9 Traits Of The Most Successful Athletes

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, Gerard Donnelly. It was the 2006 World cup final, Italy versus France. It was the most. It's the most watched sporting event in the world. The pressure of an entire country weighs on the 11 players that take to the pitch of each team. The captain of France, Zinedine Zidane, steps up as captain to take a penalty for his country. These are kicks that these players have taken thousands of times in their life. Yet over and over we see the best players in the world choke, freeze up and miss the penalty shot. But what did Zidane do with the entire world watching? He strolls to the spot and casually chips the ball in in one of the riskiest style shots you can see in a final. The confidence it takes to do that in a World cup final is immeasurable. So what separates athletes like this? How can Michael Jordan hit the game winner in the final second 28 times in his career? How is it that Serena Williams is the only player to win three Grand Slams coming from match point down? What do athletes like this do differently? Today we're going to discuss the nine traits of specifically endurance athletes that make them successful. As always, please remember the athletes unwritten rule. If you enjoy our podcasts and find them helpful, the best thing you can do for us is share the podcast on your social media or to another endurance athlete who you think might might like it. And of course this episode is brought to you by our proud sponsor, Giant Australia. For all your giant bike training and racing needs. Ride life. Ride Giant Dad. Welcome back to another episode starting with our normal first segment. What are you grateful for?

Great topic. And as I say this a lot, I'm really looking forward to this one. There's a lot to really get out of yours and my discussion on this one.

You should say one day. I'm not really looking forward to this topic actually.

And this is a good topic. My gratitude. Actually just this morning I got a text message from one of our athletes and he just wanted to text me to say how much he loved a past episode that he went back and re listened to and he said that he was swelling up with emotion listening to it again the second time and he just wanted to send a message to say thank you for creating that opportunity to move me emotionally and it just so motivated me to train for this week. So, yeah, I'm really grateful for feedback like that. And if we're having an effect on people, I think we're achieving the goal of what we set about to do with this podcast.

Yeah. For anyone that wants to go listen to it. He was Talking about episode 104, which was ultimate pre race preparation. We really went through a lot of detail about how to prepare for a race really well right before a race and the last 10 minutes specifically he was talking about. We spoke about the emotion behind racing and events and, and, you know, getting the start line of an ironman. And I was definitely moved by it as well. So, yeah, go back and listen to that if you are interested. My gratitude is I found myself the other day drinking a coffee and just saying, far out. I'm grateful to have coffee. So I thought, oh, that's perfect for the podcast. So I have said that before, but it's a very simple one.

I find it hilarious because I just don't have. I just don't drink coffee. So I love the fact that people really look forward to their coffee any part of the day. I think that's fantastic.

The irony. Dad, we've spoken about this before, but on our kitchen, Mum has some artwork and I think it says something like something along the lines of smile and coffee. Smile and a coffee is a perfect day or something like that. I don't know if you know the exact wording and. And I would always look at that growing up because I never drank coffee and just think that's so silly. How can coffee be one of the best parts of your day? But alas, as you've gotten older and I've started to enjoy it more. I agree with Mum.

I still think it's silly. It's great.

A quick what's caught your attention today because we've got a lot to talk about with nine traits of successful athletes. But the big news in the triathlon world is the PTO announced their tour, which has been much spoken about in the off season, about what they're going to do this year. And the competition between PTO and Ironman, really leveling up their prize purse for athletes and trying to create a really awesome tour experience to create some great competition and great viewing, which I really think is going to happen. And they announced that it's an eight race series over the year and athletes, if they want to compete for the prize money, must do four races throughout the year, plus the grand final, which is their version of the world championships, which is really epic. And what the hype they've created is awesome. And they've gotten Basically the top 20 female athletes in the world all agree to sign up to the series and they got most of the male athletes they wanted. But the male category was a bit more split as there's still a lot of athletes that want to focus on the Ironman World Championships at Kona and all the Ironman races. And there's a few athletes who can step up from Olympic distance to half Ironman, but they're focused on Paris this year. So not the female field is absolutely stacked, the male not so much. But regardless, it's very exciting and there's been a lot spoken about. We don't want to go into it in full detail, but from our perspective, we can't wait to see how the athletes manage the season. They manage the training load, they manage the race load, what their training preparation is going to be. Because a lot of athletes just put out all their training blocks relatively openly online now. How are they going to peak multiple times throughout the year? How are they going to stack their races? What are their race tactics going to be when they're racing each other so regularly? This just doesn't happen as much in previous years where athletes are lining up against the same field over and over. Normally just happens at the big races like the US Open or the European Open or the World Champs. And so to have it over a series means we might actually see some different tactics be employed and how athletes manage it. I'm really excited to see.

There's so much going on. We've got PTO now we've got Ironman, we've got Challenge. They're just three of the major companies who are running events. And in the pro field this has almost created a situation where there's actually now too many races, which is a great situation. If you're an up and coming pro who's just breaking in the possibility that you could go to a race and this just happened on the weekend here in Australia, Ironman Tasmania. The pro field depth was really small amount of athletes. The quality was unbelievable. There were some great athletes in the race camp. Wirth for one, being a local Tasmanian back for that race and, and it was just made me think that you can't race every race. And I know the PTO have said there's eight races and you must do four. There will be a lot of athletes who will only be doing four, the minimum to qualify and if they wanted to do all eight, that means they are all in on the pto. And they probably can't do any other events because that's. That's a lot of. A lot of 100k almost, you know, equivalent of half Ironman four times in a season. And, you know, a lot of the pro athletes are finding that, you know, originally they had to do a lot of races because there was not enough income, and that was forcing their hand to continually compete. And we had situations where guys were doing half Ironmans three and four weeks and getting mediocre results. And, you know, you look at a guy like Jan Frodeno, who would never do that, and he was lucky in that he not lucky. He had set himself up to have that much financial backing that he could pick and choose the races and not be under pressure financially compared to a new professional athlete who has no backing and is trying to break into the world scene. You know, they're wanting to compete at races that are going to give them the most value in terms of income and the opportunity to get on the podium. And so they're going to select races where the field is probably not as strong. And that's not. That's not a criticism. That's just a reality and a fact. And a year like this where, you know, the Olympic Games is on, the triathlon, and we've got the World championships in Kona and in Nice for the women. And the World Championships in Kona only comes around now every second year for, for the male and female. So the guys who are, you know, have. Still have that passion for Kona, The, The. The dream of winning Kona, which has always been the ultimate race in, in triathlon history, in the last 40 years, that event has been the ultimate to. Winning Kona is the biggest deal you can do as a triathlete, in my opinion. So. So guys are going to probably be, you know, a little bit conflicted as to. I really want to be part of the pto, but my dream has always been Kona, and there's so much clashing here. It's also an Olympic Games year, and, you know, we're finding so many athletes are being torn from, From. From. From event to event, and they'll have to really think very clearly about how they select their programs so that they can actually peak properly and get the best out of it. And the last thing I want to say is most people want to be measured on the biggest stage, and the biggest stage would be the World Championships or the Olympic Games in your chosen sport. And so all these other races are really important for income, for notoriety, for. For announcing yourself as a, as a serious contender. But there are, you know, one or two main races that you would really want to be racing against the best in and all the other races you're there to, to do as well as you can and probably get the income that you need to survive as a professional. But the key races, the championship races, such the Olympics and the World Championships, they're the days where you want to race everybody. They're the days where you want to see where you are against the very best and have everybody compete. And at the one time, and I think that still stands for most pro athletes. They want to do well in other races, but the key ones is where they want to be measured against the best.

Yeah, totally. And just the nature of being a pro athlete is you have to take money into consideration. And yeah, they do want to go to the World Champs or go to the grand final of the PTO and win that, but it also, they have to think about things financially because unless you're in the top half a dozen or so of athletes, your prize purse could be pretty small year on year. And we see that with a lot of athletes being pretty open about their income and a lot of the time travel expenses and training expenses to be in the sport is quite high. And so, yeah, it's this funny, complex situation of decision making around how many races can I actually do, what's going to be my best chance of getting a good income? Plus what, what about if I just, you know, my goal is to be world champion and that's, I want to go all in on that for the fact that I just love triathlon and that's the dream. So a lot of factors at play here and yeah, we're keen to see how the year unfolds. Moving into today's topic and nine traits of successful athletes. As I said, specifically we're focusing on endurance athletes here and what we see and what we know of and what we've interviewed people with, what we see and what we hear about all athletes. We've compiled what we think are nine of the best traits of the most successful athletes and what you can apply to yourself to help yourself improve and get more out of yourself. And point number one, I want to come out with a bit of a bang here. And this is a quote that I absolutely love. I think just applies overall. And this is what the pros get right and often the non pros get wrong. And the quote is there's nothing special about high performers. They just have a set of habits, practices and mindsets that individually aren't particularly groundbreaking, but when they're added together and compounded over a long period of time, result in the phenomenon of excellence. I think that is just a great starting point for this is a lot of people might hear a list like this or see this kind of headline and think, oh, what's the secret sauce here? And I think overall that is probably the key part is the best athletes are able to just do the key fundamentals over and over again until they become special. Not that the fundamentals themselves are necessarily special.

Great starting point. Doing the very average to the best of your ability is a good summary. And if you just consistently turn up each day, like we've said many times on the podcast, you know, doesn't matter how good, bad or mediocre the program is, if you keep turning up, you will improve, you will get better. But the elite guys, they're just doing that day in, day out. They're actually not doing anything special. They're doing what they're required to get them ready for their event. And, and you know, doing a lot of things very well will, will eventually add up to a lot of good components in, in your day to day training, preparation for the race that you're embarking on. And, and that's the point of that, that that whole quote is doing a lot of things very well. And, and you don't, you know, we talk about, geez, I had a fantastic session. You know, I just, as a breakthrough session, I, I was out of my skin, I just smashed it. And then not doing much after that, missing a few here and there and you know, thinking that that one session is going to be the be all and end all of this month's training, in fact, while you're, you know, sitting on your laurels almost about how well that session went and how great a day you had. You know, the guy who's actually going to do well on race day is, you know, done four or five sessions just very well and he's still ahead of you. And that's the thing that I'm trying to get across to a lot of people with coaching is just turn up each day and be in the zone of what the requirements are for today's session and get that done well. And you'll have a great release of chemical positivity from your brain. If you have the mindset of it's not about what happens in three months time, it's about what happens each day. And once you start to concentrate on the important things about what's going to happen Today you get a great sense of accomplishment, of achievement that you've actually done one piece of the puzzle that's going to make up the full end up, end up solution to the jigsaw puzzle. You know, just keep putting one piece in each day and that's, that's actually going to get you the big result, which is, which is what we're all aiming for at the end of the day.

Yeah. And if you look at the Norwegian example, the notorious final session they did before Gustav won the world champs at Kona a couple of years ago and Christian was second and social media blew up because they loaded onto their Strava, their, their final big hit out and it was exactly, it was either seven, 10 or 12 days out from Kona and they basically did an Ironman at race pace and they split it up over, I think they did a, you know, a 4K swim, broken up a little bit, you know, three 1K efforts. They did, you know, 360K or 350K bike efforts and, and they almost ran a marathon at race pace and it was a blistering session. And that's an example of what we're saying is that they don't do those sessions very often. You know, they do all the work leading up to that point and then they do one good session like that and that's for them, proof of what they can do. But they weren't doing that every week for two years leading up trying to do the most groundbreaking session of all time. You know, they've done the work to get there and then that's just their final evidence. So yeah, it's really interesting to look at. Point number two is this is really key for performing well is having self awareness. Now what does that mean? That's for athletes that's knowing when to push hard and knowing when to back off. So talk us through the difference between these two things because it's a really hard balance to get right. Yeah.

And I find the motivated athlete is probably the hardest athlete to coach because every session they want to be the high achiever. And that's great. That's a really good mindset to have, trying to get the best out of yourself every single session. And we just said that in point number one. That's our goal. But there's going to be times where you actually have to get a very good understanding of where you physically are in terms of fatigue. And that takes a lot to be self aware that I'm struggling a little bit today and understanding all the factors that you could you could use to contribute to making that decision. And we know that people have got aura rings and all of these outside metrics that will help us to understand what these measuring tools have identified that our body is at the moment. But the biggest one that you can use is your own self evaluation of where you are on any given day. And, and I'm a big believer in resting heart rate, but it doesn't dictate to me whether I train harder or harder. It dictates to me that there is something going on. The stress, stress generally, some impact stress has on your heart rate generally will indicate that you're thinking about something that's causing your heart rate to rise. So it could be fatigue that's causing your heart rate to rise. It could be that you're not sleeping well, it could be you haven't eaten, eaten very well. It could be there's something at work that's stressing you. Could be a family situation. These are all things that are going to get your system, your body systems to be overloading with some amount of stress. And there's a lot of things I just said there. So understanding that there's something going on, that's the first thing. Self awareness and appropriately responding by being a little bit kinder to yourself on certain days. Maybe Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday are my key days. So I need to be a little bit less excitable on the Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday so that I can actually still really do well on the days that count. And I think that comes to self awareness. If you're not aware that there's things going on in your body and you just keep pushing hard every day, you actually end up deteriorating with your performance rather than improving. And I think it's a hard one to master because it takes experience and you don't get that in the first month of you starting. I'm going to do a 70.3 or I'm going to do a half marathon or I'm going to do an epic road race and I'm just starting my training program. You don't have a lot of self awareness about how you're going to feel. So the people who've been doing it a long time have a lot of understanding of, you know, when they're feeling like this, oh, this is a sign that I just need to take it easier. And I think knowing when to take it easy and when to push is a really good trait to have that'll enable you to be, you know, a really quality athlete.

Yeah, it is such a fine line because you would say that most endurance athletes don't have a problem with pushing themselves hard, but you can get complacent and you can kind of go through the motions a bit and just be not pushing hard enough sometimes. And then exactly what we said about point one is very rarely should you be pushing so hard that you overdo it. You know, there are, most pro athletes will tell you there aren't many sessions where they're emptying the well and that they're, they're, you know, way overdoing it. You know, for most pro athletes it's a matter of how much, how hard can they train without crossing that line of getting injured, sick and ruining their consistency. So yeah, it is a fine line and there are times when you go to the well and completely empty it, but you've got to know exactly when that is and that's why that self awareness point is so key. And it's a trait of a really successful athlete. So point number three is next level of that is having very well planned attention to detail. So what do you mean by this?

Yeah, and I look at some of the examples that we have in our coaching group and one that we've talked to on this podcast. Julian Painter was an Olympian in 1992, Atlanta Games for the 5K on the track, and now he's turned himself into a Australian champion bike rider. And one of the things that he has shown a lot of other athletes in our group is that attention to detail and it rubs off on other people. When you spend time with someone who's been at that level, you see how fixated they are on every little detail, every minor detail all contributes to the big plan. And like we use the example of the jigsaw puzzle, you know, there's 500 pieces. Well, every one of those piece pieces has a role to play. And that's the way Jul went about his training. You know, he was meticulous in knowing what session was coming up, what the requirements of the session were. Well before, you know, at the start of the week, he was looking at every session and summing up, you know, how he was going to execute that, what time of day he was going to do it, what other things he had on his weekly schedule with work and with family and making sure that he, you know, he was sleeping well for the, for, you know, certain days where he knew that it was going to be a tough, tough day. He had his nutrition, you know, honed in and you know, he had all the pieces in play and that's what attention to Detail is, is getting a lot of things, well, well organized so that you can actually master the goal of the session. And, and you know, and not going off on a tangent and saying, oh look, I actually ended up riding with or running with a couple of mates and you know, they were doing this. So instead of me doing my tempo run today, I just went and did that hard session with them and then I backed up the next day and did another hard session. And then the third day I didn't feel so good so I couldn't actually do the requirements of that session. And that's someone who's just going off on a tangent and not being disciplined enough to stay in the confines of what we're trying to do. And that's almost like you're not trusting the process, not trusting the program. And we know that if you buy into the program, you will get the most out of it. If your mindset is, I trust this program, I know it works and don't deviate from that. There are of course times where you can go and do what I just said, but the next day has to change. And when you don't adjust because you've made a decision about something on one day, that's what attention to detail is, is also about, is not just resuming the program even though you haven't done the session properly on the day that it was required. So attention to detail is making sure that you know what the session requirements are and then if you don't do that, then you can do about adjusting it. And I think that's something that it's really hard for people to get without having outside assistance. And that's where a coach comes in.

Yeah, I think something like the nutrition timing is so underrated in that example. And attention to detail because you really want to plan out which sessions require high intensity, which ones require a certain course where you're going to do each session for the week, when you're looking ahead and then what time you're going to do it has a massive impact. If it's first thing in the morning, you know, how are you going to prepare the night before, food wise, sleep wise, what time you go to bed in the morning? Do you need to fuel yourself before the session to get through the session properly? If you're training after work? So many times I've been caught out by, you know, you're busy at work and then you get, and you, you miss lunchtime or lunch is really late and then suddenly you're getting too close to that evening session where you actually can't afford to have too big a meal because you'll suffer, but you're starving because you haven't eaten enough. And it really does detract from the quality of the session massively. And you end up not having a very good session because of it. And so that all comes from a lack of planning and a lack of attention to detail. Whereas when you really plan and you've fueled really well, you can notice a massive difference in the quality of your sessions just by doing that. Right. So I couldn't agree more with that.

Another little example, just while I was thinking, Jordan was, you know, for example, on a Wednesday you were asked to do some sort of high level intensity and then Thursday you were asked to back up and the coaches said, I want you to do that Wednesday morning and Thursday evening. And that gives you that extra time to do that. That's an example of, you know, okay, I've got two hard sessions on Wednesday, Thursday and you just go, okay, I always train in the morning, so I'll just do that Wednesday morning and I'll just do that Thursday morning. Or someone has messed up their planning and they do that hard session Wednesday night and then they wake up. I normally train Thursday morning so they do it within an eight hour period as compared to the first example where it's Wednesday morning to Thursday night. And that's, you know, that's, what's that? 40 hours, 36 hours different. You know, that is a huge impact on the performance that you can do in those two sessions. And that's what attention to detail is.

Yeah. Next one is one we want to go into a bit of detail with and it is having a high level of self belief and confidence. And I would akin this to, you know, having a healthy amount of narcissism. And you do see this in pro athletes. And as a pro athlete you have to be relatively self assured but a little bit self absorbed to get the most out of yourself. And full narcissism obviously isn't great, but you do have to have that quiet confidence in your ability to handle situations, handle challenges and get through them.

It's, it's one of the biggest issues I have as a coach is instilling in some of the athletes who are not that confident and don't have that self belief. And then I have a whole group of others who are actually overconfident and have way too big ego in terms of what they actually think they can do. And then we have everybody in the middle and so the ones are lacking Self belief. I love helping them because it's really easy to assure people with really good evidence based information. For example, if I'm saying to someone they could run, let's take you, you wanted to run a PB and you just did that on Saturday's local park run, trying to break 16 minutes. And you've done 1605 to 1630 more than 10 times. And your, your goal is to get under that 16 minutes. And it's not a physical thing, it's probably more a confidence thing and a self belief that, you know, if you, if you do something a little bit different and, and start to, you know, believe in what your, your goal is. So I can get under 16 minutes, you'll more than likely achieve it. You know, there will be a high possibility that you won't. But, but if you stay with the same belief that I'm a 1605 or 1610 and I can't do any better than that, you will stay there, you won't improve. And here you were on the weekend running a 1559 and they're great examples of, you know, you're fit enough, you know, you've done the training, but you just didn't believe that you were capable of that, that extra percent. And you know, once you've achieved that you could talk to this, but all of a sudden you're going, you know, I should have been able to do that before because it was just a matter of, you know, just believing I could do it.

You have to, you have to do the work, obviously the training, but when you've done the training, you have to. I just had a conversation with myself and I said, what? Why have I got this? I didn't realize how much of a belief it was, but why have I got this unconscious belief that I can't go into 16 minutes? I just realized it was something that was there that I hadn't really paid attention to. And once I asked myself that, I said that's ridiculous, just, just have a crack and if you blow up, sure, then you have a crack at it again another time. But it really does make a big difference when you say to yourself, no, that's what I'm going for. And I'm going all out at it because it should theoretically be possible so because you've done the work. So someone that I think is really the A class example of that is Lucy Charles Barclay. You watch all her content and the way she talks and the way she carries herself in training and the vocabulary she uses on herself, how she refers to herself constantly as a world class athlete and I want to be world champion. And she just says it over and over and it's just the gold standard example of having self belief and confidence in yourself and not delusional confidence, you know, and not delusional self belief but just she's constantly reinforcing those beliefs in herself that it comes out in her training, it comes out in her racing. I think it's someone to really model.

I want to add, I was watching a YouTube video on Christian Blumenfeld and it was a training session and what he did was what I talked about in one of our podcasts, I think in the first 20 or 30 episodes that we did four years ago. And I was talking about tapering for the biggest event that, that particular time in my life. And I remember running through Sherbrooke Forest and at the end of the forest when I come out of the forest there's, there's bollards there to stop cars from going onto the trails. And so every time I run out of the forest it was like me finishing my event that I was, that I was dreaming about the, the Iron man and I'd run through those bollards and I put my hands in the air, you know, like an idiot on my own, no one around me and just going, yes, you know, I've just had victory. And I was watching Christian's video and he was doing exactly the same thing he was visualizing. And I thought, oh funny, I did that in 1987. Here he is, he's doing the same thing. And many people have done the same thing in between having that self belief that if you're thinking about the victory and you're doing all the work and then start believing it. And if you don't, if you do all the work and you go into that race with a lack of confidence and self belief, you'll probably not achieve the goal. And I think that should hit home. If you start thinking like a winner, you're more than likely going to be a winner.

Your self talk matters way more than a lot of people give credit for. And we think that little comments to ourself, like in my example, it wasn't even that conscious until I, I brought it to my own awareness that I just thought, oh, maybe I'll hit 1605 to 1615. Or people would say to you what are you aiming for this weekend? And conservatively I would just say, oh, I'm hoping for low 16s and that's just the wrong thing to say, you know, because your self talk matters. Instead, you need to be saying over and over, no, I'm aiming to break 16 minutes. And one little tactic I did to help myself was I made a video on it and put it out on our page publicly. And I was just a little tricked myself to say, well, no, that's my goal. That's what I'm aiming for. But I did a with a group of mates on the weekend, we did a virtual reality gaming thing where you go to this center and you all put virtual reality headsets on and you play these games against each other. It was awesome fun. And virtual reality is a ridiculous example of how the brain works. And your brain, once you put the virtual reality goggles on, you are in this world and everything around you seems just as real as normal. But you're not. You're in a room and you're hooked up to a headset and you've got like a little harness on so people don't run through a wall or something because it happens a lot of the time. And that's because your brain can't compute the difference between the virtual reality world and your eyes are seeing what they see in front of you and it looks like reality. Even though you're in space and we're on this moon planet and we had to complete this challenge and we were shooting aliens with guns, your brain still thinks it's real. Logically, you know it's not real. And the weirdest experience happened in the game where we had to walk across this platform and it was, if you fell off, you died in the game. But as you're walking across this platform bridge, which is 10,000 meters high in space, and you look down below you and your heart sinks like you're looking over the edge of a building, even though you are so aware you're in a game, you're wearing a virtual reality headset. When you look down, it's the same experience as if you were on top of a building looking down. Your body actually can't compute the difference of what's reality and what's not. And I played a game with myself. I thought, I'm just going to jump off for the fun of it. Even if my character dies in the game and my body seriously hesitated for me to jump off, it was so hard for me to step out off the ledge and because when I was looking down, my body went to fight or flight response because it didn't actually know the difference. And that experience absolutely astounded me because I'm just saying to myself, Just jump. It's not real. You're in a room like you take the headset off. But my body, it took, it took everything I had to jump off this ledge. And that is just such a key example of the self talk you use. And the way you talk to yourself is really important because your brain is listening to everything that you're saying and perceiving. And so I think that just shows how underestimated this self belief and self confidence can be.

I want to talk about two things. I know we're stuck on this point for a bit here, but this is really important. I think the placebo and I want to talk about going one step further with you. I've done this many times. I've been on planks up, up high on buildings and it's, you know, only, I don't know, six inches wide. And when that plank is on the ground and I walk across that plank with no problem whatsoever, I have no anxiety. I walk across that plank. The minute I put it in the air, my, my whole anxiety level is at as extreme and it's just my brain telling me to self preservation to, you know, this is a risky act that you're doing. You need to think very clearly. But when it's on the ground, the planks on the ground, I can just walk across that plank with no fear whatsoever. And that is the example of what you're talking about. And the second thing I want to talk about was, you know, there's been so many examples of double blind tests where the actual experimenting person and the people in the experiment have been given drugs that are, that are meant to have some effect and then drugs that are, that have got sugar in it. So there's, there's two types of, two types of instructions going on and even the experimenters don't know who has because that could influence the, the participants as well. If the experimenting people know at the end of the experiment, the people who have been on the sugar drug are sometimes getting the same improvement. Whether it's testing for headaches or whether it's testing for anything. You can think of where all these double blind tests are being held around the world, in science labs everywhere, the placebo effect is sometimes equal or better than the actual drug itself. So giving something, someone the thought that they might be on a medication that's going to improve something if they believe that they will actually have improvement. And I just think that is an example of what we're talking about. If you believe in it enough yourself that your highly level of belief will Allow you to improve to a point that you want to.

Yes. Those tests are especially interesting when the, the experimenters do intervene and they purposely tell the placebo group that this, you're taking the drug to help you improve. So you should see big improvement here. And they just plant that in and then lo and behold, that actually happens. The placebo effect is still, I think, one of the most underrated things in science. It's just incredible how this just is showing scientific proof of exactly what we're talking about, just how powerful the brain is. And I mean we could go on for countless studies. There's, there's serious examples of anyone. People improve better from illness when they see a doctor that they know like and trust, you know, compared to a doctor that is potentially cold or they don't like them or they don't trust them, even if the doctor prescribes the exact same treatment. You know, it's just that they believe the Dr. A is, is going to help them more than Dr. B, even if the, the treatment is exactly the same. And so yeah, we could go down this rabbit hole forever, but the, the placebo effect is wild, but it just shows how important your self talk is. And that brings us to the next point which is, yeah, successful athletes are mentally very strong. And this is slightly different to self belief and confidence. What do you mean by mentally strong or mentally quote unquote tough?

Yeah, you've got to be, I think physically as well prepared as you can possibly be. But if you don't actually practice mentally, the situations you're going to find yourself in. And we're talking about endurance sport in this podcast. So we know that there's going to be times in a 6 hour endurance event or a 9 hour or a 15 hour or a 40 hour event where your physical body is starting to wilt. And this is where the mentally strong people who have been training just as hard physically as they have been mentally about that self belief about, you know, no matter what situation I'm finding myself in, I must concentrate on the things that are going to help me move forward. And you know, that's the mental strength that we're trying to get our athletes to think about is, you know, if you have this practiced idea that, you know, in a training session where it's starting to get hard, you don't always take the easy option. So in any training session when it's, it's going to be a hard day session and you know that it's going to be hard. This is, this is an example of what you should be doing, you know, physically, you're. You're going to be stressed. And so I'm trying to say to. To our athletes, you know, be mentally ready for this, so that when it. When it does get hard, you are up for it, and you're not going to take the easy option, which is, oh, it's getting a bit harder now. I'll just make it a little bit easier so that I can get through the session. Well, these are the times where that's what. Practicing to put yourself through a little bit of an uncomfortable period is going to enable you on the day that it counts to know that you can draw back on that experience so many times over and over and again in training to allow you to really pull through mentally when you actually are put in that situation. And I know, I think I've told this story before where I was in a bike race and it was extremely hot day. I absolutely overheated and dehydrated so much so that I fell off the bike, fainted off the bike, and don't remember much about it. And that was a really silly thing probably to do at the time. But just on reflection, it just made me realize how determined mentally I was to continue no matter what was happening to me physically. And I'm sure that was the training effect that I'd done in so many of my training sessions. And I'm not talking about running through brick walls, and I'm talking about when it gets hard that you don't take the soft option. And that's a practice session mentally. Jesus, getting hard. But, you know, you use strategies to get yourself through the next five minutes. Okay, you know, if I can just hold this cadence or if I can just hold this running pace, if I can get through the next 30 seconds and then, you know, keep breathing, keep concentrating on my pedal stroke, if I'm riding, you know, it's a. It's going to be over soon. I've just got to get the next 30 seconds. They're little tactics you can do all the time to get you used to dealing with, you know, uncomfortableness. That's going to happen. It is going to happen in an endurance race. It's not an intensity uncomfortable. It's a. It's a fatiguing physical. You know, Rachel talked about it in her. In her podcast, you know, at the 30th hour when she just wanted to lie down and go to sleep. You know, mentally, she's her. Her mantra was just keep moving forward. Just keep moving forward, and no matter what was happening around her. She was so, so strong that physically she was, you know, not coping, but she had the mental capacity. That's what we're talking about is practicing that as much as you practice the physical training.

I would say your example was a great one of you are so ingrained to push through that, even unconsciously, when you're not even consciously aware of you do it, your unconscious still decided that that was what needed to happen. You needed to get to the finish. So that, for me is an example of. Of that was your mental decision going into the race, if this is the outcome I want, and you were going for that no matter what. And the most successful athletes do it all the time. They don't shy away from the challenge. When the challenge is there, they step up and they say, I want it to come down to me, you know, and. And often it's like the quarterback saying, give me the ball. And they would rather them take the shot at it, have a go and then fail than rather not try. And some people would rather not try because it's. The pressure is too much. But the most successful athletes want to take on the challenge and the race regardless of the outcome. They just want to have a crack at it. And some people will shy away from a tough race or a tough challenge because they're going to let their nerves or the doubt get over them. And one key example, we love using sporting examples, but in the Aussie Rules football grand final last year, it was coming down to the wire in the last five minutes of the game, and one of the teams was a goal down, and the best players go into the center for the restart of the game. And the captain of the team that was a goal down was walking back to center. And one of the best young players in the competition, it was his second year in the comp, was walking to the center as well, and he kind of said to the captain, oh, do you want me. Do you want me to leave here? Do you want to bring someone else in? Because it's a really important part of the game. And the captain just looked at him and said, are you joking? This is where we win the game. This is where we win the final, and you don't want to be in here. He said, kind of pull your head in, get in here and let's win this. And they went down and scored a goal and ended up winning the game. And for me, that just shows unbelievable belief from that captain. It's a young player and he's inexperienced, but he's just said, no, this is our chance to win the game. And I want on our shoulders, I don't want to give that responsibility to any other player. And I just absolutely love that.

Yeah, there's so many examples in team sports like penalty shootouts in soccer, where, you know, you have to be really mentally tough to, to, to cast aside the pressure that, you know, the World cup soccer penalties, shootout, far out. It doesn't get any bigger than that. Olympic Games, you know, the world's every everywhere where the world is actually watching how you stand up or, or fall down in, in certain situations, you gotta be pretty mentally, mentally resilient to, to cast aside all of the things that are creating the pressure and, and, and concentrate on the things that you know. And that's what mental toughness is. Concentrating on the things that are going to allow you to perform. That's the sort of person you want to, you want to be yourself where you don't, as you said earlier, you don't want to shy away from a tough situation. You want to step up and go, yeah, I'm capable of doing that. And in an endurance event where we're talking about, you want to have that trait that no matter how tough it is, physically you're mentally strong enough to work your way through whatever the difficultness of the situation you find yourself in.

Which is a perfect segue to the next point, which is be process driven, not outcome driven. And that's what successful athletes do. They just focus on the process. So how do they get through the pressure of a penalty shootout? How do they get through the pressure of the last shot of the game is they just follow the process they've done thousands of times and they don't think about that end result. And we have spoken about this a lot on the podcast. It's trusting the process and there's so many examples of that. But you can trust the process when you've done it a thousand times in practice and so you know, it works and then you don't have to worry about the outcome. And yeah, that's what these players do.

Routine is really good thing to be practicing routine. Routine allows you to be process driven and allows you to concentrate on the things that are important. And I talk about that in our pre race discussions with our athletes before their, their big events. I talk about being in the moment and, and that's what routine does. Routine gives you a structure to, to concentrate on what's actually happening. And you know, I have used the example of, you know, a soccer player who, who has to take a Penalty kick and he, he puts the ball down that, you know, if he knows all the pressures on him, if they score, they win. If they, if they, if he misses, they lose. And that's as simple as that is all he needs to concentrate on is not that he needs to put that out of his mind. If I score, I win. If I don't score, we lose. That is the process that he needs to get rid of. The process he needs is my routine is I put the ball down, I go back 10 steps, I run in at this angle, I strike my, my foot on the inside exactly where I know I've done it 400 times in training. And I follow through with the best follow through that I can aiming at the left hand side of the. Of the actual goals. If he does all those things well and the goalkeeper saves it, there's nothing more he can do. He has done the process right and he has followed the key things that are going to contribute to him executing that actual penalty shootout. And he's not driven by. If I win, if I shoot, if I score, I win. If I miss, I lose. That is not helping him score the goal. And that's what we're talking about here.

Yeah, I had a really interesting example on the weekend. I don't want to go on about a little 5k PB, but it was just hilarious, the selft talk that was happening coming up in terms of like fear and doubt about the process and worried about the outcome. But I got to the warmup of the race and I just felt so average. I had a really poor night's sleep. I ate some lamb at lunch the day before. I had pasta at dinner, but at lunch I had some lamb and it did not sit right for the next 24 hours, which it doesn't happen often. But I woke up and I seriously had stomach pain the whole morning. And I also did a gym session on the Friday, which you'd argue why are you doing a gym session before a race on Saturday? But it was very much a C race. It was just a 5k time trial and so I didn't want to interrupt my training where you can miss a gym session based on that. But I woke up really sore on the Saturday as well. So in the warm up things weren't going well mentally for me. I felt horrific and I felt a bit out of my routine and I didn't feel how I normally feel before a race where I'm trying to put in my best effort. And I started to say to myself, oh, today is maybe not the day, you know, it's all this, all this ridiculous self talk kind of came in and I just said to myself, shut the F up, toughen up a little bit and you don't have to have this perfect warm up routine to race as hard as you can. And again, it's trusting the process. The work's all been done. Just because I don't feel 100% on top of everything doesn't mean that should stop you from performing well. And was a great example of, for myself that things don't have to be perfectly in line and all the ducks have to be in order to put out a good effort.

Yeah, it's a great example. And look, I look at some of the best coaches and team sports around the world and you know, from an Australian point of view, we've got one particular coach, Ange Postecoglou, who's been very successful locally here in Australia as a football soccer coach and he's gone overseas to Asia and as you know, everywhere he goes, his team that he coaches wins the championship and there aren't too many coaches that can do that. And now he's gone from Asia and he's gone to the next level, which is in the Scottish Championship. And he's taken, you know, one of the famous clubs, Celtic, who we're big supporters of, to two, two championships in a row when they were, you know, probably on their knees when he came and took over. So it's not like he took over a winning team. And then now he's gone to Tottenham Hotspur, which is one of the biggest English clubs in, in the uk and you know, he's up there in the top four positions right now and you know, I'm sure he's learning a lot, but one of the reporters asked him, you know, are you hoping to get some trophies? You know, and he said in his typical Ange way, I can show you a whole shelf of trophies that I've won. You know, I believe in what I'm doing and I all I've got to do is make sure the players are on board with my self belief and they just have to trust the process, that this process works. That's why I've got all these trophies from every country that I've coached a football team in. I have won that championship, that national championship and I'm going to do the same with Tottenham Hotspur. And you know, that confidence and that trusting in the process is what he gets his players to buy into and that's why they are successful, because he's he's done that so well. He's got them based on that process driven where you know, trust this process and we will get this result and it might not happen straight away, but it will happen.

And the way that you can trust the process, as we just mentioned, you know, it's, it's being very well prepared physically that because you've done the work and that means you can trust the process. And that's really true for a lot of athletes. Getting to the start line, you'll either get there knowing that you've done the work or you know you haven't done the work. And, and a lot of the nerves, anxiety is relieved when you know you've done it. And that's why, that's how you can really trust the process because you're as well prepared as possible physically. And that's kind of our next point is when you do that, the outcome will take care of itself. And those and those two points kind of tie in together. Trusting the process but also doing the work. That's what successful athletes do. You know, they do the work so that they can trust the process and not have to be outcome driven. So the last couple, I'm just going.

To say Jord, before you go to the last couple, that being well prepared physically combines with self belief, self confidence, mentally strong. They're all intertwined. Trusting the process. For Ironman, when you're standing on the beach, you have that self belief and confidence. You are mentally strong. You know the process you have to go through, you are very well prepared. So you are standing there at ease. You know, the anxiety levels are minimal compared to the people around you who have lacked everything that we've just talked about. And so I just think that can't be underestimated. You know, that sense of calm that you can get when you know that you're well prepared will, will give you those things. Self belief, the confidence, the mental toughness and, and will drive you to trust the process that the execution you're going to do on the day is going to give you the outcome you want. I think they all are intertwined, all those points we've talked about.

Second, last point that successful athletes do is that they rely on themselves and they control what they can control and everything else is irrelevant and they don't let external factors try and influence their process or their outcome.

Yeah, what a beauty, isn't it? It's time to stand up for yourself now and, and all the help you've been given from the whole journey you've been on Inevitably, it comes down to you have to do it. And I think that is a tough thing for a lot of people is, oh, geez, it's up to me now. And I think that's one of the reasons why I probably left team sport was because I wanted to be totally in control of the outcome and I didn't want to rely on others who may not be as into it as I am. And I'm really, I was probably a poor teammate because anybody who didn't contribute the way I felt they should have, I was really hard on them. And I think, I think at the end of the day, you know, you're better off in a sport where you have to rely on yourself and you're not going to get upset at other people because they're not putting in the effort that you, that you want them to compared to what you're doing. And this is the time where you can stand up or, and be counted or not. And I thrive on, you know, being tested. And, you know, I can use this year as an example. The last 12 months is probably the most I've ever been tested with my fitness levels and trying to get back to where I was from, from, from where I, you know, what I was able to do, seemingly no problem. And, and now it's time to really dig deep and, and, you know, trust all the things we've been, we've been saying. But, but I absolutely believe that, you know, if you, if you stand up when it counts, that, you know, that'll give you confidence in itself for the next time. And, and, you know, you've got to, you've got to know that when, when everything else is, you know, the world around you. If you're standing on the start line at a marathon or, or, or road race or a triathlon, there's so much noise around you. You've just got to cut that out and just say, today, now.

Yeah, it's simple as that. And I think we put far too much energy sometimes into things outside of our control. And this can happen. If something before a race throws you off, it's like, well, what are you going to do? If you can change something about it, then change it. But if you can't, then don't let that impact your performance and most importantly, what you can do on the actual day. So, last one, an understanding of key moments. And I want you to kind of explain this, but it's kind of. You start going into it a little bit before. When you go in the race, you're going to be Challenged, you're going to be tested and it's your ability to perform in those moments that counts.

Yeah. A good example would be just on the weekend we had a race called the Melbourne to Warnie, which we've talked about on the podcast. It's a 267 kilometer endurance race. It's one of the oldest races in the world. It's been going for over 110 or 20 years, and it's just an epic journey for amateurs and for some elite riders in Victoria here, Australia. And it's a big race. It's one of the ones that's on the calendar for everybody to aspire to. And not everybody can complete this race and get the warning medallion, which is held in high esteem. But one of the things of understanding key moments and one of the athletes, one of our coaches, Nick, was in this race and we talked a lot before the race about being aware of what's happening around you and knowing that this is a key point in the race that's going to be determining the outcome and your ability to keep concentrating and so that you can automatically respond to the situations that you're seeing and that are rising in front of your eyes. That is the thing that's going to make good decisions happen. And if you're not concentrating throughout this whole 267km, then you're possibly going to miss those key moments. And. And I'm talking about a bike race where there could be up to 30 or 40 different attacks and you can't be in every single attack. So it's understanding when the right attack goes up the road, who's in that group? Are they the key riders that you should be worried about or are they riders who are not so important in the teams that are in. You know, you see this in the Tour de France or the, or the Giro or the welter. You know, riders that aren't expecting to finish in the. In the results are being sent up the road to, you know, for tactic reasons. It could be so the guys in their team get an easier ride because they don't have to contribute to the chase. And this is the same thing that's happening in this event. Understanding who's going in the break and is that break worth chasing? Because there's someone in that race who you think is a threat to winning the race. And these are examples of understanding what's happening in the situation. You find yourself every minute of that actual event you're in, and that takes a lot of concentration. You should be exhausted after the race, mentally as much as you are exhausted from riding 267km, which is going to take you six hours of basically the hardest riding you'll ever do. So being in the moment we talked about before, understanding when the key moments are and making good decisions and normally that people who hesitate normally miss those key moments. So you want to make it automatic. When you see something happen, your response has to be, I move now. I don't wait five seconds. Because waiting five seconds could mean the difference between you having to bridge a gap of 300 meters compared to a gap of 10. And they're the key moments we're talking about. And the classy world level people, world level athletes who are the most successful have a great understanding of key moments and what to do in those situations and also what will contribute positively to make the situation better. And I think that's a really hard one to get.

And it's not just bike racing, it's in any endurance event, especially a triathlon, you're going to be faced with constant decisions and you've got to be really concentrating to make sure that you have an understanding of where the key moments are in the race and where you really need to step up as an athlete and push that next level to get the best result for yourself possible. And that's what we're talking about here. So I want to finish by asking you, dad, you've undoubtedly had a very successful career both as a pro and a master's athlete, and what do you think a trait of yours is that you leaned on to help you succeed?

That's a tough one, Jordan. I'm hesitating because it's just not one thing. There's so many things that contribute to it. So I kind of want to maybe mention a few things that would be helpful to, to people who are really looking for the Golden Nugget. And there's never one Golden Nugget. So it's a lot of little coins that I'm throwing into that one Golden Nugget here. And, and I think preparation probably should be at the top. Knowing what the requirements of the event are is one of the things that I think I have a good grasp of, and therefore I implement that into the training sessions as, as closely as I can. The second thing I do well, I have done well in the past is I've gained great confidence from, from those experiences in those races. And you know, if you've never had good experiences and you've never been successful, how do you, how do you, how do you go to that, to that avenue or that well, to try and get that information. Well, you've just got to trust the process from the start. So once you get that, that first confidence boost of improvement doesn't have to be a win or a victory, it's just that you achieve something that you thought you couldn't do before. Get many of those situations in training, in B races, C races, gain confidence in those situations so that when it comes to the important day, you backed yourself in with the right preparation, now you've got confidence that you can actually execute the way you should be. And you know, no matter what the situation I found myself in, I know that I can work it out. That would be a third thing that I think I do okay at. You are going to have roadblocks in most events that you're in that you have to think of a way, whether it's a mechanical or you're getting cramped, or physically you're not feeling that good, you're feeling unwell, but you're in a situation where you can either make one or two decisions. I'm going to trust in all of my good preparation and my confidence and my mental strength to get through this or I'm just going to fold and just give up. And that's just not in my DNA. It's just not part of who I am. And I think that unwavering confidence in my ability to perform is going to be the one thing that stands out, I think. And then I'm absolutely got a self belief in the processes that I've done before. I know they work just like the Ange Postecoglou example. A successful formula you try to refine every time you come to a new campaign. You learn from the experiences you've had previously and, and they're all in your kit bag. They're all the things that you can use when it counts. And so backing yourself in is almost arrogant, but you have to have that, otherwise you're going to be the same athlete time and time again. So you have to do something different. If the situation has been that you've multiple seconds, thirds, fifths, tense, you know, but you just haven't cracked that one victory. It only takes that one victory and the next time you know you can do it. And why is that? That's just a mental state that we have in our DNA that, you know, we don't believe it until we actually do it. And that shouldn't be the case. You know, you should be aspiring to that victory even though you haven't achieved it before because if you don't aspire to that, like we said before, it won't happen anyway. You've got to believe that it can happen. And if you're in that, that, that situation where you're still not confident enough, and I have plenty of athletes in this position that they don't believe they can do it. And until they start believing and gain some confidence from, from some small wins, and I don't mean winning as in victory, I mean small successes in, in their preparation, that, that absolutely gives you more belief that you can actually achieve what you're trying to, trying to do. I know an example I would use is one of our athletes is an unbelievably successful time trialer. And when he first came to us, he was a really fit, really well rounded bike rider. But he had no success as a time trialer or as a road racer or as a criterion, but really, really doing well all the time. And the difference that we, that we instilled in him was training differently and then executing differently. And then all of a sudden in a time trial situation, he started to improve, he started to win races, he started to improve his speed, he started to improve his power and then that converted into starting to win races. And it's got to a situation now where he doesn't lose any time trials and you know, he's probably lost one time trial in the last five years. And you would think that that would make him trust that he could do that in a criterium or a road race. And I want to use this example because I know that this athlete, once he starts to get confidence and belief that he can do this just equally as well in a time trial as he can do in a road race or a criterium and he will start to be successful and it's just a matter of time. And there's a whole lot of things that go into that to make that success work. But in a time trial you're only relying on yourself and there's really no other tactics except you executing properly. Whereas in a criterium or a road race there's your physical fitness, which is really strong for this athlete. But the tactics is where he needs to have confidence in. And I think that's one thing that I have done very well. And you're quite good at that too, Jordan. I don't understand why you can all of a sudden get, go into a race situation, find yourself in the break. You know, you're really good at, at understanding when to the key moment is, and that's what we've been talking about in this whole one of the key traits, you do that very well in an event that you're not experienced in yet. You, you have that unwavering self belief that, that that's the moment I need to be there. And I think that backing yourself in and having confidence is something that takes time and eventually if you believe it enough, you will have that trait. And finally, I think I'm a person who's absolutely willing to lose to win. And I am a measured athlete, there's no doubt about it. And in endurance sport you can't be risking stupidly. You have to risk with a mindset that's calculated. And I would do everything to win. And if that means risking out of my comfort zone and possibly losing because of it, I'll do that. And I'm very happy to risk to a certain point. And if, if that risk becomes too great that the fact that I'm going to lose, well, I'm prepared to wear that because my goal is to get the best outcome I can. But I'm still going to not go outside of the box to an extreme. Ridiculously, I'm going to try to push myself to a point where if it means that I'm going to actually blow up, then I'm willing to do that.

That's actually one bonus trait you notice, I notice in you and a lot of successful athletes is the willing to lose it factor is they don't see losses as failures, they see it as learnings. And that's a really, really key trait I think is if a race doesn't go to plan, the most successful athletes learn from it and grow and get better because of it and choose. Okay, well that didn't work. What do we learn for next time? Whereas the non successful people tend to go in their shell after that or lose confidence. And that is a really key difference. So massive episode today. We probably didn't expect to go this long as always, but it's really an interesting topic to talk about and, and to look at pro athletes and see what the best ones do and, and how they approach things mentally. So that's it for this episode. Thanks always for listening, as always for listening and we'll see you on the next one.