How Much Improvement Can You Really Expect

This episode of the Get Fast podcast is brought to you, as always, by Tribello Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. You are joined, as always, by your hosts. We have former Australian Ironman champion Gerard Donnelly. And I am Jordan Donnelly. In today's episode, we are talking about expectations of improvement and asking you the question, are your expectations of yourself fair and accurate? Because everyone has expectations of how much they're going to improve from where they currently are right now. But this often can lead us to. What would you say, dad? Have expectations that are misconstrued or could be unrealistic. I didn't want to say that word. But that's all we're going to be touching on today.

Ambition and ability. That's one of my key phrases. Don't get them confused.

Yeah, exactly right. So we're going to be touching on that today. But before we do, if you want to get access to our training, training programs, our Trevalo programs that help you train smarter and race faster, go to getfastpodcast.com that's getfastpodcast.com We've just created a new program that uses the Trivelo DSCS training system. That is the exact system that, dad, you used to win the Australian Ironman 30 years ago. And you've continued to refine it and improve it for all athletes to use today. So if you want to get access to that, go to getfastpodcast.com so, before we get into today's topic, as usual, I want to know what's caught your attention this week, dad.

Well, since we spoke last Monday, Tuesday, we definitely have had some fantastic classic races on Fleche, Rollout and Liege, Bastogne, Liege, which are two very special events. Having ridden those courses and really know the courses intimately and the Merdawee and yeah, have really loved to watch that. And as you and I've been many times to Belgium doing the classics in spring over the last five years, where we've been to Paris, Roubaix and to Tour of Flanders. And these are the two races that normally would follow in April from Flanders to Roubaix to Flech, will own to Liege, Bastogne to Amstel Gold and it's just a Mecca in April, but now we find it in September, October, which is so interesting. And that's what's caught my attention is the world title, the Tour de France, the Giro and all these spring classics all on top of each other. And seeing the opportunity for other riders to have a chance at winning A stage or a monument and a spring classic such as Liege. Bastogne Liege is the oldest race in the world. And to win that monument is pretty prestigious. So, yeah, that's. That's kind of. I'm excited about that. And there's a. There's a lot of things happening in the athletic world. Kipchoge losing for the first time in seven years at the London Marathon. That's. That's just amazing. Yeah, so there's plenty, Plenty been happening in the world of Sport. Regardless of COVID 19, there's a lot.

Happening we probably wanted to focus on. We could talk about all the races, but we're not just going to talk about the races on the podcast. It's not a race highlight show. But there was something that stood out in Liege, Bastogne, Liege, and that was the infamous sea of the finish with Alaphilippe. And I do want to touch on that. But it's funny that you said, you know, we've got a diverse range of riders in races and especially the Giro, and we'll have a big mix of riders, but the last couple of classics, you know, the world titles, the Flech Wallon and Liege, Bastogne, Liege have just been the top 20 Tour de France riders battling it out, which has been pretty funny.

They have, haven't they? And look, I really want to talk about how karma works. Roglic just had such a distraught finish to his Tour de France, you know, they stole the yellow jersey off him, rightly or wrongly, and how good would it have been for him to win? Liege Bastion. Liege in those circumstances where Alaphilippe had that race sewn up and call it what you like, he's an entertainer and he's good for cycling. He reminds me of a young Peter Sagan years ago, where Sagan's the best thing that ever happened for cycling and Alaphilippe's on the same journey. You know, I love watching him race. Something happens when Alaphilippe's in the race. And yet again, he blew one of the big monuments and. And, you know, never give up till it's over. And Roglic just kept riding and took the victory. It was fantastic. And it was interesting seeing Alaphilippe's response was been different. I reckon if he had have won the race and been relegated to fifth place, I reckon his response might have been different. But don't take anything away from what Roglic did. You know, Alaphilippe was such a better rider on the day and Roglich just hung in there and. And he got a victory, which he probably didn't think he was ever going to get. Out of those five guys, he was the least guy to win that event.

Yeah, absolutely. It was pretty special. And something that you always say is, don't give up. And it's just another example of where it comes through. You don't know where it's going to pop up, but it's another example.

You never know what's going to happen next. And that's the attitude you should have, you know. And in the women's race, the Australian girl, Grace Brown. Grace Brown, who really went well on the time trial at the World Championships as well. And. And she broke away on the last climb, and Lizzie. Can't think of her surname, the girl who broke away on the penultimate climb, which is the really hard climb at Liege Bastogne, and she had a minute lead and Grace Brown attacked the peloton, the breakaway bunch, and closed from 1 minute to 10 seconds. And you never know, Lizzie could have crashed, you know, and she could end up winning that, but she only lost by nine seconds. So, yeah, it was great to see an Aussie girl do really well and her form is really going well. So, yeah, that's kind of what caught my attention.

Definitely. That's probably a good point. As special mention to Grace Brown. Like you said, it's great to see an Aussie come second, but also, you know, that never give up attitude. She really fought to the end and the same thing could have happened. She was only 10 seconds behind. She really fought her way through. She gave up with a K to go, then. She was never going to win the race. But the girl in front might have crashed or something with a K to go. So she fought into the end and it was good to see it didn't pay off this time. But like you said, you always, always fight anyway.

Yeah. And look, you know, Flesh Will Own was a fantastic race. And, you know, the Giro started now, and there's so much racing happening, and I'm sure we'll get a chance to talk about that in the next couple of weeks, but, you know, the riders have really got. They gotta make the most of the events that are happening now. Their whole season's sandwiched into a couple of months, and some riders done the Tour de France talking about their end of the season. They've only done basically one event. The season's over, so you really gotta make the most of the opportunities that you're given. That's a really good point that not only in the race. But in your calendar, selecting what your goal races are in this particular time as a pro cyclist, male or female, is not an easy thing to do. You've really got to hone in on what your special abilities are. Are you a, you know, a domestique in a Grand Tour? Are you a one day specialist? Are you a hill climber? You know, Fleche Wallon and Liege Bastogne, they're two completely different races, but similar riders did well. But yeah, it really makes you identify in your own mind what suits you better when the selection of races is quite small.

Yeah, yeah. And we will keep touching on things like the Duro the next couple of weeks because that's going to be exciting to watch it unfold. And on a kind of unrelated note, I think I saw Hershey do a post saying he's seasoned over, that's it for now. He's having an off season. So I don't know if he just meant a couple of weeks or if he's actually his racing's done. He's had such a full calendar. That'll be interesting to see. But moving on to today's topic, I.

Was just going to say, Jord, one of the reasons is he's been very well advised. How long can you hold form? And you know, we have talked about that in the podcast a lot. You know, you're just pushing your luck sometimes when you just try and hit your A race and then all of a sudden there's another a race three weeks later. You know, it's a long time to hold form for six or seven weeks. And, and Roglic had that period where in the world titles, his form was quite down after the Tour de France, as were a lot of the Tour de France riders, you know, the GC contenders. Richie's port's form was coming good, but Gacha's was the same. And you can see the differences in where people were in their form. And a couple of weeks later, Roglic is back, you know, not in scintillating form, but he ends up winning a race. But, you know, I don't think those GC riders from the Tour de France have got much left in them and I can't see Richie doing, you know, unless they had another month off so they could go again. I just can't see them fronting up again and being in the, you know, the same form that they were in during the Tour.

The great point because Richie said after Flech Will Own, he actually rode very well at Flech Will Own, but he said he Just felt like he felt horrible. He said he just felt as bad as he could feel. So that might be an indication. How often do you get athletes say that to you after they've peaked for an A race and they're feeling really good and then they want to jump into another one three or four weeks later?

Yeah. And a lot of the times you can do that two weeks later if you've peaked for an A race, you've still got good form. Plus, I always make our athletes recover after a big event and so they've had a great, you know, really big hit out their A race, then they have a recovery period and then when they come back to do some, some rides with their mates, they're on fire. And that's holding that form. And that's probably the last two weeks you've got after your big A race. That's about the opportunity, you know. And Alaphilippe was a prime example of that Tour de France, literally two weeks later he goes and wins the world title. So there's so many examples you can have in club racing. I've got examples of people doing, I could just name the Tour of Bright. And then two weeks later just doing PBS in their local Strava segments at home because they've held such good form after recovering. So there's a lot of scientific evidence to say that that's manageable.

Yep, definitely. Okay, so moving on to today's topic, and that is expectations of improvement. And this is a really important topic whether you are a beginner starting out a program. And it's really important to get your expectations set right from the start because you might get a really enthusiastic beginner who expects the world probably a bit too quickly, but right up to an intermediate or even advanced athlete who is really well trained, they need to adjust the expectations of their rate of improvement depending on your level as an athlete. So talk me through the basis of this topic and why this topic is so important.

Yeah, it's always intriguing to me to have new athletes come on board and hear their expectations and what they think in their mind is going to happen. And I'm quite shocked a lot of the time that they think that with a program which is, you know, they're happy they've got this program, but they think within a matter of if you can put it into a small group of time, they think in a few minutes time I will be the writer I want to be. And if we put that time capsule in, it might be a 12 week program they join or a 20 week program they join, they think that in week three or week four, they should be riding at their peak, at their best. And that's the thing that causes them the most problem is their expectation isn't clear in their mind about how the program's going to work. And patience is something that you really need. And if you don't have that mindset that this is going to take a journey to get to where I want to get to. And it's a little bit like we talked about just then with finding your form at the right time. If you're on a 12 or 20 week program and you're smashing PBS in week three and four and five, there's not much room for movement after that. You want to progress so that you're eliminating all the risk factors such as over training, possibly getting sick, possibly getting injured, you know, peaking too soon, so that you're actually on a downward trend come your race day. So you've got to understand that things take time and you need to be patient. They're the two key things that I'm trying to drum into to everybody, whether they're a beginner or whether they're an intermediate or whether they're advanced. And obviously, if you've been an advanced. What do we mean by advanced? We mean someone who's been in a sport for 10, 15 years who's got a fantastic base and they're looking for that extra, but they still have to be patient because they've been training a particular way for that long. We actually have to make minor adjustments to get that extra out of them. Whereas as a beginner athlete, they have no background. So we're actually creating everything. We're creating the base, we're creating consistency, we're creating a function where they're able to follow a program. And without that understanding that this is going to be a process and it takes time and you need to be patient, you're doomed. That's kind of where I'm coming from for this particular podcast, is just trying to get across that, you know, yes, we have a fantastic program, but if you go about implementing your thoughts and your actions in the wrong way, you won't get the best outcome, no matter how good the program is. And that's the message here is, you know, the program variation can be from completely crap piece of junk that you bought online to an unbelievably well balanced program that's got good guidance. And, you know, that program will still get improvement. The other one might not get any improvement, but at least it's Giving you an opportunity to formulate consistency and accountability, which is what most people, you know, people come to me saying, I don't know what to do and I don't know when to do it. And they're two questions that are always being fired at me. What should I do tomorrow when I wake up? What, what should I do? I hate it when I wake up and go, I don't know what to do today. Should I ride, should I swim or should I go for a run or how hard should I ride today? They don't have any concept of what they did the day before or what they're doing in three days time. And so getting all that right and then being prepared to be patient with like, I don't want you to go flat out for the next four days. That's, that's not going to help you. And I've got examples of people who join the program and whether they're wanting to show me how good they are, but they're just training too hard right from the start. And you know, I've been guilty of that myself. So enthusiastic and so motivated that you end up not being patient and possibly training too hard, possibly getting sick because you're on the edge and then losing fitness rather than improving.

So that's probably a moral dilemma you have as a coach where you need to find that line between not trying to take away people's motivation or enthusiasm. Especially when you start a program, you're the most motivated you can be and you don't want to stifle that. But you also have to be realistic about you're not going to get to your goal in the first two weeks. So what's the point of going gung ho at the start?

Yeah, and we have so many examples of people who have taken literally two and three years to start to get to where they actually thought they were going to get in two or three weeks when they started the program. And people go, I'm not waiting two or three years. That's, that's just not going to happen. But you know, it should be a journey. It should be something that, you know, this is, you know, the reason why you want to get yourself on a program is because you want to improve. That's the bottom line. But you don't know how to go about it. And you know, we're creating, we're facilitating this, but at the same time, I'm almost like holding you back along the journey so that you don't have those periods where you can only be motivated for a certain amount of time, you know, that wanes as the monotony and the boredom of training day in, day out. And if you're just working on motivation as your key concept instead of a structured, well thought out plan that's got a destination, that comparison is the person with the destination journey rather than one who's just a self motivated person who's up and now who's down, who's up again, who's down, you know the answer, you know the outcome, that person's motivation is going to go high and low. Whereas the person who's got the journey goal, you know, they're stepping stones the whole way. You know, they're, they're absolutely got the mindset right that this week is, is about ticking off these, these sessions and, and you know, all of a sudden when I'm riding in my group bunch ride, I'm moving up the, the hierarchy of my group each week. I'm just, I'm better than two or three other riders that I were last week. And you know, in six months time I'm now in the middle of my bunch where I was at the back getting dropped. And in a year's time I'm now at the front of the bunch. You know, these are, these are things that should be motivating you. Not, not the short term goals where you know, your FTP test result has gone up 7 watts, which is fantastic, but that's an expectation that should happen anyway. And you know, and sometimes it might go up 4 watts over a period of three or four weeks, it might only go up 2 watts, it might stay the same. Do you get demotivated by that? No, you should be thinking, right, what did I do wrong in my program that's made me stay the same? Have I missed too many sessions? And there's so many reasons and factors that contribute to the outcome of your journey on the program. And you're going to have really good periods where everything seems to go so well and then you're going to have really ordinary periods where things aren't going so well. And that's the time to be motivated and concentrate on ticking the process off. There was a great documentary on telly recently on the 2018 Australian cricket team after the, the Sandpaper scandal scandal and how they went back to basics about doing the training. Expectations of being the best you can be and not having excuses and not missing stuff, you know, being 100% committed. If you're going to do this program, commit to it. Sure, you have to do everything else in your life, but but when it's time to do that one hour a day, or one hour 12 minutes a day of training, you're committed to that. Your focus is on that and your preparation for that's good. And, you know, 26 of those Tuesdays in 26 weeks ends up being. I've just shown one athlete who's. Who will rename Nameless, who's done 12 weeks or be nearly 16 weeks. And his FTP has gone from, I think it's two hundred and twenty to two hundred and sixty five over that period. And I've given him a session, 60 seconds on, 30 seconds off, and he's able to do that now at 270, sorry, 280 to 290 watts in week one. I gave him that same same session and he was struggling to do 220 to 225. That's what you should be looking at. What was I like in week one compared to week 16? The FTP tells me that you're great, but if you look at how I executed that session, I had heart rate that was 180 watts for that guy in that particular week one session. And he did that session 70 watts higher for a heart rate of 178. So that shows you his fitness level. His heart's incredibly stronger now. He's pushing massive more watts. He's such a better rider than he was. And that's obvious from the program. But unless I point that out, you forget that in your journey. You know, these are the things that keep me motivated as a coach when I see that and I want the athlete to know, wow, that's such a great example. The same session, 60 minutes on, 30 seconds off, 16 weeks apart, 70 watt difference. That is just truly incredible.

Yeah, it's a really great point, isn't it, that it's not just. I mean, we, we put so much focus on testing and so we tell all our athletes to put so much focus on testing, but then you can get caught up in just looking at the test number, the FTP number, or the 10K time, trial time. When you're saying that, you got to look at the other things as well. All in all in context. And that can really give you a bit better picture of how you're actually going. Something you touched on before was, you know, to say that if you didn't improve by any watts, if you only improved by 1 or 2 watts, then you got to look at what was wrong. Is it always something wrong if you don't improve? Because the goal of every test is to Improve. But you can't improve every single time because if you do that, then eventually you'll be the best in the world. How do you work that out?

The terminology shouldn't be what did I do wrong? That's, that's poor terminology. I should be thinking what did I do well in the previous test to get such big jumps and what have I been doing to make the improvement limited or small jumps? And obviously the law of diminishing return, as you get fitter, the improvement is going to be smaller. When you're unfit, the improvements massive. So there's a logical explanation straight away. And it's something that, you know, someone who's been on the program for say two or three years, if they improve two or three watts in a 20 minute test, that's pretty, pretty good news. And someone who's been on the program for two or three weeks, if they improve 1 watt or 2 watts, that's disappointing news. So yeah, we want to understand the reasons rather than what did I do wrong. We want to understand the reasons of where the result is. And we only a lot of the time in our performance, whether it's a race or training, we only analyze things in depth. And you know, from football experience, you know, teams get a smashing on the weekend. Oh, we're going to go back and analyze everything we've done in training and game preparation and implementation of the game. But do they do that when they win? Not really. When that's what we should be doing. Whether we win or lose or whether we succeed riding well or running well or swimming well or whether we don't, we should be always analyzing our performance. And I've said many times, you learn more from the poor performances than you do from the good performances. Why? Because you don't analyze the good performances that much. Whereas you should be thinking about and taking notes about, what did I do well in my prep? How was my training six months going into that outcome? What did I do on race day? What was my pre race meal the night before? How was my sleep that week? How much tapering did I do for that? These are notes you should have in your diary which will give you such better data for next time when you want to perform exactly like you did on that performance, to repeat it. Just like when you do something really poorly, you definitely delve into it and go, ah, seriously didn't taper well. You know, I didn't sleep well the whole week. My race day execution was terrible. My training up until that point was inconsistent. But if none of those things exist. It could be just that you've reached your peak and that, you know, that's your level for this particular period. And you need another 15 to 20 weeks of. Of more training to get to the next step. And as I said earlier, I've got athletes who I've coached for two, three years who are only now starting to reap the benefits of two years of training like that. And of course, I've had to educate them onto a lot of the things we've analyzed at what they're doing wrong. I'm forever telling them that you're training. Your recovery rides too hard, and it takes a long time for them to get that message. It might take six months of me saying over and over, why are you riding so hard on your recovery days? You know, you can't ride hard enough on your hard days because you're too tired. So there's so many aspects to look at on this journey, and it takes mistakes, it takes trial and error for it all to click to that one day where you actually execute and are really pleased with the outcome. And that's the exciting part is, and that's why we want to do this podcast, because we want to make sure that people understand that there's going to be really hard periods in a program. There's going to be periods where you're flying, but all the time, you want to understand what's going on. The more information you have available to yourself, the better you can reconcile in your mind. It's only part of the journey, you know, and I don't want people feeling like, oh, I'm going crap. These last two or three sessions, you know, something's wrong, you know, we need to change the program. Well, you need to stay the journey, and you'll have ups and downs and, you know, trust the process. Got too many examples of too many successes that, you know, I'm not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It's just not in my nature. And. And you have to be patient at all times. And a destination journey is going to be getting you where you want to go eventually. And that's kind of the message we're trying to get across here in this podcast today. It's all about you understanding more about what you're trying to achieve, and therefore, you'll get a better outcome.

That's really your role as a coach, isn't it? To stop any overreactions. Anyway, as an athlete, we can definitely overreact to some certain things or certain bad sessions or a bad week or A bad testing result and your role is just to not overreact and just try and stay the course. I have two main questions off that. What are some of the other factors you really aim to look at or remind the athlete of when there's a test that you're trying to review, whether it's positive or negative? Obviously more analyzing happens when it's negative. But what are some other factors you're looking for as to why that could have happened? You said look at how the training was that last six week period. What were the differences between the block before the execution of the test? What else do you kind of look for?

Yeah, I'm definitely trying to find out things about without being too intrusive. I'm trying to find out things about what's happening in their family life or in their work life that would be really massive contributors to performance. If any one of those two things aren't going so well, it is going to be hard to be concentrating on your training up until that particular testing point or that particular race. So, you know, you've got to take into consideration and there are other things like heat could be just a simple factor, and I've experienced that many times myself, where I've just changed climates from one state to another and can't perform in the first four or five days because my body's possibly going from average of 6 to 10 degrees to trying to ride at 30 to 35 degrees and wondering why I can't push the watts that I could push two minutes ago when I was in a temperature that was a lot more moderate. And these are things that absolutely affect performance. So heat is one of those things. And you know, obviously I talked about a little bit about work and family stresses, but any stress, relationship stresses are something that just affects performance anxiety. You know, the chemical reactions that are occurring in your body from, you know, we know what happens when we have good dopamine chemical results from, from really good positive performances. And they can be just as negatively as bad from poor performances. So, you know, I take my heart rate variability each day and it's always intrigued me because it gives me advice. This heart rate variability app that I use gives me advice on whether I should perform today at a high level, at a medium level, or I should rest according to the information it's taken from taking my heart rate variability. And every time I go to a national or state or really important race, it tells me to take a rest day. And how's that? I'm not going to take a rest day. This is my big race. Why is it telling me that? Well, heart rate variability picks up stresses the body is actually feeling and it could be adrenaline and certainly in my particular case when I'm on a big race, it's picked up the adrenaline and it's telling me I'm overstressed. I've got a box and it's in the far corner. The highest stress level I've been at on this day. Take a rest day, Jerry.

Do you just ignore it? Do you?

I just go, great. It means I'm really got adrenaline flowing today. So I know how to use. But that's an example of how your thought processes are going to affect performance. I know it's a really good sign for me if my heart rate variability is telling me I'm stressed, it's a good stress because I'm ready to race. Another example would be when I stand on the line in any and I used to do this on a Thursday night at the Club Crits at Sandown and you're standing there waiting for your race to start and it might be two or three minutes and I just watch my heart rate and if I think about things that are nothing to do with the race, that's going to happen because it's going to be a very hard 1 hour, 10 minutes of high intensity effort. But if I start daydreaming and I look down, my heart rate, it goes from 72 to 68 to 66 to 60. If I start thinking about right what am I going to do in the race instantly my heart rate goes back up to 72, 76, 80. Just standing on the line. Just by thinking about things differently I get a reaction. So they're the things that, the question you're asking me what are the things that impact on your sessions, on your results and they're all relative and don't underestimate them because they all every I always talk about it's not just one thing and in this particular case, the result that you've achieved, if you look back it's not just going to be one thing. It's going to be an accumulation of many things that you did well or that you did poorly. And they're the things you need to identify and they're the things if you're taking good notes you can look back on and find where you did well and find where you did poorly. Don't do the things you did poorly, don't repeat those, just repeat the things you did well. Eliminate the things you did poorly. So yeah, so that's Kind of what I'm trying to get across.

Definitely. It's quite an extensive list. But I know that you do have an even more exhaustive list of things you go through with the athletes, but we, you might save them for the actual trivalo athletes, those, those best kept secrets of that exhaustive list. Next question on that was, you know, touching on the law of diminishing returns and how more advanced trained athletes will improve less or they might hit their peak. How do you actually manage that mentally and from a training perspective in a more experienced athlete, let's say that their best FTP is 300 watts and then they improve to 3 or 5, and then for the next year or two, they're constantly hovering around 280 to 305 watts, depending on their form. You know, what's the goal in each period? You know, you've kind of hit your max. How do you, how do you go about that? And what's the point of testing so much if you kind of know that that's your peak?

Yeah, well, great question. And look, I can even look at myself. I'm, I am exactly that athlete. You know, I'm trying to hold my form as we've talked about in many podcasts, just having the fire burning under the line where you can, you can jump up. So, so on, on nationals day, I want my FTP to be at its highest point. And six months before, my expectation isn't that it is at my maximum because obviously there's going to be a point where that's my peak and I've got nothing else to give and as I get older that possibly might lower. So, you know, I might look at a 10K runner who's a 36 minute runner and he's hovering around 3630-365362-03705 in the last, you know, 16 weeks. And he was when he first started 38, so, you know, that's quite a good level. So the improvements not going to be much, but we might have gone from 38 to 36 and he's sort of hovering around that period because we're in a heavy training block. That's not going to improve because he's reaching his, his optimum level. And come race day we want him to be a 35 minute runner. So we expect him to possibly improve 20 or 30 seconds on what he's been doing. But remember, he's come from 38 to be a 35 minute runner and it could be the same with the FTP. It could be. He could have started it, you know, two years ago at 220 and he's been for 18 months. He's been at 300, but he forgets that he started at 220. So the mindset of that advanced athlete who's getting towards the point, the peak, the pointy end of his peak, that he knows that as long as I'm holding my form, holding my fitness, that I can step up with taper with the right race ready program. And a lot of the time we need to be in that build program from the majority of the year, we need to be in that until we get to. If you use the Diamond League professional runners or you use the Tour de France, you know, those guys are not riding in Tour de France form in January when the Tour de France is in July. You don't see any of the guys doing the Tour down under. Them winning, you know, the Tour de France, it's not common. And the same with the Diamond League guys, you know, in winter, those guys are not running their eight hundreds in or fifteen hundreds in, you know, three thirty, they're, they're running around the 343, 45 mark. And are they going to, you know, say, what's wrong with me? No, they know that they're in this period where they're just maintaining and getting that base and build so they can go to the race ready phase and become the athlete they want to when it counts. You can't be the athlete you want to be the whole season. It's just not possible. But there is a rate of improvement that we have expectations of. And that's what we're talking about today is in the program that you should have expectations that you will improve. And that's what we were after. We want people to be a better version of themselves from when they started with us along their journey. And there will be highs and lows in that journey, but that's the point. Patience and time. Eventually you've got enough base behind you that you can actually step up when you get that recovery period that will enable you to perform at your peak. And I suppose that is what we're trying to get across in this podcast, that it is a journey and there's so many factors that will cause good and not so good periods. And you've just got to be understanding that that's going to occur. And the person who can stay moderate, not high, extreme and not down the doldrums, not have that bipolar sort of, you know, one minute you're flying now you're down the doldrums, something went wrong, now you're back. You want to be that middle person who's, who's just ticking away, just quietly. The bloke is hiding in the bunch. That's a great example. You know, he's not showing off in the first 10 minutes of how good he is attacking the bunch. And at the end of the race, you see that guy at the back somewhere and the guy who's hiding the whole race and saving all of his matches for two big efforts and one of them is to win the race. You know, who do you want to be? Do you want to be that moderate person who's hiding or the show off, who's up, who's down and now he's at the back. You know, they're examples of the type of athletes that I have come across our desk and, you know, we really want to reiterate that to get the most out of your program, you need to be that moderate person who trains with consistency, who's willing to have patience to go through the step by step process and understand it's going to take time to get to that destination.

A lot of wisdom in that answer, as always, I guess that's the biggest message I've taken from this episode, is that it is about the journey. And no matter where you are, whether you're a beginner or advanced and you're really well trained or you're an Olympic athlete, you know, understanding the journey and where you are along that is so important to finish off with, you know, what would you like to say to athletes when they're starting this journey? Who and athletes that you'd say this to when they start with Tribalo or if they're just coming onto this journey and they're really excited and they've got this big destination they want to get to as fast as possible, what do you want to say to them to help with this mindset and help them get long term results?

It's almost like if you can use the Christmas analogy, you might have seven presents that are lined up and you're so excited and someone just gives you all seven presents and you're overwhelmed. You're just opening up and you don't even, you don't even acknowledge who gave you the present, what it was. You just rip it open, presents, and at the end of it you look back and go, far out. You know, dad gave me that present. I didn't even really take time to open it. Whereas the person who just gets one present at A time reads the card is really grateful for the person who's gone to that effort to pick the special present you've got and then they move to the next present. That's the sort of presentation person we want in a program where they're just going through the journey and smelling the roses along the way and appreciating everything they've got. You don't want that person coming 100 mile an hour at the start and the only place they can go is down. If you start at 100%, there's nothing left. You need to progress yourself. And it's exciting when, for example, in this particular Covid period, the unknown events that are, they're there on the calendar, then they disappear then and someone puts another event up and then people get their hopes up and then start thinking about, oh, I'm gonna train for that. You know, the Melbourne Marathon might be on or Amy Gillet Gran Fondo or the Tour of Bright or you know, the Melbourne half Ironman. These events have appeared and then they've disappeared. You know, the mindset you should have is I need to keep that fitness going in this program and when I have got that race ready, because I know in 8 weeks time or 12 weeks time or 6 weeks time, if I've got this really good build and base under my belt, I can just jump up and be as ready for any race that's thrown at me. And I think that's the mindset that people should have with their program. Normally in any other year, it's simple. You've got a target race, it's on the calendar, there's no reason why it shouldn't disappear. Then you train towards it. But this is a year like no other. And so the flexibility has exposed people for what it is, which is you need to be able to move things. And that's another example why you should train with moderation and build yourself. And imagine if you know, if you were training for the Melbourne half Ironman, which is in November, and you peaked, you know, your build phase too soon in August. Where can you go from August? Now you've got this high level, you can only go down again to start rebuilding. You can't hold that all the way to the race has gone from November to maybe February and you're a race ready in August. You've got to rephrase it. So the moderate person is better off in every aspect of a program. That's going to be changing. In normal circumstances that wouldn't be the case, but it's really highlighted to me, how training in moderation is going to be the best outcome. And I don't mean in each session training moderately. I mean training as best as you can in that particular session. But there's no massive highs over 2 or 3 week and then there's massive lows. That's what I mean by moderation. I don't mean each individual session. I mean across the journey. I want you to train hard when you're supposed to train hard. I want you to train easy when you're supposed to train easy in the zones that you're able to. We've got high limits and we've got low limits. If you're feeling great, you go to the top of that limit in that particular session, but not at the expense of the next day or the next day. There's no point in being flat out in that session and not even hitting any of the targets on the Wednesday and Thursday. That's the athlete. That's going to be the bipolar athlete. So you have to think about that in this journey of the program. What am I going to achieve today? How will I feel tomorrow and the next day? So getting people to think that mindset like that is going to make them really enjoy the process a lot more and understand that, yeah, I'm here for the long haul and the quick fix. That's not our program. And if you think you're going to get that from us, then, you know, don't start.

Perfect. I think there's some really good caveats in there and it's a really good explanation of all that moderation because it doesn't mean just training moderately all the time. That's a great way to finish. And I think everyone now knows what kind of Christmases we had at the Donnelly House. Process driven present openings. That's a good way to finish. That's it for this episode. Thanks very much for listening. A reminder, if you want to get access to our training programs and our training Systems, go to GetFastPodcasts and you can get access to our programs and our emails there. Thanks very much for listening to this episode. We'll see you next time.