12 Lessons of Christmas - Our TriVelo 2019 Wrap

Hello and welcome to another Trivalo coaching podcast. It is Christmas time and this is our last podcast for the year. So today we are going to do a bit of play on the 12 days of Christmas. We're going to do 12 lessons of Christmas, 12 things that we have seen observed, 12 lessons that we've learned throughout the year in Tribala coaching, whether it's to do with training, racing, certain stories from athletes. We've got 12 big lessons that we've discussed that were probably pretty common themes this year and big things that people can take and learn from the year going into next year. So 12 things on the cards, 12 things that we've learned. Let's get into it.

Great. Jordan. I'm really excited about this topic, this podcast, because really, I think it's almost like a wrap up of 2019, a bit of a summary. There's a lot of positive things that have happened throughout the year and there's been lots of learning and I wouldn't want to call them negatives because you probably learn more out of disappointment than you learn out of successes. So it's really a great opportunity for us to go through lots of the lessons we've learnt. Good things and not so good. So I'm looking forward to this discussion.

Absolutely. We've got some really good ones to get through. So the first lesson of the twelve lessons of Tribalo Coaching Christmas is actually the first rule in our Trivelo motto. So our Trivelo motto is plan, prepare, perform. And that's something that you absolutely love because that to you, is the simple process that everyone needs to go through to get the success they want and achieve their goal. And you notice this year how important it is to start with the planning and work backwards from there.

Yeah, that's been one of the key focuses. And we just actually sent out a questionnaire asking for feedback on what people's goals are for 2020. So it's kind of a good topic to start with. Without having a plan, what are you preparing for and what are you going to perform at? So getting the plan in your mind is the first and foremost thing that you should be thinking about. And as we know, the New Year's resolutions are massive for people. Every year people make New Year's resolutions and they're probably, in some ways just think about planning their next year, which is, I think, a really good thing. Not a lot of the resolutions end up being successful, but that's, that's one step in the process of getting your year sorted out and getting your mind Focused on what am I trying to do, what's the goal, what am I trying to achieve in my cycling, swimming, running, triathlon, you know, mountain biking, whatever your passion is, you know, have some sort of a plan that you can work towards. And for us at the office stage, we want to work backwards from your big race, from your big goal. It doesn't have to be a race, it can be a gran fondo, it can be just an achievement that I want in threshold or running pace doesn't have to be a race. But sometimes races are better for people to work towards because it really makes you get up in the morning and gives you a reason to, to train with more focus. So certainly having a plan to work backwards from really helps us.

And there is a massive difference, isn't there, between just your level of intensity and the way you attack your training when you have an event that you're going for compared to just going through the motions, there just isn't that same drive.

Yeah. And I often say to people, and especially when I'm having a pre race conversation with a lot of our athletes about what their, their race plan is, whether it's triathlon or cycling race or time trial or I always say to them, there's a moment before the race starts, whether you're on a time trial bike and you're waiting for your, your minute, for your minute man to leave and you've got a minute and you're, you're on the, the start ramp and you've got a minute to contemplate because nothing's going to happen in the next minute. You just got to relax. And I always think I've trained really hard for this event, this next 23 minutes. Boy, I've got up early, I've really made some sacrifices. And whether you're standing on the beach for your triathlon, the same feeling, am I standing there going. I'm really satisfied with all the preparation, the planning that I've put into place and I'm confident from everything I've done, looking backwards to today. So you want to be that person standing there, confident, not going. I wish I had done so much more than I've got to. When I've got to this position. I'm really bit worried, you know, the confidence you get from knowing you're well prepared and that's probably the next topic. But planning to get to that point is key. Yeah.

And that you've probably why this is a big lesson while we're starting with this is number one, is that you've had A lot of athletes this year year get to the start line and then after the race say to you, I was standing there and I felt really good, really confident. And that's probably what you say is your goal as a coach is to get the athlete to that line in that position.

Yeah. And that comes back to how well prepared they were. But it also comes back to the first point was, you know, they had the plan, they gave me the plan of what they wanted to achieve and they went about preparing themselves with the guidance from us. And you know, the performance is based on lots of criteria. A podium is one way to measure it. A PB just general improvement. There's so many ways to measure your performance and that's a bit more complicated an answer. But certainly standing there with the plan in place, the preparation done and then the outcome will generally be a good result.

Absolutely. And that leads us to probably our second lesson, which is what we call what we'd graciously call the domination of trivalo athletes at time trials. Throughout 2019, we had a lot of tribal athletes have really good years with time trialling and that starts with planning. But there's a few reasons for that and that is actually not just a toot our own horn, but that is actually something that we're very proud of at Trivelo for. Especially you, for a few key reasons.

Yeah. And it's interesting we're going to talk about time trialling, but certainly the triathlete's performance in the last six weeks over, you know, 15 or 20 races has.

Been and I would say time trialing also accounts for the bike leg of the triathlon. The training is very similar.

Yep. And on that point I'm a big believer in if you are a really good time trialist, that will incredibly help your triathlon racing, but it will incredibly help your cycling. So the best cyclists all around cyclists are strong time trialists. The correlation is massive. And that's why I push time trialing and all our cyclists and we put, we put races in front of them to give them more motivation rather than just saying you need to improve your time trialing, which is in effect improve your threshold riding, you know, riding at threshold rather than just saying we're going to train to threshold, we make it fun by having a time trial race and it gives them something that distracts from, from the actual fact that they're doing threshold training, which is what most cyclists hate doing because it's too hard. We are a nation of over under efforts. So bunch rides. What do you do In a bunch ride, you get to the front for 10 seconds, ride really hard, then you sit back in the bunch and recover. And you do that, you know, every Saturday. And we're really good at that. So that's the point you're making. Why have we dominated time trialing so much? Because I've changed the focus from just doing bunch rides to threshold rides as well. Bunch rides are so important to practice the over, under, over threshold, under threshold, over threshold. But time trialing is holding thresholds. And so we have a specific session in our program where guys are either doing a time trial session with others or they're doing it on their ergo by themselves. But it's a session that's got an effort of five minutes or more. And the results we've got from all of our athletes, whether they're triathletes or cyclists, is they are now elite time trialists in, you know, in their chosen sport.

What you'd say is consistently at the top end of results at races and consistently improving and really big improvements. And I asked you why is that? As simple as why is that? And you pretty much just said, because we practice it the most.

Yeah.

Both in training and the extra races. Yep.

And look, if you know, to use the example of the, the guy who just does bunch rides every day, six days a week, and some of them are hard, some of them are easy. Well, not many of the bunch rides are easy, but. But if you just did bunch rides, you would be really good at bunch riding and you would be an elite bunch rider in your particular state or city or country town. Because that's what you practice. You do that over, under effort, day in, day out and you're good at it. But the minute I take you out of that scenario, maybe into a road race where there's no rolling over the bunch, it's periods of high intensity attacks with periods of easy riding and then some hill climbs. Well, you're not used to any of that. Regimented over, under. And that's where riders will stay the same. If they keep doing the same training, they'll just be good at over, under. So we're adding another aspect to the all round cycling ability which is, and as you know, all the GC riders in a Tour, whether it's a Tour of Bright or the Tour de France, the best GC riders are the best time trialers. There's no, you know, you won't win a GC unless you can time trial. And so therefore, you know, time trialling on a TT bike also cross relates to a hill climb, it's the same effort. So if you've got a Tour that has a hill climb in it, if you're a really young time trialist, you will do well on the hill climb as well, because you're used to riding at threshold. And if there's a road race that's got undulations, we also have that where we ride the bunch ride. So we're covering all bases to make you a better all round cyclist. That's what our goal is here, to improve you as a cyclist. That's why you come to us and that's what we're going to deliver to you. Not concentrate on your strengths, concentrate on the things that you're weak at.

And that is a perfect segue into point number three. And it is one of the biggest training observations that you've seen rife, and you just touched on it pretty well there. But it's basically one of the biggest training observations you say is that you constantly see people just doing what they're good at and staying away from what they're not good at. And most people, like you just said, aren't good at threshold efforts. And so most people stay away from it.

Yeah. And you know, why is that? And the answer is simple. Because it's the hardest thing to do. So as humans, we try to find the easier options in life all the time. But if you actually want to ask someone, how am I going to get better? Well, I'm giving you the answer. Do more threshold work, do more hill climbing work and continue with your bunch riding and your improvement will be astronomical. You will become a different cyclist. We have countless examples, Jord, as you know, of people who have been mediocre to average riders who've never won anything and have stayed the same. So there's two things there. Winning, but also your performance staying the same. So winning is great, but we're really about improving you as a rider. Yeah. So improving your performance is the main thing that we actually use as an analysis to see if you're succeeding with the coaching program that you're on. And so all of a sudden, people start to improve in their local bunch ride. They notice that, gee, I'm stronger because guys in their bunch are telling them, boy, what have you been doing? You're really strong today. Such a great feeling to know that you've worked on your weakness and it's paying dividends by other people commenting. It's not even something that you're measuring analytically. It's something that some people subjectively A feeling that, boy, you were strong today. You know, what's going on, what are you doing? And sometimes they want to be a part of that. And they're asking that question because I want to know what you're doing, because I want to do the same as you're doing. Because I like to see the way you're writing.

And that, yeah, that is just something that I hear you say over and over again. And the people that are willing to listen and say, okay, I'll surrender and I'll do these threshold sessions are the ones that get the most enjoyment because they end up improving the most.

Yeah. And it's not easy and I'm not even going to avoid that because it is so difficult to ride threshold. It really tests your resolve in physicalness. But mentally knowing that tomorrow morning I've got to ride three 10 minute efforts or four 8 minute efforts or six 5 minute efforts at between 100 and 105 or 108% threshold. Boy, you have to be really ready for that. And you're outside your comfort zone, there's no doubt about it. But the satisfaction you get when you finish that session, it's actually like a little bit of a mini adrenaline rush that, oh, I did it, you know. Whereas you compare that to if I'm giving you something that's one minute and under, over, under sessions where you're doing maybe 40 20s or 30 15s, it's over and done with. The efforts are quick and short. You can manage it because you're used to doing that and you're kind of a little bit stressed, but you're still in your comfort zone a little bit and you can push yourself harder in that. But the areas that we really want to improve people in is the areas they're weak in. And that's why we avoid it as humans. We don't want to do those sessions, but that's what's going to make you better. So I'm going to push you to do those sessions and do everything I can. And if you're struggling, we'll have other strategies. Drop the power fractionally so that you can get through the four efforts or the three efforts. And we have some. So many examples of people riding too high in the range we give you at the start. So we give you a range. Say if you're doing six minute efforts between 102 and 110%, don't start at 110%. If you're struggling, start at 102. And that way you'll get through the session. So executing and managing the session, you know, it's probably one of the other topics you have to talk about, but certainly don't hide away from the things that are going to make you a better cyclist. That's the main point of this one, definitely.

And that does lead us to lesson number four in our 12 Lessons of Christmas. And that is, again, something that is a bit of a broken record. And you just said that you try to tell people this, and it's one of the hardest points for you to get across. And you say you've tried many different analogies, many different ways of telling people, and for some reason it is the hardest point to get across. Once people get it, then they're good. And Joe, even on the podcast Think few weeks ago, told the story of his success and the fact that after three years, he's really coming onto his own. But it took him this long to totally surrender to what you're saying here. And that is people are still training too hard on the easy days and how hard it is for you to convince them to train easier on the easy days so they can go harder on the hard days.

Yeah, and look, it's just not just not Joe. It would be 50% of the guys who come to us. My biggest challenge, and that's why we put out so many videos at the start of our coaching program, so that people have a clear understanding of what the goal and the outcome of every session we give you is. And if it is an easy recovery session, I still find people riding that session too hard. And it is a broken record. And people have heard me say this a hundred times. In order to ride harder, you need to ride easier on the easy days. And, you know, there are so many different ways of doing that. You can avoid riding with your mates on those easy days if they're going to, you know, challenge you with some. All of a sudden someone starts riding harder. So rather than put yourself in that position, do the stuff at home on your rollers or on your Ergo or whatever, or just by yourself where you're okay if someone on a, you know, a BMX bike passes you, you know, and you're not getting, you've lost the competitive urge on that recovery day. So that is so crucial to the program. So that when you have to ride hard on the days where it counts, yet fresh enough to do it, and people think recovery days, you know, if you're not going to ride hard, it's a waste of time. Well, there's a couple of things that happen on the Recovery days. There's no actual fitness gain on the recovery days. You're trying to recover from the previous couple of days efforts. You know, normally have a recovery day on Monday. So Saturday, Sunday is generally because we have the most time available to us. So we are really stressed. Our body. We might have a long endurance ride with some intensity, and Sunday might be some tempo stuff come Monday. The only aim of that session is to get the blood flowing around your legs to repair the damaged working muscles. That's all we're trying to achieve. And you can do that with 100 watts, at 100 cadence, at 100 heart rate. That's the extreme example. And people go, why would you bother riding at 100 watts? Well, it's because we want blood flow to repair, because blood flow carries oxygen. Oxygen repairs damaged muscle. So that's basically the reason for our recovery ride. And I guarantee if you did that recovery ride and the next day you were going to do some intensity, which is what normally happens on a Tuesday, you will be much better off on the next day's ride had you not rested.

And that's probably where most people actually just don't believe you. They say, well, no, I want to train more. And so I'd rather just get a proper ride in on Monday. I can still back it up Tuesday.

Yep.

And what you're saying is, yes, you can back it up, but you are going to be much less effective in that session.

Yeah. So if we're trying to get you to ride maybe 110 to 130% and higher, if you've done a little bit too much on the Monday and you still got fatigue from Saturday and Sunday, then come Tuesday, you're going to be lucky to push 110%. And at the end of the day, you've lost the goal of that session because of what you did previously the day before. So the day before's goal was 50% threshold. And under the next day is 130 to 150. If you can only do 120, well, you've missed that goal. So therefore your improvement won't be there. And if you keep doing that, you'll start to then lose confidence and then start asking questions like, oh, I'm not improving, Jared, what am I doing wrong? Well, you're actually doing a version of the course. You're not actually doing what it's specifically asking you to do. And that is one of the real frustrations we have is people doing a little bit of a version. Just commit to it 100% trust in the program because it will get you the improvement you're after. But not doing your little version where you just sneakily do some extra stuff. Well, you know, if you want to do extra, we've talked about that also, you know, do the main set but do easier warm down for longer and do easier warm up for longer, but don't challenge the middle bit.

So if you want to do extra, rather than doing a 15 minute warm up, you can do a 40 minute.

Warmup if you got time and the same with the cool down. Add another hour if you want to. As long as it's in the percentage of power that we're asking you in the range and it might be 40% or lower. It's really quite boring to ride an hour at 40%. So that's why we don't sort of prolong that. Is it going to gain you an advantage? Sure. By doing some endurance training. There's no doubt about it. But if you do it too hard, it will actually make you worse the next day. So doing a three hour recovery ride, if you do it too close to the top end of the range will fatigue you. It takes time to do the extras over a period of months before your body will adapt from a 10 hour week to a 12 hour week, to a 14 hour week, to a 16 to a 20 hour week. So if you tried to do a 20 hour week straight from a 10 hour week, you would find fatigue levels would be massive after 10 days and you would fall on a big hole. Probably you need to progress just like we do in executing time trials or training sessions. You need to progress the same with the amount of time you add. And that's kind of interesting because it is Christmas and what do people do on Christmas? They're not at work so their routine is totally changed. So they then think, I've got all this time, let's ride more. And that's great. But you have to temper the effort so that you just do the main set that's got the intensity. You do that only for the 30 minutes that it requires and then you add the 40 minutes warm up and the hour warm down so that at the end of the day you've added the volume at the percentage of FTP that it's meant to be.

Could you afford to go harder in the main sense as well because you might be having two weeks off of work and so you have the ability to recover more and you're not so stressed with the rest of life?

Yeah, no, it's a great question because that's what the range is for. So if you feel like, and I'm asking you at threshold to ride between 102 and 110%, go for it right at 110, but don't ride 120 and you actually won't be able to finish the session. And you know this. If to try and ride a five or eight or 10 minute effort at 120%, we know that's not possible. That's VO2 training. That's between 110 and 120%. So. So it's not sustainable anyway. You will fail. So we do have a range right to the top of the range. And that goes, you know, if you're struggling a little bit with fatigue at the third week of. If you're in the third week of your training block and you're thinking, oh, geez, I don't know if I can get through this session, start at the bottom of the range and make sure that you get the three efforts done or the four efforts done. Rather than starting at the top of the range and being a big hero and then only doing one and a half efforts out of four, that's actually not achieving anything. Yep.

So lesson number five again, this actually is a good segue from exactly what you just talked about. But I want to know your story from your Nationals experience this year, and I know you won't want to talk about it too much, but the story of where you were at 12 to 16 weeks out from Nationals and what you had to do to be able to get there and put yourself in a position to be a chance to win, you could have fallen into the trap of what we just spoke about and thought. I am you. You're really far behind. You're probably most far behind you've ever been. And that was a combination of just a long period of not having a specific goal to work for. You were just going through the motions yourself with training and you could have tried to overdo it and gone. I'm so far behind, I need to train harder throughout the week. I need to do too much and could have just burnt yourself out, but instead you stuck to the program for 12 to 16 weeks and ended up with a clean sweep at the National. So talk us through that period in terms of mentally where you're at and then what you did to change it.

Yeah, you've kind of summarized it quite well. It is something I'm not that keen on talking about. But to help other people, go back to our first point, I didn't have A plan. For the last, I don't know, two years, I did have a plan. Outside of my training, my plan was to really focus on making sure I could be the best coach to all the athletes. That was my plan. That was my total focus. I wanted to be available and make sure that everybody I coached was improving. And along the way, I was just riding when I could. I had no structure, no program, and I was able to manage most of the rides that I was doing with other people. I think I didn't realize how well I was managing it because my fitness was falling incredibly. I knew it was falling because my performance management chart was telling me that I was, Instead of being 100 plus fitness number I was in the 60s and 70s, but I wasn't struggling that much in our competitive bunch ride. And that was more to do with my management from all those years of knowing how to protect yourself without still being vulnerable to being dropped. And that would be the worst situation for me as a coach. We dropped the coach today. So that was my focus really, was to survive those rides and not put myself into harm's way. But certainly I was at my lowest of low fitness and, you know, do I really want to put myself through another rigorous test to see if I can perform at the top level? And you and I discussed that quite a bit, and our decision was, yes, you know, let's put myself to the test to see if I followed the program 100%, how would I improve and how long would it take? Because I'm doing it with all the athletes, but can I do it again to myself? So that was my motivation. And I am a competitive person, and I had missed a lot of the racing opportunities that I sort of sacrificed by putting my head down as a coach. So I was quite excited. But I was a bit daunted by how far back I was. And a couple of early time trials I put myself in, I was a miserable failure compared to where I'd been before. And that was really difficult for me to. I don't know, you know, when you're used to being close to the pointy end and when people ring you up and say, I didn't see your race on the weekend, and I'd have to say, well, you didn't look down the list low enough. I was. I was 50th rather than fifth or wherever. So that was a bit of a humble pie to eat. But I remember discussing it with you and actually using you as a bit of a mentor role. And it was like, well, what choice do I have here. I know that if I overdo it, I'm going to actually go backwards. I know that from all my coaching. So I've got to stay with the process. And the process was progress slowly and just stick with this. Stick the specific sessions that you know will get you where you want to. Don't overdo the easy rides. All the key things that I was drumming into everybody else, I had to do it to myself. And then I went and really concentrated on the 1 percenters.

And just on that point there, something was really noticeable for me was how uncomfortable you were. Because there's the physical process, but there's also the mental game as well. I'm just gonna let Millie out here. Cat dogs, joining us for this podcast.

Yeah, Millie's a quiet podcast listener, but sometimes. Beauty of live podcasts.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. She wanted to join in the stuff. No, but what was really noticeable for me was how mentally challenging it was because you were so uncomfortable. And to be so used to being at the top of races and then to have to have that really big ego blow, be honest with where you are at and be that far down the list was. You said it yourself. You said I was embarrassed and that you could easily hide away from that. And a lot of people might not want to turn up because it is just a bit of an ego check and you had to just suffer through it and just say, that is where I'm at right now and be realistic with it and then move on from there and then follow the process and start doing as much as you could with all the one percenters.

Yeah. And I. It's a real lesson for me and I think it's really good one for people to hear is racing when you're not in your best form. What's the purpose of it? Well, the purpose of it for me was twofold. One was to find out where I'm at in compared to my previous performances and also my competition. So I got an absolute slap in the face with, geez, I'm so far down compared to where I used to be. My numbers were 30 watts lower than what they should have been. My speed was for the first time in my whole career was under 40ks an hour. I've never actually ridden that slow before in a time trial, no matter where I've been, and certainly making me decide that, geez, I actually have to do this and commit to it. So having a poor result is motivation to me to commit to. Right. I'm not going to have one of those again the next Time I race, I'm going to be better than I was just then. And that is a huge driving force for me to motivate me. Poor performances. I don't think about, forget this, I don't want to do this. All I think about is how am I going to get better, what am I going to have to do to get better? And that's what you said is I started to say, oh, what are the 1 percenters I haven't been concentrating on? And one of them was amazingly just slowly crept up on my weight. That was one thing that I really needed to address. And I'm not a heavy guy, but certainly I was more solid than I used to racing at. And in my professional days I was 66 kilo, 67 kilo, and now I was 74, 75, depending on what day of the week I measured myself in. And I thought I'll have to change that. And so I really concentrated on and got some, you know, some great assistance from some experts. And one of the guys I coach helped me, Dr. Harry Wisinger, who was fantastic in his advice. We're going to talk to him actually in a podcast. And he was really, really helpful. And so I really made a conscious effort of what am I going to do every time I eat? Am I eating what's going to be beneficial to me and what are the things I need to eat and how often do I need to eat? I certainly didn't diet. There was no word diet, diet in my. It was managing my food better and understanding what are the healthy things I can eat compared to the crap things I was putting in.

And that's a key difference as well because you can't afford to mess with it too much over a 12 or 16 week period because it could be a disaster. And a lot of people would try and drastically go on a diet, which would totally ruin your training. If you start dieting and not getting enough food in, proper food in you're trying to eat less, then you're not going to be able to recover and you're going to have no energy and your training is. It's going to absolutely fall down. Exactly. To do that.

Yeah, exactly. And so I really needed to make sure I was giving myself the right fuel. And as an endurance athlete, you know, I would do certain things at certain times of the week where I would know that if I'm doing 180k or 140k Saturday ride the night before, I would give myself enough carbs for that. So the diet was diet. The food Program that I was on was really cutting a lot of the carbs out, but I didn't cut them out completely. And having a carb drink in my endurance ride was crucial. So I'm not a believer of extreme things in anything. Extreme training, extreme eating, extreme exercise. Having a balance is really important to me. So that was one of the things that was so crucial to the change of my approach.

And to clarify, I think when you say cut out the carbs, a lot of people would just think, you know, that is an extreme thing. But I would just say, you cut out the shitty carbs, and it just eliminated the unnecessary carbs. But still a lot of good carbs in there and good, wholesome, healthy meals to make sure you did have enough carbohydrates for energy.

Yeah, exactly right. And look, I was cutting. I love cakes. And sweet, too. So they're the carbs I was talking about. You know, the potatoes, carb, the rice, the pasta. I did definitely reduce that. But I had that once on a weekend or on a Friday night before. But, you know, during the week I would stay clear of that and have some really good protein and some fats and. But, yeah, that was one of the things. And. And really, you know, you know, what other things can I think of? Well, I bought a set of rollers.

Yeah, the list is pretty big.

Yeah. So doing some recovery sessions on the. On the rollers had, you know, had lots of advantages in it. I could just get on it within one second and start writing, and I didn't have to set my. My kicker up and do all the things that take 5, 10 minutes, etc. So I really enjoyed that. The balancing on the rollers. You underestimate how you're actually being on a set of Ergo or kicker or whatever, which is holding you still. All you're doing is pedaling with the legs, whereas when you're on the rollers, you're actually still balancing, so you're still working subtly the core, which I've really found interesting. I was able to ride a higher cadence on the rollers. So, yeah, that was. That was really helpful. So, you know, there were two standout things, probably. The third thing was I did specific altitude training where I slept at altitude. And, you know, don't underestimate how valuable that was. And I've had lots of experience going to Europe and training at altitude and coming back and having Strava times around the Dandenongs that I haven't been able to break for 10, five years. And, you know, all of A sudden, in this last period, I'm hitting those, those same numbers. You know, the training program's the key.

That's why they're called 1 percenters. Because if you look at the 80, 20 rule, where 20% of what you do makes 80% of the result, it's the program. The training program gets 80% of the result. But if you want those last. To fill that last bit, then it's all these other things.

Yep. So before I get to training program, I suppose the core strength, flexibility, work, stretching, sleep certainly was important. And walking daily. Yep. And so I don't really like walking, but I made myself walk and I took, took our dog. And I used that as an excuse. I felt quite comfortable walking with the dog. But that really, when I started walking, I was very average at it. And I wasn't. It wasn't a competitive thing, but it really gave me good recovery. And I tried to do that as often, you know, daily I'm talking with the dog. So. So I did that for, you know, a good 16 weeks. And I still, still continue to do that now. And my walking's improved incredibly. It's taken a lot of the soreness out of. I had some knee issues and certainly riding the bike, where you're not physically holding yourself up. When we talk about the skeletal system, we train the cardiovascular system and the muscular system on the bike, but we're not really training the skeletal system, which is your bones. And that's why walking and running is such a great sport if you're injury free. So when you're being held up by your bike, you're not really, as you get older, you really need to work your skeletal system. So I found that a lot of the aches and pains that I was having more of have dissipated a lot. So walking is Certainly a good 1% of that, I think is really invaluable. Absolutely.

And there is more. I mean, I've got a list that we kind of went through where you talked about just consistently tracking your progress on training peaks, making sure you're not just going through the motions, but you're analyzing sessions and your numbers. You had specific scores that you're looking for on your performance management chart, which is on training peaks. Things beetroot juice starting to take that. I think with a lot of these 1 percenters, how effective they are, we don't actually know because we don't have exact scientific proof. But more importantly, it shows the mindset of I'm willing to do as much as possible to win. And psychologically I want to make sure I do everything I can touch, be the most prepared so that you can perform the best of the day.

Yeah, the last couple of things you touched on were really crucial to my mindset. So tracking my progress, which is what I do with all the athletes I coach, I'm tracking them all the time and giving them feedback when I see them going well and giving them feedback when I see them not going so well and we need to change something. But certainly tracking my own progress gives me motivation. Hey, last week I was able to do the three by eight minute efforts at, you know, 270 watts, 272 and 274. And this week I did 276, 278, 280. Instant feedback because I've gone and I've checked what I did for two weeks, three weeks, and my motivation for next week is can I do all three at 280? And that to me has got a goal for the session. You know, I've got a specific thing that I'm aiming for for this. And I know my numbers, I know them off by heart and I know most of the people's numbers that I coach, but I'm really trying to get them to take ownership of their own numbers so that they don't have to say to me, did I do okay in that session? You would have instant feedback. If you take ownership of your own data, I'm there to discuss the data with you for sure. And I'll give you feedback that these are your numbers. This is what we're trying to do. You fell short. What happened? Is there something wrong? So that was really important to me and that's a real motivator for me to keep that as the focus.

Especially because how confident are you going to be on the start line when you know your numbers and you know as a measured result how much you've improved. If you don't, if you're not paying attention to your numbers, you're actually not going to know for sure on the start line or not.

Yeah, it defeats the purpose of training with power. So when you get to the start line. I know, but you know, I'm talking about numbers. I was doing eight minutes at 270. By the end of the 16 weeks I was doing those eight minutes at 305 to 310. And when I get on the start line, I now know that I can ride this whole ride around the 300 watt mark instead of the 270s where I was 16 weeks ago. You know, 30 to 35 watt improvement in that time is outstanding from anybody I would coach. And you know what you said before, is it one particular thing? No, it's never one particular thing. It's a combination of all of those 1 percenters. But without the right program I could do the 1 percenters till the cows come home and I wouldn't have the improvement. You've got to actually know what to do and when to do it and in the order that it needs to be done with the right recovery in between. And that's why you can't just move days. You actually have to have a discussion with me before you go. I wasn't feeling too good today and so I moved it to tomorrow. And you know that means you've done three hard sessions in a row. Well that's sabotaging your own program. So it's really important that you get the right structure and program to what you're aiming for. Like we talked about at the start with planning. So knowing what the goal is and it could be, you know, it could be a Gran Fondo Amy Gillett lawn race, it could be the Bathurst Gran Fondo, it could be the world titles, it could be the national titles or the time trial or, or just beating up your mates. So it doesn't matter. Yeah.

And how many sessions did you miss in that 16 week period?

None. Yeah, yeah, I didn't miss one session.

And that has to be something said about 100% completion rate for every single session.

Yep.

Both psychologically and physically.

Yeah, mentally. And look, I didn't get sick during that period and that's also one of the things we're going to discuss. But it's really a fine line because you're training right on the limit all the time and that's why the recovery is so important that you do take the time to recover and not get. I get carried away with, geez, I'm going well, I'm improving, I can see the improvement every session. Just don't get carried away. You have to take each day at a time and know that it's in four weeks time. When you test yourself again you will be at a new level. FTP so started at 270. After week four I was at 280. After week eight I was at 287. After week 12 I was at 294. And the 16th week was race week and I was at 300. Did I want to get to 300 in the first week? You bet I did. But I know that it's not possible. So you have to take your medicine session by session, day by day. And to get ahead of yourself is going to be a sabotaging move. And that's a huge lesson that I really learned from myself. And it's something that the guys I coach need to really, it is a big picture thing. It can't be small minded thinking I'm not going well today, you know, well, it's just part of the process. Have confidence and trust it.

Don't panic. And yeah, I think there has to be something said about having those standards for yourself because 100% completion rate isn't just talking about 100% the hard sessions. That is not missing one single recovery ride. And that also means not doing the recovery rides wrong. So yeah, you have a lot of athletes that train really well and train the house down, but they're still at 90% or 95% completion rate because they're missing some recovery days. The recovery days aren't in the right range. It's too hard and that doesn't count as completion. And if you're going to go to the nationals with the gold win, you know, what's your standard? Are you going to be happy with 90% completion rate or 95% or are you going to be a lot more confident with 100%?

Yeah, well, don't get me wrong, look, we're not professionals and it's all very well to say, you know, this is the goal, this is what I achieved. We have, things happen. You know, family and work are more important than what we're doing. This is a passion that we have and I'm here to help you with that passion. You will do better with your family and work if you're happy within yourself. But you know, the goal is to try and achieve perfect result. And if that's what your goal is and you fall just a bit short, that's brilliant. And you know, but you know, obviously standing on the start line on the time trial for that first race, I look back and went, I couldn't have done anything more. I've done everything. And whatever happens today, if someone beats me, they're just better and I'll tip my hat to them, but I can't be in better shape. I could not do anything more than I've done. And what a great feeling that is with that one minute to go before I'm off on the start ramp.

And that's also why you say you probably can only have one max, two A races a year because you just can't commit to 100% completion for extended periods. You are able to sacrifice some things and do it for 16 weeks, and that's great. But what you talk about is spot on with balance and it's only one. One part of your life.

Yeah, it was very satisfying to achieve. It just don't, you know, it was. I probably got more satisfaction out of that result than I have in the previous three national titles that I've. That was the fourth jersey that I've won and. And that was the most satisfying. And having won all three races, which I'd never done before, I got second on the time trial four times. And so that was a burning desire. So I had a lot of little goals that I wanted to achieve. So, yeah, to get through that and get the result I wanted was more satisfying. Having known what the process was and the actual finishing on the dice, that's great. But the fun was the process and knowing that I had set a goal and achieved it. And look, as soon as that finished, you know, as you said, you can't just keep doing that. I have to rethink and start with a new plan and give myself a break. And that's really important also. And I gave, you know, myself a week or two of not having to do anything but just enjoy the riding again without the specific focus. I've got to do this, I've got to do that.

You went to Japan and didn't take your bike?

That's right, yeah. Just did some fun things. And now I've refocused again and I've set the new goals and I'm really excited about training again and pushing myself, you know, because one of the things that we talk about is people starting a program, getting to a good point and then saying, oh, I've achieved it, and then going backwards really quickly. It's so hard to gain fitness. It's so easy to lose it. Almost. You lose it double the rate you gain it, and then, you know, two or three months later going, I need to train again. You know, I just think you need to keep chipping away at it rather than dropping it all together. Because maybe if we had a scale of 1 to 10, you know, I'll get you to a level where you're five. You started with me when you were one, and then you have a break for a few weeks and you go back to 20, and then it takes us another six weeks, eight weeks to get you back to where you were 50. If you just kept doing something and dropped back to 40, it'd take you a week to get back to 50 and then you go from 50 to 70 and then you're still climbing the progression ladder. But if you do, you know, a big all out effort, drop it all off together and then try and go again, you're just forever staying at 50. You go 50, 20, 50, 20, and you never get past 50. And that's something that quite a few of our athletes do. And I'm forever saying to them, just do a little bit more than you're doing. You don't have to be so serious, but just keep your fitness going because it's so easy to lose.

That's a great story. I really wanted to talk about that whole process because there is about 50 lessons in that one, in that one lesson. But for me, it was one of the coolest things to see this year because I could see the behind the scenes of how far behind you were and I probably hadn't seen you that far behind before in your cycling. And for a lot of people, they just saw another nationals win by Jared.

Expected.

Yeah, it was so expected by everyone. You won, which is fair enough, you've won it three times before. But I wanted people to know how far back you were and how it was totally not expected and how much work had to go into this one. I just think that's, that's probably why it was most satisfying for you.

Look, the one thing I'd add is there were periods there when I definitely was questioning myself because it's hard to coach yourself. You need some input from other people. And I would always be bugging you about, I just did this, what do you think? Because your knowledge from coaching, all of assisting me, coaching all of our athletes is, is fantastic. So I really appreciated getting some input from outside. But there were times where I was questioning, you know, I'm just not improving quick enough. And you would just say to me things like, well, if an athlete said that to you, what would you say? Well, you have to be patient. And then I just go, yeah, you're right. So it was great having. Don't get me wrong, I had lots of down periods in that 16 weeks. There were days when I knew that I was riding with Dave Ross and Joe on a Thursday or a Wednesday, the night before. I knew how hard it was going to be and I wanted to not do it because I didn't want to suffer. And my positive brain was saying, you'll reap the rewards, go through the suffering and in 16 weeks time you'll look back and go, they were the reasons why I'm here. And that's. You've got to embrace that. And that was hard mentally. I had to really. I could think of 100 reasons why I couldn't come today, Rossi. Oh, I can't make it today. But, no, I put myself out there, and you saw us come in from those sessions and, you know, exhausted but satisfied that far out. I got through that, you know. You know, riding around 3 hours, 4 hours in the hills at 32 k's an hour in is just, you know, really putting yourself on the limit.

Yeah. Yeah, that's good. That is a massive lesson, that lesson five. But we did actually touch on some lessons that we had down, and one of them was your favorite purchase of the year, which was the rollers. And, yep, it was funny that you got them because the smart trainer wasn't working. We've had a lot of people just have so many technological problems with the smart trainers. You ended up saying stuff that don't need them anymore. And then the rollers was one of the best purchases.

Yeah. And look, one of the things I didn't talk about, I've talked about how good it is for balancing and core and stuff, but. But certainly I was able to ride the bike power meter on the rollers, and it's the same power meter as I was riding outside. So I didn't have this discrepancy between the kicker power, which is another number compared to your bike power, which has always bugged me. So whether I rode the time trial bike on the rollers or I rode the road bike on the rollers, I had the power number the same inside as outside. So I was working to the one power threshold the whole time. So that was another huge advantage.

You would be advising a lot of your athletes now to get back on the rollers, get back to learning to ride properly on them, get that little bit of core back. And there's just big advantages.

Yeah. And one thing with the rollers, they've come a long way from the old style of rollers with no resistance. I've got rollers with resistance, so they've got settings 1, 2, and 3. So I can push 400 or 500 watts on the rollers. So don't think that the rollers are just for easy riding.

Yep, absolutely. So that's lesson six. Lesson seven, you also touched on is the correlation still, which is just so obvious. And again, it's one of the biggest things we say is correlation between consistency and success, but extended consistency. So every year we seem to Have a new. Few Tribella riders who have been with us for two to three years start to really explode. And you would say that just comes from that. Years of practice, and you do see a lot of riders who put in a really good period and then decide to have a break. And having a break's fine, but doing it the wrong way and going so far backwards that they're forever just coming up two steps back, one up to 10. It's just too slow.

Yeah, we did talk about that just a minute ago. But. But to get to the. The. The riders who have been with us for a long time, you know, you might say, oh, geez, how come it took so long to get to that period? Well, they've gone from middle of the pack to winners. And, you know, I've got 50 or 60 people who have, you know, come from really low base, not even cyclists or triathletes, to, you know, just even them going, whoa, that's. That's pretty amazing. But it didn't happen in six months. It didn't happen in a year. The more layers of base fitness to a program that's suited to you, structured, as the years go by, that accumulates. You know, you've just got. You're just adding. Adding more. And so if you can use a line where you're, say, hovering around a fitness level of 80, and then as a race comes up, you want to get to 90, you're at 80, so it's a really easy jump to make up to that 90, and then you go back to the 80 or 85, you've improved a little bit because you've added some intensity from racing or a gran Fondo or something. Now you're hovering on 85. And then you jump up to the next A race or B race, and all of a sudden you're now at 90, and you're just continually adding layers, and your performance will progressively get better after six months, after 12 months, after 18 months. And it's no coincidence that two and three years time, the guys who have got the layers from 80 are now at 120. If they look back at what rider they were at 80, no wonder they were middle of the pack. That's where they were. But now at 120, they're always in the pointy end of their bunch ride, you know, and they're having to move bunches because they're too good. They've got guys who are, you know, in country bunches, where they've got A grade bunch, b grade bunch, C grade bunch, not In a race. But it's a bunch, right? On a Saturday. Some of the really big, big bunches in Bendigo or Warrigal and they've gone from the D bunch to the B bunch. You know, that's just big jumps. But it's taken a year or two and once you get to the third and fourth year you are now got that good a base. And we always use the analogy of the builder who builds a fantastic foundation of concrete or really solid stable base and builds a house that's rock solid. Whereas the guy who cuts the concrete in half the measurement it should be and it cracks and all of a sudden the building starts to crack and everything's opening up because he's got the poor foundations, the layers aren't there. That's the same analogy in fitness. The longer you do this for the better. Eventually you're going to be. It's no coincidence that guys have been riding for 8, 10 years are at the top of their game the whole time. Yes, it's experience, but it's that fitness that they've accumulated through the consistency that we talked about at the start.

And that is, that is our lessons 7 and 8 combined, which is consistency is still the highest correlation to success. We just said it over and over and it's kind of what you said it before. I think long term versus short term thinking you can't be small minded, you know, you've got to be always thinking the bigger picture long term. And that's where if you want to be riding and you want to have some success, then stick it out and have a, that big picture in mind and the success will come from the consistency.

Yeah. And look, if I use my own example, 16 weeks, people go oh, why can't I do 16 weeks and, and get to where? Well, but I've been riding for 40 years so I've got that layer and layer upon, you know, training. So I wasn't coming from a beginner base. I was always coming from, for me it was a low base but it was, you know, years of base training. So it did take 16 weeks and not, you know, eight weeks. Whereas if I was, if I was a lot fitter at the time, it would have only taken four to eight weeks to do it would have been half the time. But because my base layer was quite low and that's a really good example of, you know, even for someone who's been training at this level for a long time, it took me double the time that it possibly should have had. I concentrated a little bit More on continuing to keep my fitness consistent. Good.

Lesson nine plans. And what we'll find with all these lessons is one, we have so many. So we actually had way more than 12. But we're going to do a second podcast in the new year about how to more look ahead for the next year and how to plan properly. But another planning one was the experience you had with a lot of the triathletes who have had really good results at the start of summer and the back end of this year. But a lot of them probably had their first race with Triovolo and you were shocked at. Shocked at their experience. So talk us through that.

Yeah, it really was an eye opener to me and I just, I don't know why I thought this. My observation was that if you go into a triathlon event that you would have a pre race plan and you'd also have the preparation for the event specifically. And what do I mean by that? Well, the preparation. What? You know, if you pick any event that you do, whether you're a gymnast or a trampolinist, you have a routine and you have to practice the segments of the routine. As a triathlete, you have three sports. You have swim, bike and run. So you would practice swimming and where's the swim event? In the ocean. So that would be one thing. Where do all triathletes swim? In a pool. So do they ever do any practice in the ocean? So that's one thing. I was shocked at cycling. So of course you need to be a reasonable cyclist. Are they practicing at the percentage of, of the race that they're going to do? Speed and threshold and heart rate. And as a runner, have they just trained as a runner or have they practiced? How do you run in triathlon? You run off the bike. I was shocked at the people who don't train at all running off the bike. They may have one session off the bike and it's a bit of a token session. Well, that doesn't make any sense to me. So the requirements and the prerequisites of the event are important. So. So not only the planning of that, but the preparation of doing those sessions and the planning of your actual race was the thing that really shocked me.

And it's not a negative to anyone because if you haven't been taught how to have a proper race plan and a plan that's going to get an effective result, then you don't know. But you're still shocked at how majority of triathletes haven't had that experience or been taught how to have that proper race plan.

Yeah. And for me, having a race plan is the key to a successful day. Of course, you have to prepare properly, so the preparation is going to allow you to execute your race plan. So if you aren't prepared properly, no matter what your race plan is, you're still probably not going to be that successful. But if you've prepared poorly, your race plan will help you get through the event with the limited preparation you've had. And we've had examples of guys who've been injured for running and I don't like mentioning names, but we've got one guy who was injured for eight weeks and was doing half marathon, half Ironman, so his running was restricted, so he was really quite good in the swim and the ride. And we knew that come race day. So we planned the run according to the preparation he was able to do, not what he knew he was capable of doing had he been 100% fit. Because that's not how you land on race day. You have to plan the race around the actual data. And, and we specifically test the data just before race day to find out what your swim pace is, to find out what your threshold for riding is, to find out what your running pace is. And we go into the race knowing all of those numbers. And it's like you having a whole spreadsheet of information whilst you're swim riding or swimming is not that easy to measure. But riding and running, you're getting instant feedback the whole way through the race. So I just could not understand that people could go into a race without having a plan, whether it be a bad plan or a good plan. Just having, I'm just gonna go as hard as I can today. That's not a plan, that's just ridiculous tactic of preparing to fail.

And the biggest lesson here, and the coolest part was the simple change of improving your preparation and then having a specific plan created incredible results for triathletes and people having 10, 15, 20 minute PBS.

Yeah. And as we said at the beginning, we measure our successes by improvement in performance, not podiums. We got a couple of, we got one win in Busso, we got another podium, we got top 10, we got qualifiers for world titles for 70.3 in New Zealand. And they're all great and they're, they're fantastic for each athlete wrapped for them. But every single one of our athletes in the past eight weeks has done a PB. Not one has not done a PB. So I've got 100% record. And that to me was just slight variation in their preparation and having a race plan and just a couple of little tweaks. They had been doing triathlons. No one was doing their first triathlon. Every single one of them had done a triathlon before. But it was the first time they'd actually gone into it with good preparation, a race plan. And I'm really adamant that I call and talk to each athlete prior to a triathlon to make sure we're clear on what our ranges are to ride at and what our ranges are to run at. And you still have to execute on the day, but you've got some information to base it on. Am I feeling good? Can I go at the fast end of the power number? Or I'm not feeling so good, but I need to be in these zones.

It's a great lesson. It'd be really cool to see the improvement from all the triathletes. Lesson number 10. We're at the back end of our lessons, and this one we touched on again before. But it is how you really want to be on the right side of the line between not overdoing it and staying healthy. Because when you overdo it and you get sick or injured, it just really stops your whole progress. And a lot of people then make the mistake of trying to come back too soon and end up missing more time because they come back from sickness too early and they prolong that sickness, or they come back from injury too early and end up prolonging the injury, and it's just a disaster all around, and it really impacts that consistency.

It's a great point to talk about. And look, a lot of it's out of our control, which is really difficult. And it's not your fault. Sometimes. Sometimes it is your fault and you've created it. And then by panicking, you make it worse. So it's a really valid point and one that people don't underestimate, how it can impact your season. So getting injured is one thing, and that's sometimes unlucky, but sometimes overuse. Sometimes. If you're talking about a running injury, maybe you had the wrong runners, maybe you had them too long. You know, things that you can. Can do something about is making sure you change them over a bike injury, maybe sitting in the wrong position. Get yourself set up on a bike, fit. You know, not doing the strength and conditioning core and stretching can contribute to a lot of injuries. So there are lots of things that can cause an injury. You can twist your ankle, which is accidental, and you can be out for whatever you Know, you should say, well, you should be more concentrated. Well, well, you know, that's a little bit unfair. Having twisted my ankle over 40 times in my career, I can twist it on an icy pole stick. So there's things you can control and there's things you can't control. So the controllable things is what we really want to focus on. And having a running injury or a riding injury or a swimming shoulder injury, getting the right advice and following that advice to the letter and being given rehab exercises. And this is something I was definitely at fault at in my career and hence I can't run anymore. And to be fair, we didn't have a lot of good knowledge back in the 1920s, the 1980s and 90s about rehab. We had a lot of rest and ice and a little bit of massage, but we just didn't have the knowledge to do these particular exercises to strengthen your, your core and the alignment of your muscles, working properly to stop you from it re injuring. And that's something that I think people need to really focus on is if you've got an injury, you do the homework. The homework is the stretching, strengthening exercises, maybe not so much the stretching, but the strengthening exercises to make sure the muscles functioning well. So that's one aspect the illness, well, you know, that's out of your control all the time.

There are, you can't be overdoing it.

Yeah, there are, which I was about to say there are things that you are going to do that will push you to be sick. But if you've got children who are at, you know, daycare and at school, come home with, you know, all sorts of things because we're training on the edge, you're more susceptible to getting it. And you know, this year has been particularly bad for most Australians and people all over the world for getting, you know, a lot of the flus. And so, you know, airplane flights, I've noticed a lot of people have traveled, have come back sick from flights. That's been a real consistent. What can you do about that? Not much. But once you're sick, you've got to let the illness go. You've got to, you know, be patient and not try to train through sickness. And some really good advice that Dr. Mitch Anderson gave me was, you know, if, if you're feeling 60%, why would you train at 100%? You know, it's actually dangerous for your heart to be training when you've got a viral infection. So, so you're better off resting and riding it out. You know, if you start to feel 70% better, 80% better. You know, that's the time to start training at 60% or 70%. But never train above how you feel. And you've got to self regulate. You know, am I 7 out of 10 or 8 out of 10? And if you've still got a cough or a headache, that's a sign not to try and push your body. So people get sick, that's a problem. What do they do about when they get sick? They come back too soon. So we've had people getting re sick, reoccurrence of illness.

The general rule you've said is that if, let's say if you're sick for a week, it should take you a full week to get back to 100%. You can do some easy riding, but you've got to let the same amount of time be sick for 10 days. You almost have to give it 10 days because if you do that, even though it's frustrating and you have to be really slow and patient after a week, then you're back to 100%. But if you do it too fast, then the prolonged sickness can be there for three or four weeks. Suddenly you haven't trained properly for five weeks and it's just a much worse outcome.

You've lost so much fitness and conditioning and the mental frustration is awful. And we've had quite a few people who've experienced that this year and you know, just a couple of lessons they've learned is just listening to the body a lot. And look, one thing that we do do with our coaching is I ask people every week to take their resting heart rate and I ask them to keep a track on their weight for lots of reasons, but one of the reasons is the resting heart rate with history. If you've got a year of history of once a week taking your resting heart rate. And as you know, I do it every morning myself. If your heart rate for some reason starts to spike, it's a great indicator that the body's under stress, whether it's from mental stress or from physical illness. And you need to take note. If your resting heart rate is 50 and all of a sudden it's 58, that's a red flag. And I'm not asking you to do that just to, you know, to, just to see what your resting heart rate is. I'm asking you to do it for a reason. So we've got history to make decisions based on this week. We need to ease up in the training because your resting heart rate's telling us that you can go one step further and have heart rate variability, which is a little bit more specific. And that's a really good indicator of how you should train each day. But that's something that's a little bit more complicated.

But yeah, there's not a lot you can do about this lesson, but it is important to, to understand how much of an impact it can have. And we've seen it a lot this year. A lot of athletes had a lot of their season just derailed from just prolonged sickness and injury and it's, it's very frustrating for them.

But you can do a bit about it. Jordan, you can, you can let me know that you're, you're not feeling quite any. You know, that session I didn't feel quite well, you know, so I need.

To know that again, it's that balance of. Well, I want to be a person that completes 100 of sessions, but you just like. Well, we want to. If you're sick, you just can't.

Yep, yep. And look, to be fair, when I said I completed 100% of the sessions, I might have been at the bottom end of the range in some of those sessions, but. And you know, and I was lucky, I didn't actually have any illness or sickness. So. So if you've got that, you can't be a hero and say I have to complete 100% of my sessions. And that's just, that's just not what I'm advocating. Good.

Lesson 11, this is actually lesson from observing a pro rider this year and the story of Rohan Dennis, because it's something that a lot of people ask the question about, but it doesn't get touched on that much. And there's not a whole heap of advice out there about how important is your bike set up and getting the right equipment and what do we see Rohan Dennis do this year?

Yeah, it was one of those most intriguing things that I've ever watched from afar. As everybody knows, Rowan Dennis is the world time trial champion. In 2018 he rode for BMC and he was winning every time trial that he was competing in. He changed teams and went to Bahrain, Merida and different bike. And the start of the season was the Australian national titles time trial. He would have been odds on favourite, would have been unbackable after having the year that he did in 2018. Unbeatable and unbuckable if you're a betting man. And Durbridge came out and beat him. And Durbridge had done the road race that was two days prior and had been in the break for five hours and you would have thought that a fresh Rowan Dennis would have no trouble with that. But Rowan came second to Durbridge which was a fantastic result for Luke Durbridge. But there was something not quite right about Rowan's performance and I think that was a bit of a shock to him. I don't know anything about him personally. This is an observation, this is my, my opinion. And you don't go from being a world beater to losing an event that you're beaten by. Durbridge is a great time trial and always has been. But you know, having ridden the road race, you should be fatigued and you know, the world time trial champion should have no trouble with that. So, so that to me was kind of a strange result. And then he continued to have more strange results culminating in the Tour de France.

And to your credit, you called it back in January, you said there's something not right about that Rowan Dennis result. He should have won. You said you're going to keep an eye on that all year.

Yeah. And come the Tour de France and he really hadn't. I think he might, I think he might have won one lead up time trial, but come second and third and a few others. So there was clearly how he wasn't having the success that he'd had previously previous year with BMC and Man up. You know, I was saying, well, they would have the best equipment, I'm sure. And then the Tour de France time trial midway through week two and a half, I think it was, he stepped off the bike the day before the time trial and didn't do the race the next day. Everybody was in shock. What's he doing? Is he not well? There wasn't a lot of information. The director sporties weren't really saying too much. In fact, I don't think they knew. They hadn't spoken to him and he just, he just disappeared. And I don't think there was many happy people about it. But I, you know, my observation, my opinion is he didn't want to go into another race and underperform. And as an athlete that's such a key thing to, for confidence is, you know, and he's trying to change something about why is why things are going and he had no confidence in what was going to happen the next day. That's my own opinion. And so he went away and you know, come to the world titles maybe 12 weeks later. I don't know how long it was in between, between July and the world titles, which were October. I think something like that. It was the same week as it nationals, I think. And he came home and changed everything. Changed his training, changed his focus, changed his equipment. I imagine I don't know that for, I don't know that for sure. Seemed like he wasn't riding the same bike, but again, I'm just speculating here. And he came and won the world title by 55 seconds and was, it was incredible riding. It was the Rowan Dennis of old. And to me that was just obviously having confidence number one in his equipment, his setup. It's the same rider. And then he. So he's won back to back world titles, but the journey between the previous world title to this one was extremely poor. But the outcome was the same.

And you asked the question in January, you said could his bike have made that difference and is that going to affect him psychologically? And the best guess from observation is probably yes.

Yeah. And again, I'm happy to be proven wrong. But it's just my observation that I think that he possibly was on a bike that was similar to what he won the previous year. And history says he's won back to back world titles on the time trial bike and now he's got a contract with Ineos and he's not the same person he was in 2019. Hopefully his next year is as successful because he's such an elite rider.

It was worth pointing out anyway because it's just a very interesting thing to watch. And when you're thinking about all the time and effort you want to be putting in, that's just another factor that doesn't get as much attention as maybe it should your bike set up.

So just before you move on, the reason we brought this topic up was not just to talk about Ryan Dennis, which it is an interesting topic. It is. If you haven't set yourself up correctly, you are potentially losing a lot in your performance. So not only getting the right bike, that suits you and obviously we've got sponsorship with Giant and we ride Giants and we're very happy with it.

But great results on Giants.

Great results on Giant. But you know, you need to have a bike that you're set up well on and a bike that's a really good functioning bike that's going to give you the ability to ride fast. Obviously you have to do all the other things, the training we've been talking about. But if you're, if you do all those things and you, and you still don't have the right equipment and the right bike, the equipment is one and the bike setup is the other, well, the best rider in the world proved that he can't be the best rider in the world. So that tells me that you need to do something about that. Even if you're just an average Joe, if you're going to spend money on training and coaching, get the right equipment and get the right setup, I can't emphasize that more.

Absolutely. So the final lesson of our 12 lessons of Christmas. It's been a big one, a big wrap up to the year, but we've had good feedback from some of these longer episodes. A lot of people really love the in depth analysis and I think these lessons were some really good ones. This is year that we can take a lot of and the last one's pretty simple. But everything we've been speaking about, being committed to the program and doing it 100% and getting the most out of it, the opposite side of that is how, and this is something that comes up a lot is life does get really busy. Work gets in the way. If you are time poor and it is just not realistic for you to complete the program 100%. What are the most important sessions? How do you stay fit? Because you always say staying fit is the most important, important thing. And if you want to race more as well, I mean, how do you stay fit and what are the most important sessions and what have we seen from people this year to be out that can stay fit in hard times?

Yeah, but look, it's such a great topic, Jordan. I'm glad, you know, I'm glad we're finishing on this because at Christmas time, you know, when you've got more time, you've got less stress from work, people use this opportunity, build their fitness, which is what I would do. But if during the year, that's what we're really talking about every day, not the exception of, of holidays. So during the 50 weeks of the year where you are just doing the same normal routine and you only have six hours, you still want to stay fit, but life is preventing you from doing it. Some people have 20, some people have 15, some people have 10, you might only have five or six. You can still continue to keep that fitness base going that we've talked about in the lessons. If you concentrate on key things and you know, without giving too many secrets away, there are three things. Three rides a week will enable you to keep your hand in there and not go from a 50 out of 10 out of 100 to a 20 out of 100 to keep you around the 40, 50. If you did two high intensity sessions that were based on your number, not based on what you could do when you were training at 10 hours. Based on your new six hour a week athlete. If you specifically did two of those high intensity sessions, and we won't tell them what they are, and did one endurance ride, one endurance ride, you could maintain a really good level of fitness that you could step up from, from that point. And I have at least five or six riders who are in that phase right now. And it's funny because the team's time trial is coming up and one of those riders I, I'm quite happily going to call on because of something that's happened with one of the riders who's been training because I know that he's been doing exactly that, that, that base minimum and he'll be able to step up and you know, he's understood how to, how to manage his off period. And everybody needs an off period. You know, let's not have a mistake about that. I had, you know, a two week off period where it was just, just riding when I felt like it. But you wouldn't want to go too much longer than that. So I would resume straight away back into my three hard sessions. When I say hard sessions, the endurance ride is hard in a different way. But the recovery sessions, the tempo sessions, the sub threshold sessions, the VO2 sessions, different to the high intensity and the endurance, there's specifically differences in all those sessions. If you're going to have to compromise, they're the ones, they're the little 1 percenters that build your fitness quicker. They're the ones you have to sacrifice. So what will happen? You'll just not lose fitness, you won't improve. So make that clear. By doing three sessions a week, your improvement will be zero to minimum, but you won't decline. And that's what we're trying to answer this question with. And you know what is in that session? Well, that's something you need to contact us about.

So I think we'll leave it there. 12 really big lessons. 12 lessons of Christmas. That is a wrap for us for 2019. 2019 has been a really great year. It's been great to see a lot of the travel athletes get the results they want, improve and enjoy it. That's it for us. When we made this list of lessons, we ended up coming up with a whole bunch, 20 or 30 things, things we could have talked about. And so in the new year first podcast of 2020, we'll be talking about some of those things and more specifically looking ahead for the next year, how can you get the most out of yourself the next year? What should you be focusing on and what can you do to really set up your year? Well, because it starts with that planning phase. Plan, prepare, perform. That planning phase is so crucial in that plan.

Right.

So that you can prepare really well and perform well at the actual time.

Yeah, that's so true, Jordan. And this is the time of the year to do it, to think about what your goals are next year and have them. And we always say writing your goal down means more than just verbalizing it. It's like you're making a contract with yourself. Well, I wrote it down, so, you know, anything in print must be true, as we. As we all well know.

And telling your coach your plan.

Yeah. And being accountable to someone by telling them, you know, this is what I plan to do, and you know, it's always going to be thrown back in your face. Well, you told me you wanted to do this. What's happening? So, yeah, I think I'm excited and I'm looking forward to some more podcasts, and it's been good fun this year to actually get, you know, the dozen or so that we've. That we've done. And we've had some fantastic interviews with people who've given us, you know, glimpses of what, what it's like to be, you know, an athlete or a professional or little. Little helpful hints that all contribute to making you a better person and a better athlete. And that's kind of what our goal is, really.

Absolutely. So if you are not being coached by us at the moment and you do want coaching, you can go to our website, tribalocoaching.com and contact us that way, or find us on any social media, message us on Facebook tribalocoaching, or Instagram tribalocoaching. We're always willing to help anyone that wants to come and improve and get more enjoyment out of themselves. And that's really as simple as our goals are. So that's it from us. Anything else from you?

Yeah. I'd say to all those people who think they want to be a better bike rider, if you don't change something, then you'll stay the same. But if you're happy staying the same, that's absolutely fine. But if you're not, then you need to do something different. And the first thing would be to change something that you're doing in your program. And contacting someone who can help you with that is what we're about.

Perfect. So that's it from us. Merry Christmas and a Happy new year from tribalo coaching and we'll see you all in the new year.

Fantastic, Jordan.