT band friction syndrome. And I put that all up on a website called bulletproofnee.com. that's right, bulletproofnee.com so go to the Show Notes and look for a link to that website if this is something that you're struggling with or that you're interested in finding out a little bit more about. I'm also offering anybody the chance to make a little bit of money on the side and also get a free copy of my book, 100 Ways to Boost your metabolism. And all you have to do to take advantage of that is feature it on your blog, feature it on your website. You'll get a free copy of the book and you'll also get 50% commission every time that you sell that book. And it's 100 pages.

Well, it's more than 100 pages, but.

It'S 100 tips packed into the book that get gives you everything from herbal ways to increase your metabolism, nutritional things that you can do, exercise and lifestyle changes that you can make. It's kind of a great little coffee table book and something that's good to have around for weight loss.

You know, you keep it in your car and you read a couple of.

Pages at the stoplight. No, you didn't hear that from me. I never read books at a stoplight. The other thing that I wanted to mention was that we are doing another live online TV Q&A episode and this one's going to be on Sunday, February 22, in case you missed this in the last podcast episode, the last Sunday of every month. Now at about 6:00 clock Pacific time, I'm going to be doing these live online Q&As, and they'll always be a link in the in the blog@BenGreenfieldFitness.com where you can click and go check it out. This next one is going to be on pill popping. I'm going to show you the exact dietary supplements, pills, capsules and tablets that I take or that my clients take in the mornings or in the evenings or before meals. I'm going to tell you what they do, why they work, and if they might work for you. And you'll be able to ask your questions as we go and find out more. And then if you're local if you're in the Spokane or Coeur d' Alene area. I've also put up on the show notes of this podcast a couple of local talks I'm giving. One on metabolic testing and the other one on how to actually without having a heart attack, especially for people who have cardiovascular issues or fears. I'll be going over how you can actually exercise and make sure that you're not going to drop dead and hit.

The floor while you're doing it.

The last thing is that if you missed the last lecture that I gave called the Synergy of Fat Loss, I've made that one hour lecture available. You can also click on the link to that and the show notes to this podcast as well. So lots of links to click on. If you are a triathlete and you're preparing for the upcoming 2009 triathlon season, make sure that you check out about the Ironman, the Half Ironman, the Olympic and the sprint distance training plans that I've personally sit down and created. What I did was I wrote a workout for every single day, literally every day. You know, I've got 36 weeks leading up to an Ironman, there's another one that's 25 weeks leading up to a half Ironman, there's a 20 week Olympic distance training plan, there's a 15 week or about a three month sprint distance training plan. And basically you find out exactly what you're supposed to do every day. A little bit more affordable than hiring a coach. And these are all available as well. I've put up a link in the show notes to this podcast of those and especially for the Ironman training plans, automatic 20 bucks off on those if you use the discount code bgf. And then the last thing that I wanted to mention in these announcements is that I figured out something really cool the other day. You've heard me talk before about this energy powder that I use, this energy drink. I'm not a big fan of Red Bull or Monster or Rockstar or any of those other drinks on the market that are essentially glorified pop or soda with tons of sugar, artificial sweeteners, lots of acid in them and not all that great for your body. So what I do is I use a powder and I just mix it with water. It's a tiny little bit of caffeine, but mostly it's just a mega dose of vitamin B and it's got a little bit of green tea in there. It's good not only for fat loss but also for mental clarity. For energy, for healthy brain and nerve function. Stuff's called Delta E. I've talked about it before. Well, what I discovered the other day, you know, because it's kind of cool, cold up here in Washington, is that it tastes really good as tea. So I call this stuff Delta Tea. And what I do is I take a packet of this and I dump it into a coffee mug. I pour some hot water in. It tastes just like spiced cider, but you would not. I think it metabolizes quicker or something when it's dissolved in that water because, I mean, it just goes straight to your head and gives you a ton of energy. So I've been drinking this stuff when I'm working on my computer, when I'm.

When I'm writing an article for a.

Magazine or working on a book. And man, it is crazy the amount of energy and mental clarity this stuff gives you. I'll put that recipe in the show notes of this podcast and you can check that stuff out. I'll put a link to where you can get your hands on some of that Delta E to make your Delta T. And so let's go ahead and jump straight forward into the interview with Jim Adcock on Primal Reflex Release Technique. You're going to find more about what it is and how you can use it in your own training or injury management program or even as a stress management tool.

Hey, podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield, and I am back for the New Year from BenGreenfieldFitness.com with a really exciting topic that I've always wanted to know more about. I've had a real hard time finding somebody who's an expert on this, but I finally hunted down a fellow named Jim Adcock. He's a physical therapist, and he's going to be sharing with us today about the topic of Primal Reflex Release Technique. And you may not know what that is. I guarantee by the time this interview is over, you're not only going to know what it is, but you're going to be pretty excited about it. So, Jim, thanks for coming on the show.

Thanks, Ben. It's a pleasure to be with you today.

Can you hear me okay, Jim?

Yeah.

Okay, tell me a little bit about yourself and your background.

Okay. I'm a massage therapist in private practice going on six years now. I have a private office on the South Hill called Southside Massage Therapy and Wellness. And I primarily specialize in injury rehab, massage therapy, and pain relief and sports massage.

And you're based out of Spokane, Washington?

Spokane, yes, up on the South Hill. And I also have another division of my company called Excel Performance, which works with people that are experiencing different types of fears, phobias, anxiety problems, helping them get over those problems so they can move on in their life. And I'm also expanding into the sports peak performance arena, helping people uncover and release subconscious and conscious blocks that are impeding their success and the goals that they want to achieve. This is all kind of a result of the last 20 years of my studying, my quest for studying self improvement in that type of arena.

Well, so we're talking about the close tie between mental health, I guess you would say, and physical performance. That's something that you specialize in.

Yes, there's a huge connection between subconscious patterns or beliefs that we have that we're totally unaware of. They're kind of operating under our level of awareness that can be affecting not only physical problems, but also they can be affecting emotional problems and how we operate in the world as far as interacting with people, business performance, sports performance, things like that.

Right, okay. Well, you know, I was sitting on an airplane a few months ago and one of the things that I do is I coach triathletes and endurance athletes. And I had a marathoner in particular that I was thinking about who was having a lot of struggles with some leg issues. And I happened to be sitting beside a physical therapist and they said, well, I've been having a great deal of success with this new technique that I'm using. And it's literally almost like erasing people's injuries when they've tried tons of different things before. Massage, physical therapy, different rehabilitation procedures. She told me it was called prrt, which stands for Primal Reflex Release Technique. It just so happens that this is what you do. And so what is prrt? How does it work?

Well, prrt, or those of us that use, we call it PERT for short, is basically a way of releasing chronic holding patterns in the body that can be the result of acute pain, chronic pain, for example. It could be the results of a car accident, injuries at home, muscle tightness, things like that. And I've completed, in the last seven months, I've completed three of the four levels of PERT training. And PRRT was developed by a retired physical therapist in San Diego named John Imes. And over the course of his 40 year career, he studied a lot of different type of muscle therapies and stuff. And one day he started studying the work of Charles Sherrington, which back in the early 1900s, he did a lot of work on the nervous system. He's Kind of known as the father of the nervous system. And Don started studying how hardwired reflexes in our body can be used to release pain and holding patterns in the body. And this is just an amazing, unique technique. Nobody has ever really studied reflexes at all and how they affect the body. Well, I've studied how it affects the body, but nobody's ever used reflexes as a treatment protocol at all. So reflexes are primarily just for those of your listeners who don't understand. Say, when the doctor taps the bottom of your knee with a reflex hammer and your knee jumps out, basically he's firing the deep tendon that goes to your quadriceps muscle. So at the same time that your quadricep muscle has to fire and shorten, your hamstring muscle in the back of your leg also has to release and lengthen a little bit. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to straighten your leg out. So John started working with these reflexes, primarily the withdrawal and startle reflex, because as we're developing in utero and as we're, as a young child, we start losing some of the reflexes that we need for our survival. However, as we get older, the startle and withdrawal reflex remain active, and these are both two really important reflexes. However, they can also become chronic patterns in people that can produce pain and things like that. One of the areas, basically, withdrawal reflexes have been measured up to over 300 miles an hour. So to give you an example, a withdrawal reflex is somebody that steps on a nail and they instantly pull their leg up in response to that.

Right.

Okay. So in that real quick instant of a second, some muscles have to contract and shorten. Others have to release and lengthen. The problem is that happens so fast that muscles can develop kind of an irregular neurological signal in them. They don't go back to their normal relaxed state.

Okay. So they basically have this reflex reaction. You have a reflex reaction to pain, hot stove, nail, whatever. And the muscle that has to quickly shorten to produce that reflex stays in a cramped, shortened state.

Yeah, that's a good example. Yeah. The body doesn't know when the event is over. It doesn't know when to release that. That can stay a chronic pattern.

So what happens when that muscle stays short? What does it do to someone, whether they're an athlete or whether they're somebody who just has, say, chronic knee pain? How does that shortened muscle manifest itself?

Well, it can manifest in restricted range of motion. It can result in the development of trigger points, which are painful areas that can refer pain to another part of the body. It can reduce blood flow to certain areas of the muscle. It can prevent the byproducts of metabolism out of the muscle cells. It can also affect nerve function to some effect and produce pain.

So if you've got chronic joint pain, it could be very likely that part of it is that there's a muscle in that joint that is shortened that's causing some of these problems that you just listed.

That's very possible. And plus the body is so interconnected, we tend to look at part of the body as being individualized components and segments. But you might very well have a problem with something in your left shoulder. But the problem might be coming truly from your right hip, because it could be the pain in your shoulder. Is your body compensating for another part of your body being out of alignment or something?

That's an interesting analogy. I personally have left shoulder problems and have in the past experienced right hip issues. That's actually really interesting. So with Primal Reflex Release Technique, you've got this shortened muscle that was produced as a reflex from some type of a painful condition that you have in a joint. And the idea behind PRRT is that you release that reflex. How do you do that?

Well, basically we start with a. If somebody was to come in to me for a treatment, the first thing I would do would be to take their history, check their range of motion and movement, check some spinal alignment things, and then when I get them on my table, I will do a quick one to three minute exam, kind of scanning through the body, looking for specific areas that feel boggy, tight if they're really upregulated and sensitive. When I touch these areas, the person might grimace, groan, or pull away from very slight pressure. They might have never had pain in that area before. But once I apply some pressure, they're going to pull back that it's that painful. And basically I'm going to look at what I feel and what I sense. And then there's primarily different areas in a PR treatment we focus on. The first one we focus on a lot is the body's autonomic nervous system. Because there's a lot of evidence and research going on that a lot of pain in the body is actually autonomically driven. Meaning as a massage therapist, we're trained a muscle sore, we want to knead, we want to do deep tissue work, we want to stretch, do other different types of techniques with that muscle. But what if the pain in that muscle was actually just the result of something going on with your body's? Autonomic nervous system, which is what has a direct effect to, like we talked earlier, blood function, nerve function, blood flow, things like that.

Right.

So one of the areas we focus on is down regulating or relaxing the body's autonomic nervous system. And one of the ways we do that is we specifically treat the trigeminal nerve. Now, trigeminal. Trigeminal nerve, okay? The trigeminal nerve is basically one of the major cranial nerves that comes off your brain stem. And basically your different cranial nerves branch off into different subdivisions of the other nerves that are in your body. Primarily, the trigeminal nerve is the nerve that affects your muscles of mastication, your masseter muscle, which is your. If you rub the side of your cheek, you'll feel a big ropey muscle on the outside there. Okay? The masseter muscle is affected by the trigeminal nerve. Now, the trigeminal nerve also is major innervator of dura. And dura is the membrane that lines your brain spinal cord and all the major nerve roots that branch off your spinal cord, which then turn into the other nerves that go into your body. So if you have an upregulated autonomic nervous system, that means you're going to also have an upregulated dural system, which can affect all sorts of different pain patterns in your body. So one of the things we focus on is reducing the trigeminal nerve, which in return sends a signal back to the autonomic nervous system to relax it and calm it down, which then can get your dura to relax. And, you know, I was somewhat skeptical when I first started doing this, but, you know, I'll go through and find tender points on people and just do some trigeminal nerve release, a little cranial sacral therapy. And then when I go back, a lot of these tender points are no longer there, or they're substantially reduced, which means a lot of what was going on in that person's muscle was autonomically driven. Meaning, you know, perhaps they're under a lot of stress, they're always uptight, they're not controlling their emotions. You know, all those things upregulate your autonomic nervous system. So by calming that down, you can get muscles and nerves and things like that to calm down in the body also. So that's the first thing we do, is to get the autonomic nervous system in a calm and relaxed state. And then what we do is we go back to the tender points that are still active. And then we do the other part of the PRRT treatment, which is to release the opposing. To release the pain in the muscle. We actually release the opposing muscle group. So let's say if I was examining you, you had very tender points in the gastroc muscle, the calf muscle.

Okay.

I wouldn't treat the gastroc at all. What I would do is I would go to the muscle that does the opposite motion of that, which would be the tibialis anterior muscle.

So if I've got pain in the back of my leg, you're gonna be going around to the front of my leg?

Yeah.

Okay.

So, for example, your calf muscle point your foot down to the ground. So one of the things your tibialis anterior does is pulls your foot up towards your head. So what I would do is being as those are two opposing muscle groups, I would do a deep tendon response to fire your tibialis anterior, which sends a signal to your brain and spinal cord that your tib anterior is firing, which reciprocally tells your gastroc muscle to relax and go on vacation. So you look at opposing muscle groups. Whatever muscle you have the pain and tenderness and tightness in, you treat the opposing muscle. Because to get the tight muscle to relax, you treat the opposite muscle.

Right.

And it works amazingly.

And so what is it that you do to. If. If my calf muscle is injured or it's painful or it's shortened, are you simply doing a series of taps on the front of the leg to release the back of the leg? Is that what it is? Like a tapping?

Yeah, we either do. Either use our hands to do certain tapping motions, or you can use a reflex hammer, some releases. You actually do a quick stretch on a muscle which fires the Golgi tendons in the muscle, which activates it that way. But yeah, a lot of it is done through tapping.

So give me an example of some of the injuries that you help people with using this technique of reflex release.

Okay. Well, basically, most people that use PRT report about an 80%. 80% of the people that come to them receive beneficial results. Either their pain is completely resolved or they get substantial relief from the treatment. And this can be shoulder pain, rotator cuff problems, low back, neck pain, upper back pain. I'm treating a couple people with fibromyalgia that are responding quite well to it. Sciatica, sacroiliac pain, overuse problem.

I lost you there. After bursitis. What did you say after bursitis?

Chronic overuse problems, I think whiplash, things like that. One Thing. If a person has, for instance, my wife has a couple rotator tufts cuff tears, she's not getting a lot of benefit from my PRT treatments because being she actually has muscles that are torn, her body wants to always go back to that protective hurting state. Somebody that has a nervous system condition or something's chronically wrong with their nervous system, or somebody that has muscle tears, then PRT might give them some relief, but it's not going for the significant relief or resolution of pain that we're looking for.

And when someone is coming in for treatment on these type of injuries, do they come in just one time or is it a series of repeated sessions?

That's a good question. Everybody responds kind of differently. One of the nice things about PRT is you will know within two to three visits whether this is going to be of benefit to you. Meaning you don't have to go to weeks or months of therapy just to find out that that specific type of therapy wasn't going to work for you. You will know very quickly whether the pain you're experiencing in your body is reflex driven. Let me just give you a couple examples. I've treated a couple people who have been in chronic low back and neck pain for 15 years. They had done all sorts of different types of therapy, chiropractic, massage, physical therapy, and never got any real relief. And after just three to five sessions, it was the most relief that they had ever gotten. And in the three or four months that I've treated them, the treatments have helped. They haven't went back into that chronic pain pattern. I actually treated a lady yesterday who has been having a lot of shoulder pain. She had an mri, everything looked fine, showed a little inflammation in the shoulder joint. She had done about six weeks of physical therapy with absolutely no relief at all. She came in yesterday and she could only raise her arm up to 90 degrees parallel with the ground. And if she went past 90, she just couldn't do it because it was painful. And after just 30 minutes of doing a PRT treatment, she was able to completely raise her hand up to 180 degrees and actually go past her head farther than that with absolutely no pain at all. Now that was amazing that we were able to achieve that much increase in range of motion without really even doing a whole lot, just releasing reflexes. Now, I don't know. I'll know in three or four days when I see her again how well that treatment held, how much relief she got. She might be completely resolved from that one treatment or her body might tend to Want to go back to where it was. And we might need to do one or two treatments. It's something you don't do. You don't do 12 sessions of PRRT on somebody. If it doesn't work early on, then you stop and you try doing some other type of therapy if it doesn't usually work very quickly.

I don't know if you hear this a lot, but it seems very. The concept seems very simple. It seems like kind of a simple and elegant way to at least try something for an injury that you're struggling with that won't go away. I mean, after listening to you talk about prrt, you know, it just makes sense that if the muscle is in that shortened state, if you can release it from that shortened state, free up the autonomic nervous system to release some of that pain. It just seems like such a simple way to attack an injury. Now, what are some additional resources? You know, if somebody's sitting here listening to this and they want to go read up a little bit on this procedure, maybe approach their physical therapist or their physician, ask them questions about it. Are there any resources out there that I could publish in the show Notes, this podcast to give people a little bit more direction?

Yeah. On my website, SouthSideWellness.com I have some more information about Kurt on that site. Plus I also have a link to John Imes website, which has more information. It's primarily for practitioners, but he does have some good information for patients as well. Also, if you go to YouTube, there's actually quite a few YouTube videos that therapists have posted there from stories that TV stations have done on them in other parts of the country. As far as I know, there's only about, I think, four therapists in Spokane that do prrt. But it is rapidly growing. John's trained about, I believe it's 2,000 practitioners at the different levels. So it's growing quite quickly. And I'm also offering, next month, I'm also offering free, like once or twice a month, some info seminars where people can come in, learn some more info about prrt. And then I'm going to do some brief demonstrations just to kind of show them how the technique works.

Well, yeah, I do know that we get a lot of listeners from the Spokane area. So what I'll do is in the show notes to this podcast, I'll put a link to your website so that people can go check that out. I'm assuming that that event is listed on your website.

It's not as of yet. They would probably have to Call me to find out what the dates are for that.

Okay. Well, if someone's listening and they've got the heads up about it. Well, Jim, this is really interesting. I'm personally going to be looking into this quite a bit more. I find it fascinating and I want to thank you for coming on the show today.

Oh, it was my pleasure. I hope I was able to enlighten people about this technique because I really think in the years to come this technique is really going to be something that a lot of people are going to be searching out. It's very effective and amazing.

Yeah, and I think it was. It was Einstein who said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. If you're a listener out there and you have an injury and you've tried a lot of different things, this could be the next step for you to actually find that healing. So, Jim, thanks for coming on the show.

Okay, thanks, Ben.

Alright, bye.

I know I said that this next interview was going to be geared towards endurance athletes and triathletes. And so, you know, if you're listening to this podcast and that really doesn't describe you realize that the person that I'm interviewing here actually is a coach, an online coach over at Pacific Elite Fitness. And Pacific Elite Fitness offers you online personal trainers and coaches that use the same systems that I use to coach my athletes. I train all the coaches and the trainers over there on how to do what they do. But you can actually get online fitness training and online nutritional training delivered to you for a fraction of the cost of what like a personal face to face program would run you to work with a personal trainer. There are a lot of programs over there for you to choose from. We're very flexible to help you find some things that fit your needs. But if you want to check that out, go to pacificfit.net and somebody like Jolene, who I'm interviewing here in the next interview, appears on there as a person who can not only help with triathlon coaching, but also helps with things like fat loss and nutrition management. If you want to find out more about what working with an online trainer actually looks like, surf on over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and go to BenGreenfieldFitness.Com help or just scroll down the right hand side of the page and you'll find a secret link that I just put up this week that links you over to have access to information and a bunch of free information really on a lot of the nutrition and the fitness programs that we're using with the people that we coach. And so what we're going to be talking about today is sports psychology and psyching yourself up with Jolene Wilkinson.

Hey, podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield. And on the other line, I've got a coach at Pacific Elite Fitness, Jolene Wilkinson. And Jolene's going to talk to us a little bit about something that maybe I don't discuss enough, but that is.

Super important, especially for any athlete who's.

Competing in a sport with a mental component, and that is sports psychology. Jolene, how are you doing?

Good, how are you?

I'm good. I'm ready to hear a little bit about how to psych yourself out. Psych yourself up, rather.

Alright.

Yeah. It's kind of funny. One of my. I had a guy I used to play volleyball with back in college and he always said that it's not about how many butterflies you have flying around your stomach, it's whether or not you can get them to fly in order. I know, but tell me about your background in sports psychology.

Well, I actually have been very interested in the area as an athlete, and when I was actually growing up, I did gymnastics and my coach incorporated that quite a bit since it's a very challenging sport, very mentally challenging sport. So I began that at a young age and then when I was in college working on my exercise science degree, it was one of the courses that we had, sports psychology, and I was so intrigued by everything that I started applying it more and more into my own athletics and it just went from there. So it's an interest of mine and I've been trying to pursue it more on the educational area, but it's been a long and slow process. I'm not quite there with the sports psychology degree or anything, but I have taken lot of classes.

You know, last year I was at a camp and Peter Reed was there coaching. One of the things that he said he did during Kona was he would count to 20 over and over and.

Over again during that marathon.

I don't know if that would be considered a strict sports psychology tactic per se, but are there any, any tricks or tips or tactics that you use yourself or you use with the athletes that you coach when it comes to the psychological or the mental component of competition?

Sure, there's so many of them, really. And, you know, it's funny because you always hear athletes say, you know, a lot of athletes will say, well, you know, it's 90% mental or something, you know, but how much time do we really actually devote to that side of our training. You know, most of it is actually physical. So there are a lot of tactics. The most probably common one that a lot of athletes use would be goal setting. Just for, you know, short term, long term, their season. A lot of athletes use that. And you know, I try to, when I start with an athlete, that's the basics. I said, you know, I asked them, well, why do you want me to coach you? Where do you want me to go from here? You know, where do you want to go from here? What are your goals? You know, what, for the season, for a race, a specific race. And that's just the starting point right there. So that's a very good tactic to use. And I teach them how to set goals too.

So that would be considered like a short term goal. I mean, for me, you know, some of the things that I, that I use are, I guess they would be super, super short term goals, like during a race, like get to the next telephone pole. I mean, is that something that would be considered sports psychology or is that just kind of like a, you know, a random thing that you do in the middle of the race?

I would consider that definitely sports psychology because it's a mental game really. You know, like you said, get to the next telephone pole, you know, pick up your pace until then, you know, getting you there faster. So it's definitely a mental tactic.

Right. So you've got short term goals like knowing what the next race that you are going to do will be or knowing what your next, know, four weeks of training are going to look like. Are there any other tactics or tricks that you can use to keep yourself motivated or to make you go faster?

Yeah, well, speaking of goal setting, you can do that as a daily thing too within a specific workout. If your coach has something set up for you in a workout and you know, time goals or, you know, today I'm going to, you know, run five minutes longer. It's my goal to, you know, do this and, or not to walk or you know, this hill, this course that I'm going to do today. I'm going to, you know, run all the way up today without stopping, you know, so it could be very, very short term goals. It doesn't even have to be your next race. It could be a daily thing or even a weekly thing, like having a weekly focus. So that's very good. But they have to be, there's actually a thing and a lot of people have used this before. It's called smart. And goals should be specific. Measurable attainable, realistic and timely.

Specific. Measurable, attainable, realistic and timely.

And timely. Yes. It's the smart. Called smart.

S M A R T. So when do you, when do you tell an athlete that it's okay to set a goal? Like you know, I want to qualify for Kona.

You know, what if somebody comes to you?

They've never done a triathlon before and the first thing they say is, I want to go race in Hawaii.

I saw it on tv.

I've actually heard that before, you know, definitely as a coach I've heard people coming up to me and they say, oh well, I want to do Kona by the time I'm 40 or something. And sometimes it's hard looking at a person and thinking, wow, they have never done this before. They have no idea what it's like to even do an Ironman, much less qualify. But I encourage them and I encourage them by small steps. You know, I say, okay, well let's look at. And I won't even start coaching an athlete until a lot of times they put their money where their mouth is because a lot of people will come up to me and say, hey, I want to do a marathon someday. And I said, okay, well let's you know, start looking for a race, a goal race that we can work towards, you know, so something big like Ironman, I try to break it down into steps and you know, especially somebody that's never done anything before, I say, okay, well let's you know, work on this first or this. There has to be smaller stepping stones definitely.

Right. And I mean you'll even get some. I know, you know, like even pros will say, you know, my, my goal is to, you know, win the Ironman world championship or something of that nature. And what you're saying is that it's, it's basically, you know, it can be something and it is something you can do or you can say, well here's like the four year plan and the in the five year plan for doing it. But then here's what we're going to do for the next few months and here's what we're going to do for the next few weeks and here's what you're going to do today and just break up your breaking it down.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I would never want to discourage somebody from their goals and their dreams, you know.

Yeah.

But sometimes, you know, there is that realistic component in there.

Yeah. One of the things that I do is I like, I have a word document that's just like titled, you know, well, I have one, you know, 2008 race season, 2009 race season, whatever. And that document gets open at the beginning of the season or a few months before the season starts. And all I write in it is the races that I'm going to do. And that's the first page. And then on the second page, I copy and paste the races that I'm going to do, but then I kind of go in between each of those races and I write out just a basic, really, really basic overview of, you know, I'm going to do some base training here. And this race is more important to me. I need to build her own. I have a family between this race and this race, so I probably should kind of back off for this one. And then what I'll do for the third page is I'll go in and I'll start to write out actual workouts, whether fun workouts that I've seen before or workouts that I've wanted to do and haven't done before. And I'll put those on the third page, but basically drag those into the areas of the season that I think they fit well into. So, like the swimming skills and drills workout, I'll put a lot of those in the early seasons. And. And so when I pull up that word document, it kind of gives me a way to look at workouts, look at the overall plan, but then also kind of get into detail. And that way, the other thing that happens is when I come across a workout that looks really cool or really fun or track workout that I want to do for running or a cycling workout, I will copy that workout and then paste it into the part of the document where it would really fall well into in terms of it being a good, good worker for the season. And then I always have access to new workouts to do. And that's kind of how I keep myself motivated and not bored, is by always kind of doing some new things. I think it's good for fitness, too, to, you know, throw some new things at your body. So.

So how about plan? And also, you were saying you. You look at the races, you know, well, some of the races you're doing may be very different terrain. One of the races you're focusing on may be more hilly. So you do need to, you know, have that plan and goal setting for that specific race. So that is a good way to break things down. Definitely.

Now, how about psyching yourself up? Is that something that you have special tactics for?

Well, there's actually a thing in sports psychology.

Where.

You could be over psyched or under psyched, basically, you know, your arousal. Talk about your arousal level. And it's also something like that is also different for each sport. Say you're in a pistol shooting competition. Well, you don't want to be so psyched up, you know, and jittery. I mean, for something like that, you want to be pretty mellow and relaxed or, you know, like a different sport, like a sprint sport, sprinting sport, something like that, you want to be, like, totally psyched up, you know, and so you can just explode. So. Yeah, but like triathlons kind of in between, and it depends on your race distance, too. So I think you were talking race specific, right? Like sizing yourself up for a race or an event.

Yeah, like, you know, self talk, you know. Do you have things like that that you pull out of your bag of tricks before a race?

Yeah, definitely. Like, personally. Yeah, just trying to erase. And this is an ongoing thing, too, trying to erase anything negative, all negative thoughts and turning around and making those things positive. And also seeing myself as a good athlete, making what is called positive affirmations, like self affirmations. And you say things in the present tense, you know, like, for instance, like if you're. If you're on the run and you're saying to yourself, I'm relaxed, I am focused, you know, instead of. I mean, very present tense, you know, you want to make it present tense. I'm. I am relaxed. And sometimes going through that in your mind will help you bring your shoulders down or actually bring your heart rate down. I've read things like that where you can actually, in your mind, you can help bring your heart rate down.

Yeah. Like Stuart Smalley from Saturday Night Live, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me over and over again in the mirror before your race. Yeah. One of the things that I've used is, I learned this when I was playing tennis in college, was progressive neuromuscular relaxation, where you lie on the ground and you tighten your toes up as hard as you can, and then you release them, and then you tighten your calves up and release and tighten your thighs up. And basically you go up your body gradually until you just feel heavy. Like you're like you're gonna just get sucked up by the ground because you're so heavy. And then you say like a relaxation word to yourself when you're in that deeply relaxed state. And then you can use that word to bring yourself into a relaxed state out of context, like before a Race. Like my word that I use sometimes is blue and for some reason that word really calms me because that's something that I've used before when I'm doing the progressive neuromuscular relaxation. But what I wanted to ask you, here's something I've heard from some athletes was a race like Ironman 70.3 Boise, that's not starting until 2pm in the afternoon. That's a long time to sit around and get nervous and apprehensive and freak out. What would you say to someone who's got to wait around that long for the race to actually start? I mean, what do you do?

Well, I've actually been in that situation before because I did live over in Europe for a while and a lot of the races over there don't start until. And I raced last year in South America and they didn't. They're, you know, till pretty late during the day. And it was kind of weird too and I, I was kind of nervous last year actually. I was in Chile in Argentina in January and it was very hot and it was the hottest part of the day too. And I thought why are they having this at the hottest part of the day? You know. But it's, it's just a culture thing. So I have been there and it's difficult. It's kind of difficult sometimes because you're waiting around all day instead of getting there and getting started. So I would say just sleep as late as you can and get a good night's sleep. Sleep, eat, you know, get up and eat. Just kind of take your time, you know, take a shower to kind of waken you up. Go for, you know, if you're jittery, you can kind of go for a little jog, you know, nothing too intense or a nice walk just to get yourself going and moving around and you know, don't spend all day dwelling on. You can look for some distractions, watch TV or a movie or something.

Or.

Anything that will kind of get your mind away from that and just that waiting glad time. But at the same time it could be hard if you have a family and you have other distractions around you too, you know. And that is something, you know, I was going to talk about too, is shutting off other distractions. And that can be definitely hard when you have family members or friends coming to watch. Yeah, but I would just say kind of, you know, do be normal, go about your regular business, you know, and not worry too much about it.

Yeah, my plan is to go see.

A movie there you Go.

We'll see how that works.

You're doing Boise then.

Yeah, that's right. So, you know, one of the things that I wanted to mention is you yourself have quite a bit of experience as an athlete. You know, you were in the world Class athlete program for the U.S. air Force. And while you were there, you were attempting to qualify for the 2008 Olympic team. You've raced ITU Elite around the world. You've qualified and competed in Kona, you competed in the 2000 Olympic trials for time trialing and cycling, You've raced Xterra, you've done mountain biking, you've done adventure racing, you've coached junior Olympics. I know you've done quite a bit in your own career. And what I wanted to mention to people was that with all this experience, as well as the ability to apply some of the sports psych to it, you are a good coach and people have access to you. So if you're listening into this podcast interview with Jolene, go check out some of what she can do. You can just go to pacificfit.net and Jolene is available as a personal trainer over there. She's also available as a triathlon coach. And all our online and personal training, online triathlon coaching and personal training programs are available to anybody anywhere in the world. Jolene works out of Utah. She's in the Park City, Utah area. So if you're listening in and you're in the Utah area and you want a coach that maybe you can work with online but maybe see face to face every now and then, definitely go to the website, check it out and surf around on there. If you go to the personal training section or the triathlon coaching section of the website or the About Us section, you can have access to read about any of the coaches that are on there and in particular see some of the things that Jolene has to offer. So, Jolene, I want to thank you for coming on the show today.

Well, thank you. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

Awesome. And I'll be in touch.

Okay, thank you.

Yep, talk to you later.

All righty.

Bye.

So you can check more about jolene out@pacificfit.net I'll put a link to that in the show notes to want you of this podcast as well as everything else that I talked about. And remember, if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and you pull that up on the right side of the page, if you scroll down, there's a section that you get to called Free bonus training programs from Ben Click here for Ben Greenfield's Top Secret Free Training Programs. Click that link. You're going to find a lot of cool stuff that you can use in your own training. Now remember, leave us a rank in itunes if you get a chance. At the very end of the show notes of this podcast, I put a link there where you can click on it and go leave us a star ranking or comment in itunes. I love to try and get the word about this podcast out to as many people as possible, so that'll be doing us a huge favor. And remember, if you want your question answered, you can email me ben greenfieldfitness.com and you can show up February 22nd at 6pm for the live online TV Q&A with me. Until next time, eat smart, train smart, and I'll talk to you later.