Things That The Pros Do That You Shouldn’t

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. We like to model what the pros are doing because theoretically they should be the most advanced in the game about what works with training and what works in racing. They have the most investment of money behind them. They have the best teams, the best coaches and the best exercise scientists. So it's. It makes sense to copy them, but not all the time. And today we want to get clarity on what sort of things the pros might be doing that you shouldn't be doing. That's the topic for this week's episode. First dad, welcome in. Let's start with our normal starting segment. What are you grateful for?

Thanks, Jordan. This is another awesome topic because as much as we want to emulate the pros, there's a whole lot of things that we shouldn't actually do. So I can't wait to talk about that. There's lots to discuss on that topic. The gratitude thing. It's been interesting and I don't want to keep going on the same theme all the time, but it's just so coincidental that my last gratitude last week talked about Shauna and my niece, my brother's daughter, who has had cancer for three years and is really going well. And ironically, my brother has been in a similar position and I'm so grateful to his gp, who identified an illness that no one else did. It's a blood disease. For those, it's amyloidosis, which is too much, basically, too much protein in the blood, and it's a form of blood cancer, I suppose. And he's had this for the last two or three years, and it's only in the last four or five weeks that he's absolutely back to almost normal functionality as a human being, which. Which has just been such a journey for both Shauna and her dad, my brother in the one family, to have, you know, two people just really struggling with their health and ironically, they're coming through it together. And I'm so grateful for the. For the gp, for identifying what was wrong with him and being able to do something about it. And, you know, after having Covid for the last two and a half, three years and no travel, Shawna's brother lives in New York and Frank's been able to travel there for the first time because of his. He's now well enough to travel, whereas before, regardless of COVID he couldn't, he couldn't really move much. So, yes, I'm really grateful a for the GP who's, who's got him on the way back to some sort of normality in his life. So I don't like to be medically grateful all the time, but it's just. I just really want to get that out there. And yeah, it's, it's a very astute GP who's done his job so well.

That's the beauty of gratitudes, is you can be grateful for whatever you want. My gratitude is for online delivery. Online delivery is just so amazing these days and you can order something and it'll be on your doorstep the next day and it saves you the hassle of going to the shops or going to a shopping center, which is my worst nightmare. So, yeah, I'm really grateful that you can just click a couple of buttons and then this thing will turn up on your doorstep the next day. It's pretty awesome. Moving into what's caught your attention.

Including. Including food, George.

Yes. Yeah.

Who would have thought that you could get food delivered to your house? Exactly.

Yeah. Next segment, what has caught your attention?

Yeah, it's, it's sort of on the medical side again, which there's just been so many people sick in this part of the world and I'm not talking really Covid. Covid's absolutely still hanging around and you know, the, the welters still being affected by it. I saw Yates had to go home and you know, he's coming fifth in the tour and I think the guy's coming ninth also had to go home. But, but just, you know, here in Australia there's been a really big spike in Covid, but. But it seems to start to dissipate a little bit now. But it's still out there. And not only that, there is so much during winter, so many other ailments going around the cold and head cold and throat. And all of this stuff has caught my attention. Why? Because it's causing chaos with people's consistency and their program and, and we have some unbelievably motivated athletes in our group and I really feel bad for them because they're so determined to be on the journey of improving themselves yet of being hamstrung almost, you know, by illness and, you know, a lot of that's, you know, not people's own fault. It's just in the community and because we're on that fine line of stressing our immune system we have the possibility of catching anything really easy and we're training hard. Our immunity is right on the limit. Sitting on the fence could tip over either way. And you only have to have one of your children come into the house from, from school or from playgroup and they've got a runny nose and all of a sudden you get sick and then you can't do the intensity session and you can't train properly and you, you're a week behind where your schedule is for your, for your A race. And all of a sudden now you're, you still haven't been able to get over this head cold. So I feel bad for the people that this is happening to, but it's a fair majority of people that are in the community who are not well during the winter period. And what makes it worse is, and what's really caught my attention is having to deal with the motivated athlete when this happens to them. And they're their worst enemy, their own worst enemy, because they just think that they're bulletproof. And I can actually now train. I feel, I feel 10% better than I did yesterday, which could be 2 out of 10, and so I should be able to train. And that's actually not the case. You shouldn't be training if you're 2 out of 10, 4 out of 10, 5 out of 10. You absolutely need to give your body the days and weeks, possibly that it needs to recover. And that's a subjective thing and you need to be honest with yourself about not because you're motivated to train, but realistically, am I well enough to train? And that's really been week in, week out, day in, day out, I'm having to deal with the motivated athlete who's telling me, yeah, I'm good to go, and then I'll give them something that's 6 or 7% out of 10 as an intensity yet they'll go too hard and then two days later they're back feeling average again. And you've just got to take your medicine and, and accept that you might miss a few days. And don't ever forget, you've got weeks and months and possibly years with many people of fitness in your bank. And think about that. There's so many examples of people, including myself, where I fractured my pelvis. Five weeks of no training, just sitting, not allowed to walk, not allowed to do any activity, just had to sit to let the pelvis heal. And I'm thinking, five weeks, how bad is my fitness going to be? And, you know, some of these coughs and colds are lasting four or five days and people are panicking that they're going to lose their fitness and it's just not true. You will be fine. You know, give yourself four or five days of easy training and you'll, you know, you've lost maybe a week but it won't take you long to get back to where you were. You know, I had five weeks off the bike. Within three months I was back to where my FTP numbers were pre accident. So you know, it is something that is real and that's why I'm talking about it because it's caught my attention so much that I really feel I need to get that message out there that it is okay to rest when you need to. And just because you're so determined to get the consistency thing happening, which is what we bang on about a lot, don't we? We really push that consistency. But there's times where you just can't be consistent. You need to be consist consistently resting and make that your mojo. You know, this is part of my program. I need to rest and let my body recover and then reset, start again and progress yourself gradually back to your level of intensity that is not going to cause you to go backwards again. So a long winded caught my attention but it's a really good message and if people can get, get that concept that they will be more relaxed and funnily enough when you take the pressure off yourself and not create anxiety in your own mind about I've got to get back, I'm missing days, I've got to stop missing these sessions. All of a sudden when you go no, just relax, I'll be fine. The body will actually feel that and start to regenerate itself with you not creating stress about an anxiety about I can't miss another day's training. You know, the body's almost like, you know, it's not silly, it knows that you're under stress and it's your own, your own mental thoughts that are causing it. So stop, stop that and, and give yourself time mentally and physically to, to let your body heal properly and, and then reset.

And what's my, what caught my attention is probably a follow up from that. And I was one of the people that have had an interrupted period after a really good period of T.R. you experiencing that it is really frustrating because you're in peak form and then you're forced to go through a bit of a block where you're not training. And the thing that actually caught my attention from that was that just Getting the key sessions in is enough to get back to a good level of fitness. And when I came back I was going through a few different things and it could only fit in some of the key sessions for the week. And ideally you want to be ticking off every session, every Recovery session, every zone 2 session, every key VO2 max session session, every endurance session, and all those things are great. But there's a few key sessions throughout the week that are giving you most of the results. All the other stuff is just a bonus. And when I was just going through this training block, this previous training block, just getting the key sessions in, I mentally didn't feel like I was as fit as before. But the results proved differently. And we spoke on the podcast previously about running a pb and that was a real shock to me given the level of training I'd done. I prefer a lot more to be doing way more volume training. And you've shown this a lot with a lot of our running athletes as well. A lot of them have come to us and just want to be doing three to four sessions a week. And so you give them just three to four key sessions a week and they're all running half marathon pbs, which most people think isn't possible. They think you need to be doing six, seven sessions a week. A lot of the dogma in the running community is that you've got to be running 60Ks plus a week, 80Ks plus a week. It's all about volume, volume, volume. And some of these runners that are doing half marathons are only running 30, 40Ks a week. Maybe it goes up when they're closer to the half marathon and that endurance run gets up. But apart from that, it just shows me that, yeah, the key sessions are really what matters and you don't have to get in your head about everything else and your body can still get back to that fitness level quite quickly.

It's a great point you raise and you question yourself, don't you? And you're lacking confidence because you haven't done the same preparation as prior and what a, a big confidence boost it is to you. You're thinking, oh geez, I've done it. I've done an all time PB based on the least amount of volume that I've ever done. And it's not that fact. You've got this bank of fitness from four or five years of running, six years of running, 10 years of running and having an interrupted eight week period. The body doesn't care about that. It's still got that bank of fitness and you're still ticking off the key sessions. So it's really good that you can now sit there and say, oh, great. I actually understand now that the key sessions are the important ones. And the other ones, if I've got time, they're really going to help me keep maintaining my fitness bank. If you didn't do back to involving more volume at some point in your year or your block, then your fitness will slowly decrease and then it will be harder. So you're lucky you've still got that, you know, that fresh fitness volume from a, you know, a really good two or three years of training under your belt. So, yes, it's not just one thing and it is determined by a whole lot of things. So you've identified definitely that the key sessions have kept your fitness going so much that you've done an absolute pb, all time pb. But if you kept that same regime, that wouldn't happen over the next six months, 12 months. You would need to have a period where you have to get back to getting the endurance into you and the volume. And it's a really good topic you've brought up with catching your attention. But don't let the listener be fooled here. You only need to do the key sessions and you'll be fine. Well, that's true for a period of time.

Yeah. Depending on your training history as well. Moving on to today's main topic, things that the pros do that you probably shouldn't. And we want to start with by saying that you have to understand that the first thing you have to understand is that the pros are a different part of the population. You know, they are the top 1% or sometimes top 0.1% or sometimes top 0.01% of the population in their ability to do what they do. And you look at what the Tour de France riders can do, it is just, it's unthinkable the way they can perform. They often have different genetics, different VO2 max levels, different makeups that allow them to do what they do. And so when you understand that, you don't have to compare yourself to them, because sometimes those genetic advantages or those natural advantages or even the mental advantages they have, because they're people who are just solely focused on, you know, going to the Olympics and winning that gold medal and nothing else in their life matters apart from that. And they will sacrifice everything in their life to do that. And not a lot of, a lot of us are willing to do that. Then they are. They are just different populations. So you just keep that in mind when you are comparing. It's okay to compare, but we want to start off by saying that and saying they are a lot of the time just a different part of the population. So that's why we don't want to automatically straightaway copy everything that they do.

Yeah, that's a, it's a good start to this topic. And you know, not only are they in the, you know, the half a percent of the population in terms of physical ability, but, you know, they probably, and I put myself in this category during the period where I was so determined to achieve my goals, I became the most selfish person on the planet. And you know, that is, that is part of what is necessary. And, and you know, a lot of the things that we're doing in our podcast is, is totally directed at the everyday person who just wants to improve and, and still have a functioning family or functioning social life or, or really good at work. And, and this is just part of their everyday activities. Whereas, you know, the pros are single minded, selfishly directing all of their energies and they'll do whatever it takes to get the best out of themselves so that they can continue their existence as a professional sportsman. And they should be doing that. That's exactly what they should be doing. But you know, a lot of them, if they look back at the end of their career, if they were so, so single minded that they, you know, had a, had a partner who didn't like that and, and left them, that that would be a disappointing thing to have happen. You still need to have a balance even if you are a professional. So I want to make that point that you will probably have a better professional career if you are a balanced person rather than an extreme person. And there are a lot of examples of a lot of the pros as triathletes, marathon runners, cyclists at the pro tour who have got fully functioning families and careers that, you know, it works better when they've got everything working well rather than, you know, being totally single focused on one thing. It's actually not healthy. And as we've said many times, if it's extreme, it's going to be unsustainable. So there's going to be a point where it's not going to work for you.

So there's a few things that the pro lifestyle allows them to do that the everyday athlete or the age group athlete just isn't able to do and do the same, do the same way. And one of those is the recovery time. Pro athletes have way more time to Recover. So it allows them to go harder in sessions or potentially do more harder sessions throughout the week, potentially double up to a hard session in the morning, hard session at night. And the age group can't afford to do that because recovery is such an important part of the training program. And if you've got limited time to recover, you can't be filling that time with extra stresses on the body because you're just going to overtrain, hit a wall, get yourself injured, get yourself sick, et cetera. And so that recovery thing is so important. We just can't try and copy the same volume or intensities that they're doing because of that. And Joe Friel is quite strict on this and he, he basically says that no more than two high intensity sessions a week and we personally push it up to three, potentially some double days depending on the athlete, potentially, you know, two really high intensity sessions and one endurance intensity session mixed in with each other. But I do like how Joe Friel is quite adamantly that you know, the age group can handle two and the rest of the time needs to be recovery. And he's really strict on that and that's a really important factor to consider.

Yeah, not only recovery, it's resting. You know, the pros can go out for a training session and then can come home and either have a nap or put their feet up and just really rest, you know, go into a spa or a sauna or, or a swimming pool for relaxing, you know, non weight bearing, you know, get massages, get the right fuel straight away. There's just no stress to actually get on with your day. Whereas you know, we've got everybody that, that has got a full time job and family is probably getting up at 5am, some people 6am So I know some people get up at 4:30 to do their session before they actually have their breakfast and then get on with their day. And they're not sitting around, they are, you know, either catching public transport into their job or having to commute to work on their bike or whatever they're doing. It is not stationary recovery. And you know, that is a number one thing that you have to consider. The difference between what pros are able to do in their training session and then what they can do in their recovery. We're not actually talking about recovery as in training recovery but they can do both. They can rest, sleep, do all the 1 percenters and still do easy training sessions for recovery. Whereas the everyday average person, they have to do the training session in the time limit they've got and then get on to a full eight hour working day and then deal with, if they've got a family, whatever the children are dealing with, which means picking up and dropping off and going to sport maybe with them and maybe being their coach. So there's so many things that are going to prevent you from, from emulating the recovery process that pros do. So this is really important that you know, we understand that, that we can't do the same recovery. So we've got to be way more conservative in our training so that we don't cause ourselves, you know, a heart attack from, from training so hard, working so hard and you know, not sleeping properly because you have to get up at the crack of dawn and you know by the time you finish some of your work at night, you know you've only got four hours sleep left before you have to get up again. So you know, burning the candle at both ends is something that the everyday athlete is doing daily, whereas the pros are absolutely not doing that. And this is a big difference that you have to understand that you know how the train, the pros train like this day in, day out, but they're resting, you know, in between. And you know, it is as you said at the start, amazing that the pros can do a 21 days tour. You know, day after day, you know, a training stress score of three or 400 every day. And at the end of 21 days they've got some ridiculous training stress score that we would take four months to accumulate. But, but they've got, they've got an adaptable body that's, that's used to this, they've trained for this, got the same thing. Triathletes doing Ironmans four weeks apart, you know, but the everyday age grouper shouldn't be copying that. They need longer periods between big events. You know, you can't just line up every weekend for half ironman. You need to spread it out so you've got an adequate recovery period. And I would suggest the pro should do the same a lot of the time because, you know, just because these, this is my job. That's their, you know, that was my, my mantra. I need to be in events. This is what I'm, this is what I'm training for. I don't want to avoid these. But, but the events aren't, you know, a 1500 met the track. It's possibly, you know, the minimum time is going to be three hours fifty as a half ironman and you know, seven or eight hours as a, as an Ironman. And for an age grouper it's, you know, anywhere between four and six hours as a half ironman and eight to 15 hours. So you've got to have adequate recovery. While we're talking about recovery in between events, in between training.

Yeah, it's a really good next point. It's that, you know, you can't copy the pros racing schedule. It's been really interesting watching a lot of the athletics athletes who competed at the World Champs, which was a few weeks before the comm game. So this only applies to some of the Commonwealth athletes. But Ollie Hor, the Australian who won the Commonwealth GO Games gold, competed at the World Champs, had a disappointing result, went to Commonwealth Games, had an unbelievable result, won gold and then a few weeks later backed up and went to the Diamond League in a really competitive race in the 1500 at the Diamond League and ran one of his worst races he's ever run. He was, he was eight seconds slower than his pb. So it just shows what's happening and these athletes are trying to keep up these crazy calendars and even they can't do it. And a lot of the British athletes, I saw a posting online about it and they actually had the European Championships in there as well, as well as Diamond League races. And I just couldn't believe there's been a Laura Muir from Great Britain, third at the World Champs, gold at the Commonwealth Games, gold European Champs, I think, and then backed up for Diamond League and she ran a really good PB 3000, although she was only in the top six I think, but it was still a PB. I just, I'm amazed at her ability that she's backed it up for two months straight. Basically. We talk about holding form, but the point is it's hard to copy that racing schedule and you really shouldn't try. It's just not viable. That's actually a really common question we get from athletes is I want to do these two races, are they too close together? And so often if they're within six to eight weeks, even if they're just two half Ironmans, we're really advising against that and we say probably give yourself a little bit more time and that's probably the minimum period. Anything less than that, it's probably a flat out no. Some people like to do, you know, Geelong and Melbourne, the last few years has been a month apart and you've really tried to advise people against that, even though a lot of athletes make their own decisions and decide to do it anyway. But especially the more beginner athlete Compared to the intermediate or advanced age grouper, definitely. The more gap, the better. As you were talking, it reminded me of George Hinkapy's quote where he says, he says, I'll always. I'll take the escalator instead of the stairs if I can, because I want to rest my legs. And so much so that if I don't have to stand, I'll sit, and if I don't have to sit, then I'll lie down and if I don't have to stay awake, then I'll fall asleep. And that's, that's his mantra of everything outside of training. And I know that we don't have to say this, but I do want to say that if there's any pros listening, we're not just saying that your life is training and then feed up. We know that there's other stuff going on. There are a lot of pros that are parents to young children, so. But we are talking about the stark differences between atriums and pros here. Yep.

And I think that's a really good summary of the recovery aspect of it. And, you know, if you don't understand that you do need to not copy that, then I don't think you've been listening.

The next point is a little bit more specific, but it's talking about how you actually perform when you're out training. And one thing we thought of was taking unnecessary risks on the bike. You see a lot of the descenders going absolutely nuts in cycling races or even, you know, on the TT bike. And for the age group, this is just a bit of a conservative lesson. But if you've got a job that you can't afford to lose, maybe pushing it on the bike and risking crashing is not the best idea. And this is, you know, we can get caught up watching Tom Pidcock descend like a madman and do the greatest descent of all time in the Tour de France. And you go out and the hills and you want to do the same thing. I know I, I like going around corners really fast and sometimes you think, if I come off here, is it really worth it? And it's absolutely not. So just another example of something small. But you don't have to copy the pros in those circumstances.

Yeah, the peacock example is, is spot on. It was unbelievably good to watch. But, you know, he's really trained himself to be really skilled at that activity. And, and that's another thing. What level are you. Are you. Are you used to riding descents in the hills or have you hardly ridden any descents, and, you know, you've got to just keep yourself in your ability levels and practice until you. You can risk. Risk getting a bit more of an angle in corners a little bit faster. That's something, you know, just because you see the pros do it. It's not something they've done in, you know, one or two weeks of training. They've been doing this for three, four, five years and 15 years. You know, they're used. They're used to riding on these limits. And it, you know, it's. You know, you often watch the motorbike riders just doing incredible things with their motorbikes on corners. And it's not, you know, the GP stuff you see with Mick Dornan those days. You know, leaning over on the bike with gravity, you just can't believe it. You know, if we as amateurs tried to do that, we would be flipping over the handlebars within the first corner. So you just have to respect that the skill level of these people is not something you can just copy. You need to practice it. And I think that's the important thing is just because you see someone do something, that doesn't mean you can without, you know, without the appropriate skill lesson to get to that level.

That brings us to the next point, which is be sure to understand the reason why a pro might be doing what they do. Don't just copy it for the sake of copying it, because you could be copying it for the wrong reasons. And you've told the story a couple of times on the podcast of DiCostello in the marathon, who had diarrhea and was trying to rip the diarrhea off himself mid marathon. And then everyone started wiping their legs in marathons because I thought it was some new technique, whereas he was just wiping the diarrhea, which is just absurd. And this is how superstitions start. You know, people copy the actions or something that the pros do. That happens a lot in tennis, thinking that it makes a difference, and it's actually not. And if you understood that it was just a person's superstition, then you wouldn't be copying it for no reason.

Yep. Routine and superstition are two different things. And, you know, a lot of the pros are doing it because it's their routine and. And it works. But, you know, that's. You know, I often look at Rafa as a tennis player and his routine for his serving. It just. It's just beyond laughable. It. You know, every single serve after a fault is going to go through the same routine. But it's what's made him. It's. It's not what's made him. It's what's part of what's made him such a successful athlete. Because he's got a routine and you know, the footballer who is meant to kick goals and you know, he's having, you know, a horrible time with it and he starts to practice routine and, and emulate thing, the same, the same action day after day, week after week. Eventually he'll start be a sharpshoot goal kicker. The same with a person playing golf who's got the yips in putting. You know, you need to get out there and practice a routine that's going to make you calm and enable you to hit the ball, strike the ball properly, read the lines that you're trying to putt the ball into the hole with, and you will become a good putter. But you know, you've got to have these routines rather than superstitions. You know, I don't, I don't wipe my brow because as Rafa does, because it's a superstition. I do it because it's part of my routine.

You can look at routines and definitely take the best parts of them. I've definitely changed up my warm up run routine by looking at a lot of the pros and seeing some of the warm up drills they do and seeing certain things they do and think, oh, I might try that. And then you try it and you find it really feels good or you really like what it does in your warm up routine. And that's a great thing to do. Tennis is a funny one. I just want to quickly digress a little bit and tell a throwback story. I was lucky enough to be a ball kid appeared when I was 13 years old at the Australian Open and right in the Djokovic era when he was just winning every single Australian Open in a row. I think he won seven out of eight or nine or something. It was just absurd. And earlier on when he was winning those early ones, his routine before serve was out of control. He would bounce the ball and it got up to something like 36 times or. And I was on. I was lucky enough to be on court in the final when he was doing it in the year that it had the most media attention. And I remember it was such a pressure point and the crowd were getting into him a little bit when he would bounce it so much and the umpire would have to shush the crowd and there's so much riding on that game. And he's just standing there bouncing, bouncing, bouncing. And I'm watching him thinking, why are you doing this? You're just making it worse because he's just drawing so much attention to it. And he had this ability just to. For him, it put him in the zone. And the more bounces he did, it was putting him in the zone, because after 20 or so, I'm thinking, you're going to stuff this up because you've just put too much pressure on yourself. And then you would serve the most unbelievable serve you've seen. And he obviously won the game. And I thought, for him, that really works. And for someone, for myself, I bounced the ball that time, I'd get Wayne over my head, and if I tried to copy that, it just wouldn't work. And that for me was a real big standout of someone really sticking to their guns for what works for them, even if the whole crowd was against him, but knowing not to copy that because it won't work for me.

Yeah, great stories. And the DiCostello one's a ripper, as we've talked many times. But, you know, you want to pick the best out of what you see and try it. And, you know, we've said this many times about nutrition, about anything. Try it on yourself, and if it's going to help you perform better, then continue to use it. But, you know, there's reasons for what people do as a professional because they've experimented on themselves and they've found out because they're at the top of their game, whether it's golf, tennis, triathlon, marathon running, that they've got there, because the things they've done have enabled them to be successful. So that's the premises of why we, as amateurs or everyday athletes, want to copy them, because we think that that's what got them there. It might only be part of a routine, but it enables them to concentrate. So as you've used that example with Djokovic, and I remember, the more important the point, the more bounces he hit, and that was. That was a key to his success. Of course, he spent 70,000 hours serving.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, people forget that, you know, it was the serving that actually won him, the points won him, the matches won in the tournaments. But the bouncing of the ball was getting his mind right. And he was probably, you know, blocked out everything from the crowd. He couldn't even probably hear the crowd, and he was just going, what? This is how I'm going to surf. I'm going to throw the ball to the Left going to, you know, make sure this is a straight serve down the line. And he's in his mind using the ball bounce repeatedly to get him to think about how he's going to execute.

And I have to say, if I could change my gratitude for the episode, I'm grateful that you enrolled me to be a ball kid when I was 12 years old, because that is honestly still one of the top memories of my life. It's weird to have one of the best memories of your life when you were 12, 13, but I just hold on to that, and it's so special. Another example is lactate training. You know, a lot of the pros are now doing lactate training and a lot of people want to get into it, but there's no point doing it unless you know how it actually works or the reasons behind it, the science behind it. And if you've done any lactate testing and there was footage come out again from the Collins cup recently, and a lot of the pro athletes were training together, and Christian Blumenfeld and the Norwegian boys, or watching Lionel Sanders train, and they were giving a bit of a hard time around the track because he was doing 2K intervals and they're all watching on the sidelines and they've got the lactate meter and they're going to take it in the rest period. He's letting them do that because one of the Norwegians is his coach and they're all yelling at him going, you're running too hard. And because I think there's a lot of ego and testosterone going around, he's running too quick. And they're all guessing what he's lactate level is going to be. And he's supposed to be under 2.6 millimoles. And. And someone's saying he's definitely going to be over 3. And someone's going, he's going to be 3.5. And I think Gustav Eaton said he's going to be 3.8. And then, bang, he finishes the rep and they all huddle around and what's he going to be? And he was 3.8 millimoles. So he was training way too hard. But that is example of, again, understanding the reasons why they're doing what they're doing, finding the science behind it. If you see a pro doing something new, you've got to go ask, okay, what's happening here? What's the science behind it? Is there any research or is it just an experiment at this stage?

Yeah, great summary. You've just got to understand the reasoning behind it and obviously only implement it if it works for you.

I think on the experimenting thing, we can watch someone do something on TV and think that's interesting. And as you always talk about, they might decide in their post race analysis that that was absolutely useless and they felt horrible doing that thing. But we don't get to see the post race analysis. So someone might go and copy that even though the person did it and realized that it was the worst thing for their race. So without that lack of information, you just can't be making decisions and change your own routine based on that. Yeah.

And that's why we're trying to say just, just don't copy everything that you see. You have to investigate it and look, some of the most outrageous things that you see a pro do that might have nothing to do with contributing to their success. So you've just got to be a little bit clearer in what you're going to copy. And copying is always dangerous. Every human being has got different requirements. So just because it works for, you know, rider A doesn't mean it's going to work for the next 50 riders. It's. It's just totally determined by what works for you. So, so, yeah, we're not saying don't copy anything that the pros do. You should be trying to pick out the eyes of what's, what's going to be helpful.

Model the path.

That's not going to be helpful.

Yeah, yeah. And Ryan Warren, the exercise scientist who was on the show a while back, spoke about this and he spoke about efficiency and, and you could get one of the most efficient runners and everyone might try and copy their style. But he said almost guaranteed, if you change your running style, your efficiency goes down and it might eventually catch back up if you stick to it for long enough. But that's another example of your running style is the most efficient thing for you right now. And you want to keep training that and maybe make minor tweaks. But if you suddenly saw that Eliot Kipchoge has the best, most efficient running style possible and then you just suddenly change your style and go for it, your economy is going to go down. And, and yes, we're really just trying to make this point of figuring out what to model and what not to model. And I think one of the final points you wanted to make was you've got to figure out what kind of athlete you are, find out who you are and what you want and what you're aiming for, and that'll help you make decisions based on what you should and shouldn't be doing.

Yeah, that's a really good point. And just before we get onto that, I was thinking that when you see an example of that last point we were making, you know, I remember seeing the best swimmers in the world swimming and you know, you see their stroke, you see the slow mo underwater and then all of a sudden all swimmers seem to be swimming similar and all of a sudden someone comes out with straight arm over the top and they win an Olympic gold medal and all of a sudden people start swimming with straight arms. You know, whatever the successful people end up doing, people will copy that. And that might be the most inefficient way of swimming. You know, some time trialers have got such a flat back and their head is so far down between their shoulders and their chin is touching the handlebars and they are aerodynamically, unbelievably perfect. But the majority of us can't get that position.

Yeah, or you might get there, but your power's right down. You might be in the most aero position but your power's right down, so what's the point?

And you'll go slower. So you know, that leads on to, you know, you've got to actually identify in your own mind and be brutally honest. What am I and what am I trying to achieve? Am I a dead set beginner in a sport that I've just taken up? Am I an experienced, average person who's just trying to improve, or am I someone who wants to be a winner in an age group? Point the pointy end of the events that are the chosen sport that I've picked. I might be very average at the start, but my goal is to be a winner in my age group. And all of those things are okay, but you have to actually work out what you want and that will determine how you go about it. So if you're more than happy just to be social and use the events or the training to keep your health and fitness going, then you're going to think about doing some of the stuff that the pros do with a lot less interest. You're going to actually not worry about any of that. You're just going to do what's going to be more beneficial for you to get through each day, each session, each week. Whereas if you're actually got aspirations of being a winner in your chosen sport, you really need to be thinking about it differently. You need to be thinking like a pro. Even though you don't have the hours or the probability that the means or the equipment, but you can do everything you can to give yourself the best opportunity by looking at what works for pros and trying it yourself. But that's the level you've chosen. So you need to actually think similarly to a pro even though you haven't got the time to do it. But you can emulate the things that are going to make you as good as you can possibly be. And once you establish what your level you're aspiring to, that will make the world of difference of how much you should take on board with what's good for you and what's something that you shouldn't even go near.

I think that point can be really underestimated. Setting the right expectations for yourself can have such a positive impact on your experience in the sport and your experience with training and racing, your motivation levels, your enjoyment levels. I've definitely fallen into the trap of we love these sports. It's our jobs to get to watch these sports, to get to look at exercise science, to get to look how to improve. And I fall down some serious rabbit hol of things we should be doing. And some of the conversations we have, we are just talking about wacky things, wacky potential things to add to training programs, to add to the athletes, to test on ourselves. And then suddenly you can go down these rabbit holes of comparing, well, I'm not doing enough or I'm not doing enough compared to this certain pro or this certain age group. But then you've got to take a step back and say, okay, what's actually my goal here? Because if I'm not a pro or I'm not, you know, I'm not at this level, so do I need to be thinking like that? And just adjusting your expectation suddenly just helps you enjoy the process a little bit more. I think that really important. One last thing I wanted to. One bonus point I wanted to talk about was we've seen a lot of pros talk a bit about power and racing and we've spoken about the balance between using your power meter and then racing the race. And a few pros recently, especially in triathlon have been coming out and saying they've just ignored the power meter completely because they're there to race and they're just willing to do whatever it takes to win that race. Braden Curry spoke about it in terms of his run pace at Ironman. He was in first place, then Christian overtook him in second place. And he's. He said he wouldn't do it any other way because he was going for it. Lionel Sanders talks about it all the time. It's his time to race. And this is an example where I think for age groupers, they should do that a lot less than what the pros are doing. And that's just a bonus one to finish on, is that for the age grouper, sticking to your power for as long as possible will probably get you a better result more of the time than when it's time to race. There's very little time we speak about in Half Ironman or Ironman, where you disregard that and then it's time to race and time to push yourself. Not. Not based on the numbers, just based on your effort.

Oh, there's so much in that one, Jord. I don't even know where to begin. When you've got the ability to race week in, week out, and you know, it's not the race you've been training for for eight months or 12 months, it's okay to be almost flippant about, I'm just going to race it today. And really, they are experimenting as well, and they're trying to see what happens if they do ignore all of. All of the things that they could be using. And I know that I've seen lots of, you know, interviews with Lionel Sanders where he's just said, I had a crack today and it didn't work, and, you know, I live to fight another day. And, you know, in his mind, he's not actually telling us the full story. You know, he's not going to do that again. He's. It's an endurance event and he's going, and he's proved that. You know, we look at these last couple of events that he's been doing, especially at Utah at the Ironman Championships. You know, he let the bunch go. He didn't race the race, he raced his numbers. They're examples of them changing their minds. And so, you know, just be careful what you hear and watch their actions more than what their words are saying. And, you know, as you just pointed out, you will have greater success the more times you stay within your range and try to push yourself slightly outside your range. When you've got control of your event, you will have way more success using that tactic than just blazingly going for it. And I just had an interview today with a guy who's joining us, and he's done lots of endurance events as a cyclist. And he's one thing that the reason he made contact was because he has had so many disappointing results and he's heard our podcast, he wants to be on board. And the reason is because he's sick of having all of these disappointing results. He said, I've been fit enough, but I just sabotaged myself come the event. And, you know, he's just wanting some advice and some help about what should I be planning and preparing and how should I execute. And he's heard us talk about it on the podcast, and now he's excited because he feels like he's got some guidance and he won't be making that mistake again. And, you know, it's almost like a aha moment for him, you know, to know that there's going to be someone helping him on that journey. And that's the thing that the majority of the age group, as we're comparing against pros, you can't be like a pro and risk everything because that's their livelihood. You know, if they don't perform, they are wondering, you know, whether they're going to retain their sponsorship, you know, if they don't to be seen to be having a crack that, you know, people aren't going to actually back them anymore. And, you know, their careers could be over if they're not successful. In actual fact, if they thought about it differently and just raced within their means and trained better. So they're going to be stronger and fitter for the next event and learn from their mistakes rather than continually going in. And I see this all the time with the guys who are coming 12th, 18th, 24th in some of these pro races. They're unbelievably talented racers, but they're racing above themselves when they're not ready. You know, they're trying to ride in a pack with Christian Blumenfeld and Jan Frodeno, and you can, you know, Lionel Sanders, you know, they're probably not at that level yet. They're going to ride with them because they want to be pushing themselves to give themselves every. Every opportunity to be successful. But it's actually probably detrimental to them. If they just did their own race pace and power and then ran at their own pacing, that's going to give them possibly a pb, they would probably get a better outcome. And there are so many examples for the amateur to understand that. And, you know, just because I'm talking triathlon more here other than World Tour cycling, where it's in a race as a bike rider, you know, the race is the race, it's quite different. Time trialing is for triathlon almost, and racing the bike is for World Tour riding. So they're quite different sports. And you don't get confused with what we're saying. Here, if I'm in a cycling race and I want to be at the pointy end, if the race goes up the road, I need to be going up the road. Despite what my power meter is telling me, I need to just stay with the race. And if I can't do it and I get dropped, it's not because I didn't try. You know, once you're separated from a bike race where there's a peloton of 12 people and you're being dropped by yourself, you're not going to come back from that.

That.

Because the advantage of having drafting with the 12 people ahead of you unless they all sit up and look at each other. Whereas in a triathlon, it's meant to be an individual time trial as a bike rider and as a runner. And as we know, there are groups that form in triathlon races. But definitely you have to be able to focus on your own own ability. And that's the thing that's different here. And even the pros are going to understand that at some point in their career that you just can't throw it all. You know, if someone's riding or swimming or running faster than you, you just can't go with them. If you don't have that ability, you can mentally push yourself to a point, but, you know, once you build the lactate above your level, once your heart rate goes through your mouth, you know, you're just physically going to slow down. So. And you could end up going from possible second or third, which is, you know, not as good as winning. I'm agreeing with that. But it's still better than finishing 30th. So, you know, there are times when you should do that. It's a be all and end all and give it your. And you're not. You don't care if you come 30th or it's first or nothing. And I'm okay with that. But we're talking about the difference between pros and everyday athletes here. And so, you know, there's not many times where I'd say that to anybody I coach. You know, this is a day where just abandon all of the tactics and go with the race. You know, I do and have said that to a few athletes, but there's particular reasons why. But the majority of the time I'm trying to say to triathletes, stay with your numbers and try and improve on what you've done before.

One interesting hypothetical I'd like to put you to you to finish off just quickly. You telling me that in 1988, when you, when you've got 5K to go in the run at the Australian Ironman Championships, a little bit different back then because you don't have all the, you didn't have all the data available. So you didn't really know whether you're pushing yourself, fasten your threshold or not. But let's say you had the data and you could see second place coming, you would, you would still stay in your range and let them come, or you would push yourself above and be willing to risk losing first place because you said that for you, coming second or third isn't as good as first, but better than 30th. I'm asking you, when you're in that mindset where you wanted to win so bad, would you rather blown up and come 30th and come second?

Great question, Jord. And two years in a row it happened to me at that event. So the first year I was being chased down and I went beyond what I was capable of doing and managed to hang on and it was a great outcome. The second year I was starting the race equal with the other competitor, which happened to be Tony Sattler at the time. We came out of transition together and his pace was in the run league for the marathon. So we got off the bike together and, you know, this is the year after I'd won. This is my second go at defending the title. And he just came out and ran and a pace that was unsustainable for me. He was running way above my ability. And I just thought I'm going to stay with him for a little bit and to see if he is just bluffing. But straight away I'm running at his pace, not mine. And after, I don't remember whether it was 2 or 3K, I just made a decision to let him go. And he was, you know, I wasn't letting him go. He was just running away from me. And I decided that that was going to cost me the event. So I decided that I would stick with my pace. And I still ran a PB because I backed off and I measured my effort. But he beat me by three or four minutes. At the end of that, end of that day, maybe five minutes, I can't actually remember, but I ended up coming second. So it was disappointing. But he was better than me on that day and had I tried to run with him, I would have come probably fifth or sixth or second, seventh. I would have lost so much more because I would have blown up. It was, it was a level that was above me.

And that would have been disappointing for you.

It would have been, yeah, absolutely. Limiting my losses was. Was something that I really prided myself on. And, you know, the year before, I proved that I could push if I had to, but, you know, to push for 42k, as compared to pushing 4 or 5k at the end, was a different scenario. Yeah, so. So it's a really. A really great question. And. And I've done both.

Yeah, no, that's a good answer. Thanks for finishing with that. And I think we'll end the episode there. So thank you very much, as always, for listening to another episode of the Trivalo podcast, and we'll see you on the next one.