Personalise A Training Program To Your Needs

Everyone in your group, they're doing the exact same training program. But the difference is exactly what you just spoke about in having flexibility around the program. And what we know is so important is analyzing how you feel in comparison to the program. This podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo Coaching, Jared Donnelly. In today's episode, we are talking about the topic of individualizing and tailoring a program to you. Now, individualized program is one of the buzzwords in coaching and training, but we want to straightaway dispel the myth that every single person has to have an individualized and tailored program, because realistically, that's just not possible. But there are things that you do need to tailor and individualize to you based on many factors that we want to talk about today. So we're going to discuss the myths of individualizing things to you when it's unnecessary versus what things you actually do need to be changing and tailoring to suit your individual needs, your individual abilities, your individual level as an athlete, your training history, and many other factors. So we're going to dive right into that today, which we're really excited about. But first, dad, welcome to our normal starting segment of the episode. What are you grateful for?

Well, it's with great pleasure for you and I that we can announce that new baby, grandson Banks Donnelly has arrived into the world a few hours ago, not many hours ago. And, yeah, it's a very emotional time for families, and it's absolutely fantastic. It's, you know, it's the second child to Liam and Lani, who live in the Sunshine coast, and I'm sure there was a lot of anxiety around the birth, having already had one birth with their daughter Eden, who. Who had a few complications with the hearing, and. And that would be having some anxiety that hopefully the new grandchild would be. Would be healthy. And so far, so good. So we're really pleased that a. That everything went well and Lani did suffer a little bit, but the details we don't need to go into, but so it's just. I'm, yeah. Just so grateful that another grandchild has arrived. And now we've got three under two, which is unbelievably exciting for my wife and I and obviously for the rest of the brothers and sisters of the family. It's. It's a happy, happy time for everybody. And A new person entering into the world, you just. You just can't be more emotional, I suppose. It's just such a special thing to have happen and to experience it and have your children have children is quite unique. And I have just a completely different outlook on it as compared to when you four children were born. To Andy and myself watching it from as a grandparent, it's similar, but it's completely different. You're just so proud of what's happened and can't wait to share the experience of what's about to happen. And for their journey from this point on, it's been a. It's been a hilarious roller coaster ride with Eden and. And baby Archie's only 12 weeks old. And now baby Banks is entered the fray of the clan. So it's. It's exciting times. And yeah, I'm really grateful to. To have the opportunity to experience it firsthand. So that's my gratitude.

Couldn't have said it better. I think it is the. One of the purest forms of gratitude. And when Lani went into labor, you sort of hold your breath for that entire period, just hoping that everything goes fine and it's a healthy baby and healthy mum. And when that happens and, you know, they send the message through, you know, Banks Donnelly, born safe and sound. It is just a sigh of relief and overwhelming gratitude. So. Totally agree. That would be my gratitude as well. But for the sake of the exercise, I'll do my own one. And mine is on the opposite end of this death and life spectrum is I went skydiving last weekend. My mates bought it for me for my birthday, which I was grateful for the present, but I was also terrified.

And I wasn't grateful for the present, I can tell you that.

It's something I've always thought about doing but never committed to, and this forced me into it and I was terrified. And I've done a few bungee jumps, and everyone kept saying that bungee jumping is way harder. Skydiving, you know, you jump out with a person and it's so high it doesn't matter. And I just think that is absolute bullshit. I think you know how high you are and you know that you're FL flying in a plane and then they open the door. And there's something about, you know, a door opening when you're that high up in the sky that is just so unnatural. And it was terrifying. But one of the coolest experiences I've ever done. Not saying I'd recommend it, but for me, it was one of the coolest things I've ever done. But even still, when you're up there and you're enjoying it, there's nothing like flying through the sky. I just. You can't even describe it. I will say that as we're getting close to the ground, I was just grateful once we finally had both feet planted and nothing, nothing had gone wrong and we're all safe. So that is definitely my gratitude. More moving on to what has caught our attention and as usual, we want to go through a lot of updates with what's happening around the world in cycling, triathlon or running. As always, there's plenty of things that have caught our attention and I'm pretty excited because there is so much happening, but mostly cycling racing is back. The spring racing calendar is back on. We've already had Strada Bianchi. We're in the middle of Paris, Nice and Toreno Adriatico. I'm waking up every morning, morning and checking the highlights, checking the race footage. I just can't get enough of it, as always. So dad, tell us what's caught your attention in these races so far.

Yeah, look, I've probably. What's caught my attention is form and understanding form and I want to give a few examples. The season is incredibly long and I don't care what you're talking about, whether you're a marathon runner, whether you're a triathlete or whether you're a cyclist. There's just so many opportunities where you want to hit the race that you're trying to target, target in the best possible form that you can. And that's just such a difficult thing to achieve. And right out from the, from, you know, the main race and already there's been five or six races that have already happened in the lead up to Strato Bianca. And I think Strada Bianca will become a monument. It's just, it's just one of those races that is, it's just got everything. The fact that it's on the gravel and white sand for know, for the key aspects of the race just sets it apart from any other race. It's so unique and I suppose you wanting to come into that race with the most form, but straight away you've got Milan San Remo, then you've got Tur Flanders, then you've got Perry Roubaix, you know, back to back to back to back sort of thing. So what, what race are you trying to, trying to win? So if you can hold form for a period of time, but then, you know, without. Because when you're In a racing season, you cannot train the way that you normally would because you've got to recover from races. So the sessions take on a different look. And, and so you're actually using the racing as you're training. And I don't mean that you're going in there not trying to win. You're going in there to try and win every single race you can, if that's what your goal is. Depending on if you're a triathlete or a cyclist or a marathon runner, you may be in a cycling team as a domestic to help people. I'm of talking about the. The heads of each of those teams in cycling, you know, who are trying to win the race. And, and this is kind of the hard thing to get right, is you could. You could target the str. Bianca maybe. And you come into it and all of a sudden you don't ride so well. And then three weeks later you're in the form of your life, but there's no race you're in. So, you know, that timing thing is. Is really hard and crucial and enjoyable once you get it right. And, and I'm just examples of what I witnessed from the cyclocross season where really Vanderpoel and Vanart were untouchable. And Tom Kid Pidcock was. Was pretty much the only guy who was close. And he was, he was third most of the time. And those two guys were alternating the wins and they were just streets ahead of everybody else who, who were unbelievably good riders and take those two riders out of the. Out of the race, and it would have been a fantastic race behind them. But, you know, we saw anybody could have won the final, the world title with Van der Poel and Van Aert, and they were both in unbelievable form. And it was really a tactical sprint that won the race. Van der Poel out out tactician Van Aert to win that race. And so the form of both of them was pretty spectacular. They got it right. Where was Pidcock? He. He changed his tack and stopped doing the cyclocross with two or three, two or three races out and started concentrating on his form on. On the bike, on the road bike for Strato Bian and go forward a few weeks after the World Cyclocross Championships where those two guys were outstanding. Pidcock lines up. Yeah, sure, he's one of the favorites, but really everybody was talking about Van Aert and Van der Poel. Van Aert misses out because he's sick. Van der Poel really Has a very average ride. Well, was his form at the Cyclocross World Championships the peak of his form? We're going to see, aren't we, in the next six weeks you're going to have ups and downs. Even the best athletes in the world have poor results, poor races. And it could be that he hadn't recovered from that epic 10 race cyclocross. And that is brutal. Those races, they're one hour of power every third or fourth day. Some days they have five or six days in between, but, but they're just relentlessly doing, I can't remember how many races they do, but it is a lot of cyclocross races and you see the workout they're getting. It's a full body workout. You know, they're using upper body through quicksand, through sand, through mud, up stairs, getting off their bike, running upstairs, riding on the beach, through the water. It's a full body workout. It's just not your upper body sitting beautifully smooth on a high bitumen road. You're actually physically exhausted from, from the top of your head, from concentrating to the, to your feet, from, from what you're doing. So, so what's caught my attention is what is going to happen. I can't wait to see what happens in the next six weeks with van der Poel and Van Aert's form. And we all know that Van Aert hasn't really won anything in terms of a Belgium classic with Tour of Flanders as his race. And, and we're going to be lucky enough to be there to watch this. And I can't wait to see if form right and, and whether he's done the right thing because he might have had a mild bout of sickness and refused to race and, and is living to fight another day. And, and I think that's what he's doing. He wants Flanders to be his thing. Sure, he'd love to win Strata, but, but I think Flanders, it's the grand final for all Belgiums and, and I think that's what he's gonna, and I'm hoping that that's what happens, that he's, he's doing what Tom Pidcock did with the cyclocross season. He's, he's giving himself every chance to win Tour of Flanders. And yeah, just talking about it now, it would be good to see in three weeks time what actually happens on that, that race day and how his form, because he's in great form from the cyclocross season. How long can he hold it and does he have to reset? So, so that's kind of what I'm, what I'm really, you know, banging on about here with. And look, just to sidestep a little bit with topical things that are happening now with the POG beating Vinegar on the hill climb yesterday, you know, that's another example of Vinegar had great form in July last year. Wasn't that brilliant leading up into July? And the POG was doing everything, he was winning every race. And yet come Tour de France last July, Vinegar beat him. And the same thing happened yesterday on the stage four and it was a 7K climb and Pog put 35 seconds into vinegar and everybody's saying, oh, you know, Vinegar's not the same rider. Well, he's not the same rider this week, but he wants to be back to back defending title in July. So, so the form that I'm talking about is not what he wants now. And, and you've got to understand that you need to do these races to get form and be okay with being criticized for being beaten. And that's a hard thing. Even as a, as an age grouper, you know, you don't want to go into a race where you're not in good form because you know, people are saying, oh, what's wrong with you? You know, you're not going so well. Well, well, this is a B race and my A race is in four weeks and you've just got to, you've got to cut the noise out around you and concentrate on your plan and, and kind of that's the message I want to get in about what's caught my attention. There's lots of lessons that we can learn from the pros and plan and goal for each season.

I want to ask a follow up question on that because it is such an interesting topic for especially age group athletes to go through these experiences. The POG is in unbelievable form right now. He's, he's already won six or seven races this season, plus a few stages. He's just looking unstoppable. Puts 40 seconds into Jonas finger on the climb. Vinegard attacked Pog very early. And I wonder, I know that they're turning up to every race to win. There's no way that they're using it as a training session, as you just said before, but I do wonder if there's a little bit of an element of that in that they want to win, but they want to, you know, Vinegar wants to try it a potentially different way and try an explosive attack because that's where the POG smashes him in those explosive attacks. And in the tour last year, the POG would continuously explode and attack on him and Vinegar would just slowly, you know, chase him down or just stick with him. But he, but he kind of wore the POG down last year rather than exploding away from him. So I wonder if you think there's an element of that in there, that they're using these as training sessions. I'll let you answer that first before I ask the follow up.

Yeah, I definitely think that they've looked at the strengths of Pocketchar and they need to do something to negate that. It's all very well, the example you used was letting, not letting Poga would attack and Vinegar had no choice but to not going in deep into the red zone and then just grind his way back onto the wheel, which he did very successfully. And now I think I, I totally agree with your theory is that he's trying to do things in training. And I'm not saying this is a training race, but I would imagine his training sessions would have lots of 10, 30 second efforts where he's having to go real deep and then go back to threshold. And, and so therefore, you know, why not try it in races like this? And, and he's backing himself in. And you know, when you look at it, I thought, oh yes, that's a, that's a very average move. But then I thought, well, he's trying stuff which he's not renowned for. And then I thought, oh, that's, that's actually a good move. And it cost him, it cost him big time. And they're the, they're the consequences of doing those, those, those decisions. And we always talk about there's consequences for every, every decision you make in a race, in training, in, in your planning. It has consequences both good and bad. And I think if you keep putting yourself out there, you will actually get better at it. And look, he didn't totally capitulate. He only lost 30 or 40 seconds, which I suppose at that level is.

On a small bit, on a small climb, you know.

Yeah, so, so yeah, you know, there's a lot to read into it and we probably are digging too deep here. But, but yeah, I just think if that's, if that's what his mindset is, then chapeau to him. That's, I think that's a really good, good strategy to put into place coming into the season.

The discussion is so relevant though, because we have athletes go through the exact same experience in the lead up to their, A race, especially triathletes, because you'll often will often have triathletes do an Olympic in the lead up to a 70.3 or some sort of sprinter Olympic race practices in the lead up. And they could be, like you said before, anywhere from four to six to eight weeks out. Jess has a good tune up. Plus we might do some mock races in training yourself or in a lot of cases, if an athlete is training for an Ironman in the last 10 weeks of their program somewhere, they're trying to fit a 70.3 in as great race practice. But as you said, you're turning up to them not in your peak form. It is categorized as a B race, meaning that it's not your A race. So it's this weird contradiction of wanting to do as well as possible in that race, but knowing it's not your best race, knowing it's not your be all and end all. But you know, on the large scale of the top cyclists in the world, Vinegar or Poga, if they go into these races like Paris Nice and try things and blow up, they're criticized by the entire world. And they can't just sit there and say, oh, it's all right, I'm just training. They'll get absolutely blasted for it. But it even happens on a small scale to us as amateur athletes where people do say to you, the people around you, oh, what happened there? Or normally you'd be a bit high. And when you have to sit there and say it's not my A race, you sound like an idiot. So how do you manage this expectation of. We've got a few athletes actually doing a 70.3 in the next few weeks and then doing an Ironman in a few months time. How do you manage that expectation of. It's hard if you have a bad result to blow it off as it's not my A race. It feels like a cop out. So how do you approach that?

Yeah, I think you got to be careful with the terms. And the competitiveness that we have is probably one of our. One of the things that it's really hard for our own ego to be okay with that. So you have to have a pretty tough mindset to know that the form I'm in eight weeks out from my A race is my form. That's where I am. I don't expect to be in the form that I'll be in eight weeks time. I could be 5% better in eight weeks time. And plus it's not the same distance. So you're training for an event. In the example you gave as a half ironman training for an ironman or an Olympic distance training for a half ironman, they're faster events than you've been training, training for. So you know, whilst we're working our way towards the event, our training gradually increases in intensity and the duration drops as you get closer to the event and the intensity increases. So you will probably be in different, different form. And, and the mental approach that you have to have to make this work is, is the key to it. So you have to be able to cut out the noise and just, you know, be single minded about what my goal is. And once you've got that mental approach then you just bet the noise is bouncing off, you sort of almost laugh it off. And the answer is this is not the form I want to be in now. I want to be in the form of my life in eight weeks time. And you almost want to say just watch me in eight weeks time. But you can't be that arrogant. It's just not. And the consequences of something going wrong on the day pretty high. But yeah, because we're such competitive beasts we want to perform every time we put a number on and that's the nature of human beings is, you know, I agree with my coach and I've got this right mental approach but you still want to compete at the best of your ability. And as long as you understand the reasons why you're say, you know, you expect to run 4:30 pace for the half marathon and you're really struggling at 4:40. But you know, you still got eight weeks more training to come and you've, you've had a block that's had three weeks of really hard fatiguing training and you've just done this mini taper for two days to get to this event so that you can use it as a training session. You know, logic should play a role in. Why would I think I can run 4:30 pace when I just ran two and a half hours last Sunday and it's now six days later or seven days later and during the week I really didn't taper at all. So my fatigue level is, you know, possibly minus 30 or minus 40, whereas on race day it's going to be positive 10 in my training stress score levels. So these are things that if you think logically then it's a no brainer. But we don't think, we think emotionally a lot of the time. And that's the thing I'm trying to say. Mentally you have to put things in perspective and be methodical in your thought process, and that will alleviate the anxiety you're creating in your own mind. And of course, others around you are creating that as well because they're questioning you. They're not meaning to do that in a derogatory way or trying to put you off. Maybe some people, your competitors might be doing that, but your friends and family, if you have a second to explain this is what the plan is for this weekend, then everybody's on board. And that's kind of the way I would approach it. And it does sound like excuses. Oh, yeah, Look, I'm not. You know, I've seen. There's been many videos with the guy walking into a. Into a bike shop, and he's asking the guy, does my. My shaved legs look good? Does this goo taste better? Does that hammer nutrition I should be taking Am I cranks too long? You know, he's asking 17,000 questions. And. And it's the same. Same theory here is, you know, as long as everybody's informed about what you're doing, it's not excuses. Everybody's on board with. With what your schedule and your programming looks like.

Slightly funny story on this. It just came to me as I. As a kid, I remember you'd come home from constant races, and because you won so many, we would. As kids, literally, we'd come home, we'd say, did you win? And if you didn't win, you'd have to say, nah. And we were like, oh, pathetic. You know, we didn't mean it as kids. We just were so used to either dad wins or dad doesn't win. You know, and it must have been so harsh. You'd have to cop that to come home and go, either I have to win to be successful or it's nothing.

Yeah, but don't you remember me sitting you down saying, jordan, that wasn't my A race, Jordan.

That's my point is there was none of that.

Exactly. Right. I had to cop it. And daddy wasn't so good today. He'll try better next time.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that does lead into the last point about kind of local races and regular races where as a cyclist, you can turn up on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday night every week and do a local crit race. And that's an interesting mindset as well, because you can't be tapering every week for these local crit races. So most people would be turning up to them with some level of fatigue. Maybe you want to have a completely normal training week, but you want to race in there instead. So you could turn up at night and be pretty stuffed from three weeks of a hard block of training and then you want to do well in the race and your ego takes a big blow when you can't perform your best. But, but again it's this fine line of well, I'm not going to taper two days for a local crit race. So you've really got to put your ego aside, I guess, and just understand where you're at.

And one of the things I always look back on is guys who see you train and race week in, week out. If you're going to do crit races or you're going to do B or C races, club races, as a triathlete doing maybe some shorter distance races and, and if you just perform mediocre, people would be definitely observing that if they're following you. And then when you come to your A race and you have the best race possible, then they get perspective of far out, he wasn't going or she wasn't going that well six weeks ago or eight weeks ago. Now they've hit the race right at the right time and it takes history for them to understand the perspective. But they then go, oh, next time that happens, oh yeah, this is what he or she normally does. They have all these races and they're not performing well. But you wait, you wait till they get to their A race. They will be in the form of their life. And then you've almost turned people around because of your history of performance based on what you've done previously. So there's a lot to it. And look, we are getting caught up in a lot of what people, you're worried about what people are saying, which is not about that. And if you take that completely away then, then you'll be fine. And look, we are human beings and we have an element of, you know, we, we, everybody has an ego and we don't want it to be to be tarnished or damaged or you know, and, and, but that, that you got to suck it up and, and just be single minded and, and the most successful athletes around the world, that's what they are. They're very single minded and, and you know, the noise bounces off them. That's, it's like you've got the cone of silence in if you're a get smart fan, you know, or a shield if you know all that noise is just bouncing off here and it doesn't affect you and you're a pretty special human being if you can do that. But that's what you should be doing.

Well, that leads to the last thing that caught my attention and that is just looking at where the Norwegians are at in their season and, you know, being World champions, Gustaf and Christian, they're currently in a horrible position in their season and the world is seeing it. Christian is actually injured, which doesn't happen to them very often. So he had to missed the first World Championship race in Abu Dhabi and Gustav turned up and he came 52nd and had an absolute stinker. And he's the world 70.3 champion and Ironman champion. Sorry. And you know, they've. They've said in videos behind the scenes that they know they're going to go through a rough period because they've just come off a year of Ironman training for the world champs last year. And to make that switch back to Olympic racing at the top level, they've basically said it's no one's ever done it before and come back to the top level. So they know it's going to be tough and they're being humble about it. They know that they're going to suck for this period. And Christoph was laughing, just saying that was absolutely a performance to forget. But that's where they're at right now. And they did a great video where they started doing their testing and they went behind the scenes of all their VO2 max and lab testing and lactate testing as they were starting this training block for Olympic distance. And they kept saying over and over in the video, and this is a little bit of ego as well, I guess, but they kept saying, we don't care what the numbers are right now. We're not trying to hit record numbers of VO2 max. We know that our Ironman training has changed our physiology and we need to see where that's at so we can adjust our training accordingly and know what we have to work on specifically for the Olympic training program. So a lot of athletes can get hung up on testing, even just field testing, FTP tests, and you want to break your own record every single time, but that's just not the goal. The goal is to improve it when it's necessary, but a lot of the time it's finding out where you are and being okay with where you are so you know what you have to work on. And people will avoid a really hard session or going to a race or going to do a hill climb that's relevant to their specific race because they're afraid that the result will be poor when the whole purpose of the test is to find out exactly where you're at. And I just thought they provided a really good example of that. If you look at where they're at now, they're not in a very good position, but their goal is Paris 2024. They've got over 12 months, 15 months or so to get themselves into form, so they're not panicking. So I think that's a really good example to look at.

Yeah, and look, the whole, the whole topic of form that they want their form to be in 2024. And of course, because there's such high elite, exposed athletes, and that's by their own doing that they are in the media and they're going to have to cop people questioning everything back. But already, like I was saying before, because they've been so successful, people won't question it as much. They'll just say, okay, we're going, we're going to watch them go through this new process, and most people will be on board with what's happening. And, you know, I think that's a good thing about how you communicate what you're doing. So, you know, they're explaining it themselves already, and anybody who's listening to it could be rhetoric. It could just be, Jesus, you know, I'm just not performing at the moment. I don't know what's wrong. But they're not saying that. It's, it's, this is, this is what we're explaining, why it's happening, why we think it's happening. And, you know, come the Olympics in 2024, you know, just watch this space. And I'd be surprised if they're, if they're not fighting it out once again for the victory.

So it's taking us a little bit longer than normal to get to the actual topic of the episode, which is how to individualize your program and tailor it to you. But we're going to get into it now. The reason that this topic has come about is because one of the most frequent questions we get from athletes is, can I do more here or can I do more there, or should I do a little bit less here or less there? And you're constantly trying to teach athletes where it's appropriate to do more and where it's appropriate to do less and have that knowledge themselves. They don't have to ask you that question. And I don't want to use the word frustrated, but you get potentially frustrated with experienced athletes who should know this. When you say you should know where you can, where you can do more yourself and the Less experienced athletes, it's a learning process of finding out about their body. But I want to start this off by talking about what are the factors that you need to consider as an athlete that individualize wow your program to yourself?

I suppose you have to strip it right back, don't you? And we're going to really concentrate on the key factors here. And don't forget everybody, whether you're a new person to the sport that you've chosen or whether you're highly experienced, the answers are always going to be the same. And so that's the first thing I want to get across, having a coach, your expectation of the coach is to help you and guide you on these decisions about what should I be doing more, less today? I'm a bit unsure about what I should be doing today. And obviously the less experienced athlete, that would be a fair enough question. The person who's been doing this a long time, they might just be wanting to run it past. They've got their plan in mind and they just want confirmation. So whereas the least experienced athlete has no clue, he's actually asking. I don't know what to do. So the range of the spectrum is huge and we've got everything in between. And I've made the mistake myself of I'm a very experienced athlete, but I've made poor decisions about when I should be doing more or when I shouldn't be doing more. So I'm not here criticizing anybody. I'm just saying that it isn't an easy thing to get right. So let's just get that clear from the outside. It's not an easy thing to get right. So the more you go through experiences, the better the answers you'll come up with. So. So, for example, we had a situation where one of our athletes had all these plans last weekend. It was a huge set of goals that he was setting for the next four days. And rather than me doing my usual put my coach's hat on and say, no, you can't do that, you can't do this, you should be doing this. I really wanted to give that person a bit more leeway. And I think from over the years, I'm definitely changing my mind on rather than me preventing people from making mistakes, I almost think sometimes it's better that they do make a mistake and then understand the consequences far more clearly than if I prevent them from making that mistake. And I've got to be very careful about what the mistake they're making is. And if it's putting them into a hole that Lasts six months, I'm not going to let that happen. But if it's just going to cause fatigue for an extra four or five days, then so be it. And at the end of the day, that's a great lesson that they've learned and we can discuss that as a team. And we did have that discussion beforehand. And the question was, race. Thursday night there happened to be a 10 hour gravel bike race the next day, then a bunch ride on Saturday and then another long endurance ride on Sunday. And I'm saying, no, nope, you select two of those events out of the four and no, no, no, I should be okay. And that's the answer. I'm getting back and let's see how I go. And so in the end I'm going, okay, that's what you want to choose? Then let's see what happens. And you know, really excellent Thursday session. No worries. Race well, had a great day on the Friday, 10 hour endurance gravel ride on top of the world, wakes up Saturday morning, jumps into the bunch ride, can't pedal and understand straight away, oh God, I need to turn around, this is no good, I can't do this session today. So they're examples of can I do more or can I do less? And that person understood that really clearly straight out. And that's a good experience for both the coach and the athlete. Discuss it first, see what happens. And then he made a great decision on Saturday. Had he kept going because he's such a competitive person and tried to get around that course, he probably wouldn't still be riding, you know, seven days later, he would be in such a fatigue state. And that's kind of one example of where we want to go with this topic.

Spot on. And I think if we look at what's ideal, and the ideal is you have a program and you want that program to suit your individual needs as best as possible. I guess the question is, what are your individual needs? And as you always say, the work starts with the goal. And whenever someone says to you, what can I achieve here? What program should I be on? The first question you ask is, what's your goal? Is it a race goal? Do you have a time goal? Is it a completion goal? That's the very first thing. And then once you've established that end goal that you're working towards, or it's just a PB or it's even a training goal, then you start going through the individual factors as an athlete, which is what's your training history, what's your current fitness level? Like, what's your injury history? How much have you been riding, swimming or running the last three months, last six months, the last year? Have you had big experience in another sport, which we talk about a lot, which could potentially carry over? What else is there that you look for to start thinking about the individual needs of an athlete?

Yeah, their capacity to absorb load is almost forgotten. And understanding that person's ability and being in tune with that person and getting that person to be in tune with their own body. And, you know, the excitement and the motivation of starting a new program is. Is it's second to none, isn't it? Oh, fantastic. I'm on this program. Let's see how well I can go. I want to show the coach that I'm. That I'm. That I'm really good and I'm really consistent because that's what we talked about. You know, you only can be on this program if you're willing to do the work. And the consistency thing is the key to it. And I'm going to show this coach and I'm, you know, even though we talk about it, it's okay to be in the middle or the bottom end of the zones in training or to be at the top, depending on how you feel on any given day. In the first block of training, almost to every athlete, they are trying to be at the top and trying to show how good they are. And I'm forever saying, stop, stop showing me how good you are. Show me how good you are in eight weeks, in 12 weeks, in 16 weeks. That's a more indicative level of your commitment to consistency. And it's easy at the start, just like it's easy at the start of a 5k run or a triathlon. Everything's easy because you're fresh. And this is the same in a training program. You are fresh and the fatigue is minimal. If you haven't come in from a hard period of training and you're just mentally, you're on top of it. You're loving life and you're motivated and you can see your fitness just going in an upward direction. And the thing that I'm trying to get people to understand is you have to understand how you are coping each day and train accordingly and let the coach know by just giving little notes along the way. You know, rode at the top of the zone today, felt really easy, or tried to ride at the top of the zone today, could not do it, was only battling to be in the middle of the zone. And then that conversation then goes straight away to why were you pushing so hard, if you didn't feel so good, you know, drop it back to the bottom of the zone for that day. So that because you gotta live to fight another day and tomorrow and then the next day and the next day, they all count, they all count in that consistency. And if you keep thinking about the one thing I have to get right in the first 20 weeks of my new seasons program is being consistent and the intensity and the duration will sabotage it every time. So if you do too much with too much intensity, your consistency will go out the window. So the single minded thing that you should be thinking about is how do I feel on any given day to allow me to be a consistent trainer. And that is a better way of going than trying to do hero sessions every third day and then having four days where you can't get out of bed or can barely put your running shoes on. So can I do more here or there? Absolutely you can. But. But there are consequences with your decisions. And don't forget that consistency is going to be the determining factor. If you can't back up, you're training too hard.

There are some obvious factors. If you look at a program, if you're an athlete and you get a program, you look at it, you've got to make sure, do I have the time available for this? Logistically, can I do this program? But this is a very underrated question I think that age group athletes might not address because like you said, you get so motivated, you think you can do anything. But you really have to look at what's your work life balance like at the moment? How stressful is work? What's your family balance like at the moment? How many hours do you actually have available? Because it's detrimental to your own motivation to attempt a program that just isn't possible with your time availability and the stresses you might have on with work at the moment. You've spoken about this plenty of times before where someone is really motivated to do an ironman. And that motivation might have come from watching the ironman world champs or watching your friend do an iron man and they really want to do it. But you always say you have to be so realistic, like is this something that's actually viable for your life? And that's kind of one of the starting points. And how much time do you have between now and your race goal to achieve this? Is this program actually possible for you? Possible is the wrong word. I'm going to say. Realistic and viable is a really good word there. It's not going to really have a negative impact on your life.

There's so much in that, George. There's so many actual topics that you've raised. We could spend another hour on each one of those. And look, I think summarizing the better planned you are as long as you've got a family and a job that is going to go along with the journey. But planning is the key. And at the start of each week or each block, you need to be in tune with your work and your family's requirements and then plan your training around that.

That.

And of course there's going to be roadblocks thrown at you every single day of that next three weeks or that week or that day. So even when, even though you've got a plan for the week, you wake up on the Tuesday and someone in the house is sick and therefore you can't go to work because you have to stay home with your child who's sick. And so straight away you can't train because the child is needing your attention. So these are things that, that you know, you have to be flexible with your planning. You have to have a really good plan, but it has to have flexibility in it. And that's just one example of many thousands of examples that I could throw at you that will hit you in the between the eyes. Every day you wake up that something happens where you have to make the most of the opportunities you get. So people, one thing that people say is to me, oh, the session was an hour 20 or the session was 45 minutes, I only had 15 minutes so I didn't think it was worth it. It so I didn't do anything. And that is just the complete opposite to what you should be doing. Remember, consistency is what we're trying to achieve and whether it's 15 minutes or 30 minutes, you're still better off doing something than nothing. And you'll feel better about yourself. You'll beat yourself up if you miss it. That's one thing that's going to happen. You'll be a grumpy, angry person with everybody around you and you're better off just even if it's, I don't know, 7:30 at night, 8:00 clock at night. I've got some people I just shake my head at who are on the trainer at 9:30 at night, which I think is absolutely fantastic. If they're that committed that that's the only time they've got to train, I just say well done. And I'm sort of probably texting some of them saying, you know, don't overdo it because it is hard to sleep after an hour 10 session when you finished at quarter to 11 and you're trying to go to bed, you know your body's is kind of a bit wired and you know it's not an easy thing and it can be detrimental. So you've just got to be careful with so many of these things. But you know, consistency is king and if you don't want to go through the day without missing it, you've got to find it somewhere in the day and if that's the time available. But then you've got to ask the question, should I do the session, the high intensity session, if it is, or the hill repeats as a runner or an easy run, or, you know, I can't go to the pool because it's closed, what should I be doing in replacing it? So knowing that you're not going to get a reasonably good sleep with a high intensity session, you need to really dull that down a bit. And especially if you're already feeling tired and feeling some anxiety or some stress from whatever's been happening, make changes for the session. And just because it's written in black and white doesn't mean that's what you have to do. You have to be flexible and those better decisions will still keep your consistency going and you won't, you won't lose fitness at all because you're keeping the consistency going. What's the outcome of not doing the hard session? The outcome in a sentence is your progression will be slower. Just absorb that. You're not going to lose fitness, but you won't progress at the rate that you normally would. You'll just take maybe four or five days longer at the end of 16 weeks to get to where you want to. So if you think about it like that, then you take away a lot of that anxiety of oh, geez, the session says I have to do this. Well, it doesn't say I have to anywhere. There's nothing in that written session that says you have to do this. This is a recommended session that'll help you improve your fitness and progress you as an athlete. If you can't do the session as it's done, doing a percentage of it or a section of it or a fraction of it is still going to maintain consistency where you're not losing any fitness, you're not regressing, but you're marking time, you're maintaining, but you're just not progressing at the same rate. And that's okay. And get that through your head that, that's okay. And then at the end of the day, you'll be a much better and happier person and you can deal with whatever's happening because you know that it's okay. And I think that's a key thing here.

Well, I think that is not only a key thing. I think that is one of the fundamental principles of at least our coaching philosophy. And I think what you think talking about is just a golden lesson for athletes to understand in that when we're talking about this topic, this is the answer that we want to get across. We're not trying to give an answer of here's the exact ways to individualize and tailor program and sessions towards you. Because as I said at the start in the intro, that's actually a myth. The individual sessions around the world, there's only so many types of interval sessions you can do. There's only certain types of endurance rides you can do and length you can do. That can't change too much. And so it's not going to be individualized on, on a level to you that's so different to everyone else. You look at all the pro clubs around the world. We just spoke to Stuart McSwain a few weeks ago, part of the Melbourne Track Club, one of the best 1500 meter runners in the world. Him and everyone in his group, they're doing the exact same training program. But the difference is exactly what you just spoke about in having flexibility around the program. And what we know is so important is analyzing how you feel in comparison to the program and then being able to adjust accordingly each week. That is what we actually mean by individualizing the program to you. We're not talking about necessarily changing the structure of the program and how it's written to start with. That all comes with, you know, a well written program is, is, is tailored around, you know, if you're a beginner athlete, you have a beginner amount of volume, you have a beginner amount of frequency, and the intensity distribution and the zones that you're training in are appropriate for a beginner athlete. And same with intermediate up to advanced. But what we're really talking about is this flexibility that you just touched on. And Stu was saying that if on weeks where he's tired, he'll really dial back those easy runs and he won't push as hard in the intensity sessions. We spoke to Dave McNeil last year who's part of the exact same Melbourne track Club, and he decided that individually he just wasn't coping with the three hard intensity sessions that the group were doing. So he dropped one and replaced it with an easy day. And that is an example of, you know, the program's still basically the same, but he's just adjusting minor things to suit his needs. And we see this at the top level. So it absolutely applies down to us as age group and amateur athletes. And I could keep going through examples. You know, Ollie Hoare and his training group are just absolutely dominating world athletics at the moment. They're just, they're running the world's best times right now. And they're all. They all do the same session. You see that, the footage of their training, and they're doing the exact same track session. And I'm sure that individually, if an athlete wasn't feeling it, that would off in the session. They'd sit at the back of the pack. They might miss a rep, which happens very frequently in group training. But they're doing the type of group training at that pro level where they can get it right. And this is where probably as amateur athletes, we can get that wrong, where we just try. And if we're doing something like group training, we try and just do it no matter what. And we're not adjusting it based on feel. And this has been a bit of a rant for me. But the last point I want to make on this is probably one of the best coaches in the world, the coach of the Norwegian triathlon program, Olav Alexander. When he gets asked what's the most important metric that they pay attention to? Because they pay attention to everything from core temperature to lactate levels to VO2 max testing, they measure absolutely every single part of their athlete's efficiency. He says the number one data that he pays attention to is feel. And that, I think, for me, just summarizes exactly what we're talking about with individualizing a program. To you, it's really about how you're responding to the program and what, what's the benefit you're getting from every training session and every week?

Yeah, there's so much that you've talked about there. And I was just thinking while you were talking about the Norwegians and having interviewed a lot of the people who are involved in the beginning of that 20 year almost story now, isn't it from getting those guys at a young age, and really, those guys have trained together a lot and, and there's a lot of positive things about training together, but there's also some negative things. And if you've got too big an ego, you end up. Someone in the group ends up training too hard. Someone in the Group ends up training too easy. So it's like it being in a classroom and having such different levels of ability in grade one where there's some kids who can read and write fluently and some kids who can't even write their name. So how do you teach with such a variety of ability? And so when you in a group training session, you have people who are trying to keep up with people who are better than them, and they're going to actually be detrimental to their training. And one of the examples I remember was Christian was running on the track and they were doing 1k repeats and he was running wide and Gustav was running shorter. And. And Gustav was saying, I can't run at that because that's going to. I can't run at that pace because that's going to upset my lactate level. Level. So I run a shorter distance. I run on the inside.

He was in lane one and Christian was in lane three or four.

That's right. And that was him, you know, adjusting the session to fit his individual needs. And then there were other sections where he'd drop off and I'm not ready for this today. I'm going to run a lot slower. And, you know, it was a great. My view of what I was watching was Christian was happy and smiling and Gustav was having to explain, you know, and yet on the key race of the year, Gustav ran away from Christian at Kona. So, you know, that's one of the things you're trying to get across, is you have to train according to how you're feeling and where you're at on that given day. The training sessions are key. You need to be doing VO2, you need to be doing threshold, you need to be doing tempo. They're all part of the program and that has to be important. Don't let's dismiss that. The program is really important, knowing what to do on any given day. But the program's not the be all and end all. When you're struggling on some day to hit the targets, you have to have to make decisions based on how you're feeling on that day. And that's no different to how you're feeling on race day. So we're trying to practice you getting in touch with your own feelings in training so that when it comes race day, if you start the swim and the pack is swimming away from you, you know, do you go into the red zone to sprint to catch up to them? You make decisions there. If you're on the bike and you've been caught by a bunch behind you and they're riding at 20 to 30% higher than you want to. You make a decision based on how you feel, whether I go with that or I stay. And we've seen that happen at St. George, where a couple of the riders blew past Christian and Gustav and they let them go.

Go.

Who won the race? The Norwegians won the race. You know, good decision making is hard when you're being put under pressure and that. You know, think about that. The race is going up the road, yet I'm letting it happen. That's not easy to do, you know, as a competitor, you've got to trust and back yourself. And what are they doing? Their understanding of their own feelings is phenomenal. That. That's too hard at this particular point, you know, and you can think of classic examples from the way different riders or athletes or triathletes go about their business. We know, for example, Contrador on a climb would hate it to be steady tempo. He would want to get out of the seat and attack every two or three minutes and just put everybody in the red zone. And doing that 20 times, he ends up riding away from the bunch because that was the tactic that allowed him to. To get people out of their comfort zone. So. So you're. You're having to make decisions in the race with Contador to go with him. Like we had Armstrong and. And Froomen. Those guys in that generation, they didn't respond. They said like vinegar does. They sat back and just got themselves back on with their team. You know, the sky Train. Always just riding themselves back onto the back of the. Any. Any rider who was attacking, it would have been so frustra years earlier. That was the way to break down everybody and win. And yet the smart coaching and writing prevented that by writing a different tactic. And so you have to understand your ability that is key in training and how you feel on that day. So in a race, you also have to understand your ability and how you feel on the day. And if you're like Van der Poel at Strade Bianca, you just didn't have it on the day. You just live to fight another day. It's not going to happen today. You've had your best crack, but the feelings aren't there. You know, it's not the end of the world. He's put that behind him already and disappointment for him. But what's my next race? I get another opportunity. And that's the mindset I'd like the age grouper to have. Who's listening is sure I trained and put everything into this one event and maybe I didn't do the event that I wanted it, but geez, I'm so motivated to get it right next time. But I, I need to work out what went wrong this time first. And so that's kind of important as well. Did I, did I race too hard? The conditions were different to what I expected. Did I get my nutrition wrong? Was it hotter? Did I not fuel enough? Did I dehydrate? Did I ride too hard? In the ride? You know, you've got to ask yourself all the questions about what happened and, and, and understand your feelings. That's kind of key. And I'm sort of going across a lot of topics here, but the feeling topic is really going to contribute to whether you should be training harder or easier. And that's the message I want to get across.

And I guess to summarize from a structure perspective, the golden question you can ask to really assess whether your program is suitable to your individual needs or not is you look, look at three core training principles. And we go on about these, but they're just so important to keep referring back to. And it's volume, sorry, frequency first, then volume, then intensity. And I guess how would you go about it? You really just ask yourself, is this volume something I can handle? Is this frequency something I can handle? Is intensity something that I can handle? And you're continuously assessing that throughout each session, throughout each day, depending on how you're feeling, throughout each week, throughout each block even. And that's where as you get more experience than an athlete, you can start to manipulate those variables to suit your needs. As you get more experience, you get more used to the frequency of training and the longer rides. You know, suddenly you're used to a three or four hour endurance ride because you've done six weeks in a row of them. You can push yourself to four and a half hours or five hours and keep it easy, but see how you respond to that. And for a lot of your experienced guys, when they ask you, oh, can I go have a real crack and go five, six hours plus in the mountain, mountains, you start to say yes, but then there's caveats come in like, well, how far are you going to go? Is that going to be detrimental for your next day, for your next week? And these are the questions you ask yourself. But it's a really good way to go about assessing your training program and making sure it's suiting your needs and your development.

Yeah, spot on. And one of the examples I was thinking as you were talking was, every single time I get asked that question, can I do more? I'm straight away trying to formulate who this person is. Are they experienced, are they intermediate or are they entry? And my answer will be almost every time. Okay, this is a new person and I've asked them in the initial interview, what's your longest bike ride you've done in the last year? What's the longest run you've done? What's the longest distance you've swum, you know, in time and in distance? And the answer might be, for person A, my longest run was 40 minutes. And they're asking me, can they go and do a half marathon? And my answer is going to be, that's not a really good idea at this stage because you haven't, you know, this half marathon could take you two hours and the longest run you've done is 45 minutes. That sounds absolutely logical. But that's the question I'm getting asked. If an experienced person says to me, and if I only. They've only been training for a short time and they've been running all their life and they've done, you know, maybe an hour's run, an hour and 15 and they want to do a half marathon, that's coming up, my answer is going to be different. My answer is going to be, yep, you could cope with this. But, but the question I would say to them is, you know, are you, are you feeling like you can cope with that volume at this stage? And, and you know what, what are your intentions with the intensity? So there's a whole lot of things that I would be thinking in my head about the history and the level of experience before I'm contributing to the answer of yes, that's a great idea, or no, I think you should reconsider that. So for someone whose longest ride is 40k, you know, could be an hour to an hour and 20. If they're telling me that they've got a ride that's 100k next week, week, I'm saying to them, yeah, you can go and have a go at that. But understand that you've never been further than an hour and a half and this is looking more like a four hour ride for you. Let's just have a talk about the consequences of that and what it will do for your training session the next day and the next five days. Wouldn't you be better off deferring that 100k for five more weeks until you get from 40 to 50 to 70 to 80 to 90, then get to 100. And that sounds boring, but that will prevent you from having any doms, from having any fatigue and allowing you to keep the number one thing that we said right from the outset, consistency. You do that 100k. Yep, you probably can do it. You'll be exhausted, you'll have sore legs, you'll be sleeping on the couch for the day and the next day probably and probably not be able to train the high intensity session that you meant to do two days later. So yeah, there are the consequences, but you can do it. Yes, you can. That's the answer. You can do it. But understand that there will be huge consequences or small consequences. And that's the message that we're trying to get across is, you know, the answer is always yes, do whatever you like, but just be aware that consistency is what we're trying to achieve and preventing ourselves from being that tired and sore that we can't function as a human being. And I guarantee if your wife sees you or your husband sees you lying on the couch for six hours after you've done a training session that's not going to last till you long, they're going to be pretty upset with, with you not contributing to whatever you're supposed to be doing as a, as a wife or as a, as a husband. You know, you're having a great time with all your mates training and then you come home and you just useless that, that, you know, that's a factor that has to be considered. So, you know, the person who, who does things in a progressive manner won't have that feeling of exhaustion every single endurance day. Sure, you'll be tired, but you'll still be able to function the way you should be.

The last point I want to talk about to finish this episode is this theme that you've kind of touched on throughout the whole topic. And it's inherent in the questions of can I do more or even can I do less? And it's this fear of losing fitness or fear of not getting to your goal fast enough. And when an athlete is asking, can I do more? You know, it's they, they won, they want to get there faster to their goal faster, which is a great ambition. And two, they're afraid that if they don't keep pushing themselves potentially that they'll lose that fitness. And it's actually the same thing when someone says, is it okay if I do less? They're worried that if they do less, it's a bad thing for their training. They're not going to get the results they want. And sometimes when that question's been asked it means that they're feeling really tired, they're feeling really fatigued, they're not feeling up to it. They're asking permission to do a bit less because they're that tired. But they feel like it's the wrong thing to do. They feel like they're doing the wrong thing by the program. And what you're saying is, is how you're feeling is so, so, so important there to, to get right and to understand that it is totally okay to do less sometimes if that's what you need. Because in the scheme of things, in the scheme of a 16 week program or a 24 week program, it's not going to affect you too much. Whereas over training and not taking that into account and not individualizing it to your needs is, is going to have a detrimental impact on your program. And it's the same thing with the doing more. If it's appropriate for you that's going to be fine. But if it's not appropriate for you it's going to have a detrimental impact on your program. Would you agree with all that?

Yeah. And look the two things we're talking about and let's just break it down, it's the program and the feelings and you're having a fight between both. Here's my program and it's perfect for me and here's how I feel and I don't feel very good at the moment. Am I letting the program down? Am I letting myself down? Here's the program. I feel great. I want to do more. If I do more am I going to be letting the program down? Am I going to be causing too much fatigue? So they're the questions that you need to be asking yourself all the time. The program is the program and it should be. If it's not clear now to everybody listening it needs to be flexible. And just because it's written that that's what you're doing on a given day that doesn't necessarily mean that that's what you have to do. That is the ideal program to get you from a, in 16 weeks time to, to. To your. To your goal race. If you ticked off every single session at 100% the way the goal and the. And the intensity of the session was recommended, you would be in the.000 percentage point one of the people in the world because that it's just not possible to, to hit every single target every single day. There will be ups and downs along that journey journey. So get that clear in your head and then really be good at the feeling side of it. So if you're wanting to do more, you're not going to do more at more intensity. If you understand that concept. Straight away, people say to me, can I do more on the hard day on a Tuesday, can I do more training? I say, yeah, but it's all in zone one or two. So you can add time to that, but you're not changing the 20 minute high intensity section of the training session. That is not going to be touched. I don't want you doing another set, I don't want you doing two more sets. I want you to leave the exact amount of sets that you're asked to do. And if you feel like it was too easy, then probably we need to retest you and your FTP is wrong. But that shouldn't be the case. Normally you should be just satisfied with, you know, there's the intensity. Let's do more zone 2 afterwards or before if you've got the time.

Time.

And they're easy answers to reply to when people are asking, can I do more? And I know what they're asking, can I do more intensity? And I'm just saying straight out, that's not what you should be asking. You should be asking, can I add some more volume to the session? And as long as it's in this intensity, the answer is always going to be yes. With consequences of if you do too much. Say you added an hour and a half to a session that that's meant to be 90 minutes and you've added, make it a three hour session. If you can't back up two or three days later, then you've done too much. So instantly you've got that response mentally back and physically. And how do you determine that? Because you feel crap and you don't hit the targets and you wake up and go, oh, I don't know how I'm going to do this session today and I don't know what's wrong with me. Well, you do know what's wrong with me. You're just not even, not even thinking clearly. I did too much two days ago. And then, so that's the, that's the extra stuff. So I'm absolutely on board with people who've got more time to do more training volume. So the duration can improve the frequency or the consistency stays the same and the intensity stays the same. The extra stuff comes at low intensity. And so the opposite is I'm feeling tired, I don't think I should be doing the session. I Should do less. Is that okay? Well, as we've established already, it is absolutely okay. And it's almost like imperative that you do less. And that'll enable you A to keep the consistency going and B not lose any fitness regardless of you doing the session at an intensity that's way apart from the intensity of the intensity of the session. So yes, that should be paramount to your thinking is I'm not going to get through this session. I've tried the warmup, I'm just not able to function properly in this session. It's okay to do the session. If the session is asking you to do 95 to 105% of your FTP, do the same session, but bring it back to 75 to 80% of your FTP. And if that seems too much, still do the same session. If it might be five by five minute effort that's at low cadence, do it at 65 to 75%. And you don't even need the coach to tell you to give you a new session. Do the session that's written for you. Just change the intensity. And if then you're still struggling, just ride for 15 or 20 minutes and get off. And if you're still struggling, get off after you've spent 10 minutes warming up. These are all the things that you should be able to understand yourself. And that's really important that everybody out there listening can make those decisions independently of, you know, how you feel, you know you're a motivated person because you've already got a program and you want to do the program to the best of your ability. So that's not in question here. The question you're asking yourself is, am I wussing out? Well, no, you're not. You're actually making a really good decision. And the consequences of that really good decision is you will be better in three or four days or however long it takes you to recover. Doing less from my experience in the last two or three years, it's almost shocked me. Doing less seems to be enabling people to stay fresher, longer and perform better. But there is a caveat to that. They need a huge base for that to happen. And after a period of time that will go the other way. But if you've trained really well for months into years, and if you have a period where you sometimes less is better and you're just concentrating on hard sessions or racing and recovering in between, you will actually perform better because you've just shed the fatigue and you've got this incredible fitness base where it doesn't matter that your fitness is dropping, but your fatigue level is so low your form's massive. And that's almost where we started was form is what we're trying to achieve here. And fatigue shedding is the key to form. And intensity stays the same or if not improves because your fatigue is so low and therefore your form goes through the roof. And that's what we're trying to achieve by doing more or less. And feelings that you continually have to ask yourself and it should be erased, that you're going to do will determine how you go about each day.

Each session couldn't have been said any better. The final caveat, I think is because we've really spoken so much about assessing how you're feeling physically and responding to the program, is that it's assuming that it's a well written program. Assuming that it's a well written program based on the factors we started with, which is your race goal, your current training level, your current training fitness, your fitness history, your injury history, your time availability, it has to be a good, well written, structured program in that regard that suits your needs of current frequency, current volume, current intensity. And if that's not the case, then you go into this individualization that we've spoken about this episode. So I think that's a great way to finish. Been a long episode, but we really want to hammer this point home, which I think we have. Thanks as always for listening and we'll see you on the next one.