The Biggest Lessons We Wish We Knew As Beginners

The coach saying, just go and enjoy the run. Just go and have a nice, enjoyable run with no pressure. Got enough pressure already.

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, Jarrett Donnelly. Coming into the sport of triathlon or cycling, their learning curve can be overwhelming. There's suddenly a large list of new equipment you have to get you familiar with. You have to learn how to train properly. Racing and events can be daunting. And overall there is a steep learning curve. So today we're going through the biggest lessons we wish we knew as beginners. This isn't just for beginners. These sports are a constant learning process and even the pros are still learning from consistent mistakes. As always, this episode is brought to you by our proud sponsor, Giant Australia, for all your bike training and racing needs. Ride life. Ride Giant Dad. A big episode ahead. Let's start with our normal segment. What are you grateful for?

Thanks, Jordan. Looking forward to it as usual. I'm definitely keen on. I know the northern hemisphere won't be that excited about this because they can head into some of the cooler weather and possibly snow and freezing conditions where they can't really go outside. But summer is really starting to encroach on Southern hemisphere and, and that means that the racing season is really opening up and we got a first hand look at pretty much the, I think is the. There's lots of other races going on, but the Noosa Triathlon is kind of the opening race to the season in my opinion and it's one of the all time epic races. If you've never done it, you should get yourself to that event. It's something I did in the 80s. It's been going for over 40 years. This year was the 40th Noosa Triathlon and I think there was, I think a total of nearly 13,000 competitors across all individuals and teams. And that's a huge amount of athletes. It's a very well run race considering the amount of traffic that's. I'm not talking about cars, I'm talking about competitors traffic. It's a really iconic beach. The Noosa beach is beautiful. It's. It can have different conditions at certain days and luckily the conditions were quite good. It can have a bit of surf, so you could strike. Strike a very average swimming day if the surf's big. But luckily around this time of the year. The surf's not that big, so the conditions in the water were great. The bike course is super fast. It's got a great hill in it called Garmin hill. Anywhere from 5 minutes if you're a pro to 10 minutes if you're at the back of the field. And, and it's a really great road surface, very technical, lots of turns. And the run course is, is really set up for a fast run. It's pretty flat, but it does get humid and it is hot. So it's one of those races I, I'm, you know, really glad that I've done over the, over the years early on. And yeah, look, it's a great, great event to be at.

I love that gratitude because depending on your seasons, whether, you know, whenever you're coming to the summer racing, you've just come out of a winter period of training and a lot of that training will be done indoors. Depending on where you live, you're doing a lot of hard work for potentially just some individual testing and not much. Not many chances to test yourself in a race or in event or against other people. And so now's the time where you start to see, okay, I get. You start to reap the rewards of the potential training you've done. Did you train properly through winter? And for some people, you know, you can easily lose motivation in winter and you don't do that much. And then you get to now and you go, oh, no, I'm not as fit as I wanted to be at the start of the season. Then you have to spend the next six or 12 weeks trying to catch up from what you didn't do in winter. Whereas for those athletes that really stuck it out and were able to stick to their hard training through this hard period can start to reap the rewards over summer. So I really like that gratitude.

Yeah, I think it's for all the athletes that we coach for the event. I think there was 11 Trivalo athletes. Oh, most of them really had a great day and it's real testament to the work and preparation they'd done prior to it. So, yeah, it's really exciting start to the season and it's really motivating for them to find and look at it, analyze the things that they might have done better and move forward to the next race.

My gratitude is a. Sometimes it could be a cliche one, but it's access to clean water. I just watched a great YouTube clip of a YouTuber who is probably the biggest YouTuber in the world right now. He's making the most amount of money and he just decided that he wants to start giving as much of his money away as possible. And he, he's, he's proudly makes it doesn't take home much money. His actual channel makes a lot of money, but he hasn't personally take home much. He lives in a very simple, modest house, lives a very simple life. And he just decided that he wanted to start making some change. And he built 100 wells in 100 different villages in Africa. And they went and showed kind of these villages and just get some perspective of for them to have clean water. The whole village in some of these places will have to walk 2km twice a day or carrying a bucket each or some sort of bucket or thing to fill the water up. They all got this epic climb for 2km, fill it up or walk back down. That's their water for half the day. And then they do it again in the afternoon. And I just thought the whole village is doing that every day just to survive off water. And it really gives you some perspective of just how easy it is to have access to something like clean water. I really like that. And to see the 100 villages get dug these epic wells where it was just free flowing water right next to town, it was just awesome to see and maybe really appreciate what we already have.

Fantastic. I love that it's, it's perspective at its highest level. The basic necessity, necessity we have is, is drinking water. It's, it's brilliant.

Moving on to our next segment. What's caught your attention? I wanted to start off by talking about a bit of a sporting analogy and this is kind of a specific analogy to our Australian audience. And I can now say sorry to the international audience we have, which we're kind of proud to say is 50% of our audience now. So in fact we've just had athletes sign up from America, Canada, Europe and the UK in the last one to two weeks. And so if you're wondering if you can be coached by us from overseas, absolutely you can. But yeah, it's, you know, not everyone's going to be as familiar with the AFL as our Aussie audience of the, the Aussie Football League. But our motto has always been enjoyment and improvement and we really harp on that. And it's, it's not, it's not results based, it's not outcome based, it's not determined by your best power or your best pace on a 10 kilometer run or your best swim pace. It's enjoyment and improvement first and then the results do come and the outcomes do come and, but we, we really harp on that. And a Melbourne team won the, the championship, the Premiership this year and one of their players has been doing a podcast all year and he has consistently said all year how much the secret to their success and how the whole group has been so confident all the, all year in their ability to win. Because the biggest factor that they've changed is that they've made a real effort to enjoy their training and, and playing again and enjoy competing. And he's just said blatantly on the podcast, it's no secret. We all turn up every day to the club ready to train, ready to have fun, ready to work as hard as we need to when, when it's time to work. And outside of that, we're having the most fun. We're as a closer team as you can get. And that stems from their coach and leading to the final series. He was just saying we have so much confidence in our ability as a group. And he was basically saying we don't know if we're gonna win or not. But you know, they just love absolutely playing. And I just couldn't, I couldn't reiterate that more for just our own perspective of how much a difference it can make when you are. Enjoy enjoying the process. And that's what this all should be about, you know, and we, we can definitely get caught up in taking things too seriously. This is a professional team who won the biggest cup in, in the, in the league. You know, they won, they won the entire thing. And he really put it down to a change of enjoyment factor. And I just thought that was so profound.

Yeah, it's an interesting topic. And if you look at the most successful teams and the most successful individual athletes, there's a common theme. Those who are enjoying themselves the most generally get a better outcome. And there are obviously examples that outliers that that doesn't happen.

Nothing's done.

And we're not saying that you have to, you know, go far, so far to enjoying yourself where you're taking the piss almost and not. And not actually concentrating when you need to concentrate. The point is that if you're turning up to do something that you really enjoy and want to do well at, you know, you've got more chance of actually achieving that goal than if you have a mindset that's I have to get to train tomorrow, I'm not looking forward to it, it's going to be hard. You know, the, the whole approach can be completely different from one person to another and and that's the point that I think, you know, once athletes or teams, they're quite separate sometimes teams can inspire each other. Athletes need to inspire themselves and want to have that process inbuilt, whereas teams can have someone leading them on that journey and getting them all on the same page and wanting to train harder for each other and work together for each other. And, you know, some of the best coaches in the world, you can rattle off, you know, 10 or 15 coaches who have been able to be masters at that. Sir Alex Ferguson with Manchester United would be one. Every sport you can think of. In American football, you could rattle off coaches that, that have got that ability to get people to gel together and play for and not make it about an individual in a team sport, but making it about the common goal, which is, you know, get as fit as we can, love what we're doing and, and go through the mindset process of living in the moment, training in the moment, waking up each day and, and really striving to be the best you can be in that training session with the big picture might be eight months down the track, you know, the Grand Final or the last game of the season could be that far away. But you've, you've got to go through those processes every day and not think about the end result. And, and that takes a lot of coercing or, or really good strategies, really good psychology to get people to think similarly and, and to have a common, a common goal. And, and you think about the personalities in, in teams, whether it's a soccer team or a football American football team, which has possibly got 50 players in defense and in an attack, and an AFL team in Australia has 23 players. You know, you've got a huge array of different personalities that just think differently. So one method doesn't fit all. And so that's the ability of that coach to understand how each of his players really ticks and what you can do to get the best out of each of those players to play for each other and not, you know, it's a team sport, but if you're a really standout player, like if we took soccer, a Maradona or a Messi, the elite players of the world, yet their teams won't win. If, if it's all about Messi, it has to be about the team. With Messi contributing and channeling that into an individual sport, you've got to actually think similarly about, you know, separating your physical self from your mental self, where you need to, to always be in control of your mindset. About what am I trying to achieve here and am I enjoying the process and if I'm not, don't do it anymore. But if I am and I want to improve, these are the things I have to get right. I have to think about how I'm going to train this week, today. What do I need to do to get the most out of that session? Do I have to go to bed at 9:30 to get up at 4 to do my training session at 4:30, or is it okay to go to bed at 10 because I'm not training till 7? You need to think about that strategy. And if you do that each day and be in the moment, that's what I think being in the moment is. And if you do a whole lot of moments, 200 of those moments, you will actually get the right moment when it counts on race day because you've done everything. All those stepping stones, all those steps you've taken along that path, that journey to get to the eventual race day, you will actually get the outcome you want, but you still have to do that on race day. So the organization has to be associated with the fun factor where I'm getting such enormous outcomes from chemical releases from my brain telling me how much I'm enjoying improving. And that's where you need to think about the enjoyment factor rather than, you know, it is a discipline to get up early to train or to train late at night when you just come home from work. That is a discipline that is hard. And if you've got that thought process all the time that I know it's tough, but that's why I'm going to be better than my competitors, because I'm probably going to think that they're not going to do this. And I'm super motivated to do this session. And that's another session I'm up ahead of my opposition. And it's not about competing against others, it should be about yourself. But these are things that I'm thinking about myself just to get my motivation that I have. You know, don't think that everybody is super motivated and you're the outlier. It's the opposite. Most athletes need some sort of strategy to get themselves up and up and going to get somewhere along that journey where they're happy. And I think that's, that's kind of a, it's a long winded way around saying, you know, the enjoyment factor has to be a priority and if you, if you make it too serious, and I have to be careful here because you have to be Serious with your data and with your actual execution of your training session. But knowing that, you know, I can't wipe the smile off my face after I've started a session, got through it really well, got to the end and I feel good about what I've just done and I'm happy to go on with my day because just tick that box for today and that's the enjoyment I'm talking about.

Yeah, and that's exactly what the player, the footy player on the podcast was referring to. He was saying there was when it was time to work, their work. You know, they're not having a laugh when they're in the middle of training drills and in the middle of the session that 90 minutes on the field, they are working as hard as they can. And then it's the times around that when they need to allow themselves to enjoy. They're making sure they do that. And that process, that strategy that you're talking about of training discipline, you know, you also might need to train yourself on how to enjoy things. You know, you might have lost that ability a little bit. You need to start thinking of some new strategies about how do I make sure I'm actually enjoying training and what do I need to do? Do I need to stop for a coffee on my ride so that I can sit there and soak in, soak in a potential sun on a good ride, or do I need to make sure that. And you had this example recently where you were doing all your sessions indoors and it was becoming a bit of a chore for you and you started riding outside again. You said, what the hell am I doing? You just become so used to this control factor indoors. And you, once you start riding outside, you remembered how much you loved it because again, it's winter, which just kind of gets you into that habit. So it's this strategy kind of thing. And I do. The reason I love the application from the team sports side of things, like you're saying to the individual, is that in a team sport they have to really rely on this process factor because there are so many parts at play. You know, there are so many things that contribute, can contribute to the outcome of game. There's 22 players on your team and there's 22 players in the opposition team, you know, and so the game can go either way and it's for each individual player on that team. There's so many things out of their control. So what can they control is their commitment to the process. And that is just so necessary in a team sport. Whereas an individual sport, we're lucky because the process all comes down to you. So in that sense, all you have to do is control yourself and then you're guaranteeing yourself the best outcome. So from an individual perspective, it's a lot better for you to, to really trust in that process. It's harder from a team's perspective. So that's where I really like that.

I, I think, Jord, the one common theme that you can have between team and, and the individual is if you get everybody to gel together and the main thing you're wanting to do out of those 22 individuals is for them to do their role. If you do your role as a backman and prevent your opposition player from getting the ball, or if he gets it, take the ball away from him, that's your role. If you're an attacker, your role in soccer is to score goals. If you just concentrate on getting yourself in the right position to do that, then you're, you're just staying in your lane and doing your role and contributing to the team, because that's your job. And as an individual, if you just do your role, which is the process each day, that is, that is the analogy that we should be thinking about. Just do what it takes to get the job done. And if everybody in the team's doing their, their role and contributing a little bit to helping others in their role, then you've got an unstoppable team and you've got an individual who's, who's going to be, you know, improving out of sight week in, week out from where he started because he's got the right approach to his training processes.

So on that note, I wanted to chat about Lucy Charles again, who we talked about in a couple of podcast episodes after the Kona Iron man where she finally won her world Champ title. And since then, there's been a lot of interviews, there's been a lot of post race videos, a lot of more stories have come out over the last couple of weeks, and she herself has released a bit of a mini documentary on the win. It's awesome to get all this information and find out some of the backstories behind the race and the lead up. And one of the biggest things I can, I just really want to reiterate and talk about is just the huge respect to her for her laser focus and her husband Reese confirmed. What we said in our last podcast is that, you know, we kind of, we, we predicted going into it, we said we haven't heard much from, you know, Lucy Charles and Then she, she's really seems like she's put her head down and that Kona is her number one goal. And then he confirmed what we said. He, he said that she had to put her head down like he'd never seen before. And he said she was as dedicated to every single part of the process, to not just the training, the sessions, but the rec recovery between sessions, the food in between sessions, the sleep each night. He said she, she went to bed at 8pm, woke up at 5am every day for eight weeks straight and didn't budget from that. She didn't see family or friends because she was just so committed. So that is one interesting thing to look at, but a point on that I wanted to make was that on the 5:00am thing almost, she, you know, he said she woke up with no complaints about the alarm to get into her training. And we spoke about pro hours before on here. And the pros generally get to train whenever they want so they can train in the middle of the day. They want morning or afternoon. If they've got monster sessions, it kind of takes them all day. And for the age grouper, you know, it just reminded me of how impressive it is for so many age group is that they are waking up at 5, 8am every day, sometimes 4:30, just to fit their training in before work. You know, that's just the norm for the age grouper. And yeah, it was just a reminder for me for how well age groupers do and shout out to everyone out there that has to get up at the crack of dawn or has to come home late at night and get their session done done just to reach their goal. I thought that really highlighted a interesting point and it's no disrespect to Lucy, you know, to give her credit, she was getting up at 5am to fit seven or eight hours of training in. You know, rather than going to do a work day, she was training for eight hours. And so I doubt there was a second in the day where she's not training, foam rolling, stretching, getting physio treatment, eating or sleeping. But I just really wanted to point out how the age group needs to appreciate how well they're doing with everything else that, you know, we need to juggle with life.

Yeah, it's funny, the term pro hours is exactly that. When, when I'm out training in the middle of the day for some reason, I'll get a comment from Strava from somewhere. Oh, training with pro hours, that term means that the pros can train whenever they like in the Middle of the day. And that's where that term comes from. And so to see the pros getting up at normal regular age group time, you know, that's another whole nother level for me.

It's great. And I mean, there's some other stories I want to talk about. This is all tying in with the mindset around enjoyment and thinking about being mindful about the process and, you know, not getting attached to necessarily the outcome or result and the story of and how came second. And we talk about second place a lot here. And she ran a killer run leg. You know, she ran 2:48 and that was 10 minutes quicker than Lucy. She, she was 12 minutes down coming off the bike and she was absolutely gunning her down and got it back to two minutes and it just wasn't enough. And you kind of wonder how she would be feeling about that result. And there's a few things I want to say about that. But one of the things I want to say is that Lucy said in her interview, that post race interview that this win was so much sweeter because she'd come second four times. And we've gone on about this point so often, but this was just, again, it's so profound for me because up until this point when she won the world championships, she did not feel good about those second places. She would look the back of them and she would be frustrated, angry. That was her motivation that was driving her to finally win. She was so annoyed that she'd come second time, second four times. But now those second places are a magical part of her story because she's now one. She actually said that it's more special because she came second four times. And so I just really want to make this point that this is so much about what our performances are. It's the result that we get. It's not the result that matters, it's the story we tell ourselves about the result and how we decide to review the actual performance and the races because we can decide, we get to decide what it means to us. And for her the second places meant more motivation. She was so determined to finally win it. And now the second places are a magical part of this story where she had to go through so much difficulty to come second four times and then finally win it. It just becomes this epic, almost movie like story. But my point is the result hasn't changed. You know, she still came for second four times. It's just her story around the result changed. And we can just fall victim to this so often where a result happens and Then we decide to tell ourselves a story about that, and we believe that. And so often you're counseling athletes through a result, trying to get them to see it in a different light, potentially trying to see in a lot that you see it where you're really proud of a certain part of the result. And then there's things that you want to improve. And I just think this can't be underestimated because we put so much time and dedication to this. The narrative we tell ourselves around the results is actually a really important part of this enjoyment that we're talking about.

He could also be looking at an incorrect outcome. And sometimes. I've had many conversations, not sometimes. This is almost a weekly thing that I have because each of our athletes are in a phase where we're regularly testing every fourth week for the majority of our athletes. So every week there would be someone in a testing week that we are coaching. And so I would be, you know, waiting for the results to come through. And I'm straight away looking at how the execution happened, how did they go about their testing? And the actual number or pace or time that they've done is not so important to me. It's more about how did they go about achieving it. And sometimes with the technology that we have, and I'm talking mainly on the bike, we could have technical difficulty with the power meter reading on a certain session. And we try to eliminate that by calibrating power meter every time we ride, making sure that, you know, everything's right, everything's functioning well, it's all charged, and the battery's not dead. So you don't end up having an effort where you're having to stuff the whole effort up because the battery's not working on the power meter. But I would get people whose power is down if they're on an outside velodrome. We do test a lot on the velodrome or an out and back outdoor course. You can generally see that 200 watts equals 35ks an hour for a particular athlete. And all of a sudden they've done 190 watts or 185, yet they've ridden 35.2 ks an hour, or 35 ks an hour or close to what they did for 200 watts. They're outside and we're getting. We're getting average speed as a backup. We can look at their heart rate and the heart rates, you know, right in the zone where it should be. Their power is lower than it should be, but their speed is right. So they've got this this story that's being told to them by the data, that's incorrect. And so I'm having to counsel them after this test because they're texting me saying, what a disaster. I've dropped 10 watts or 15 watts from four weeks ago. And they haven't looked at all of the data. They haven't looked at how was my speed in compared to last time. And either last time's power was too high or this time's power was too low. One of the, one of those outliers is happening so the athletes actually getting quite depressed almost about the result when if they looked at the data more intently, they would see a different outcome. And once we have that conversation and I'm pointing out these things, the mindset is totally changed exactly how you were talking about five minutes ago. What story can they now tell themselves? And now they're telling themselves, well, I've just ridden the fastest average speed for a lower power, maybe my position, I'm getting better at that position we've been talking about. My head was down, I was putting the power down in different spots, which made, you know, the course might have been quite undulating or windy. And because we do out and back in our tests, we, we should get really good average speed. Correct. But if you put the power down differently, you have a better head position aerodynamically, you could end up with a higher outcome with lower power. And, and that's the story that you need to actually understand what is the true story and not be blindsided by inaccurate data.

It seems so obvious, but we have trained our athletes to focus so much on power because it's such a good, good way to execute something. But sometimes in the end, you, you forget to look at the most important thing is you're trying to ride faster. So it does seem obvious. And, and I'll bring it back to second place. Anne Hay, who. I wonder what story she's telling herself because she almost ran Lucy down for the win. But at the same time, Lucy was dealing with a pretty bad Achilles injury and she was running slower than she was. So had she been normal and wouldn't have been close, so is she, I wonder if she's. What story she's telling herself. Is she frustrated? Is she accepting of the result because that was the best she could do, which she probably should be. Did she think she could run faster? Is that going to be motivation for her? I just, I just find that pretty fascinating. And it reminds me of one of our old favorite childhood movies, the Mighty Ducks, where the coach, he missed the penalty in overtime hit the, hit the post. And he, he stews on it for 30 years and it haunts him. He missed it when he was a 16 year old or something and he, he has nightmares about it. And he always says, you know, one inch the other way would have gone in and we would have won the championship. You know, and then someone says to him, yeah, but one, one inch the other side I would have missed completely. And I just always think about that and it's, it's like we don't, we don't want to have to regret these things because that, that's the outcome. And again, the story he's telling himself, he's just half an inch away from a championship. And then another perspective is you're half an inch away from missing completely and, and making more of a mistake.

So, yeah, I totally agree. And it's another great example, a simple one. And look, if I was an hog, I would be absolutely thinking about how can I not put myself 12 minutes behind? That's, that's the story I would be telling myself. What do I need to do prior to the run to be four minutes behind so that I give myself a better chance? And so, you know, she's clearly an outstanding runner. I think that was the fastest run marathon ever at, at Kona.

I haven't confirmed that, but it may be 248.

I think it's pretty close at Kona. I'm talking. So, yeah, there's no doubt, you know, she can run, but what's she doing on the bike and the swim that's causing her to be that far behind? So that would be the, the mindset story that I would be pushing as a coach is okay, we've got a great outcome here with our running. Now we have to get ourselves in a better position so that we don't have to actually catch up. 12 minutes.

Also, Lucy Charles has run a course record, so it's kind of hard to, you know, to beat someone who runs the fastest someone's ever got around Kona. So, yeah, there's so many ways to look at it and it's tough for the pros because, you know, they really want to improve so you can't get bogged down. And again, we, we speak about this a lot off air and so we really wanted to make this point in this episode. So moving on to, you know, tying this in with the topic of the podcast and things we wish beginners knew and we wish all athletes kind of understood these messages with these sports, there, there are Honestly, thousands of things you need to learn, and you will learn them by just going through the process. You'll just learn as you go. And we're not going to list all the minute things here that you need to understand, like what equipment to take to a training session or a race, how did, how did a flying start in a triathlon, or the equipment list you need for swim squad practice, how to connect a power meter to your bike, all these tiny things that you do have to learn in this process. Instead, we want to talk about some overarching principles of how to approach these and how to approach this sport as a beginner and then all the way through to a pro. And dad, you haven't been a beginner in a long time. But I want to ask you, what do you want all athletes to understand when they start training with us? Because, you know, we recently had an athlete come on board who thought they weren't good enough to get coached because they were quite at the beginning stage. And we don't think that's the case at all. We just have our systems that we would like people to buy into. So can you start us off with when someone new comes, whether they're an absolute beginner or they've had some experience, what are the starting principles we want to start going through of the things that they need to understand that will make their journey easier?

Yeah, I guess most common thing is to try and simplify everything. And yet it is so complex. This, this is such a complex world that we live in. There is so many distractions. But we want to make sure that the athlete that we're coaching, regardless of their ability, and we have no bias against ability, we in fact, would prefer beginner athletes with a clean slate so we can actually teach them from day one the trivalo way.

And which is what you said to that athlete. He said, oh, am I too beginner? You go, no, that probably makes my job easier because you haven't. You don't have to unlearn anything.

Yeah. And it might sound a little bit arrogant, the trivalo way, but for people who have got set ways, it's really hard to change their mindset around. But I've always done it this way, coach. Why do you want me to do it this way? And that's my job, to explain well enough so they can understand that there is some logic behind, you know, obviously they're reaching out for help because the method they're using hasn't been that successful. So. So it's an easy throwback to Me saying, well, hang on, you know, you want to keep doing the same method, yet you want to improve. You've got to trust the process that we're going to give you because the process you tried has kept you at the same level, and now you're reaching for something new. So. So it's really good to have to have people who are quite new to the sport. And I'm not just talking triathlons. I'm talking cycling or gravel riding or mountain biking or marathon running. It's great to have new athletes because they are on board, because their knowledge is the limited, as limited as you can think, and they're a sponge and they want to just soak up any little gems that you can throw at them. So we want to try and keep it as simple as possible as they join the program and. And, you know, starting if you were. If we're using the example of triathlete, the swim, bike and run, you're just really trying to hone in on what are the three sports goals that we're trying to aspire to and what are the key priorities?

I guess.

Yeah, yeah. What are the key things we're trying to do? And. And it might shock some people, the way I'm going to answer this, most of the time, people think, just train hard and you'll go faster. And that's true to a point. If you have that mindset, if you. If you're willing to put in the work and train hard, you will actually improve. And I'm not disputing that. But what we want to do is get you to train smarter. And there may be some hard sessions, but there may be some other sessions that are actually honing in on other aspects of your fitness that are going to actually help you be a faster athlete in the long run. So it's not all about every day training faster or harder. It's about getting that balance right. And it sounds similar to a lot of the other podcasts we've done, but if we were new to the sport and we didn't know anything, and then someone gave us an almanac that said if you do this, you will get this result. That's the method that we want people to think about. It's like getting handed, you know, the results, like in Back to the Future, ahead of time, and if you just follow this structure, you will actually get the outcome that you're looking for, and it'll be a fun journey on the way. And so we're trying to make it as simple as possible and just getting People to concentrate individually in all of those sports and on the other things such as the sleep, nutrition and rehab and recovery. I just had a conversation with someone who, who just finished the Noosa Triathlon and, and you could not hold back the excitement they had when I was explaining about how they could ride the bike with the same level of fitness, slightly different, and probably get three or four minute improvement on there already reasonably good bike ride in the race. And, and you know, really, Coach, you can, you can actually, if I rode that slightly different, I would have got a faster time. Yeah.

And so let's, let's take it through each specific legs example and using the triathlon example. And we can start with the bike. We don't have to go in chronological order to spin bike runs. Like, let's keep going on the bike. What do you want people to know, you know, about the bike? What's, what's. If you could wipe someone's slate clean, what's important? What do you think the priority is?

Yeah, I don't want to sound arrogant here, but I'm basically saying whatever you thought you knew about bike riding, just put that to the side and try to get on board with what I'm telling you of how to ride your time trial bike. Now, if we're using triathlon, we're talking specifically about time trialing and we're not talking about crit racing or road racing here. We're talking about supposedly the race of truth, which is you and your bike and you trying to go from A to B as fast as possible with no outside assistance. If we set the scene like that, understanding how to, what is your power, what is your power number and how do I ride that power number on a course that's got headwind, tailwind, side wind, uphills, long uphill, short uphills, punchy hills, downhills, long downhills, big tailwinds, left turns, U turns, roundabouts. How do I manage that ride? And there are other rides that have straight out and straight back. They're the easiest time trials to ride because there's not much deviation in you sitting on a number from start to finish. Of course, there'll be headwind and, and there'll be some rises. And no road in the world is perfectly flat for, for more than 10 meters. So we've got deviations of changes in gradient every single 10 meters. We go on a particular road anywhere in the world. So you're feeling different pressure come through your legs as the road dips. You feel the pressure come off the pedals as the road rises, you feel the pressure come back on the pedals and your ability to manage the power with those dips and rises is going to be the starting point for you to learn how to ride the time trial bike in the ranges that the coaches ask you to ride at. And that is almost overwhelming for the person to hear. And so therefore we don't talk about that, that that's advanced. We're actually trying to just get you to ride close to a power number. And whether your, whether your graph looks like it's got highs and lows, but you end up with the right average. That's the first step, just getting you to try and ride a five minute effort where your average is right in the zone. And if I really analyze it, you might say we're trying to ride at 200 watts. You might have written 30 seconds at 240 watts and you might have written a minute 15 at 65 watts and it ended up averaging 200 and you've got the end result. But we want to teach you how to get where you're not spiking and not dropping. And why is that important? That's important because it really burns matches and that means your lactating increases, your body temperature increases, you burn fuel quicker and therefore you can't run well. So these are things that is mind blowing to people who think they thought they were just going to ride their bike from A to B.

And so from the beginner's perspective, you know, a beginner might literally just be riding the bike and having, looking at the time, you know, and just how long have I been riding for? They might have speed on there, you know, and then suddenly we're trying to get them from there to a point where they are riding with a head unit. If they're using their head unit properly on the bike and they're looking at eight different pieces of data. The first one, like you said, is just riding and then looking at a power, power number below you is really confronting because especially when it's instant power or three second power, meaning power you're pushing in real time, it's jumping a lot of shop. It's 240 watts, 160 watts, 140 watts, 190 watts. And so you're running, going, what the hell is going on here? And the advanced rider, you know, they can really good riders could just. Every pedal stroke doesn't really change within a 5 to 10 watt range. And that is really, really efficient riding. But that's just one aspect I just mentioned that on a Head unit. You might be looking at eight pieces of data. You might be looking at the time, the time of you're on the speed, the average speed, your cadence, your average power, your, your instant power, your heart rate. Yeah. And so getting from a point of never looking at data while riding a bike at the same time before to looking at eight pieces of information and making decisions internally while riding the bike is a, it's a big gap. And so that's why you're saying you kind of need to come in with a clean slate, because we need to build you up in steps to get to that point.

It's incredibly overwhelming for people and most people think that they're the only ones who have experienced this. But I'm trying to tell them this is what happens when people come and reach out to our coaching. It's just that you're not used to this method or style and, you know, not a lot of people are coaching people like this. Most people are just coaching with heart rate where that's all you're looking at. And we know the issues with trying to do a race or do a training session with heart rate where there's a lag period and the temperature could affect the heart rate. So you're riding in different zones than you should be. There's so many really important aspects that will make you a better rider. And I've got to point out, you know, if you present with the same level of fitness, if I present with fitness level of 8 out of 10 and I, I execute differently for the same fitness level, I could be 2 minutes faster over 40k for the same level of fitness. But just thinking about riding differently and that's quite exciting for, for someone who's actually been doing it for a long time, who's stagnated, and for the people who are just new to the, to riding in a time trial situation, they're just so excited to go, wow, this is really. It's like Formula one data coming back at you. And for those people who are data nerds, I just can't get enough of this. And, and who would have thought that it could be so technical? And once, once you get through that technicality of it and you know what you're trying to look for, you know, with practice over, and I'm telling everybody who's starting this, don't expect to get this in the first month. This will take hundreds of practice sessions before you are able to execute it on race day the way you want to. And there's so many practice sessions that I Want you to really hone in on it. Think about that. And so therefore the training session has a whole new goal, a whole new experience that you're actually looking for instead of the, you know, we talked about. What story are you telling yourself? The story I'm telling myself is, oh, far out. Another really hard session. I just got to ride hard on this power. Well, here we are, we've got something to look at. In every five minute effort that we're doing. Am I staying constant? Am I rising too high above the average that I'm supposed to be? Have I dropped off? You know, these are the things you start thinking about and all of a sudden that five minutes goes by like that and oh, the next five minutes is on. Now can I get better at what I did the last five minutes? And this brings a whole new meaning to training and, and you are now involved in the process, which is what we're trying to get our athletes to do is be part of the process, not be spoon fed here. Jordan, you ride at 270 watts for this session and you've got no idea that that's what your, your number should be. I want you to say to me, do you think I can ride 280 or is 270 my number? That's a better conversation between athlete and coach because you're invested in what you already know you can do.

It actually makes the training sessions a lot more exciting as well because you, you're focusing so much and the training sessions fly by and like you said, you've got so much more motivation around each, each segment of the session. Whereas just the thought of just getting on a bike and riding for a certain amount of time, not even looking at power, it just sounds so boring to me, you know, and, but then there's opposite. Sometimes you just want to go out and ride your bike and not look at the screen and there's this. So that's a great starting point from a riding perspective. Let's move into running. What do you want people to know when they come in from a running perspective?

Yeah, and we've got to be careful here because I'm talking about triathletes, I'm not talking about marathon, half marathon, 10k runners, 5k runners. Of course, triathletes are 5, 10 half marathon runners, aren't they? But in the sport of triathlon, we have to have a different mindset as runners. So we're, we're really adamant that the majority of runners in the world have had some injury at some point in time in their life come to us with an injury. With an injury. And when I ask them what training sessions they've been doing and some of them are still at the beginner level and they may be training for half Ironman, which is a, which is a half marathon run, or they may be training for Olympic distance, which is still a 10k run, or they may be doing an Ironman, which is a marathon run. And, and I'm hearing training sessions where they're doing eight two hundreds as an age grouper who is probably a four hour to four hour thirty marathon runner in an Ironman. And I'm asking, why are you doing those? Well, that's what our group's doing. That's, that's what our group's doing. It's doing eight two hundreds on the track. To me, that is just the craziest thing that I hear is age group runners trying to run fast when their body clearly hasn't had the capacity to cope with anything with intensity. And there are a minority of athletes who could cope with eight two hundreds day in, day out, month in month, month out, no problem. But we're talking on this podcast about newcomers to triathlon. So what am I trying to, what's the message I'm trying to get out to all of these new people? The message is you need to get your body fit enough to cope with the load. And the only way to do that is to, to regularly run and regularly run easy. And if you can do that for four weeks, then eight, then 12, then you may well be a candidate to be stepping up from those runs where you've really built up strength and condition in your skeletal and muscular system that you're trying to carry around as a runner. And therefore you could be a candidate to run some hill repeats and some, some fart leg work, some, some intervals, some, some fast intervals, some tempo intervals. But until that point comes where you've had a really good sustained period of being able to sustain a load of running program training where you haven't got any niggles or twinges, then you're ready to step up. And you might say, when you're listening to this, where's the intensity coming from? And how am I going to run faster if it's going to take me this long to start to run with intensity? Well, don't forget the body doesn't really mind whether you're swimming hard, riding hard or running hard. You're still making the cardiovascular system really work. And you can get a lot of that on the bike. You can Get a lot of your intensity, which will transfer in your cardiovascular system to when you want to run fast. The only thing that's lacking is the leg speed and your body's ability to get used to, you know, running with a bit, a bit more tempo. And so in the events in triathlon, the majority of half marathon in a triathlon is 10 or 15% slower than you would run in a normal half marathon. And in a marathon in an Ironman, as compared to a fresh marathon on its own, you would be probably 20 or 30% slower sometimes than you would be in a fresh marathon. So you're actually not running with any intensity in any of these events. So, so the necessity to train with intensity is not as important as the injury that you could sustain by doing intensity. So we want to steer away from that. And that's our biggest advice to people starting out in the sport of triathlon. Get yourself a really good running shoe, get fitted properly, get videotaped, and then start your running program where you're just doing consistent running, not with any intensity. Your ability to increase is all around time. So you might start with a 30 minute run and work your way up to a 35 to a 40 to a 45, et cetera. So we increase the duration of the run, not the intensity. And as months or weeks go by and we can cope with an hour on a Wednesday and an hour 20 on a Sunday, then you're starting to get somewhere. But if you can't run for 30 minutes or 40 minutes on those days without pulling up sore, you're still not ready to even add more time to that. So everybody starts at a different level. You just got to find that level and be okay with the coach saying, just go and enjoy the run. Just go and have a nice enjoyable run with no pressure. You know, you've got enough pressure already thinking about the swimming stroke. You've got enough pressure already thinking about the power I should be riding at, the intensity, the cadence, that's, that's enough for you to concentrate on. Now I've got to run. It's fun. It's, it's a freedom that I have just to go out and run and smell the roses almost and just enjoy it.

I guess the summary is that, you know, get rid of the belief or the myth that running fast is the only way to go. There might be a time and place for that depending on your ability in the program, like you just said, and then understanding that you cannot underestimate the load that running takes, the body and how often people get injured is a, is evidence of that, that people are underestimating the running, the load toll on the body from high volumes and, and high intensity of running. And so I guess you're really wanting to make that point that you need to allow the body to take time to absorb these loads and avoid, to avoid injuries in the long term.

Yeah, that's a great summary. I couldn't have said it any better myself. But you know, I've still got athletes who are 12, 14 weeks into a really good slow build in the running program. And because they haven't actually paid attention to the stretching and a little bit of strength and conditioning, a little bit of function functionality in there away from running, away from riding and away from swimming, spending five or 10 minutes each day on that stretching. All of a sudden with this load that they've had for 12 weeks, their body starts to tighten. All the muscles start to almost like the tightest guitar strings you could have on a guitar and they're about to break. You need to really pay attention to that. Even though your body's coped with the load, you are going to get some sort of fatigue factor buildup over, over a two or three month period where if you haven't paid attention to that, you will still probably get injured or pull up with some niggles. So, so I can't emphasize that enough. It's just not enough to your body to absorb the load. You have to actually do some of the stuff where you're not running, where you are just spending five minutes. Yeah. Looking after your body.

Yeah, for sure. And that look, that's a whole rabbit hole in itself because you know, the methods of looking after your body are, I'm going to say, controversial around the world because there's new evidence coming out that you know, potentially just goes against stretching and really doesn't rate stretching for recovery or injury prevention. And when for the, for the last four, five, six decades, all we've been, all we've been taught is, you know, you must stretch before and after every, every training session. And so I, we do get it. It can be confusing with, you know, different instructions, potentially different physios, Osteos, medical staff. And, and that's a good part about science is that it's always updating, evolving and asking more questions. But it just shows that it's an area that you have to pay attention to and seek out help for. So moving on from running into swimming, the last kind of leg, you know, what do you want people to know from a swimming perspective?

It is almost the opposite to riding and running. The harder you train and the more structure you have with the fitness side of running and riding, the greater the potential and ability for you to get the results you want and improve. And it's really enjoyable. As a swimmer, you can get as fit as you can by swimming five, six sessions a week, possibly still swim the same time. And that doesn't make sense. I've trained harder than I ever have in the pool, yet I'm still swimming the same speed. And look, what's the difference? The difference is it's easier to swim that same speed without hardly blowing a candle out compared to what I was 12 weeks ago for that, for me to swim one four zero zeros, you know, 12 weeks ago I was huffing and puffing. Now I can swim one four zero zeros and I'm, you know, I'm quite fresh at the end of the 10, 10 by 100. And so your fitness is definitely improved, but you're not swimming any faster. And my message to every new person is if you don't spend time doing the fitness work and the skill, you know, swimming is a skill acquisition, it's a technical event. And if you don't improve that and look to a certain degree on the bike and as a runner, if you did pay attention to the biomechanics and the functionality of your body, you will improve as a runner and have more efficiency. And we talked about that, you and I regularly about your running patterns and stride length and the way you pedal on the bike with the cadence. You know, are you using all the muscles in swimming? You know, if you aren't swimming parallel to, to the water and you've got your legs dragging, you're going to swim slower no matter how hard or how strong you are as a, as a human being, you can't, you know, I've seen 12 year old, 30 kilo young kids swim past a 96 ball of muscle in the pool. It is just astounding to see beautiful swim technique against brute power. And the technical swimmer will win every time because they, they're efficient, they're not getting tired because they're not brutalizing the water. So it's important that you actually spend time becoming a better, efficient swimmer. And technically you need to film yourself, get it analyzed. And we have that facility at Trivalo to do that and work on some things that are going to make you a far more faster swimmer and efficient swimmer for the same amount of training. As a person who does disregards the technical side of the swimming stroke Such.

A brilliant point, as you say athletes all the time. We can get you fit, we want to get you fit, but to get faster, you know, you need to change your technique. And that's as simple as it is. So I think, you know, when we were talking about this topic ourselves, one of the main points that came up was that all the time, what our goal is, is to help athletes make better decisions and understand that everything is a guide. It's not a strict handbook, rulebook that you have to follow these procedures. We have our ways of doing things, and we want people to get educated to make informed decisions. And one of my favorite things you always say is that every decision you have will have consequences. And you have athletes all the time saying, can I do this or can I do that? Or, oh, I want to do this? And you say, sure, you can do whatever you want, because this isn't black or white, you know, this is just our guide. And you. You decide what you want to do with that information. But here are the consequences. Here's what's going to happen if you do that. And I think that's really important for athletes to understand is that, for example, you might want to keep running with your group on the back and do two hundreds because you really like it. That example used before, and you can say, sure, you can keep doing that. It's not like it's an ineffective session. Just the consequences are you're at higher risk of injury. It's not very specific to the sort of training you're doing, and you're potentially slowing yourself down in the bike and swim training. And overall, in terms of your goals for the triathlon, specifically, because you're doing this session, that's just not that appropriate for this sport. So I think that's a really overarching principle we want people to understand, is that, yeah, as a beginner athlete, you know, we've just gone through the three legs in terms of what's a priority. But this whole process is about finding out more information about what can work, and then how does that apply to you and your. Your training and your goals?

Yeah, definitely. Jordan, Everybody's an individual, aren't they? And what. What might work for one beginner might be too easy or too hard for the next beginner. So finding your lane is really important, and understanding, you know, what load is appropriate to you, and. And that's been a big learning curve for me as a coach, and that's something that I don't think I was very good at 15 years ago is, you know, this is the method that I know works and this is a method that will make you a better triathlete and not saying, well, this might not work for you, Jordan, I need to do a bit of a different version on this method so that you'll get the most out of it. And I think that is something from my point of view that I have to actually keep on top of. Just because it works for some doesn't mean it works for everybody. And we have really good principles of, of how to, the method of riding the bike in certain parts. The example we use where, you know, we've got some hills or headwind that doesn't change. But you know, the training session that I give you might need to differ because you're not able to cope with that or you can cope with way more. So you know, the technical side of it that's sort of setting concrete and we still, it still has the ability to be tweaked so we can always feel like we're finding new ground and, and trying new things and, and you know, to be fair, that's what we do on ourselves a lot of the time in this journey is, is absolutely see if it works on, and I'm experimenting on you all the time and, and if, if I see good, good results, you know, I'm going to give it to our, our athletes. And, and I'm researching this and reading and seeing what, you know, the best athletes in running and triathlon and, and riding are doing and, and trying to apply it to an age grouper. And, and you know, we don't always get it right, but we're, we're very willing to try things and, and we are absolutely on board with the consequences. And that's the message that we're trying to tell everybody that we're coaching. You know, there isn't one size fits all and everybody comes with different needs and requirements and, and that's the one thing that I take great pride in is identifying who I've got, who I'm working with and how I can get the best out of them. That to me is why I loved coaching beginners. And it's a challenge for me to coach people who are really high level and are trying to get that extra because they've set in their ways and sometimes they're not willing to try new things because they don't know if it's going to work yet. They've reached out to me to say I want to get better. And I'm coming back to them saying, well, let's Just do the same thing over and over again and see if, see if you improve. You know, we know that's not going to happen because that's why you're here. You know, there's some great lessons we can learn from all levels of, of of athletes.

You're sounding like our great man, Ange Foster Coglu. He just had an interview recently where they.

Chelsea, Chelsea.

This is totally tangent off topic, but Chelsea just cracked the one billion dollar mark spent on players. And some of my journalists asked him like, what would you do with a billion dollars? And he said, oh, I would hate it. He said it's a headache I don't want to have. Because he. Exactly what you just said. He said, I don't want to just get the 11 best players in the world into a team. He said that doesn't make a good team. He said, what I love about a team is that you've got a bunch of guys with different personalities, different skill levels and I've got to get the best out of them and climb out my methods of what works for them so that they can all gel together. And it's exactly what you're saying. You know, we've got our methods of how training works and you want to apply it to the individual and, and see where their strengths and weaknesses are and how you can get the best out of them with their personalities. So for me, I mean, in summary, I think again, like I said this at the start, but there's a lot to learn and the amount of things to learn can be overwhelming. And even just down to equipment, if you think about the bike, suddenly there's this whole new stuff that you have to learn about disc wheels and how does gearing work and how do you charge a power meter and how do you connect your head unit to your phone and how do you connect your smart trainer to your power meter and how does WIF work? You know, there's all this stuff and in my experience, you know, one asking for help, asking as many people around you ask people in the bike shop to explain everything about your new bike and how it works and what you need to know and ask people at events and races for direction and, and tell them it's your first time doing this. The atmosphere at a lot of these events is everyone is super helpful and super friendly and willing to help. And again, that the whole racing experience itself can be overwhelming and daunting because you turn up to these races and people have been there before, are super confident, they're walking past with flashy bikes and everyone's fit. And it's really, it's really. Even if you're really fit and you're really well trained, it's still a very daunting experience. And that's at a triathlon, you know, if you even take it to something like a park run, first time you turn to a park run, which is as, as casual a race or event as you can possibly get, it's still a little bit intimidating. Suddenly you've got 70 runners around you all doing a 5K, and everyone's kind of looking at each other. And it's, it's such a nice environment, but it can still be daunting. So. And races for the pros at the highest level are the most extreme version of daunting. So it doesn't get any easier the more you get, necessarily. So I think my point is just there is a lot out there, so we want to simplify it down to these basic principles that we've spoken about today. And just to know that, you know, you'll learn as you go. It's okay to make mistakes. Everyone does. And we see the pros every single race talking about major things they've stuffed up. And I think that's the lesson, is that, yeah, you just gotta be willing to go through the process and enjoy the journey.

And it's one of the things that I'm adamant about telling all of our athletes as they go into a race. And we've just had a whole group of people do the Noosa Triathlon next week here in Melbourne is the Melbourne 70.3. And that's one of the messages I'm telling people, is if you are grateful enough to know that you're fit and healthy and you've entered this race, you know, just think about that. There's a whole lot of people who may be injured or having a hell of a hard time in their life. The example you gave in your gratitude, where simple things like they don't have any water, and here we are, we've got all this expensive equipment and, and I'm not saying be down on yourself about this, but be, be grateful that you're able to, to have some fun on a day where you're well prepared. You've got to a fit body that's, that's got a racing strategy plan and just be happy with, with, you know, what's going to happen in the day. And I guarantee if you have that approach to the day, the results will be super. You'll. You'll be so pleased and just Be in the moment. And that's how you should be in all of your training. And racing is not being put so much pressure on yourself. Self expectations are the worst thing. You know, you've got a plan. That's not, that's not the same as an expectation. A plan is a guide to help you have a better outcome on the day. And you still have that freedom we're talking about to do whatever you like on that day. But why would you ignore that little plan that you've trained so well with and it worked so well in training? Why would you ignore that on race day? Use that to set your race up and by all means do whatever you like after you've set yourself up in the swim, bike and run, you know, ride as hard as you want. Run as hard as you want. I tell people that all the time and enjoy what you're doing. And if, if you blow up, you've learned a lesson, that's where the tipping point is. There's nothing wrong with that. You know, you're not going to get the outcome you wanted, but at least you know in perspective of where you can go and where you can't go, you know, there's no right or wrong in any of the things we're doing. It's a journey. And if you think about it like that and not not. I don't want to make a mistake, you, you'll not improve at the rate that if you're willing to make mistakes. You know, I know a lot of the good coaches and if I bring it back to that team, a lot of the coaches will, they will applaud people who are trying things and it didn't come off rather than people who are not trying things and just doing the same old stuff repeatedly over and over again. And, and that's, you know, encouraging people to go outside of their, their zone when it counts is that's the mark of a good athlete who knows when it's time to push further. And you know that that's what you want to prepare for. So if you can set yourself up by doing everything well, then you could actually push further, harder. And I just had an example of one of the guys who coached for Ironman Florida last weekend. He just blitzed everything that we had planned for him to do. He was ahead. And as I was watching it unfold because I've seen so many people do that and it's come back hauntingly poor where they've pretty much walked the marathon from 10k or 8 mile onwards and this guy has run the same pace from start to finish, pretty much within a few seconds per mile. Unbelievably outstanding. And we might talk about this experience down the track a bit, but that's an example of someone using what they've got, the knowledge they've got. And then on race day, when they're fresh and, and, and fit and ready to go and have a really positive mindset, you can do whatever you want. There's no ceiling in your race. And so that's the exciting part for me, is if you can get the knowledge that you, you're being given from this type of method and then you are competitive because that's what, that's why you're going to coach. That's why you're listening to this podcast, because you want to get better. You're trying to learn ways of improvement. And so, you know, these are the times where you've got all that set in place now race and deal with the consequences, both good and bad.

That's a great way to finish. Hope you've enjoyed this episode. It's been a big one, but, you know, we really want to hammer some of these points home, and I think we did. So we hope you've enjoyed it. We'll see you in the next episode for another case study and we look forward to continuing to share all these episodes with you, which we love, bringing this information. So we'll see you on the next episode. Thank you.