How Well Do You Handle Program Pressure?

This episode of the Get Fast podcast is brought to you by Trivalo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. In this episode, we're going to be talking about handling the pressure of a training program and more importantly, handling the perceived pressure of a training program. Because often it is a psychological battle as much as a physical battle to handle a training program. And we can psych ourselves out pretty easily with the mental battle of sticking to a program and staying consistent with it and not letting missed sessions or tough sessions get the better of us. So, a lot to dive into with this, but there's a lot more to talk about as well because there's been some exciting things happening in the world of cycling, running and triathlons. So before we get into the topics of the podcast, just remember, if you want to get access to our programs to help you train smarter and race faster, just go to get fastpodcast. That's getfastpodcast.com and you jump onto our email list. That's the best way to get access to the Trivalo coaching program. So getting into the episode, let's get right off the bat. Dad, what's been catching your attention this week? What have you been paying attention to?

Well, unless you are hiding under a rock, the World Championships is probably the biggest thing that's happened in the cycling world locally. The Cairns Ironman 70.3 was on yesterday and I suppose that's kind of what's grabbed my attention. And obviously the Diamond League is also in full flight. So there's so much happening in the world of running, riding and triathlon. And you know, the point I wanted to make, and we've made it many times in our podcasts, is how important it is to know that your race day will arrive. And if you haven't been preparing properly come race day, you're going to be easily disappointed about your preparation. And you know, the examples are there. You know, who would have thought that there would have been any Ironmans happening in Australia? And sure enough, Cairns have just ran one. Two weeks ago, Sunshine coast held a half Ironman. In three weeks time there's a half Ironman and Busselton. So the races will appear and if you're under prepared, you know you've only got yourself to blame. And we've been pushing this message from March that races will start to appear on the calendar and you're going to regret not, you know, self motivating, getting yourself organized, getting a structure, getting consistency, all those things we, we talk about a lot and it's just words. But come race day, those words just ring clearly in your head. You're either in the A camp totally prepared and can't wait, or you're in the B camp regretting. And you know, it's not too late. This is just the end of September. There's still an opportunity. You know, there's possibly races, more races opening up. December, January, February, March. So you've still got a chance to turn around a poor three or four months that's just happened and refocus, get your mindset changed to say, oh, actually, you know, it is a bad Covid year, but you know, things are starting to happen again. So that's kind of the message, one of the messages I wanted to get across today.

Good. That's a perfect starting point. I think that's really important to remember. We have been saying that since March and we don't want to waste this period. Especially if you feel like races aren't anywhere close. Especially I can feel that way for people in southern parts of Australia. They will creep up and they'll be here before you know it. So you want to be using this period to get yourself race ready. Like we have said many times, you touched on the Diamond League before and that was something that I wanted to bring up as part of what's caught my attention this week is actually some phenomenal performances have happened recently with Australian middle distance runners. And I think it was a podcast maybe a month ago or a bit longer, we were talking about Australian middle distance running. And it has kind of been a little bit disappointing over the last few decades. We've kind of had some, some really good runners come through, but nothing, you know, that's really grabbed our attention on the world stage. We had a Commonwealth Games marathon gold medal in the women, we had Craig Mottram get silver. I think at the 5000. The Comm Games, they're our best kind of performances middle or long distance wise. We haven't really had any standouts since. And if you look at the Diamond League, you know, there's very few Australians representing at the very top level. And in the last month we've had two athletes show how strong they really are. One in the male, one in the female, breaking three Australian records each in the last this year pretty much. And that is what I wanted to talk about because it's so exciting to see at this level. So in the female category, Jessica Hull just broke the 3000 meter Australian record on the weekend and that was her third record. She's broken in 2020. She now holds the 15, 3,000 and 5,000 meter records simultaneously. And she's been producing some unbelievable performances and I think that was really a highlight to see in the Diamond League. Female Australian right up there mixing with the top African, Kenyan, Ethiopian athletes and European athletes. And then in the male category, Stuart McSwain who just ran the tan earlier this year in the COVID lockdown. We know we spoke about in the COVID period how important it is to practice racing. Well, the Melbourne Track Club actually put on a race at the tan to see how well their athletes could find fair because they didn't, hadn't had any races and he was just four seconds off Craig Mottram's tan record time. So that showed how well he's running and he made the decision to go over and race in Europe as well. And it's paid off in dividends because he now holds the 1500 meter record, 3000 meter record and 10,000 meter record. And 3000 metres he did a couple of weeks ago was actually one of the best middle distance performances we've seen in a long time from an Australian athlete because he ran under 7:30. He ran 7:28 which is a ridiculous time for three kilometers. And the stat that stood out to me was that there's only 30 people in the world who have ever run under 730 and now he's one of them. So that shows how much he's flying. So those two performances throughout this year and especially on the weekend really cemented for me that those two, Jessica Hallel and Stuart McSwain, are our best middle distance chance at the moment of doing well worldwide and more importantly for Tokyo next year. It's going to be really exciting to see them at the top end and potentially challenging for a top end spot at the Olympics and maybe a medal compared to hoping a middle distance runner might get through to the final is what we've kind of seen the last few years. So that's really exciting for me.

Imagine being able to run an Australian record at 1500 and run an Australian record at 10,000. That's not, that's not very common. And you know, even his 5k was 13, I think 1312 and Mottram is 1258, which is, you know, in amongst the top best in history. There's not a lot of people have broken 13 minutes and our own Julian Painter who's been on the podcast with us has run a 13:24. I think I better get that right. And you know, he made the Atlanta Olympics with that time and for McSwain to run a, you know, 13, 12, you know, puts him right up there. And that wasn't his best result. I mean, obviously he ran better in the 3k and ran a 26 minute something for the 10k. Was it 27 or 26 minutes?

I can't remember what time.

Yeah, it was outstanding. And 330 for the 1500 I think something.

330, yeah.

And there, that's quite incredible to be able to run that quick and have the endurance to hold it. Rather an 800-1500 runner or you're a 3, 5 and 10 runner. You know, very rarely do you have a 1500 meter runner who's a gun 10k runner. I mean there are exceptions obviously, but yeah, fantastic to see someone of that, you know, be at the top of their game and for YouTube to have him as a highlight package, you know, someone from Australia, you know, it's an American dominated advertising sort of company, you know, to highlight him and how well he's running against, you know, the Kenyans and you know, the, the Belgians, the brothers from Belgium and.

Yeah, no way. I think those brothers.

Sorry, yeah. Got confused with my Belgian cyclists and Norwegian runners. But yeah, so it's, yeah, it's really exciting, isn't it?

Yeah, definitely. And I mean the same thing for Jessica Hull. She's somehow a record holder in the 1500 and 5K. You wouldn't think those two things would go hand in hand, but um, yeah, very impressive.

Some challenges for our good friend who's also been on the podcast, Jordan, Jordan Williams. And hopefully, you know, some competition in Australia will spur on other athletes and that's, that's what we want. We want to have, you know, like we used to have with Ron Clark and Herb Elliott and, and all those guys, you know, John Landy. That era of runner we had was just, you know, world, they were world class and you know, Australia's gone away from that over the years and Mottram sort of picked up, you know, picked up the banner in between, but nothing, nothing really much. I mean, Ralph DeBell held the 800 meter from 1968 till Michael Hilliard broke it. I think 25 years later, that's sort of no progression, is it? I know it was in Mexico and at altitude, so that was going to be always hard to beat. But. But yeah, we just really haven't progressed, have we?

It's, yeah, it's interesting but this is a really good group, this Melbourne Track club group that we're looking at and we had Jordan Williams on the podcast about a year ago, who's part of that group. And like you said, the competition is actually really good for each other because they all, a bunch of them did that tan track race in this Covid period. And you know, Jordan himself got the fifth fastest time ever on the tan, but he was fifth in his group. And that shows the quality of that group. You know, they five of them beat the kind of top five record at the moment. So now they're all in the top six. I think Craig Mottram is the only one that's faster. So that shows the calibre of that group and the same thing. Actually, one special thing I wanted to mention about that those records was they did at the Diamond League and it was the same date that 20 years ago Cathy Freeman won the 400 at the Sydney Olympics, which is undoubtedly one of Australia's greatest ever sporting performances. In terms of our historical performances, that is easily one of the top one or two or three performances of all time. And also Jessica Hull's coach is Cathy Freeman's ex coach. So a lot of things tying in there. The fact that both McSwain and Hull broke the records on that anniversary, I thought that was really cool.

Yeah. And it's really great for female athletics to have some real talent come through and you know, Australia, just the weight Cathy Freeman had on his shoulders from Australia just jumping on board with, you know, one out and out champion and she, you know, the pressure that must have been on her on that day to produce that performance. It is incredible how well she performed knowing that, you know, you know what Australians are like. We love winners and we love the underdog and geez, that must have been hard to compete to get. That result was fantastic. So it's great to see that, you know, another really quality female coming through.

Definitely. And we don't want the running the middle distance side to take over the podcast. I just am a big fan of running and I do want to favorably biasly see it kind of go back to what it was even 20 years ago where Olympic park was packed out, or you think about 40 years ago when Olympic park was sold out stadiums for athletics events. I'd love to see that come back. So if we have some good runners, hopefully that can happen. But moving on, we wanted to touch on the world champs as well, which is pretty exciting. We had the individual time trials and the world races, the female and male category, and it was good to see all these events unfold over a weekend, a week after the tour de France finish and it was pretty exciting weekend of results and performances.

Where do I begin? It was like the best four events that could happen. Two time trials and two road races for the males and females. And it was outstanding. And my question was going to be, how are the people who've just finished the hardest race, both male and female, the Giro. Rosa was on for the, for the women and the Tour de France was on for the men. And then one week later, they're backing up for the biggest one day race and the biggest time trial of their careers. And you know, to wear the world champions rainbow jersey is the ultimate in a cyclist's career. And you know, is it bigger than the Tour de France? Well, some might say yes, but. But how are you going to back up? Normally the World Championships is the last event on the calendar and you know, a lot of the Grand Tours are well behind them and they've got time to recover. But you know, we've got races this week already, Fleche, Malone, and then we've got Liege, Bastogne, then we've got the Giro within 10 days. So it's just a jam packed calendar with the world title in the middle of it. So it was intriguing to me to see, you know, to see people's preparation and the differences from a coaching point of view and how they climax their peak for the world title and whether some people made, you know, the Giro, Rosa or the Tour de France their goal as compared to the world titles. Ironically, the person who dominated the Giro, Rosa, also dominated the world titles, which is impressive. And the person who did very well in the male, you know, Van Aerts, he certainly is going to be a talent down the track and to come second in the time trial and second in the, in the road race. And you know, he was very unlucky in both to be beaten by outstanding performances in the time trial and on the road race by Ella Philippe. But certainly Van der Breggen winning both road race and time trial in the women's division after taking out the Giro, Rosa was a pretty good week. And let's face it, there isn't anything she hasn't won. She's won. Fleche will own five times, she's won multiple stage races, she's won world championships. And, and I think I was telling you earlier that a lot of the races that she's actually been victorious in, there's been girls who have been favorites and they've actually had something go wrong. And Chloe Dyggett's crash in the, in the women's Time trial when she was 30 seconds ahead at the first time. Check. And you know, that's not Vanderbreegen's fault, that girls having issues that make her end up the winner. That's just the way it is. You know, it could be, could be poor cycling technique from Chloe that caused the crash, you know, and her training, she doesn't do any European races, she just trains in America and comes to the world titles. So she's not getting a lot of practice on the TT bike outdoor in events. So it could be the reason why she crashed. She's overcooked a corner. I'm just coming up with ideas here, you know. And in the defense of van der Bruggen, you know, Van. I think it's. I can't remember their names, Anna or Enemke. Van Vleuten was leading the Giro Rosa, when she crashed. And van der Bruggen went on to win the Giro Rosa, because of a mistake from the person who was in the lead again. So it was great for her to win a road race with no issues from the other girls. And she won fair and square, even though she won fair and square and all those other events. But it's always been a cloud over her winning when people are actually making mistakes. So it was fantastic. She proved to everybody she's the fastest time trial and the fastest road race rider. So I was really wrapped that she won both those events and the Dutch. I just can't emphasize how good the Dutch women are compared to the rest of the world. It's like Kenyan dominance in middle distance running. It's just fantastic the way they're organised and they just have winners everywhere. Van Vleuten, Van der Breggen, Voss, they're just winners.

And like you said, it's not Anna's fault that other people are falling down. You, you know, she's in the best position, coming second if something happens, so. And you always say, you never know what can happen. I think they're actually calling her not Anna van der Bergen, Winna van der Bergen. She keeps winning everything.

Yeah. And you've got to put yourself in that position. And that's one of the things, from a coaching point of view, it's never over. It's just not over until the last second. And even then, the last second, you can still win. So you've just got to keep going, you know, no matter what seems to be happening around you, you've got to keep that mindset of you never know what's going to happen. And you know there's been so many examples of that. She's just proven it time and time again. Put yourself in the right position. And if other people make mistakes, whether it's, You know, that's something that listeners in any club race or, you know, any, any state or national or world scene, it's the same. It doesn't matter. You just got to keep that mindset of it's not over till it's over.

And what did you take from a coaching perspective from the men's time trial or road race?

Yeah, look, the men and women were very similar. And van der Bruggen attacked on the same hill as Ella Filipe attacked, except it was a lap later, she attacked 40k out. What a fantastic risk reward effort. And everybody's on the limit, including her. And we talked about this in the Tour de France with Hershey and with Craig Anderson. You know, it repeated itself. When everybody's on their limit, that's the time for you to make your move. And you're on your limit too. But it's a gutsy one to go way beyond where you think you can go. And we've always talked about you think you're at your limit, but you're actually at 60% and you can go more. And she did that on that exact point that Ella Philippe did and patience on that hill because it was a reasonably long hill. And there were a few attacks in the men's division. Greg van Avermaet attacked, then Hershey attacked, then Kiatowski attacked and then with less than seemingly 45 seconds to the top, Alaphilippe did a vicious attack and only gained literally 40, 50 meters. And that was enough to win the race. And you know, that's risk reward again reared its fantastic ugly head. And races are won and lost. You know, nine times out of ten that won't work. But wow, what a feeling it must be when it works in the world title race to ride solo to victory against the best riders in the world, both male and female. And she, Anna had to do it for 40 kilometers. And you know, Ella Philippe only had to do it for 17, only against, you know, Van Aert, Hershey, Kiatowski, Roglic full sang the best riders ever. And because they all looked at each other and had ulterior motives, I'm not taking Van Aert to the finish line. Was the other five riders, four riders philosophy. And you know, they were right because he did all the work and still out sprinted them for second place. But you know, they were willing to give up first place. Not to drag him across the line because they weren't going to get first if they dragged him there anyway. So it's a sensible tactic, but it worked in Alaphilippe's favour perfectly.

Yeah, it ended up just being a bit of a time trial between those two with everyone else.

And the same thing happened in the women's race, George. They had the Dutch riders. Boss and van Vleuten were in the chasing bunch and van der Breggen was relying on the other girls not working together. And it worked exactly the same. She extended her lead to one minute and two minutes. It was incredible. Just because all the groups look at each other and every time they stop pedaling, the person who's consistently pedaling gains another five seconds. And that happens five or six times and you get 30 seconds instantly and it's the same story repeats itself. And believe it or not, in the future, it's going to happen time and time again. So don't think, because that's a one trick card that's only going to be used once, that happens every race. So my advice to people is get used to doing it. Try it yourself. It may not work, but it may work. And, you know, that's the risk reward we talk about a lot.

So that leads us to the main topic of the podcast, which we wanted to get across, which was to talk about perceived program pressure. When you stick into a program, there is the mental pressure as well as the physical pressure, and mentally, it can actually take more of a toll on you than the program itself physically. And that's because we can psych ourselves out by putting too much pressure on ourselves and expecting too much of ourselves within a program. And it's something that you have to get work hard to get the balance right. Because on this podcast we talk a lot about aiming for consistency and aiming to be as perfect as you can be in a program. You know, the better you are with your program, you know, the more green sessions you have in training peaks, for example, the better you're going to be and the more you're going to improve. But often that can be a little bit detrimental psychologically to athletes because when you start to miss a session or two, you start to really get in over your head and you can start to play mental games where you start berating yourself too much and the balance goes the other way, where you, you think you're actually not doing that well and you psych yourself out a little bit too much when you're actually not going too bad. So there's A clear balance that you need to find of aiming for as much consistency as possible, but not beating yourself up if you're not as consistent as you'd like to be. So how do you approach this with athletes and really getting them to get that balance right and not going too far either way?

Well, I try to break it down into three key components of what we're trying to achieve in our program. And, you know, it's always interesting talking to a new athlete who is so excited about coming on board, and their enthusiasm is just fantastic. And I love to work with people like that. But I'm trying to get three things across in their program. If they can understand these three basic fundamentals, then they will have a long and fantastic outcome. And it's really so simple, yet people just can't manage it. No matter how many lectures I give or just pep talks almost to get them to not do what I think they're about to do. It's just astounding how many people fall into the same trap and they've come from that habit. So that's why it's easy for them to try to replicate what they've done before. But that's what we're about, is trying to change their mindset from what they've previously done. Because that's the reason why they come to us, is because they're not happy. They're unsatisfied with the outcomes that they've been achieving. And doesn't matter whether you're a cyclist or a lawn bowler or a triathlete. You know, if you keep repeating the same mistake, you're going to get the same outcome. So you have to do something different. And the three things, they're very simple. And the most important one can only be developed first, and then the second one can be developed then the third one. So frequency or consistency, you know, they're both the same words. Frequency. Frequency means you are able to continuously train without gaps. And that sounds pretty obvious, doesn't it? Straightforward. But 50% of the people can't achieve it. And they're so focused on the intensity and the duration. So they're the three things. Frequency, duration, intensity. And I say them slowly because they are so important, because that's what the whole program is based around. And, you know, call it fdi, frequency, duration, intensity, call it whatever you like, but that is the method that is going to get you the result at the end of the day. And I'm a real believer in extreme training is going to prevent any frequency, because the examples I can Give you are people who come into the program and do a session way beyond what my expectation was. As in if we're doing 1k repeats on a track, as a runner, I asked them to do 4 minute K pace and they do 3, 23, 30, 3, 23, 20. And aren't they so pleased with themselves? And I'm saying that was a disappointment. And they look at me like, what are you talking about? I just ran the house down. Well, that means tomorrow you're going to be so tired, you can't do tomorrow's tempo run because you're exhausted. And that's where getting the frequency wrong, because you did the intensity first, you didn't get that aspect of it right. You know, so many riders will do power numbers that are way beyond what I asked for, the range and it will derail. And it's, it's, it's the extreme training. You know, just do the program at a moderate level to begin with so that you can form a habit of consistency. And we know 30 days in the history of the world, 30 days is the average time to become a habit. And if you can't do consistency for 30 days in a row without missing something, then you're going to have to start again until you get to those 30 days. So we need the frequency to be the key component of, of a program. And when you said at the start, you know the perceived pressure you put yourself under for trying to achieve a program, forget about the duration and the intensity, just concentrate on the frequency and they're the things that are going to enable you to take small steps in your journey to improve yourself so that come race day, out of a hundred sessions, you've done 98. Whereas the person who's smashed out five or six unbelievably good training sessions and then had four or five days off the first week because they were too tired, then the second week they've done two or three really good sessions and had two days off. Then the third week and this pattern continues, by the time they get to their hundred days, they've done 60 sessions. And the person who's done the frequency has done 95 sessions. Who's going to be better prepared on race day? And the answer is pretty obvious. So I really want people to take the pressure of frequency as the key to start a program and not the pressure of intensity and duration. They come, they come down the track and if you get that order wrong, you're going to continue to make the same mistakes that you made before you joined our program, which is probably the.

Opposite of what most people think. Most people think the intensity is the most important part. I need to train hard to improve. Can I ask a specific example?

But, George, you do need to train hard to improve, but not at the start. The program isn't a week. The program has got an end point which might be six months, three months, 12 weeks, a year. So that's the time when you need to be getting the intensity right. Intensity is so important. I said at the start, there's three important factors, but the order and the time you spend in the frequency determines how well the duration and the intensity will go.

So to ask a specific example of a situation an athlete might face, am I right in saying that you would rather, especially at the start of the program when you're trying to get frequency correct, you would rather an athlete sacrifice the intensity of a session to get the session done and to keep that consistency up than try and do the intensity and therefore miss sessions throughout the week?

And as you know, in our program, because we test people, we actually have their correct range, so we wouldn't expect them to be doing anything but the correct intensity straight away. So to answer that question, yes, if they didn't have information like that, I would. Rather than be moderate, rather than extreme. And obviously, at the end of the day, we want to progress our efforts as we progress through the program. We want to get more, you know, more duration involved and more intensity involved. But you need to be starting at your level to start with. And that's the key component at the start of the program. So to answer that question, yes, of course, but we already know that data from our testing in our program, so that there is no way someone can be. Can be riding, swimming, or running above the limit that we've set unless they choose to go outside that range.

Yeah, so that's the starting component of this perceived pressure. But you would see a lot of athletes. I know you've seen this situation many times where athletes are on a program for, whether it's six weeks or six months or a few years, but they get to a point where they may have been ticking off the frequency, duration, intensity correctly for a while, but they are hitting mental fatigue. And they might just be putting a bit too much pressure on themselves to. If they miss a couple of sessions, they really get down in the dumps. And you would say that a couple of sessions, in the scheme of things, isn't that big, but they, you know, athletes demand a lot from themselves. We coach a lot of very driven athletes who want the Absolute most out of their program. So what do you say to an athlete that has a couple of missed sessions and then starts really getting down on themselves about it and starts almost throwing in the whole towel just because of a few missed sessions?

Yeah, well, we always say one bad session doesn't make a season, one bad game doesn't make a season, and that's never rung. So true. But we want motivated athletes who want the best out of themselves. We want that. We don't want to suppress that at all. We want highly motivated, highly concentrated athletes who, I'm not saying highly talented, I'm saying highly motivated and who have the right frame mindset to aim to do as consistent a training session as possible. And if that means the pressure for this particular week is too great with outside things happening in your life, then you have to adjust your program accordingly. But still, something is better than nothing. So answering that question, you know, don't try to achieve the duration of the session. Just get something done so you can keep the frequency up. Because frequency will outlast any intensity in any duration of any program. So without the consistency or the frequency, then your program is going to be derailed. So having two or three out of 50, you know, sessions that aren't quite spot on in the scheme of things is like running the first K of a triathlon. The run leg 40 seconds slower than the rest of it. In a half marathon, 40 seconds in an hour 45 is an hour 45 plus 45 seconds. It doesn't make any difference at the end of the day. So having five sessions missed out of 50 in the, in the big scheme of things is quite minimal. Whereas having, you know, 25 sessions out of 50 missed half your program. So I can't emphasize that enough that, you know, take the pressure off the poor or lack of achievement in executing 100% of the program. And once you get that frame mindset ingrained, that it's okay. But still something is better than nothing in training. So, so yeah, there's really ways of going about making the athlete understand that, you know, there's going to be good, bad and very good sessions. So just, just work your way through it. That's, that's, that's my advice and, and that's really what I'm trying to get across to the everyday, you know, triathlete, everyday cyclist, everyday runner that, that, you know, even the best, the best motivated, highly highly planned, structured athletes have days where it's not so good. But to abandon it just because of one bad day or three Bad sessions. You know, I hate the hundred percent or zero athlete. I want the moderate athlete who's willing to put the consistency in rather than the guy who's the flesh in the pan who does something way above and then does nothing then. So you know, that's they're the worst athletes to have on your program because they're going to race like that. We always say the way you train is the way you're going to race. And you know, you've got to have a race plan in your race. And that can't be 100%. It's got to be. If Alaphilippe, for example, in the world road race had, have attacked at the bottom of that hill, he knows his ability is 1/32 effort and it can only be where it counts the most, which is the hardest part. So tactically he has used his ability to the best value. And you know, we saw Dumoulin bridge across to Podja on one of the previous laps and that was his race done. You know, one effort, that's all he had. It was such a brutal course. So there are examples of putting your efforts in at the right time. And that's kind of what we're trying to get across in this podcast, is that even the pros can make mistakes in putting pressure on themselves and executing at the wrong time. There's a lot in that really, in that question.

Yeah. And on that moderation point, I mean, it applies with everything, you know, and we had Dr. Harry, and it applies really specifically with nutrition as well. But we had Dr. Harry on the podcast while ago talking about nutrition. And that was one of the first points he made, was that a all or nothing diet program just will not work. 100% or 0% will not work. You know, it has to be in moderation for it to work. And I guess the same principle applies a lot of things, but especially with nutrition and training.

Yeah, there's so many examples in life where, you know, I can use a person who wants to lose, say 10 kilo and they want to lose it in one week or two weeks. And logic tells you that's unsustainable. They could lose the 10 kilo, I'm not disputing that in two weeks, that's possible, but they would have to pretty much starve themselves to achieve that. Whereas if a person aimed to lose 10 kilo over a period of 30 weeks, it might only be half a kilo per week to achieve that. And that's probably going to be sustainable for another six months, a year or for the rest of their life, just doing everything in moderation because the person who does it in two weeks, I guarantee they'll put five kilo back on the next week because they've had an unsustainable eating program. And that's what we're trying to say here. Do everything moderately well and make it consistent or frequent, and you will actually get a much better outcome come race day because you've actually achieved, you know, consistency by ticking off session after session and doing it as an extreme. You will burn out or peak too soon or. There's so many things. Injure yourself, get sick. There's a hundred things that happen because you are just up too high the whole time. And we talked at the start of the podcast about who's come out of the Tour de France with the form. Alaphilippe has done it beautifully. And he was highly criticized in the Tour de France for doing ridiculous attacks. And you can see now, looking back, that he was practicing for the world titles. Pretty much he was training himself to death in the Tour de France so that he was ready to peak for the world titles. And Stefan Kuung is another great example of someone who went on the break almost every day and he was practicing his time trialling in that break in the Tour de France. Guess what? He comes third in the. In the time trial at the world titles. You know, that's someone who's using the Tour de France as a training exactly how Alaphilippe was doing it. So they're examples of people, you know, understanding when to peak. And if you don't have an understanding of the frequency, duration and intensity of what you're doing, then it's a haphazard approach.

So what do you do if you have an inconsistent period? If you just notice that you can't get the frequency as much as you'd like, or you're missing one of those factors. Frequency, duration, intensity, you've had a bad week, something like that. How do you go about that process?

Great question. And in the old days, and I've done this many times, I would say, oh, goodness me, I have just lost a week. I now need to train harder to catch up. And that is going back to the 100% zero. You've gone from zero now you're going to 100%. It's no different to being injured or sick. You would not expect, if you were injured with a hamstring to start, resume your first running session with a set of 400 intervals. That would be crazy. You would start with an easy Jog, walk and progress yourself. So you need to resume your program at a moderate level and rebuild yourself. You have to suck it up. You have to acknowledge that you've, for whatever reason, being inconsistent by going 100% back into your program of intensity is not the way out of, out of what's happened. You need to suck up what's happened and just resume the program at an intensity that's going to be able to be consistent. So that means moderate, moderate resumption of training. Whether you're coming from a period where you couldn't train, not because of injury or illness, but because of other factors, external factors, you were traveling or you just had no access to, you know, a bike or there could be a hundred reasons, you know, it could be in quarantine. That could be a reason. So, you know, there's so many reasons why you could not have access to a program. You just don't jump back into where you left off at the level where you left off. You have to actually take a step back and build yourself back to where you were before. You resume the duration and the intensity aspect. Remember, the frequency is the number one. So get that ticked off first. And then you start thinking about the duration and the intensity of your sessions.

You're still just as competitive as you used to be. So that must be hard for you not to just jump in and want to do double the amount of sessions and work twice as hard to get back on track. So what do you actually say to yourself to remind yourself to do what you tell the athletes to do?

Yeah, and I've done it myself many times. And the result of, of me doing that is, and I can give you the example of the calf injury that I've carried my whole running career, and I got through till I was about 30 with calf on and off, and every single time I injured the calf, I didn't do the rehab, which is one mistake, but that's a separate topic. But I let it heal. And thinking that it was good to go because it didn't hurt anymore, I straight away went back into my program without doing the progression that I talked about. And I got injured again. And my competitiveness was my downfall. And eventually it got so bad that I can't actually run anymore because of that ridiculous competitiveness. And that's an example of the extremeness I can't run because of that method of approach that I took. And that's a lesson that's pretty hard to swallow, because running is something that I enjoy more than any other sport that I've ever done and now I can't do it. So if you can't understand, that's a sacrifice I've had to make. And through my competitiveness and my stubbornness of trying to do things at an intensity that's just not sustainable and as a result, I can't run anymore.

Yeah. And then nowadays if you have an inconsistent week or you just go back to it, are you as patient as you know you should be?

Yeah. And because it still frustrates me, but I know that I have to take my medicine and it's enabled me, and I'm not saying something that's not obvious, it's enabled me to keep myself at the highest end of my ability and my level for such a long period. And if anybody analyzed my career over a period of time, I've just, just been sitting under. We always talk about the fire sitting underneath, burning away, ready to step up. And that's because of the frequency and consistency in my training. And I don't like talking about what I'm doing. But it's such a good example of now I've got some people I'm coaching who have got exactly the same approach and they're turning their careers round at all ages because they have mastered the frequency, the consistency, frequency mastery enables you to become such a better athlete for such a long period of time. And you know, keeping that fire warm underneath the peak zone is what it's all about. And that can only be achieved by not dropping your bundle when you miss four or five sessions here and there. And that's what we're talking about today is what happens when you get pressured from missing sessions or having bad sessions. They're different things, but they're the same because they cause the frequency to be shattered.

It's almost like an exponential increase or return that you get. The more frequent you are for a longer period, the better athlete you are. So those athletes you're talking about, I know that you say that it's because they've been consistent and had that frequency correct. For not just a three month or a six month program, but it's now it's been 1, 2, 3, 4 plus years. And that's where the reward starts to pay off more and more. You know, if you get that frequency right for a year, you're going to be a really solid athlete. If you do it for two or three years, it just starts to pay off in dividends.

Yep. So we get, as I said, we get people who are, who are getting to their goal event and Then they need to take a break and their fitness level could have been at 100 when they were right at their race peak performance level. And then they take a two, three, four, four weeks, sometimes two months, sometimes six months break, and they come back to the program at fitness level of 50 or 60 and they spend the next four months getting themselves back to 100. And this is what they end up having a graph like. And what I'm saying is continue to build at an angle and then hold it and then have a recovery which dips a little bit, then build again and to the next level. But the other person, they've been here and now they're back down here and it takes them all that time to get to where they were before. So I'm saying it's great to step back, but just keep consistently training at a lesser intensity and lesser duration. And that is the key to keeping yourself at the level that you want to and not have this. You know how hard it is, Jordan. If you've had a break from running and all of a sudden you're back into a training program, it's like doing a preseason. You know, so many footballers just go, oh, I hate preseason. But if they actually looked after themselves at the end of the post season, it would be a breeze for them and they would just be stepping up from a small little decrease in fitness. But we do the extreme. You know, we talked about 100% or zero. You know, they train at 100%, then they don't train it. They train at zero when they break. And so all that gain they've made, they've lost. So we get this roller coaster of highs and lows. And that's completely against what my philosophy is of holding moderate, moderate of everything, moderate eating, moderate training, moderate work, have periods of hard sections. But it can't be hard all the time. It can't be easy all the time. It has to be periods where you're holding moderation so you can step up to hard and step down to easy. And if you have that line, then you're going to be a much more even person, a much more even athlete. Easy to live with and easy to train because you know when to work hard, you know when to rest and you know when to be consistent. Whereas the person who's all or none, they just train too hard and then they just don't train enough and we end up with that all on an athlete, which is what we're trying to get across to everybody today, that you can change this by thinking about it. Differently. And concentrating on frequency is the key. The consistency of your training will get you to the end result come race day. Like we've said many times, there will be a race coming. At the start of this podcast, there will be a race coming. If you've, if you've maintained frequency, you will have some chance of getting a good outcome come race day.

The AFL example is actually so spot on. It's crazy how still every single AFL club at local level does crazy hard training until the end of the season in September, and then no one runs until the preseason starts in December or January. And it's just the epitome of all or nothing. And to be honest, AFL clubs were doing that up until the last, I'd say decade. And still there'd be a lot of players in the AFL who don't train between September and October. They take six weeks completely off or eight weeks completely off when the club's not training. And as professional athletes, it's just crazy to think about, and it was probably even more uncommon 10 years ago for any athlete to do any sort of training, and now it's expected of them. But it's just crazy how it's taken that long to cotton on.

But I get it a different way too. You know, they're professional athletes who have a really small window of opportunity for their career. Why would you let yourself go? I can't even understand that, that thinking. You've only got, say, five years as a career, you should, you know, there's no such thing as an off season. Sure, you have a period of recovery, but you're still looking after yourselves because you want to be the best athlete you can be the best footballer you can be. And whether you're an athlete or a swimmer or a triathlete or a footballer, you've only got a small window. But then when you get to our everyday athlete, which is past professional, we're talking about guys who just want to improve. It's no different. The more time you have of zero, the harder it is to get back to where you were. And most people tell me when they start program, I want to improve my health and fitness because I want to live longer and I want to. I want to have a good, healthy life. And I'm saying, great, well, consistency will be your key. And within six months they're already having a rest where they're going back to zero training and they're going to repeat the same mistake that they came to me with, which was 100% or zero and nothing in between. And that's the, that's the message we're trying to get across here in this podcast today. And using the elite people as examples really makes it easy to understand what we're talking about.

Yeah, definitely. And to be honest, it's funny how the same principles come back. We did a podcast two months ago on purely consistency. It was the exact same principles you're talking about here. That latter example of rather than stepping two steps up two steps back or two steps up one step back, it should be two steps up maintain, another two steps up maintain. And we, we did a whole podcast on that. So you can listen to that. But really summarizes what we're trying to say here is that the perceived pressure of a program, we don't want to let that stop anyone from being consistent because that frequency, consistency is one of the most important factors in a training program. That's it for today's episode. It's been a pretty jam packed episode. We'll finish up there again. If you want to get access to our training programs to help you train smarter and race faster, go to getfastpodcast.com you can chuck in your email. You get onto our email list and you'll be able to get get access to any of our programs when we release them from there. Thank you very much for listening. This has been a Travello coaching podcast. We'll see you next time.