Changing How We Train: Biggest Takeaways from 2023

This podcast is brought to you by Trivalo 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. Just a reminder, we currently have our Giant giveaway competition running from our sponsors. Over at Giant, there is currently a prize pack that you could win, which is valued at over $7,000. And in that prize pack, you could win a set of carbon fiber Cadex wheels. Now, a lot of people think that we are just offering the Cadex wheels, the disc wheel at the front and the quad spoke wheel, sorry, disc wheel at the back and quad spoke wheel at the front, but that's not the case. You can pick. If you win, you can pick any set of Cadex wheels you want. So if you want a set for your road bike, a set of carbon wheels for your road bike, or any other of the range that Cadex provide, we now will get to see select whichever they choose, which is really exciting. So the competition is still open. The winner will be announced on next Week's episode. Tuesday, 26th December. Perfect Christmas Present for someone. And I must say, there's probably only about 700 ish entries at the moment. So it's a really. You've got a really good chance. If you go to our Instagram, go to the post and follow the instructions, you've got a really good chance of winning an endurance pack valued at over $7,000. We've got the Cadex wheels, we've got an SIS package in there, as well as a bunch of other goodies. So that's really exciting. Go to our Instagram page and find the Giant giveaway post to enter that if you haven't already. So getting into this week's episode every year, this is one of our favorite episodes to record as we get to reflect on the year and all the incredible learnings that we've had. And it's one of the most valuable things that we can do. And it's really insightful to actually sit back and reflect and ask yourself the questions. What did I actually learn this year? What did I improve on this year? What did I find valuable? When we force ourselves to answer these questions, you remember such great, incredible insights. And that's why we do this podcast episode every year. So as always, this episode is brought to you by our Pratt sponsored Giant, who are sponsoring the giveaway for all your bike training and racing needs. Ride life. Ride Giant Dad. Welcome to One of the final episodes of the year. We're going to start with our normal segment, what are you grateful for? But we're going to make it. What is, or what are your biggest gratitudes for the year?

It's a big starting point, isn't it? For the whole year, what am I most grateful for? And boy, there's been at least 50 gratitudes this year. And so I kind of, I couldn't really decide. There was just so many things that I was grateful for. But to try and summarize it, I don't think I could be more grateful to be in the position I'm in. And it's a very privileged position to be in, to be able to surround myself with like minded people, have a relationship and go on a journey with those people that I really care about. And they're very inspiring, dedicated, resilient and driven athletes that we've surrounded ourselves with in this community. And finally to be able to hopefully have a positive impact on those athletes. So I'm grateful for that opportunity. And if we have a positive impact on those athletes, then those athletes probably and should turn into better human beings because of this relationship. And that's kind of my gratitude. And hopefully that's what we're achieving in this podcast. And we never know that until we get feedback. The majority of the feedback we get is fantastic and especially when we happen to meet people for the first time at some events, it's brilliant. So, yeah, I really am grateful to be in this position and, and hopefully I'm using it to the best of my ability and I just love what I'm doing.

I think most people would say that you would. So that's a good one. My one is pretty similar and pretty broad. I think. I was just reflecting. I've thought many times this year. I just feel so lucky for my life. I get to work in an industry I love, I get to pretend I'm a pro athlete, I get to work with my dad and my brother and I get to talk about all the things I love on here, on this podcast each week and, and help a bunch of athletes improve. And it's just an area I'm so passionate about and genuinely in an ever changing world. You know, coming out of that Covid thing the last few years, multiple wars breaking out over the last 18 months. I'm just incredible, great, incredibly grateful that my life has turned out this way. Very lucky that we live here and I was born here and this is the life I've fallen into. And that combined with we have such a great community around us, as you said, and everyone that's involved in Trivalo and Giant. It's just super special and I'm really grateful for it.

It's a beauty. I couldn't agree more. And they are very similar gratitudes. But yeah, just the people and relationships, that's kind of what is important in our lives. And a lot of the research tells us that you and I were talking about this a few months ago is the people who live the longest in society are the people who have the best relationships. And I think belonging to a tribe or a community is really helping that relationship.

Yeah, those blue zones. So let's get into our biggest lessons of the year and we just wrote down our kind of biggest one separately and we're going to go one by one and kind of discuss our biggest lessons and our biggest points. So I feel like this year we're going to have pretty similar mindsets in that we will be talking maybe potentially less about the training tactics or the nutrition tactics or those kind of things which we have in previous years and more about this year. Just feels like it's been a lot of mindset and behavior stuff. So I'm really interested to see how this unfolds, so I'll let you go first. And what was your point number one of one of the biggest lessons of the year for you that has potentially changed the way you train and race?

Yep. Well, you've just stolen my thunder because my number one is the importance of your mindset and how that impacts everything you do. And it's like a road directory, a street map, your brain. And you can take different directions according to what you're feeling and what your thought processes are and how you're being impacted by others and influenced by what you hear and see. And I think that is so powerful, you know, just as powerful of how physically you are as a. As an athlete. You know, that is the one thing that, you know, our performance is a physical thing, but we definitely know that the brain has such an impact on how we physically perform. And I think the mindset is such an underrated thing. And people just talk about mindset all the time, but they don't dig deep enough into what are we talking about when we're talking about what you're thinking. And in every scenario, you have to think through things in life, in sleeping, in eating, in working, in training, in racing, in relationships. You determine what and how you want to react and behave. And I think, I think that that is an untapped area and one that I'm really, I'm almost, it's almost a turning point. And it seems weird because after being on this Earth for 65 years already, I haven't really thought about that enough. I don't think over my journey. It's easy to look back now and think, well, I did have, I did have good influences around me and my behavior was, was certainly driven by my brain telling me, this is what I want to do, this is what I want to achieve, this is how I want to go about it. And it's that single mindedness, I think, has got me a long way, but it's also been a preventative thing because I'm too driven sometimes and don't do the relaxing and smelling the roses and enjoying life as well. And that comes onto one of my other points. But certainly the way you think and the way you approach things has a lot to do with the outcome. And it is influenced by so many things in your life, the people around you you surround yourself with, which is what talked about in our gratitude. You don't want to be spending time with people who are negative. You want to be spending time with people who make you happy and allow you to do what you want to do. And, and you and I are very fortunate that we've got a great family and a great network of people. And the people we, and I don't want to be flippant here, the people we choose to be on our program, we're really interviewing them to find out who they are, what sort of people they are, and secondary is what sort of athletes are they. You know, the type of person is more important to us than their ability as an athlete. And we've said right from the beginning in all our interviews, when we have people join our program is, you know, whatever level of fitness you are, that's okay. But we're not selecting you on your ability, we're selecting you on your, on your personality and whether you are in line with what we think and you're on board with that. So it is very narrow. I know, but I don't want to spend my life with negativity and battling people. I want to spend my life with people who are on board and on the journey. So I'm talking about mindset, not in the racing and competing. I'm talking about in how your life is being lived. And of course, this podcast is about tips and competing and racing. And that is also such an important part B of the mindset goal that I want to talk about, which is you know you can do so many more things than you think you can because of the way you allow your brain to think. And I just had another example during the week with some testing where one of some of the comments were I just didn't have it today, didn't feel like it. And that's you deciding that that's how you felt and it's probably real because you did feel maybe tired, you didn't get enough sleep. But it is Christmas period, the period of, of the year for people trying to get ready for, for, for vacation and works really. People are trying to get things finished for Christmas so there's no loose ends. And so it is hard to have a brain that's focused on a training session. And, and that is an example of how important it is to just spend that 45 minute training session not thinking about the list of things that you have to do between now and, you know, the end of the next four days or whatever. It's what I'm being in the moment and that is one of the things I've been really pushing in a lot of the race strategies and training plans is just being in the moment and trying to separate all the other noise that's interfering with your thought processes and can be used as an excuse, which is fair enough really. They are, they are actual reasons why you can't concentrate on what you're doing and if it's that bad, you probably shouldn't be doing the event. So getting the mindset right, as long as it is the right action that you're taking, I think if you get those things right with the people you surround yourself with and in your activity, I think you go a long way to improving every aspect of what you and the enjoyment and happiness you have in your life and, and people out there who are in their 20s and their teens and their mid-30s and 40s, there's a long way to go. You've got lots of future ahead of you where you're still young and you've still got a physicality that you can do really whatever you want in your life. Just you being willing to choose that pathway that you think is more important at that particular period and what fits in with your current situation. And so it's good for me to look back and see the decisions and selections I made and be happy or be unhappy with them. You can't change anything because it's already done. But you certainly can try to influence others around you to make them think about they have got a long future ahead of you. If you're 50 and you're probably going to live to the average age of 80 something. You've still got 30 years of good life left. If you're 20, you're just starting in the first 1% of your 100% of your life. So the mind can take you down really bad pathways, but it can also take you and you decide you're in charge of. Every decision you make will have an impact on the next decision and where your journey goes. So I know it's a long winded one, but I really wanted to get that out there.

I've got a good feeling that we're going to cross over a bit on this theme throughout all our points and you made a really specific point in there about the fact that our choices around who we want to be involved with in our community just so much not about an athlete's ability and just so much more about the people we want to be involved with. And my first point is kind of similar to that, is that your training and racing success comes down to so many factors that don't have actually anything to do with the actual training or racing, you know, and it's, it's so many personal factors. When we do the interview at the start, when someone comes on, you know, most people think that the highest priority question is, you know, what training should I do? I'm get, I must be getting the sessions wrong or, you know, there's some potential secret of training that I'm missing that I'm not getting right. And yes, there's an element of that that's true. You know, you do need to know the right structure of training, but it's just not the highest priority question. What we're finding is an athlete's longevity in the sport and their ability to be consistent and their enjoyment comes down to all these really personal and individual factors and, you know, finding what works for you and what your individual preferences are, what your personality traits are in relation to all these guiding principles and training structures that we have is just such a more important way to go about it. And you know, for ourselves we find various factors that have our own impact on how motivated we feel. Or you're very race driven. So you potentially or definitely train best when you have a race goal in mind because you see the focus for that and that's your strength. And other people aren't, other people don't like the pressure of a race and they train a lot better, a lot more consistently without a race goal. And so it's really finding out this is why my opening statement was training and racing comes down to so many personal factors outside of the actual training itself. You know, really finding out why you're doing what you're doing. And you ask all the athletes that at the start of the journey, you know, why do you want it? Why have you picked this goal? Why is it important, important to you? What's in it for you? And that's actually a really important question to ask. And it doesn't have to have a really deep answer, it doesn't have to have a really philosophical response. If you simply say that you enjoy racing, you enjoy being competitive, you want to be as fit as you can be for your age group, you want to top your age group, whatever the answer is, as long as you're congruent with it and you're really happy with that, why? And that why motivates you personally, it's not someone else's external input, it's yours. You're going to have a much higher chance of succeeding. And the really important question is, and you ask athletes, this is, okay, so this is the goal. What sacrifices are you willing to make that work for you? Because any journey towards a goal or any race goal or training goal will take sacrifice. And so what are the sacrifices you're willing to make? And for most age group triathletes, there are sacrifices around lifestyle factors in terms of how much time you can have with your family and how much time you can dedicate to training. And you know, we look at some of the great interviews we had this year. Rachel, one of our athletes, with the, the ultra trail world champs, you know, and the dedication she showed to getting the training right, and the insane 12 to 16 hour overnight runs she was doing in the forest in the middle of winter here in Oz. The running to and from work morning and night to get her endurance in. You know, the sacrifices of half Ironman, Ironman athletes is massive. The training required for that is huge. We spoke to, we had a great interview earlier in the year with Jimmy Wheeler, Zealand, where he had just decided that he did not want to give up on his dream to be a pro cyclist. And that was the most important thing to him. And he just left no stone unturned. And his why was so strong, he just kept at it and eventually picked up a contract which was really exciting. And one example I had written down, which I don't think is the best one, but it's an extreme example. The other way is Nick Kyrgios, very famous for not training, not trying yet, extreme talent, but that kind of seems to work for him. He seems to play better when he's out of his head. You know, the games where he is ended up beating Fedora, Nadal, Djokovic. He was super relaxed and in that, in that kind of flow state that he loves. And people would argue maybe he would do better with, with more training and, you know, more practice. But my point is it's, it's really finding what works for you. And that's just a really, really big lesson. I think we're, we're learning more and more about as we go on. Just the individual factors have such a bigger part on your chance of success than necessarily the specifics of the actual training.

Yeah, that's a great summary and I couldn't agree more with everything you've said. It really comes into my second point. If you want to move on to.

That, just keep going.

I think your mindset is well summarized already in what we've just said. And therefore, once you've understood why you're doing it, you don't want to be so driven that it's at the extreme level. And as you've heard me say so many times, anything that's extreme I think is unsustainable down the, you know, the long term. And I can give hundreds of examples of, you know, in nutrition people just not eating just to lose weight. That's an extreme behavior that is unsustainable. And, you know, invariably if you do go down that track, you could probably achieve the goal of losing the weight that you want to. But there'll be a point where if we looked at that person five years later, they would be back to what their weight was before they started that journey. And it might be five months, it might be five weeks. But that's an example someone who just is addicted to training, who just has got a two hour training session and does five, who repeat sessions morning and night when there's only one session for them. That's extreme behavior because they are so determined to improve. And, you know, more is not better all the time. Sometimes more is better, but, you know, it depends on the person. So the balanced approach is what we've, we've said this from podcast number one, and we're nearly at podcast number 200. And I just feel that if you just try to have that, that approach where it's almost like the analogy of riding in the zone, you know, you've got a range to ride in, and if Your range is 200 to 220, if you sit around 210, you're going to do okay in the race. And if you take that balanced approach of not being extreme and not being lazy, but being somewhere in between there, you're going to actually do okay in life. Sure, you want to be dedicated and be driven and have, have purpose and, and understand your why. But, but if you, if you keep doing it extremely, you, you will be failing. The consistency is king approach, because that works. Turning up each day works more than extreme behavior. And, and that balanced approach is the one that, the one lesson that I think that even though I, I know it's, it's one that we talk about a lot, but I think that I keep getting behaviors in some athletes that end up stopping what they're doing because they've just been that high, low athlete where they're, you know, they're on. All of a sudden they're on and I can't give them enough sessions and I'm trying to hold them back and then something happens. And it could be any number of reasons. It could be sickness, which could have been the reason why they're so high in the first place and why they lose their consistency. Could be injury, could be work, could be a relationship, it could be feeling depressed, it could be unhappy with their life. It could be any number of reasons, but it will create a position where they're low again and they're not training properly. And so that's the hardest athlete to coach. And if everybody can just try to get some sort of balance approach, then, then I think people will get better outcomes and be more satisfied. And I think if the expectation. I was watching the Mark Cavendish documentary, and then I watched the podcast with Rich Roll, which was a follow up on that. And his documentary was brilliant. And it was interesting comparing that with Beckham's. They're both elite athletes who are under the spotlight in the media and, and, you know, Cavendish, what, what an athlete. What a. You know, one of the most famous sprinters in the world, you know, if not the best sprinter ever to, to ride a bike. Yet that documentary showed a side of Cavendish that was. He was so measuring himself by winning and losing and, and that's extreme behavior. He was going to be a happy person if he won. If he lost his, his rate on that race on that day, he was unbearable to be around. This is his words, you know, and that's the perfect example of when he was interviewed with Rich Roll. He was looking back going, that was a crazy way to live, you know, even though that was a, it was a successful way. But I feel he said, I felt embarrassed for the people that I was hurting along the way because of my behavior. My family and my wife, my kids, my teammates, my coaches, anybody I ran into when I had a bad day, they didn't want to be near me. And, and now he's, he's kind of smelling the roses a bit. He's having another year at the sport and, and he's not going to be measured by his, his performance. If he, if it's a bonus, he's saying now, if he, if he can win another race, it's a bonus. And that's, that's, you know, and people might say, well, he only achieved his successes because he was extreme behavior. And there's a fact there that's probably right. But is that the human that you want to be? And that's what we talked about in our gratitude. Is that the human you want to be? I certainly wouldn't want to be a win at all costs, even though it looks like that's the way I'm competing. But, you know, I want to be gracious and defeat and humble in victory, but enjoy the process and the journey more than the winning and losing. It's unbelievable to win and to be on the top podium, but, but the balance is more important, I think, and it's more sustainable. And you can be in the sport forever if you have that balanced approach. And that's my point, is I want to be in this for the long term. And, you know, I've probably got only 15 more years of, of exercise at a, at a level that's kind of worth saying you are exercising and not being in slow motion. But, but I still want to, I still want to have, you know, that, that what's left for my, for my training and fitness to be, to be really healthy and, and I want that balance to be continuing.

It brings up a really interesting point when you say, you know, was he only successful because you had that all or nothing mindset? And there's a sports psychologist who actually is Australian. I really want to get on the podcast, so hopefully we can get him on next year, who talks about this, and he refers to Andre Agassi's story, where that's how Andre Agassi, you know, believed for a long period. And that is one strategy that could work, but it's a very unhealthy strategy and it doesn't hold up when, you know, when things go wrong. As Cavendish found out and under Agassi was able to. He went through a big rut in his career and he was able to turn it around and get back to a winning strategy without that all or nothing mindset. Instead just became a much more consistent, balanced player. And so it shows that, yes, that strategy works for a reason, that's why some people adapt it, but it's very unhealthy and goes the wrong way. So. And just as a side note, as I haven't actually seen the Cavendish documentary yet, is, is he unretired? Is he going around for another year?

Yep. So Stana have given him another year's contract and he's lining up for the Tour de France next July and it's super exciting.

Oh, awesome. I didn't know that he is the.

World record holder of the most stage wins in the Tour de France, even though he's sharing it, but he is the current world record holder, so he has nothing to lose. And that was the great point that he was making was if I win another race, it doesn't change anything. I'm still the world record holder of the most stage wins in the history of the Tour, so. So it's a great, a great approach he's having, which is quite different to what he was doing his whole career.

It's interesting you brought up the Beckham documentary as well. I feel like Beckham is such a really good example based on the documentary because you, I've never seen that, or no one's really seen that behind the scenes, but he was basically choosing family of his career the whole time and he was so invested in his relationship and family and it almost came to the detriment of his career multiple times. And he was okay with that. And I really liked that example where, and it's paid off for him now because he's so happy with his family, post career life and that was always going to end at some point. And I really like that example.

Yeah, he was criticized the whole journey. I had a great admiration for that documentary for him and I didn't, I didn't know anything about him. I'm a mad soccer fan. I knew that he was one of the, the all time greatest players, but you just look at the pretty boy image the media were pushing during his career. But when you, when you get to see that documentary, you understand that the pressure that he was under at all of the clubs he was at and, and the resilience he had and, and that he kept balanced. He didn't, he didn't have extreme behavior and, and I just really think that there were two extremes, Cavendish and Beckham and how they were both in the limelight and how they dealt with that and, you know, not saying one's right or wrong. It was just interesting to see how both athletes approached and, and handled and you know, to be fair, I thought Beckham had almost his whole country against him at one stage when, when he performed poorly at the World cup. And, and you know, I don't think any athlete would ever want that on anybody. And to see him go through that was, was distressing. You know, watching that back, I just, it just, you just really had an understanding of how, how hurtful your behavior to other human beings can be and how resilient this person was that he, he didn't go in a depressive state about it. It was, it was what a. What a human being he is.

You say, you look at the differences between the two and you say there's no right or wrong, but I think we kind of are saying there's a wrong one. The wrong one is the extreme one and the wrong one is the results based one. And I do want to point out that you've used extreme examples here, but I think one of our key messages is you're using extreme examples just to make the point clear. But anything that is unsustainable is kind of an indication that it's out of balance. So it doesn't have to be extreme behavior. You use the example of you set a two hour session, they go for five hours, you have one out of a thousand athletes that actually does that. But what you are saying is that even if it's minute things added up or just minute things in general that take away from that balance and consistency, then that shows that something's a little bit out of whack. And that shows that you're doing a little bit too much to not keep that balance. And I think that's a really important point. We have an example right now of two athletes who are on a very similar program in terms of their volume and ability, and they're pushing each other to do extras. And one is doing extras very much within the zones that they want and the other one is not. And there's two key outcomes happening. You know, one is getting through the training and putting together very consistent weeks, and the other is having a lot of interruptions. And that's just, that's not an extreme example. You know, they're doing basically the same thing, but with some minor adjustment. One is getting quite a different outcome at the moment to the other. So I think that's worth pointing out.

Yeah, sure. And you know, I could go on with other examples that aren't so extreme. And your point is well taken. And I just wanted to make sure everybody's, you know, getting some range between extreme and balance and, you know, extreme laziness and extreme over the top, you know, dedication into, you know, don't ever think that doing. Doing just enough is what I'm saying. I'm not saying that you need to go the extra mile, and that doesn't mean possibly training harder or longer. I'm saying be more. Be more organized in yourself. And that probably comes on to my next point. But. But really, you know, if. If you're an athlete who's just like, almost got, you know, the headlights in your eyes, like a stunned rabbit has, you're. You. You are searching for what works. And you see some athletes successfully achieve something, and instantly you start copying his program. And then two weeks later, some other athlete does something better and you. And you change from that. That's. That's another example of extreme behavior where you're just not following the process of what probably would work better for you rather than jumping on board with that person's doing this. So, you know, this is what I should be doing. And I did have an example of that where one of the endurance events, you know, one of the athletes was. Was saying, well, the guys I train with are saying that I should be doing this. And then I'm looking at the, at the event that, that the person's trying to train for, and they're giving guidelines for the general population to follow. And, and the athletes asking me the guidelines from this event says I should be doing this. So straight away, they're asking two other outside parties to make a comment about their own training program. And that is just extreme behavior of grabbing bits and pieces from everywhere and listening to people who don't know anything about you. You know, a program that's written for an event is for the general population. It has no specifics to your current situation, your ability, or your fitness level. So that's all it is. It's a general guide. So why would you take that over someone who's actually training you specifically? And why would you listen to other people who have no idea about your program or where you're at in your program? So really, that balanced approach of not just being a headless chook and following someone else's program because it's successful for them, but really, you know, getting to understand and working out what works for you and following that, and you'll never know if it works if you keep doing Variations of it. And that is another example of what I'm talking about with being balanced. Go do a campaign, follow the structure that you've worked out with your coach and follow it through to the letter, and then you can make a decision about whether it worked or not. But if you do a variation of that program, you're still in the dark about how successful or not it was, depending on how you, you. You performed on the day.

My next point is I think these keep. They keep following along with each other. But my next point is really kind of a continuation of that in terms of. Of not overcomplicating training and yeah, not jumping from thing to thing, because training is really simple and it's not. So it's a bit of a paradox. And what I mean by that is we can keep it really simple and we can overcomplicate it, and you can go as far down the rabbit hole as you want to overcomplicate it. But the summary is that there's no one right way to do things. We've gotten to interview such a range of guests. Coaches see training programs from all around the world, and there's such a wide variety of training strategies and approaches that even the top athletes in the world, you'd think they'd probably be on somewhat similar training structures and principles, but they're not. They're quite varied. In your example just then, of course, there's an athlete who, when they compare to the general guideline or what someone else is doing, it's obvious to see why there's something different happening, because there's no one right way to do things. And I think this is a really big thing that stood out for us this year, is there's many versions of the same way to achieve the training goal, which is to achieve a stimulus response. That's the bottom line. And our job is just to try and simplify it down to make sure that that's happening for the athlete and not over complicated. Because we know that this whole process can get very overwhelming, especially once you start diving into the research, diving into other people are saying online, diving to the videos online, diving into other people's Instagram posts, talking to other athletes about what they're doing. It can be overwhelming, it can overcomplicate things. And this is why it's a paradox. There's a lot to learn, there's a lot to uncover, and you'll be uncovering things for the next 30 years if you keep diving into it. But at the same time, we want to take it back A step, just say it doesn't have to be complicated. We see many examples of this where you just want to strip it back and just keep it back to the basics and that will probably yield you just as good a result. So being willing to adjust where necessary for your needs and also being able to stick to the program where it needs consistency and dive into some more specifics where you need to improve and learn something and then not overcomplicate it when you just need to get the training done and keep it that simple.

Yeah, it's a great point. I love everything you've said and the kiss. Keep it simple, stupid. Which is what my dad used to say a lot to me when I was practicing some of my penalty kick takes in training and don't overcomplicate. And that's a great example of how you can overthink and over complicate a penalty kick. Isn't it? Like it's such a mind game when you're standing there and that's, you know, just pick a corner and go for it. If the keeper's good enough, so be it. But if you practice that actual action rather than overcomplicating what should be a straightforward execution, then you'll be better off for it. And I think that comes into my next point, which is the importance of really being well planned and well prepared. And it's equally as important as the actual doing of your training program and racing program. And people just don't give that, I think, the kudos that it deserves. And, and you can, you can be unplanned, unprepared and train the house down, but be training the wrong sessions and the wrong days and the wrong, the wrong duration and, and you know, and what you said before about adjusting things according to how you're coping, they're the important things that, that you should be really getting lessons from in the past history that, you know, you've done previously poorly. Don't keep repeating that, you know, make better, better decisions around, you know, preparation. We've said this example of people just jumping on their trainer, not really knowing what the session is going to be today and opening up and looking at the Zwift screen or their bike computer and it says, okay, I'm doing a warm up. They still don't know what the main set is. You know, this is a, this is an extreme example of an athlete who, you know, I've had them do this to me and you know, they've actually loaded the wrong session because they didn't, you know, they had three or four sessions, loaded on their bike computer and didn't even know which session they were supposed to be doing and ended up doing the wrong session. And that's just poor preparation, poor planning and getting an outcome that's not desired for that particular phase of their program. And that, that is just as important as doing the training session. Doing any training session is still going to have a stimulus, but it could be the wrong stimulus for that day or week or that block. And that's why understanding what's happening in the afternoon or the next day or the next week or the next month is really important around your work schedule, your holidays, Christmas time, like now, you know, family functions and your actual health and fatigue level and being okay with, you know, sure, we have a program that's perfect for you for 12 weeks or 20 weeks or whatever the program is, but that has to be flexible and have the ability to adjust as you go and not just be pig headed and say, well, this is what I'm meant to be doing. I've had so many examples every week where I'm just flipping sessions around, adjusting, asking the question, are you coping? You know, and the athlete says, well, actually I'm not. Instantly, we change it instantly. And that's a reason why you would get less impact in injuries and illness because you're on top of it all the time. And that's the planning and preparing part that I'm talking about because it will impact your training and your racing results.

I do love your emphasis on this motto and it's a really important point that it's not just a throwaway, throwaway line on motto. You know, plan, prepare, perform, which we have at Trivelo. It's a important step by step process and you have to move through them chronologically. You're not just saying, oh, make sure you're a little bit planned and you're a little bit prepared because then you perform well. And majority of people's focus goes on the performance part. You know, if you, if you broke it down to where do people spend the most time and energy, you'd say 80% of it, 80% of people focus on the performance part and they spend 20% of the time on the planning or preparation. And for you it is a step by step process where if you were to, you know, if you were to be like, in an ideal world, you wouldn't let an athlete go through the planning, get to the preparation phase without ticking off the planning phase properly and you wouldn't let them get through the preparation phase. To the performance phase until they prepared properly. And there's such a high correlation between our, you know, our best, quote, unquote best athletes and our athletes that perform the best. And that's not necessarily winning, although it's off quite often is winning. But athletes that get the best improvement or pvs, and how much they're willing to plan and prepare around their performance. And I always use the nationals example as a great one. When you turn up to nationals, when you look at the Trivalo riders warming up, it looks like it's the before Paris, Roubaix or Tour de France time trial stage. You know, the amount of planning, preparation is going on there. It looks like the most professional unit of cyclists and there's a bunch of, you know, masters athletes all just getting ready for a nationals time trial. And I just absolutely love it because the level of planning and preparation just sets them up perfectly for performance. That's why we've had, I don't know what we're up to now, 40, 50, 60 plus national titles in time trials over the years, probably even more, to be honest. And yeah, I just really want to emphasize this point that you are so adamant about this planning and preparation stage because you're trying to tell athletes the more you get that right, the easier the performance becomes, the more that you focus on that and start improving that in yourself. Performance comes naturally. And I just think for a lot of new athletes out there, it sounds a little bit trivial and it sounds a little bit like over the top, but it's really not. It's just part of this process that will absolutely guarantee improvement on race day.

The performance is still going to be hard. You know, that doesn't change anything, but you're more informed. That's what I want to, I want to, I want to make sure every athlete is so well prepared that the execution part of race day or the training session, it doesn't have to be race day we're talking about. It could be just the execution of your day's race training session. You know, you are so informed about what you're about to do that you can make good decisions. And the only thing you have to worry about is how well can I execute according to how I'm feeling. And that is one of the big lessons that I'm trying to emphasize with everybody. So you can concentrate on the important parts of the session, which is if we take the bike session as an example, am I pedaling in the ranges that I'm supposed to be in cadence and power? And is my Heart rate response according to how I'm feeling. And they're the things you should be thinking about rather than can I just get through this session? You're actually got some goals, strategies that you're trying to implement in that training session to get you to the range that you're trying to do in say the five minute effort we're doing. You know, if you're trying to ride at the top of the range, for example, how am I pedaling, am I pulling up in my stroke? You know, all these things are part of the start, part of the preparation and planning so you can implement the actual skill of the session or the race. And, and if you, if you have that mindset more informed I am, the better and easier it is to execute. Still hard physically, but at least I've got information that will give me feedback about how to continue that actual effort that I'm currently in. And that's the game changing thing that you should be concentrating on. And as you know, if you think about that, Jordan, any training session you're in, it flies, it flies by because you're concentrating on really important things that are helping you achieve the goal of that particular effort. And the same with the race. You know, people say, oh, how do you possibly do a half Ironman for all those hours out there? And Ironman's even worse. But if you're concentrating on key factors in the swim bike and run and transition that you know, that you and your coach have thought about, what is my power, what is my cadence, how's my speed, what is my running pace? These are all things that you've thought about before the event and you're now thinking about during the event, which will make the thing go so fast, pass so quickly because you're in the moment the whole time. Which is what I talked about in the mindset at the start is, you know, if you're in the moment and thinking about what am I actually doing now? What are the conditions surrounding me? What, what decision should I make right now? And if you're asking that yourself that the whole time, then your, your journey in that training session or, or week or race will be so much more effective because you're thinking about the important things and not the noise that's going around you.

Yeah, brilliant. I think I'm on my last point for the episode and the last one I want to finish off with is again a mindset theme. And yeah, we just, I think the, we've been lucky with the guests this year that a lot of the conversations have Just lent that way in terms of the mindset stuff and excuse, kind of the philosophical nature of some of the stuff we're saying. But it's really kind of, it really is our biggest lessons of the year. And for me, the last point I wanted to make was just around your own self worth and value as a person. And I'm not an expert in this topic. This is just kind of what I've been learning a lot of this year from our guests, from listening to a lot of documentaries and podcasts on this. And I just think it's been so applicable. And there's this quote that stood with me all year and it's called, it says there is no good or bad, but thinking makes it so very common phrase or thought process that the meaning we attach to something is our own choice and whether it's good or bad depends on us. And there's a very vague way, a vague generalization because yeah, we're not trying to say that nothing is good or bad necessarily. It's just, again, it's a philosophical concept, but how it applies to athletes is really this notion of we're not defined by your results or outcomes, so you're not defined by your ability as an athlete. And for me, that was a big learning this year because I, for the first time in a long time, I lost a lot of love for training. And our conversation with Lockie Morton was so awesome for this because he's been through major periods of where he loved bike riding as a kid, made it to the pro scene, and then wanted nothing more than to quit and go home. And his journey to find the love again of just riding his bike and him and his brother riding their bikes literally to the middle of the desert in Australia, just for the pure love of it and the pure freedom of it. That really resonated with me. And as I mentioned, I think, yeah, this was generally one of the most challenging years I've had with training. I was traveling a lot this year. And that really is not conducive to consistency. And what that meant for me was I got really down on myself about it and I was just far too critical. Which I think an athlete mindset is definitely that we hold ourselves to high standards. If you're choosing to do athletic sports like triathlon, cycling, running, whatever, you know, you're, you're a competitive person and you've got those demanding traits. And so it's very easy for people without traits to have high standards for ourselves. And that was definitely been. I was, I was being far Too harsh on myself for my lack of consistency in training, which only made it worse. And it was kind of a negative feedback loop where you'd feel I'd feel worse about the training which would make me want to do it less. And it was kind of a spiral I hadn't found myself in myself in before. And what really changed that was understanding this kind of self worth concept a lot more. And I see it in so many athletes in TR and also externally outside of Travelo and in professional sports where the more we're defined by how we think people perceive us or these kind of external things that are just so out of our control, the worse we're going to be because it's just such a poor way to try and live, to try and meet those expectations. And then when you're not and you're critical on yourself, it's just this lose, lose scenario. And you know us as coaches, we, if someone wasn't training well or if they weren't being consistent, we wouldn't treat them as harshly as we treat ourselves. You know, internally you kind of berate yourself or beat yourself up a bit and there's just no way you treat an athlete like that. There's just no way an athlete would call you up dad and, and say, I've been struggling with training, I haven't been consistent. There's no way you're going to say, you know, what's wrong with you? You know, why haven't you been doing that? And so that combined, you're, you'd not say to an athlete, you're, you're a bad person because you haven't been consistent, you know, you're a bad person. The person's worth is just so not associated with that at all. Yet internally we do that, we so often if a person has a bad race and they call you up and they say, I didn't perform well, I wanted to get in the podium, I didn't get there. I wanted to do a pb, I didn't get there. Never once are you even considering the thought that they're a bad person because of it. Because you go, well, I don't want to talk to anymore. And it's exactly what you said in your very first point, that we're not coaching people based on ability, we're coaching people based on personalities. Yet the athlete talking to you probably feels that way. They feel worse about the result as a person. So separating those two things for me has just been a big eye opener this year and how I found love again for Training was getting back to why I wanted to train and why I loved it and finding enjoyment in again. And that's a big process of hearing people like Locky Morton talk about it, but also just not trying to define how you're feeling about your life based on how well you're training or how well people in the community see your Zwift numbers or your FTP at the moment. And yeah, it's kind of counterintuitive because it's our whole goal at the moment. Our whole goal is to improve. Our whole goal is to have a high FTP number. You know, we're putting so much time and attention on, you know, performing better in races. So it's counterintuitive to say, well, if that doesn't happen, it's not a problem. That's not what I'm saying. It's. It's separating the result from who you are. So that was a. That's been a major lesson for me this year.

There's a lot in there and, and I've got so many examples I'd like to share almost a couple of them. But, you know, there is no good or bad, but thinking makes it so. It's such a great sentence, isn't it? So you decide what's good or bad, by the way, your thought process is. That's what that's saying. And so the example I would give is if you performed below the level that you wanted to in the race that you were aiming for, you're calling that a bad performance and you've got a bad feeling out of it, a bad outcome about yourself. And so really in life we make decisions and we have actions. And in a race, for example, we might decide that our power number is this and our average pace is going to be that. But on the day we make a decision to go above that or to go below it or to stay the same, they're the choices we have. And as an athlete, I'm always encouraging people to, to be free to choose what they want. And that's what planning and preparing is about, is having information. And on race day, you go out and you execute however you want. And it's sort of ironic that some athletes will be jokingly saying, oh, you wouldn't want to make the call post race to Gerard because you've made a mistake. And that couldn't be further from the truth because I've done every one of those mistakes that that athlete's about to discuss with me. And that's not a bad thing. It's actually A positive. You learn more about what you did poorly on race day. Your execution. That's the only thing that's happened on race day. You're not a bad person. Just you made a decision that was detrimental to the outcome you wanted, and therefore we can discuss that and learn that that's our level there. And we went too far past, and therefore it caused us to slow down so we didn't get the result we wanted. And if you don't identify that, then you actually haven't learned anything. So you thinking that you've done something bad or wrong is actually not correct. You've just made a decision that's had an effect that got the outcome that you didn't want. Just like if you make a decision to attack and you stay away and win the race, that's a really good decision that has got the outcome you wanted. And had you done that and you got caught and finished last, you would say, that's a bad decision. But it's not good or bad. It's a decision in itself, and the outcome is determined by that decision. And then you can say at the end, well, it must have been a bad decision because I didn't do the performance I wanted. So, so. But whatever you think about that, everybody's making mistakes, and if you're, if you're going through life thinking the people who are winning all the time aren't making mistakes, you're. You're mistaken about their, about their life as a human being. Everybody has struggles and, and has tough times with, with the decisions they've made, getting a poor outcome, whether it's at work or, or, you know, with your own health or with your. With your racing. So, so yeah, I think the point you're making is really valid and, and I, I want to make sure that everybody is clear that, that the, you know, that concept of good and bad is, is just a learning thing and, and not to frame it like that, but to make the thought process about, I tried something and the outcome didn't. Didn't get what I wanted, so now I'll try something different and see what happens. And that's a better way of doing it.

Yeah, And I really want to follow up on that point and make it clear that I don't think. Well, for me, it's not about lowering your standards or trying to pretend that you don't want to achieve big goals or try and win races, you know, and I definitely got caught in that trap a little bit, because when you are making decisions that don't go your way or you're having outcomes that don't go your way. You can start to go into your shell a little bit and be afraid of making a mistakes or exactly what you're saying. Be afraid of failure, whether it's in racing or life in general, like you said. And it's quite the opposite. It's, it's, you know, you really. I love our high standards and I love our competitive nature that we really want to go for things, achieve things, because when you do it's so rewarding. But it's just more about that when you stumble along the way, which you inevitably will. It's how do you treat yourself in those moments and are you kind to yourself like you would be to a friend or to another athlete? For us, you know, for athletes we're coaching or do you internally beat yourself up, which is just the absolute worst thing to do because it just doesn't help anything. It only makes things worse for the future. So yeah, it's definitely not a case of pretending everything's rosy and not trying to achieve goals and try to protect yourself by not failing. It's quite the opposite. It's going for these lofty goals and that's what triathlon's all about, is setting big targets that you want to work towards because the journey to get there is so rewarding. And then knowing that, yeah, if you stuff up or when you stuff up and make mistakes, it's all part of a learning process that will only make you better in the future.

Look, I just want to add one more thing I've had to learn. Vulnerability is a good thing, not a bad thing. And I framed that as bad my whole life. And I think only in the last period of my life that I've come to understand that being vulnerable is actually really helpful not only to you, but. And to be kind to yourself, but shows who you are to others. And I think that has an effect on others in a positive way. And I think that vulnerability is something that is. When I was growing up that was a sign of weakness, being vulnerable and showing your emotions and definitely a male thing growing up in the 70s and 80s and, and you know, you just couldn't show a weakness and I just think that that's just such a narrow minded, poor way of living. And you know, I'm now happy to admit to anybody that I'm stuffing up or making mistakes and not getting it right and I'm as human as anybody else in my performances and my behaviour and I'm not setting myself up to know everything and if I did, it's a very quick, lonely journey forward, because if you don't learn something every day, you've wasted the day, in my opinion. And I want to hear and learn from as many people as I can who can help me be a better person, and therefore I can help others be better. So that vulnerability is one step towards that. And not sitting on your high horse thinking you know everything. And, and I think, you know, to set yourself up like that, you. You want to be getting people around you and associating with people who can, you know, the example would be as a bike rider, just riding with your group, and you're the best rider in that group, have been for five years. But you haven't improved one bit because all the other people you're training with are less standard than you. You should be getting out of that pool and going to a bigger pool where the majority of people are better than you. So you're being challenged. And that's an example of. What I'm talking about is staying in your comfort zone. So what you're talking about is, you know, we want you to be pushing yourself. We're not trying to, you know, in a balanced life where we talked about, you know, we want, we want you to be pushing and making your challenge so that you are actually becoming a better human because of those limits. Yeah, limits that you're, you know, but not being the extreme example, but, but, you know, we want you to be out there having a go. And, and I will applaud anybody who has a go ahead of people who sit on the fence and don't make any decisions and just repeat the same training session and the same race result week in, week out, year in, year out, decade in, decade out. I want to see people challenge themselves and push their limits and see what their capabilities are, and you never know where that takes you.

That's a great way to finish. And yeah, we definitely, we know we've gone down this rabbit hole of mindset a few times this year and especially to finish off, but it's so prevalent for us, and we'll definitely continue to really dive into training specifics and sports science and nutrition and everything that helps us train smarter, race faster. That's our bread and butter. We can't wait to bring you more episodes and guests next year. But we also know how important this is, and we actually have. We've spoken a lot together about how this is a really kind of missing topic in the endurance scene in the triathlon cycling world that we want to bring more of next year. So we're really looking forward to bring. Bring some more guests in that are really in line with that, which is really exciting. So that's it for this episode. Been another great year for us, and it's how we've taken these kind of lessons and we're applying them to our mindset and training. So Merry Christmas from us once again. We will be continuing to release an episode weekly, not too weekly, as normal, over the Christmas break, but definitely an episode weekly. So we'll see you next Tuesday as normal. Thanks, as always, for listening and we'll see you on the next one.