5 Reasons Your Fitness Might Not Be Improving

But the journey of improvement will ensure that on race day, from when you started the program to when you get to race day, you will be a better prepared athlete with a better outcome.

This podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo Coaching, Jared Donnelly. If I were to ask you about your training week, do you know what sessions to do and what order to do them? This is the most common thing we see with athletes when they reach out to us. They have so much conflicting advice about what they should do and when they should do it. Most athletes just want to be able to trust a process that they can be sure will work. This is one of the many reasons we see athletes not seeing fitness improvements. So today we're going to talk about five reasons you might not be improving and what to do instead. We want to say from the start that most people think I'm potentially just not doing the right session, or if I could get given the perfect session to do, that would make all the difference. But we can tell you for certainty that's not it. And the answers that we're going to give today aren't what you think. And of course, before we get into the episode, this podcast is brought to you by our proud sponsor, Giant Australia, for all your bike training and racing needs. Ride life. Ride Giant Dad. Welcome to the episode. Our normal starting segment is. What are you grateful for?

Thanks, Jord. And look over the last few few months and probably last few years as the technology has improved, and I was just talking to someone the other day. It was your grandfather, actually. He was telling me the very first time he had a mobile phone, and it was a big bag with a normal phone inside the bag that was connected to wiring, and you pick it up like a normal phone, like in a phone booth. And I remember exactly when that came out as well, in the early 1990s, and texting wasn't a thing. People still talk to each other. I'm grateful for modern technology, don't get me wrong, but I just feel like the art of communicating through talking to each other is still the best form of communication. And that's what I'm grateful for. The fact that we still can actually look each other in the eye and talk to each other and have a conversation where you can really see people's body language about how invested they are in what they're saying or how much they believe in what they're saying. Texting, you just lose context. Emailing, you write something and someone reads it differently to how you've written it and that causes great confusion and sometimes great anxiety and great angst. And I just feel even with all the technological advances we've had, I still am grateful that we can still talk to each other and that that should take priority over everything. And I think a lot of issues would be better off solved if we actually just picked up the phone and talked to each other or went and sought the person you might have an issue with or that you want to congratulate on a positive side, on a negative side if you have an issue with them. But you know, there's nothing like for example, at the end of a race and you happen to be there when you've been watching someone who's performed very well and you're there to give them a congratulations, hug or kiss or whatever you're doing. It is just a great non verbal way of communicating your happiness towards that person. So I love that face to face communication and I'm hopeful and wanting that to be the mainstream of our communication going forward. Although technology is dominating our style of life. But I want people to communicate verbally if I could.

It's a good one for you because as a coach you spend a lot of time on the phone. So I'm glad that you still enjoy it enough, no matter the time you spend on it. I think you might have got your decades wrong there. I can't imagine that that bag phone was the 90s. It sounds more like the 60s, but.

Well, let me tell you, there was no such thing as a mobile phone until 1990 something.

I'll probably get ripped for that by the listeners. Yeah, that's a good one. My gratitude, actually it's probably a little bit personal to go into detail with on this podcast, even though that we do go into a lot of detail on this podcast about our personal lives. But I will just say that I'm grateful for our family and that is my gratitude for today. Moving on to what's caught your attention, we have been watching an awesome show on Netflix together, the Quarterback. It's a show about the quarterback in the NFL and I'm a big NFL fan anyway and you're not. You don't watch it. You watch it every so often if we watch it. But we both love sport and these documentaries are such a great insight into athletes at their top level, at the top of their game in different sports and anytime you can see a documentary in a different sport outside the ones that you might do, like triathlon, cycling or running. It's always great insight to see what makes them tick, and you can take some strategies that they use and apply it to yourself. And we just were watching episodes, just soaking in every second, absolutely loving what was happening at the quarterback position, which is arguably one of the most technical and toughest sporting positions in the world, because of the mental strategy it takes as well as the physical toll. And, yeah, we've enjoyed a lot of it. We kind of wanted to share some lessons that we took from it that we can apply to our athletes. So I'll let you start.

Yeah. And look, it's just not about American football. We could use this with Ange Postecoglou as an incredibly improved soccer manager or Penrith in the local nrl. The coach there, I can't even think of his name, but he's won three in a row, I suppose, premierships, or if you're in America, world titles in a row. And I think they all have a common thing that they're really mentally prepared. And we. We talk in this podcast a lot about the physical side of preparation, getting things right, and even the physical side of the week before and, you know, getting your equipment right and all that stuff. We talk about that physicalness, but we haven't talked a lot in our podcast over the years that we've been doing this about how much the mental preparation, not just for race day, but for every day, almost every day that you are on this earth. You kind of need to have some sort of strategy the day before about what you're going to do tomorrow, what you're going to do in the next hour when you're going to go to bed. All of these are part of your mental preparation that you are actually preparing your physical self to get through the day. And I think it's really underestimated how important that aspect of it was. And these coaches and the players in the American football context really showed me this is a very technical sport. As a quarterback, you've got all these plays being spoken to through your eardrum earpiece that the coach is working out on the sideline. And you've got to remember that if he calls out a play, the playbook might have 60 or 70 plays that he has to know. And sure, they'll narrow it down for each team that they're playing, because some teams, these plays work better. But that quarterback has to remember the play in the huddle, tell his guys who are supposed to stop him from getting nailed and throw the ball to the person who's waiting to receive it. So there's so much mental preparation that he has to think about how he's going to execute and knowing that he could possibly get absolutely hammered by three or four of the biggest guys who their whole purpose is to. Is to knock him to the ground. I look at it just going, who would want to be a quarterback? That is the most brutal sport in the world. But the point I'm making is the preparation mentally that they have to go through each week. It was a real eye opener to me. And the plays that they have to actually learn for each week's game over the season. And it was fantastic to see how the detail they go into it. And if you convert that to a running program or to a triathlon program or to a bike program, it's exactly the same as a bike rider. Most people think that riding a bike is easy. And to the average punter it is. You just get on a bike and start pedaling. But to be successful in an event against opposition, there's way more technical stuff that you could do to get the same result with the same level of fitness. Get a better result. Sorry. With the same level of fitness that you currently have just by changing strategies. And that's all about mental preparation, understanding what you should be doing on certain parts of the bike course. Just like the quarterback has to make a decision about what he's going to do once the guy gives him the ball and backs and forwards are running left and right in front of him, he's making these split decisions to get the right outcome. And, and so the mental side of it, that's what's caught my attention. And we had a couple of really extreme examples with Patrick Mahomes and Kirk Cousins. Is it Kirk Cousins? Is that right? And one is the super conservative quarterback who does all his diligent homework and really sticks to the plays and is known for that conservativeness. And Patrick Mahomes is the complete opposite. He is just looking like he's going by the seat of his pants and making decisions as he sees fit. And they're both very successful.

Flamboyant, like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he talks the talk, but he actually walks the walk as well. You know, he's won two out of the last three Super Bowls and he's been MVP on the last Super Bowl. He does talk a lot, but he, he actually does the. The work. And it was two contrasting ways of going about things and showed me that, that you Know everybody has their own unique way of getting the best outcome. And it's just finding, finding that method that suits you. And everybody's got a different personality and character that you've got to find your way about going about things, not just physically. This is the mental side of it. You've got to understand what makes you tick and push those buttons to get you in the zone, in the moment and make better decisions. Just like Patrick Mahomes does and just like Kirk Cousins does. When you know you've got so much information being fed to you and how quickly you can actually put that information, information into categories and come out with a. An action that's either going to be good or bad. Instantly you're going to. You're going to make a shocking throw to an attacker. A receiver, sorry, the word is receiver, who doesn't receive the ball because of your poor throw or his positioning. And so you live and die by these decisions. And you know, we saw there was another example. I don't even know his. Remember his name. There were three quarterbacks they followed.

Max Merit. I was the other one.

Mariota. That's right. And he ended up getting replaced as a quarterback. So we had one, Patrick Mahomes, Flamboyant, who. Who was MVP and won the Super Bowl. Kirk Cousins, who was conservative, but still they got. They won their conference, they made the playoffs and lost the first round. And the other guy, Marioti, who actually lost his position as a quarterback because of the way he was playing. He was doing all the work. It wasn't panning out for him. So this classic examples of. Of how it's just not a physical game, it's a mental game as well.

Apologies to anyone that hasn't watched it and wanted to watch it. And we're definitely going to spoil it in this explanation. It was fine for me because I knew the result of the whole series. I knew everything that happened. So it was just as fascinating to watch. I guess it's the same with the F1 series. It's out. When it comes out a season later, everyone knows what's actually happened. But there's a reason that plan, Prepare, perform is our motto. And you go on about the preparation part and you always say to our athletes that the preparation isn't just the training you're doing, it's everything around the tr. How are you going to fit your training into your actual week, where you're going to fit it in before and after work, and how prepared are you going to be the night before to make sure that you can actually make the session happen if you've got all your equipment laid out and do you know the exact timing of things. And we had Rachel on the podcast last week where she had to really look at her weeks and go, where can I fit this volume of running in that's going to get me fit enough for 160 kilometer event, a 41 hour event. You just think it's impossible, especially when you're working full time. So she made her commute to and from work, her training, and she was literally running 10, 20, 25, 30 potential kilometers to and from work to get that volume in. So that preparation is, I think one point I really wanted to make was exactly what you just said then that, you know, figure out what works best for you. And we had two quarterbacks with very kind of different styles of going about it. But my, what I was so impressed with was the attention to detail from both quarterbacks. And they went about things differently, but they, they prepared just as hard as each other, but in different ways. And I think that's the point that stood out to me, was they were just pure examples of, you know, they couldn't have done any more work themselves to make sure they were up for game day and they were ready for games and are ready to perform at the absolute peak performance. And so, you know, some people might use the excuse that, oh, I'm not a detailed person, so I don't like going about things that way. And that's not what we're trying to say here, that we're trying to say that if you don't like being well prepared, then you know, that's good enough. It's, it's fine. The best way for you to be ultimately, ultimately prepared to give your peak performance. And I just think a lot of athletes could learn a lot from how they go about their weeks and where they're fitting in the mental side of their preparation, you know, their study about the playbook and where they're fitting in the physical side and where they're fitting in and prioritizing recovery. Kirk Cousins had a great example where he takes Tuesdays completely off and he has time completely away from the club. And he just says, I'm not doing anything football related that day. And that's his reset day. And then he has examples where he will leave training to go prioritize getting treatment from four physios or doctors or whatever to make sure that you actually get up for training. So all these things combined were just great examples, I thought of the ultimate preparation. I Just thought it was worth pointing out.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more with, with you. And they were very extreme examples. But, you know, looking over the journey of, of the most successful coaches and players, it comes down to a lot of inbuilt talent. So that's, that's mainly one of the reasons why some people are better than others, because they've got just this natural talent. But there are many examples of people who are mediocre talent, but invested mentally in their preparation and physical preparation. Of course, you can't just be thinking about what you're going to do, you actually have to physically do that. But there are many examples of people who are outsmarting the actual, the more talented athlete just by thinking and mentally working out how to overcome the opposition. And that's kind of a key.

Moving on to today's topic, the five reasons you might not be seeing fitness improvements. And as we said at the start, there could be many reasons why. But here are five very specific reasons that we want to focus on that we see often are the reason why athletes are stuck and not improving. And often they don't know why this is and they don't realise they're doing these things. The very first one is a bit of a unique angle, but we were gonna actually define improving and ask the question, well, how do you know you're not improving? What's your definition of improving? And for a majority of athletes, they're actually not testing themselves regularly. So we would say, okay, well, what are you testing against then? How do you know specifically you're not improving? And more importantly, dad, you often have conversations with athletes where they've forgotten where they came from. They might have tested or gone through a training block and then done a time trial or a race or something and not had an ideal result. And then it feels like the world's going to end because you're going, what the hell's going on? I've done so much hard work, I'm not improving. And often you have remind them that six months ago they were 70 watts lower than they are now. And so, yes, they might have had one poor result, but look how far they've come in six months. And obviously that's not good enough forever. You do want to address, okay, what happened today, why didn't we improve, what needs to improve for next training block? But these are often a case of understanding, okay, what is the analysis here of how do you define improving?

Yeah, and I suppose our case studies that we've been doing a series of in the last Couple of months has been a classic example of that. And that's, that's intentional by us to get people to understand that you need to get perspective. And perspective is something that allows you to understand where you're at and where you've come from. And if you don't have that perspective, then you are kind of going on a journey that's got no destination. Almost aimless. Yeah, aimless journey where you are expecting that you're improving and then when you actually come to your race day, you get a shock where you perform poorly and you could also get to race day and think that you're not in such good form but you perform well. So there could be so many outcomes but you are at best guessing and I don't like to be in that situation when I come to race day. So understanding the perspective of your improvement is key. And how do you do that? That's obvious that you need to start with a baseline like a line in the sand. Where is my fitness at right now? Where am I going with this journey? Is it a 12 month journey? Is it a two year journey that I'm on? I saw Lionel Sanders do a YouTube video and he's given him three more years to have one, two or three of the best performances he can possibly do. I love that the guy's absolutely not happy with where he is now. He's given him three years and I'm going to do everything I can to improve my swimming. My swimming sucks, as he says. My bike could be improved and my running is not where I want it to be. So I'm giving myself three years and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that I have one, two or three of the best races that I've ever had in my life from this point going forwards. I've got examples of guys that I coach, for example, have set targets and, and these targets when I first coached them were, were pretty, pretty high targets. You know, breaking a Strava Kom that's currently their time where it might have been around 12 or 13 minutes and their target was to break 10 minutes and they just did it. Last week they did 953. And that's unbelievable perspective for them. They, and they are so grateful they understand where they've come from. This is an example of someone who understands it, who really gets it, who's grateful for the work they've done, where they've come from and where they're at now. That can happen to anybody that knows what their current fitness is and where they are, where they were and where they want to be.

Such an important point, because we're doing this because we want to enjoy ourselves and we want to have good experiences. And you will have such a good experience as an athlete if you can measure yourself properly and have this perspective and this objective analysis and see exactly where you've come from so you can celebrate your victories and celebrate your good performance. And if you don't have this, you're taking away your own enjoyment of celebrating these victories. And I know you've had plenty of phone calls where an athlete has done a race or an event that you are so proud of and pumped of because you as the coach know exactly where they've come from and exactly what they're capable of. And you've seen it and they've called you up. And this can be the problem, as you say at the motivated athlete is they're always looking for ways they could have been better and they're always kind of focusing on the mistakes. And you're saying, don't take this away from us as a coach and athlete. This is our chance to celebrate what a good performance is, is. Don't just focus on the negative or what could have been when this is a performance that you would have been so proud of six months ago, 12 months ago.

Yeah, and look, that's the negative side of it. But the positive side of it is that you can measure yourself not just in a race. You can do this specific time trial, you know, as a 10k runner or a 5k run or a park run, a 20 minute FTP or a triathlon. There's so many ways of measuring it. It doesn't have to be in one race. If you think hard about just everyday group rides that you might ride in as an example, or long endurance runs with a pack of runners that you run with. And there's been times where the pace has been so hard that you're just keeping up and then all of a sudden a year later you're actually inflicting some of that pain on the other people in the group. That's not a test that you're in, but that's just an experience that you've had that gives you perspective of where you are in that pack of riders or runners or swimmers. If you're doing endurance, you know, open water swimming, you know where you are before and you would know where you are now. And that's perspective that I'm talking about. It doesn't have to be a test to, for you to get an Understanding. And that's what you should be thinking about. And they're the definition of you might be improving, but you don't actually know it because you actually aren't thinking along those lines. And you should be looking for all the opportunities to see and feel that. Today's ride with my normal mates felt so much easier than a year ago. And on this particular hill they all left me for dead and had to wait for me. And now I was second up the hill. That's perspective of improvement.

And there's, yeah, there's so many ways you can go about it. And I guess that's why defining any little or big goal is a really key part of this. And that example you gave the athlete before that broke that 10 minute barrier, he had some great examples of. He set a whole bunch of goals that he started with and has slowly ticked them all off.

Right? Yeah. And look, it's, it's gone from 1 minute PB, 5 minute PB, 10 minute PB and 20 minute PB. He's beat them all. He's. And now he's sitting back saying, whoa, what's my next challenge? I've ticked off all the boxes way sooner than I thought. That's a happy athlete who's, who's now ready for the next challenge. And, and you know, he's thrown out another 20 minute PB that I've sort of gone, whoa, that's, that's out there. But, but there's no ceiling. You know, it might take longer than you think, but everybody has the right to select whatever goal they want. And whether it takes two months or two years, that's entirely up to you.

Yeah, that's a great example. And another good one is just even on our bunch ride, we often see athletes who are newer to the bunch ride. The back half is a big, really tough role and you're rolling with some really experienced athletes and people are really trying to hurt each other a little bit in this role. And we see the new athletes in the bunch ride get spat out of the back of the roll pretty quickly and either hang on or get dropped. And that's just the nature. And that little goal is just how long can hang on next week, how long can I hang on next week? And then how long till I can start pulling strong turns?

And how long can I pull strong.

Turns till I can make it to the sprint at the end of the bunch ride? And that's another example of what you're talking about, about using little measures here and there. It might be an individual Session where you're measuring against your numbers, you know, six by three minutes. What numbers was I doing three months ago? What can I do now? They're all ways just to actually measure yourself about how you're improving. And the last one I wanted to kind of touch on was thinking about race results versus execution. You can have things both ways here. You could have a really great result, but you actually didn't execute that well. And as a coach, you're sometimes pulling athletes back and saying, I know you want celebrate the result, but here's where you could have really improved and got a better outcome. And other times they've got a really poor race outcome, but you were just so happy with the way they executed. And they actually did a half marathon PB at the end of a 70.3 or it was good conditions and they rode the highest speed they ever had. And that's worth celebrating.

I totally agree. And we shouldn't be defined by our results. Results are great. They are fantastic. We can celebrate being on the podium doing a pb, but I'm more interested in that journey of how you got that result, not only in training, but but on race day. I absolutely love when someone gets the execution right. And the result might not be a podium or a pb, but they've actually learned how to go about getting the race strategies right because they will improve from that point on. If you're getting good results with poor execution, you will keep repeating that because the result is determining how you're going to go about it rather than the journey that will enable you. You'll come undone eventually. If you have a poor execution and still get a result that's going to reiterate that execution doesn't count. And I think that's really important for the long term. You might get away with it occasionally, but for the long term improvement, that execution strategy is going to win out.

Point number two is quite specific, but it's making the mistake of trying to start a training program without a proper base.

Yeah. And look, we often say to all the athletes who join that we want to find out exactly where your fitness level is and we'll train you to that fitness level. That's kind of heartening for them to hear because I'm saying to them, I don't care how good you are right now, I just want to know where your fitness level is. And so we can train accurately to that fitness level and not start you with a level that is way beyond your capacity and fitness at the moment. So initially, if we've Got enough time. We will absolutely push to get that base training, that endurance training up on both. If you're a triathlete, as a runner and swimmer, and as a rider, if you're a pure cyclist and endurance cyclist or a racer or a crit rider, we want to get that base up. We want that endurance ride to be the mainstay of your program and making sure that you're doing the high intensity sessions at your current level of fitness so you can still get away with those short, hard efforts with a poor level of fitness. But that will stop you from improving if you don't work on the. The base. The base is. The is, as we've said and you've heard it many times. You know, if you're building on poor foundations, the house will not stand up in strong winds and, and howling rain and all those things that the modern era is throwing at our, at our community at the moment. So we want, we want our base fitness to be so rock solid that we can actually do the intensity without it having to hurt us too much down the track. So the lack of improvement could be long term here. You could get away with it early by training really hard early on, but you will get found out as well. Just like the execution example, if you don't have the fitness, you won't be able to sustain the program for the third or fourth or seventh week. If you neglect the endurance aspect of building your base, getting that aerobic fitness capacity as high as you can, you will start to get tighter and tighter as you work your way through the journey of the program. And if you keep doing that, you will get to a point where you are so exhausted because the hard sessions become way too hard and you don't improve, by the way, you actually stay. You hit an FTP number in those high intensity sessions that you can't improve on because you don't have the fitness base to work harder next week or the week after. And that's why the base training is so important.

Yeah. And to clarify, you're not saying it's endurance and base and nothing else, but I think Stephen Styler put it perfectly when he came on our podcast. And you really have at home the points we love, which is volume first or frequency first? Volume, intensity. And when you're building that base, it's the frequency of training and the volume that you're trying to build up before you're worrying about intensity. That doesn't mean you don't do any intensity. It's like the very first point you made here is that you do the intensity, but at your level. But it's just not the priority, as much as the frequency and volume are of building up and getting your body used to that point. Number three, and this is probably the most common conversation we have when an athlete starts, is, okay, well, you want to start training, Tell us about your, your training history, what kind of training sessions you've been doing. And so often the answer comes out with the training week that, where it's just a lot of the same session over and over or a similar session over and over.

Yeah, and the examples I've probably talked about in different podcasts over the journey. But, you know, guys, guys will say, I'm really training as hard as I possibly can. I'm just not getting any improvement. I'm, I'm feeling really strong and solid, but I just can't seem to get any better. In fact, in the last month or two, that's why I'm reaching out to you. I feel like I'm actually starting to get worse. And so I'll ask them, well, what are you doing in your. What sessions are you doing? I'll say, oh, Monday I do recovery, Tuesday I do really high intensity. Wednesday I do my zone two, Thursday I do more high intensity, Friday I do recovery, Saturday I do endurance, and Sunday I do some zone two. And I say, well, that program sounds pretty damn good to me. And I'll say, the next question is, are you doing that on your own? And give me an example of what your FTP is and how you're doing that in your zone. So the minute I dig into a session, tell me about your Tuesday session session, and then tell me about your Wednesday session. Okay, the Tuesday session, I do that with my bunch and we just roll flat out from the start of the ride to the finish of the ride. So great. That's probably a good high intensity session in a roundabout way. That's okay. Wednesday, what are you doing there? We just go out with a bunch, and it starts off, you know, as a zone 2, but normally someone, you know, goes up the road, we go to some hills where we end up. You know, if I was, if I was being honest, it's ended up being quite a hard ride. And so, you know, straight away we're getting a little bit more detail about, well, he's just done the same as he did the day before with the same group of gu. And then Thursday says, now I'm back to the high intensity session, which is now three days in a row of high intensity. And then I'll jump back and say, oh, tell me who you rode with on Monday and Friday. Oh, yeah, I rode with the same guys and yeah, we probably went a little bit too hard on Monday and Friday. And before you know it, he's given me seven sessions that are identical. And he's really good at those seven sessions. He's really good bunch rider, by the way. He's no mug as a bunch rider, but that's the reason why he's staying the same. So you need to have recovery sessions, you need to have variety, and therefore you're not going to get the improvement you're after. So, you know, we do talk about this a lot and it's probably enough said about that.

Yeah, yeah, it's just a classic example of it needs to be disparity between high and low. And that's where polarized training comes in. And then obviously, you know, the primitive style of training, but it does bleed into the point number four. And that is again a point we have hammered home a lot. But we want to try and talk about it a slightly different way. And that is because it's such a common mistake is, yeah, not training in the correct zone that's allocated. And the example you just gave is exactly that. You know, the Tuesday high intensity day was supposed to be high intensity, but often the high intensity is even good enough because, yes, VO2 training needs to be high intensity, but that doesn't mean going as hard as you can for the whole ride. And that's kind of what a lot of bunch rides can be. It's just health or lever the whole time. You know, you're making sure you're going hard enough consistently in the session. And the reason that, you know, a six by three minute interval session is a classic example, is because it gives you 18 minutes of work at that VO2 max range. And if you're doing VO2 max properly, you probably can't handle more than that. And a lot of athletes actually, you can only handle, you know, at the start, beginning athletes by two minutes or five by two and a half minutes before building up to six by three minutes at proper VO2 max intensity. And so if someone says that they're doing a hard ontride where it's, it's VO2 for an hour, we're probably saying, well, it's not quite high intensity enough or you're going too hard early and the back end is not high intensity enough because it's just not physiologically possible.

And also, if you dig into that session, which I've done many times I've looked at guys who've said, oh, can I do the bunch right? I go, yeah, sure. Socializing is really important. I want you to have a balance in our program and jump in a bunch ride, it's fine. And then when I dig into that bunch ride, I'll find that they've done probably four or five minutes of VO2. And that session that I was prescribing instead of their bunch ride was a VO2 session. And you've given an example of that. Six by three. Or we could do 60-30s or 4020s or 3015s. Well, they've done probably three to four minutes. And then the rest of it's been about maybe four minutes of threshold. And then the rest of it is being tempo. And so really they've only done a quarter of what we're trying to get out of that. Even though it was a hard ride.

It'S just you probably gas at the end.

It's just not hit the target that we want. It's not spent enough time in the zones that we want. It's in the wrong zones for too much time. But it's still tiring and it's still fatiguing and it does affect you the next day. But unfortunately you're not actually riding hard enough for long enough in that session. So yes, it's okay to do these things, but within reason, and once a week is what I'm advocating for guys to get their socializing and see their mates and do that high intensity midweek ride. And then if they can find a group to do the same session thereafter on a Saturday, then there's two examples. Or go to a race and you've got lots of socializing there. And you know, we're big advocates of balance, so we want, we don't want you to be a hermit and ride your bike by yourself. And there are people who love doing that, by the way. But the majority of people love the socializing of the bike riding and the improvement. So you've got to give a little bit with the socializing so you can get the improvement. But still you can do both at the same time if you're very clever and very smart about it.

Yeah, and look, this is where knowing and using data, and there's two things there. Knowing data is one thing, but actually using the data is another. Is so important because you can apply it to any session throughout the week. If it's a zone 2 session, do you actually know what the zone 2 range is? And that's lower and upper. Do you know what the minimum range is for you to actually be going at to get an aerobic fitness improvement? Because if you are going too low, it's more of a recovery, just kind of frequency session. Whereas if you're actually at the bottom of that zone 2 range, you're going to be making sure you're getting that aerobic physiological benefit. And then the upper end, you know what you can't go over. And we are all guilty of this. And I often go on jogs with friends, I'm supposed to be at zone two and we get a little bit carried away and suddenly you look down at the heart rate's above what it should be for that zone and it's just you making a classic mistake. You should not go over that no matter who you're with.

Select another day to go with your mates. If you want to go with your mates and you're doing a zone two and they want to run faster, then you end up, you do the session poorly or you'll end up leaving them and letting them run up the road and select another day where the pace they want to run at is the pace that you're meant to be running at. Selecting who to ride or run or swim with according to the session you've got is also part of that mental preparation is, well, you know, if I go out with my mates tomorrow, I've got recovery and I know they're going to ride hard, so I'm going to get the wrong session out of this. So what other days are they going to ride? Okay, they're going to ride Thursday. Well, I'll join in that day. And so making good decisions is kind of as important to get the right improvement as doing the session. The example I could use is, I suppose, one of the athletes I just came back with a conversation with recently, I've been coaching this guy for a long time. He's a really talented athlete, really great cyclist. In fact, he lost the national time trial to one of our other trivallow athletes by four seconds one year and three seconds another year, so two years in a row he came second at the national time trial. So that's the standard of rider he is. And because we went and got him to do a VO2 test and he really got the understanding of the science of what lactate means against power and heart rate. Even though I've been coaching for all these years and I've been telling him these, these reasons why we train so accurately, he's now saying to me, I Now, get it, that I shouldn't go outside the zone in the session you give me that's meant for Threshold. I shouldn't ride at VO2 in the threshold session. And just like I shouldn't be riding at threshold in the VO2 session. Now I get it. And he said, you're going to be angry with me, but you've told me that a thousand times. But now that I've done this, I totally am on board, and I promise I'll try not to do that anymore because I am sabotaging my own program, aren't I? I said, yes, you are. And even though you might be doing a tempo session where it seems like, you know, you just want to rip it to pieces, be patient, just like you should be in a race, Be patient and wait for the right day to do that at. And, you know, I'm often saying, you know, you did a great tempo. Right, except for the last effort. And you just got out of your seat and rode max. Max VO2 for the last minute. That's just ruined that session, you know, and now. Yeah, and he's understanding that, and it's great to hear that. Although it's a. It's almost a backhanded way of saying, yeah, I actually. Now I get what you've been trying to tell me for these last five years.

Yeah. And we actually had another really funny example last week where we wanted to go on a Zone 2 ride, and I invited one of our mates up who's just in flying form, and he's just absolutely. His zone two is about 150 watts high at the moment. And I told you that he's going to come up and you cracked it and you're like, no, he's not coming up, because he's just going to 1. He's going to be miserable because he can't go to our Zone two, and he's going to increase our ride. And we both. We spoke to him and he said, no, no, that's fine. I'll just run with you guys. And you're saying, no, you're not. You're not going to do that, so don't come up. Anyway, he came up, and a very simple solution was he was getting a bit itchy feet on the hills because it was a big hill Zone two endurance ride, and we're very disciplined and committed to tapping away. And he just rode off and he just rode up, up the top of the hill, got to the top, turned around, rode back down and met us to where we were, and then rode with us for the hill a second time. And so he gets a heap out of the ride while staying in his zones and we stay in our zones. And that is the key difference between knowing and as we said before, using your data. But it's no good if you know that, you know, you zone two range but you don't use it and you go out of it anyway.

But that takes discipline and you know, lucky you and I are practicing what we preach. But you know, the minute he started to ride too hard, I'm yelling out, go, go up the road. You know, go, go to your zone too, because we're not going to ride any more than this.

Yeah, it is incredible how easy it is when you're in conversation as well. And you're in conversation, you start creeping over climb. But you, you're so focused on the conversation and suddenly you look down and it's, it's 330 watts and you're going, oh, this is way above what I'm supposed to be doing. If to pull yourself back. Our last point for the day is this is again quite a unique one. But you have been shocked at how often an athlete's training isn't specific enough or meeting the goals of their event and their selection of events as well.

I just think that people haven't thought clearly about what they actually signed up for. And I think if they did think that through a bit more, they may not be so gung ho to sign up for an event that's probably outside of their level, their current level. And so what's so bad about that? I'm a big believer in enjoying the race day and not surviving it. And I know there are some events that are endurance events that love example, Rachel, you just couldn't be any more prepared. And it is survival. And that's an extreme example. But I'm talking, I mean, Ironman is pretty extreme as well. So most people, whether you're an elite pro or a middle age group or at the back of the field, it's still a hard, long day. But there's, there's an enjoyable fact. If you're prepared for it and give yourself enough time and have goals that are within your reach. And I just keep getting, I don't know, I don't know why I'm so surprised that the people who have literally no fitness to start with sign up for an event that is going to require a massive amount of commitment. And I almost sound like a negative when they contact me. This is what I want to do. And instead of everybody Being excited about moving forward. I'm almost the person who's giving them the reasons why they shouldn't do that and to think long and hard about the decision they're about to make. And if they tell me or convince me that they're up for the challenge and they've got a lifestyle that enables them to go for potentially a six hour bike ride with an hour's run afterwards getting closer to the event, then I'm on board with it. But unless they can convince me that they're on board with that, then I'm pretty much trying to talk them out of it because I know the consequences. I've been at the other side of people who have told me that they've signed up for an Ironman as an example, not done the work and then had a horrible experience. And then, you know, the week after when we analyze it, you know, the first thing they say to me is, I shouldn't have done that event. I was underprepared. I didn't have the time for it. And I'm disappointed that I, that I put myself through that. It was not enjoyable. And in fact, I don't think I'll ever do that again. That was so unenjoyable. And so I've been at both sides and so I'm trying to be the voice of reason and if you can convince me that you're up for the challenge, fine, I'm with you. But halfway through the program I can see whether this is going to be a good outcome or a bad outcome. And I'm forever reminding them that the things they told me at the start aren't happening. And you're going to have to re align your goals for this event. Your strategy of I wanted to break 13 hours for the Ironman is looking more like 14, or your strategy to break 10 is looking more like 11. With the preparation you're putting in and.

The reason it's so important and we're making this point is as you said, that the whole point of an event is to make it an enjoyable, somewhat enjoyable experience where you're achieving a goal, but along the journey you're improving as well. And like you're saying, if you can't meet the requirements of the training for that event, it's not going to be an enjoyable training process either. And you're actually not going to see the improvement because you're, you're not meeting the volume or intensity or frequency requirements and therefore actually just not getting much out of the program. And it also works the opposite way if you are training for an Olympic distance triathlon or sprint distance triathlon, for example, which requires maybe a bit more, more high intensity and a different style of training, but you're such used to being endurance athlete and you just do a lot of volume and not much VO2 work, again, you're doing the same thing, but in a reverse way. You're not meeting the requirements of the training in the event, you're not going to be seeing improvement. You'll probably keep turning up to races just seeing the same result because the training you're doing isn't matching that. So that's a really key point.

Yeah, I just don't think we can finish this podcast without really enforcing that to get the training right, to see the improvements. You know, we talked about having perspective, but if you don't actually get the physical training right, you're going to stay the same athlete. And if you're okay with that, then that's fine by me. But I haven't met anybody who doesn't want to improve. I'm yet to find an athlete who says I'm happy with a worse performance in this next race or the same. I haven't met that person yet with that theory. You want to be able to show improvement on that journey. Look, the race day is key, there's no doubt. I'm not dismissing that at, but the journey and the improvement you get and the satisfaction you get week in, week out, with slight improvements here and there, 2 or 3 watts, 10 seconds per K as a runner, 2 or 3 seconds per 100 meters in the pool. These are really little goals that you're achieving, little milestones that you're getting enormous satisfaction out of. And that's part of the improvement journey is finding those positive feedback that you're getting to get you up the next day to say, if I keep doing this, the next time I test, I will see some more improvement. And it's such a great roller coaster ride ride to be on. Where do the work, test, improve, start the next level, do the work again, test, improve again, start at a higher level, and before you know it, you look back six months and you're, as you said at the start, 70 watts ahead, a minute per kilometer faster runner and 20 seconds per 100 meter faster swimmer as a triathlon example. And it's harder to measure as a cyclist because you can't just say I want to win races. It's really how well you perform in training bunches and, and in actual races that your tactics play a part. So it's hard to measure by just the end result. The improvement is in how you actually feel like you're executing on race day. So improvement is key to motivation, to wanting you to come back to train the next day. And there's lots of reasons why you might not improve, and we've hopefully covered a lot of them today. But the journey of improvement will ensure that on race day, from when you started the program to when you get to race day, you will be a better prepared athlete with a better outcome than had you not started that journey. With the sequence of events that we try to put in place for most athletes that we coach, that's a great way to finish.

We hope you've enjoyed this podcast on five key reasons why you might not be improving. And as we always say, there could be a combination of things. And as we were talking about this before the podcast, you just said, oh, there's, there's countless, but we picked five here that we think would make some of the biggest differences for you. So we hope you've enjoyed this episode. Thank you very much as always, for listening. We'll see you on the next one.