CORONA VIRUS UPDATE

Hello and welcome to this special edition of the Trivela Coaching Podcast. We are filming and recording this podcast today because we are in the midst of everything that's happening with the coronavirus. And so we thought we'd quickly record this podcast episode because, dad, you've been finding yourself repeating a lot of information about what to do in amidst the coronavirus outbreak. A lot of questions have been coming your way about training, training schedule, what should you be doing? Does anything need to change? If so, what needs to change? And so we're going to address some of the issues from a coaching and training perspective, but we also have some input from our resident doctors, Dr. Harry Wiesinger, and also Dr. Mitch Anderson, who kindly provided their input into what people should be doing from a medical perspective, but then also a training perspective as well. So welcome if you're tuning in today. Welcome. Dad, what are your thoughts starting off?

Who would have thought, Jordan, at March 2020, that we would be in this situation with a worldwide pandemic?

Yeah, yeah. And at first we thought it might be a bit overboard to record an episode on this, but considering just this morning the Victorian state government declared the state in a state of emergency. Shows that people in positions of power are taking this very seriously. A lot of intelligent people are taking this very, very seriously, and the world is needing to take it seriously. So it is important that we adhere to their advice. And we don't need to be on one end of the spectrum and fully panic, but we do need to be alert and be aware and plan. Plan for our life, essentially.

Yeah. And we're talking earlier, both of us, about extremes. And this is another example of everything in moderation. And if you're sensible and understand the seriousness of what's happening, then you can make decisions that aren't extreme, but moderate your behavior, no different to how you would do everyday normal life. And the people who take it to the extreme are, you know, the panic people, panic buying, you know, it's really not in the best interest of the community. And sent out a text on Friday night to most of the athletes that we coach. Some people thought that was a little bit over the top, but in hindsight, now, four days later, three days later, it's proven that, you know, things need to be considered so that, number one, we try to stay as healthy as we can, and number two, the consistency that we've achieved in our training isn't derailed through the next two or three weeks.

So we won't panic about it, we won't get into the actual information about the coronavirus. We'll just deal with the information we have now and what we know as that is changing minute by minute. But from a coaching perspective, what is the general advice that you are giving all the athletes for this next period?

Some of the research that I've been doing and some of the information that Dr. Harry and Dr. Mitch have given me, which has really helped me understand how best to manage all the athletes. And moderate intensity is probably the key way to train during this period. High intensity, A. It's not that required because almost everybody's race, a race that they've been training for has now disappeared off the calendar. So we actually don't need to train with such intensity that we would normally, given that we're training towards an event. So the event's been taken away. That's actually a positive thing for some people, which might sound a bit strange, but it truly is. A lot of the time we are running a little bit short on time to get ourselves to an event. And now that that's taken away, I see the positive side of that is it's a great opportunity to build the base that a lot of people skip when they're trying to get themselves fit for an event.

Oh, that's what was going to be. One of my questions was it's something that you would advise most of your athletes to do is have a base building period, but most don't do it because of a lack of time and a desire to train in a short amount of time for an A race. So you've given, I've got 16 weeks, get me right for my A race. And you say, well, I'd prefer to have a full year, but yeah.

And that is the mentality of most of the athletes we coach. They come on board. A classic example for a local event would be Melbourne Ironman in November. Once that was announced a month ago, we had an influx of people wanting to be coached for that event. And that's fantastic. That's a good period between February to November. But we will also have an influx 12 weeks out or 16 weeks out of people or wanting to get fit for that event. And my advice is, if you want to get fit for that event, you should have started January 1st. And the more time you give yourself, which is what we're talking about, base building, the better prepared you'll be and the greater your ability to increase your intensity when it counts. If you don't have a base. We've talked about this on some other podcasts. If you don't have A really good foundation to build a house, a good concrete slab. The house will be vulnerable to weather conditions, to hurricanes. If you've built a really good base of a house, it will withstand everything. The same with training. Once you've got a very good foundation of training under your belt, you can step up the intensity without risk of fatigue, injury, sickness. So they're really key things that we try to instill in our athletes, but a lot of people take shortcuts.

So as a coach, this is probably a really big silver lining for you. And you'd hate to say that in the midst of the crisis that we're in, but for you it's almost a good position for your athletes to be in, to be forced to build a base.

Yeah, and look, I'm in the same position, you know, probably in the form of my life after having done the Melbourne to Warrnambool and trained really hard for that. And really, you know, at peak fitness right now, it's the best time to race. And so it's frustrating. I understand that. You know, there's races that we've, we've had to cancel which are on next weekend, the Tour of Mansfield. A three stage race with a time trial and a mountaintop finish. Perfect for the fitness level that a lot of the guys we have at the moment have. Same with some of the triathlons. It's, you know, the back end of the tri season where most of the events that we've been training all summer and all winter for are now ready to be raced, but they're not there. So, so it is, it is disappointing. But at the end of the day, this is, as you say, a silver lining because we can refocus and get that base back looking forward to, because there will be a period, whether it's three weeks time, three months time, six months time, when there won't be a coronavirus, everything will be back to normal. And those people who have been able to withstand the pressure of not training at all or got sick during this period and lose their fitness, they'll be at a disadvantage. The people who can keep their head, so to speak, and just stay consistent, train with moderate intensity, but keep consistent, not get sick. And that's a very difficult thing to do when the prediction is that 70% of the population around the world will contract the virus. But if you can avoid that by some things we're going to discuss in a minute, you will be in a much better position come six weeks or three months to just lift from the base that you've built over this period to launch into the next races that you want to compete in.

So let's talk medically about giving yourself the best chance to not get sick. And this isn't our advice, but this is the advice. As we've said, we've called in our resident experts to help us with, to give all the athletes and anyone else listening, starting with the difference between moderate and high intensity exercise and how both of those have a different impact on the body with regards to getting sick.

Great question and it was really good to get the responses from Dr. Harry and from Dr. Mitch which confirmed what I thought was what we should be doing. But it's always good to get the experts because I'm not a medical expert. I might think I am, but I'm not. And really what does the term moderate intensity mean? Well, if we use the example of our functional threshold being 100% of our intensity when we train to do on the bike, for example, same for our running or our swimming, when we can sustain an effort in a race situation, that would be our 100%. So using that as our guide in our training sessions, we train at 110 or 120% of our FTP. Some train at 150, 160. And if you use the example of zones percentage together, that might make it clear for people. Zone 1 and 2 is from 10% FTP to 55% of your FTP. Zone 3 is between 60 and 75%. Zone 4 is between 75 and 95. Zone 5 is 95 to 105. Zone 6 is 105 to 120. Zone 7120 plus percentage wise. So those two comparisons give you an idea of. Now we can talk about what is high intensity. Well, high intensity is anything above 105%. It can be down to 100%, but generally it's 105 and above 110, 120, 150%. And we do lots of training at Trivalo, coaching in that range. Zone 5, 6 and 7. We also do lots of training in Zone 1 and 2, but we don't do a lot of training in zone three and four. Zone four would be a lot of time trial racing triathlon, depending on the distance of the triathlon, depending on the distance of the time trial. Criterium racing for cyclists would be a mixture of all of the zones. You could have freewheeling in zone one. You could have 400 watt efforts in zone seven. Triathlon is really more about, you know, in an Ironman 70 to 75, 5% for the age grouper, for a half Ironman, 80 to 90% for the age grouper, Olympic distance, 90 to 100% and sprint is 100%. So they're the intensities we're talking about. And for people to get a clear picture of what I'm saying is moderate intensity is that zone three to four and not above it. So a conservative Coach would say 75% is about where we should be training. 80% is pushing it a little bit. So why are we talking about intensity and moderation and easy training? Well, the graphics that we've looked at this morning, and there's a great J curve graph that shows that those with intense training have increased risk of between. What was it, George?

Two to six fold.

I think the graph said yes, as compared to. And that is of diminishing your immune system. But training at moderate intensity has the opposite effect. It actually increases your immune to illness. So really, the evidence is telling us medically that that's the zone we should be training in right now. We don't want to train too hard so that we are vulnerable and lower our immune system. We want to train in an area that does two things. One, it increases our immune system so we are less likely to get sick. And two, it maintains what we're after, which is consistency and training. So what a great position to be in.

So what if someone was worried that they won't be able to maintain their fitness or even increase their base fitness a little bit by not training with intensity?

Yeah. So we know anecdotally from all of the people we've coached that if you do the same thing repeatedly, you can maintain your fitness. And we've talked about this in bunch riding. The guys who do six or seven bunch rides a week get to a really good level of fitness, and they can hold it by continuing to do the same training. The reason why we get our athletes to improve is because we give people a variety of training sessions that have high intensity, have recovery, have tempo, have sub threshold. So the key here is understanding that if you maintain the same structure that you're doing before, which could be high intensity, you are going to increase your risk of being sick. So we want to avoid that. So therefore, we're going to lose the opportunity to probably improve in this period. So make that clear. You probably won't improve during this period. You might slightly improve, but it's not going to be at the same rate that you would have before.

If you've already got a base.

If you've already got a Base. So the people who are going to do what we are advising, moderate intensity, they will be able to maintain their fitness as long as they can just tick off each day, each session, their fitness will not fall, their fitness will be maintained. And come three weeks, come six weeks or whatever the period is when this is over, might be three months, might be six months if you maintain this. And that's the mindset you have to have is what's the goal and purpose of this? Boy, this is a little bit frustrating. I'd rather go and ride hard, but we can't. This is just the reality. So the goal and mindset should be I'm going to do everything I can every session to be right at that zone where I should be. And you know, look at your heart rate, how is it responding? It will maintain the same heart rate response if your fitness is staying the same. And it may actually lower if you're getting an increase in fitness. So we can push the barrow up a little bit towards 80 to 90%. We can do all of our easy recovery rides. But the main area to be focusing on is between that 60 to 80% intensity, moderate intensity.

And for the people that have the base that they want, this is an even better opportunity to just ride consistently at that moderate zone and get to the base fitness that they want that they probably hadn't been able to achieve so far because of a lack of consistency.

Yep. There's two types of athletes we're talking about here. The one who is in peak form and the one who has not reached his peak form, missed 50% of the training sessions trying to catch up. Really frustrated with his last two or three months of training. That's the person who's got the great opportunity to improve. They will improve without doing any hard sessions. That's right. By doing some volume and some tempo, moderate intensity. And if we are still allowed to ride outside, and there are some countries in the world, Spain and Italy, where you actually can't ride outside, but we are still had to ride outside. So on the weekends, by all means, keep continuing to do the endurance ride, but remove the intensity from it. Keep the pressure on the pedals. That's the key thing that we want to talk about. So both athletes here, one is going to maintain his fitness, the other who is not happy with his, his last three months has great opportunity to catch up.

Absolutely. So to summarize that we don't want to do anything too high intensity because we're going to stress the body too much and risk what is already a risky situation in getting sick. We don't want to do anything that puts us at more risk of getting sick. And instead we want to do the opposite and train at a moderate intensity.

We.

Which actually the studies suggest and show and prove that that reduces your risk of getting sick.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. So that is the goal. With the intensity of training. What else have we got on the list that we can kind of check off with to make sure that you are absolutely minimizing your risk of getting sick? Which we said it before, it is out of our control because the World Health Organization is indicating that 70% of the population could contract this virus at some point. That's not to say that everyone will show symptoms. You could contract it and not show any symptoms.

You could possibly train right through it.

Yeah.

Having had the virus yourself. So look, I think one of the things we did highlight on Friday's text message we sent out, which was reduce the opportunity of being in groups. So in training we're talking about. And look, we're at the advantage because all of our training is one on one. We do one session per week, whether you're a triathlete, a cyclist or a runner. Generally we only do one session where we train with a bunch. And I'm suggesting that we don't do that anymore. We can still ride endurance on a weekend, but it's okay to be with one or two people, preferably on your own. So the risk is zero because, you know, you do sweat and cough and know spit when you're riding and running and swimming. So it's really important that we eliminate that. So group training is something that I would not be advocating and that would be one session that I replace with just a solo endurance ride.

But the rest of the rides are solo anyway.

That's right. The rest of the ride you're training or the running you're doing is all individual anyway.

Yeah, absolutely. And then some of the obvious things that things that need to be said are things that just seem like common sense, but also are big players in making sure that you are staying as healthy as possible. And that is starting with consistency in your exercise and training program, keeping that up by dropping that, you're not going to do yourself any favors.

No. Well, the evidence is, from what we've read today, tells us that by resting you are lowering your immune system. So people think I'm talking about healthy people here. So we're not talking about people who are sick. So our athletes who are healthy and in great form and trying to stay healthy and trying to stay healthy, they need to basically do the opposite to what we did to try and get them fit and healthy, which is spend a lot of time in zone six and seven and a lot of time in zone one and two resting, recovering. Now we're telling people to do the middle. So stay away from rest, stay away from high intensity and keep your body active, keep the blood flowing. We know that that is one of the best things to keep the immune system functioning very well.

Absolutely. Adequate sleep was another big one.

Yep. It's always been important, but now it is extremely important. So, you know, whilst you're trying to keep your immune system going, the less sleep you have, the more vulnerable your immune system is going to be, which therefore means your more open to getting sick.

Adequate nutrition and hydration.

Yeah, well, funny, we just had Dr. Harry talking last week about nutrition and the athlete. And so it's even more important now that, you know, vitamin C is one of the things that Dr. Mitch has mentioned that we could, you know.

Or multivitamins.

Yeah, multivitamins. You know, just getting some really good, healthy, natural food into you. We talk about green vegetables, there's a whole variety. We don't want to act like we're nutritionalists ourselves but. But really from the advice we've been given, really healthy fruit and vegetables to, to really make all of your systems functioning at the top level.

It's really common sense, isn't it? But eat well and drink water.

Yeah.

Just keeping yourself as healthy as possible.

The fluid you consume is so important. So we've got sleeping, we've got eating and we've got water as really high on the priority.

Some extra ones that are a bit more left of field are keep on getting some time outside and actually walking in nature, not just staying inside the whole time. That's where that vitamin D comes in.

Yeah, just getting some sunlight, natural sunlight on your face and your body. We also did ready about the chemical release you have from being happy and in the environment. We've used the example of the study that did on the athlete. It was a cycling study where the athletes were going through high intensity, stressed exercise and half the group had to have a happy face and the other half of the group had had to do their normal grueling. This is really hard face. And the improvement from the people who had the happy face. This is not hurting me, I'm in control. Even though it was hurting them the same as it was hurting the people who were just showing their normal reactions. The chemical releases were showing that they were actually improving in the sessions because of their mindset. So don't underestimate how important it is to try to get outside, enjoy the fresh air, be happy about how lucky we are to still be able to breathe some fresh air. And it is good not to spend all the time inside.

And Dr. Harry actually put out a photo. We'll put it on our Trivelo coaching page of the solution to a lot of these things is keep riding the bike. To stay happy, Keep riding the bike. To stress less. Keep riding the bike. Avoiding public transport. Keep riding the bike. It's a good little image that just shows in a joking way how staying consistent and in routine with your exercise habits will help you through this period.

Yep. And look, it reminded me also of the grind of hard training. And it is a grind sometimes, but it's worth it because the rewards are massive. But now I'm looking forward to because I actually love riding my bike and I've just come back from an hour's ride in the sunshine, 25 degrees. It was just so enjoyable. I didn't have to ride fast, I didn't have to ride hard. I was riding it, you know, a pace that my grandmother could pass me, but you couldn't take the smile off my face. It was just enjoyable. So that's the mindset we need to have. You know, get back to riding your bike for fun, but keep the consistency going because at the other end, you want to make sure that you come out way ahead of the rest of the people who have lost the plot. Their minds are shot because they don't understand how to go about training during this period.

And there was advice from both doctors about that. The concept of pretty much trying to reduce any stress in your life, whether that's stress from high intensity training or just general stress. You know, that positive mindset you were talking about actually does go a long way in trying to make sure that you are consistently happy, healthy, and not adding any stress in your life that doesn't need to be there.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it seems obvious, but. And that's why we're doing this podcast, because we want to tick off all the things that you can actually implement to get yourself in a positive frame of mind to try to eliminate the risk as much as possible from getting sick. Because if you get sick, the two goals we had, stay healthy, be consistent. The minute you get sick, the consistency is gone.

Yeah. So on one side of the scale, we have the panic buyers, you would say, who are ruining the shopping centers. And other hand of the scale We've end of the scale, we've got the people that are paying no attention and we're trying to say, as with everything in moderation, be somewhere in the middle, understand the risks of the next period that's coming, but we don't need to panic about them. And I really like what you've said about using this period as a big bonus to your training plan and your base fitness and to use it as a building block for your next. A goal.

Yep. Because you know that this will be over. It's not going to go for four or five years and I can't predict that. But, you know, common sense says that eventually it will run its course. So the people who have really thought about this through this period will come out in such a better position. And I'm talking, you know, from a sporting point of view, but it also relates to business as well. If you can start to think on the outside a little bit about how you can do this, like working from home and, you know, all these little things, if you do something different, it's going to get you on the other side of when this virus is over in much better position. And we're really aiming to get everybody to come out without losing fitness. That's our number one goal. So the consistency is going to be our key thing, that we're going to be drumming into people. You know, you may not have to hit high targets, but doesn't mean you get lazy and don't do the sessions. You still have to do the sessions. They're there for a reason. So that when we come out the other side, you are in a great position to jump up from the base that you've got. And the example is if someone's got. Let's just use some numbers. If you've got a number of Fitness Number of 100 and you maintain your fitness through this period and someone else has got a fitness number of 100 and they absolutely stop training in three to six weeks, that number could be at 50. And then when they start resuming training when it's over, that might take them six more weeks to get back to 100. The person who stayed at 100 is already stepping up to the race that's coming up really soon and they're already at 120. So it'll take the other person double the time to get back to where they were. So that's a really important thing to understand and that's the motivation in my mind, that's going to keep me training during this period because I know that if I do this, I am going to be so far ahead of everybody else who has actually not thought about this.

Great. Is there anything else you wanted to mention to any of the athletes that have been asking you questions or wondering what to do in this period?

Yeah, look, a couple of the questions have been about the swimming. For those who are triathletes, certainly I wouldn't be going to swimming pools. If I wanted to maintain my swimming fitness. I definitely would be. During the summer period. It was 24 degrees out there today. I'd be being more organized and planning my ocean swims or lake swims so that I still can maintain my swimming. But I would be steering clear of pools. And I think a lot of the pools will close anyway. So there's a couple other things that I think people should actually consider which is doing a little bit more stretching, a little bit more of the left field stuff, you know, yoga, stretching, a little bit of core strength and conditioning. These are things that we don't generally have time to do. So if you've got a little bit more time up your sleeve, you know, put your energies back into these things that, you know, just like the base building that we're talking about, whether it's on the bike or running or swimming, think about these things that you might have more time. And if a lot of people are going to be at home through work, you have more opportunities to do some stretching, some core. It's a good opportunity to use this period for that.

Perfect. That's our quick update on this topic. We didn't want to come in pretending that we're experts on the topic like everyone else. We don't really know anything. We're just listening to the information provided by pretty much the government and any other medical experts out there. But you were getting a lot of questions about this, how to tackle the next period. I think that's really good question for people to ask and understand and it's really important to take this period seriously. We hope that everyone's families out there stay safe. I think obviously with the advice given by the government in terms of locking everything down, it can seem like an overreaction. But hopefully that slows the flow of spread so that everyone can get through this period, train properly and come out the other side healthy and hopefully nothing else happens.

Yeah, look to finish off with, for every negative thing that ever happens in the world, there is always a positive and it's just finding it. And you can go with the attitude of it's doom and gloom and throw the baby out with the bathwater, as they say. But you can take the opposite view and say what a great opportunity this is to do what we've talked about in the last 15 minutes. So that's the way I think about things, to change the mindset from doom and gloom to what can we do to change our mindset to get the positives out of it. And we've identified that straight away, change the focus so that we a stay healthy, B, be consistent.

And I can see the coach in you is quietly ecstatic that some people who you really want to build a base fitness will get that opportunity now.

Yeah, I am very excited to get people's fitness levels back to where it should be.

Perfect. Well, that's our quick update. Thanks for listening to this quick special episode. We hope this has helped and we hope everyone stays as healthy and as safe as possible.

Thanks, Jordan.