Training Less for Better Results [CASE STUDY]

Welcome back to another case study episode where we like to review an athlete's improvement to find out exactly where they were potentially when they started with us or their journey over the last period, and how we got that improvement, what training we did, what changes we made, and what we needed to do with them to get that improvement. And today is a little bit of a different style case study. It's not a typical linear progression from potentially a beginner athlete where we see them, where we see them just improving all three disciplines. We've seen some great results with our case studies where athletes will go up 20, 40, 60 watts in their FTP on a pretty traditional journey. But this one's a little bit different because an athlete came to us who we would describe was a endurance monster. And this is Fiona, who had managed her training herself essentially the last 20 years or her whole life. But she'd hit a point where she wanted to see if she could go for another Ironman 20 years after she had last completed one. And this was a great test of a coach and athlete relationship and the challenges that come when neither coach or athlete potentially want to compromise too much. And both coach and athlete needed to compromise here about their methods and what they wanted. So this was someone who was very, very well trained. And she really came into us saying, I don't want you to tell me to train less. You know, that's not what I want, when that's exactly what she needed. So there's a bit of a. A starting sticky point about how you start off a coach, athlete relationship from there. So 18 months ago, we started this journey with Fiona and her position was she has a very busy job as well as a son to drive around to multiple sports throughout the week and somehow fit her training in the early, very early hours each morning. And her goal was to see if she could get herself back to Ironman level and maybe even qualify for the World Champs. So before we get into the episode, I just want to quickly mention something from an episode. A couple of weeks ago, we did an episode on Lauren, who was more of a beginner triathlete. And we just wanted to make a note that we spoke a lot about her improvement. And one of her big goals was to improve her running. She just had not seen much improvement in her running performance the entire time. And before the 70.3, we didn't get a chance to test her fresh PB. And a few days after the case study, she did a fresh 5k and smashed her PB by 5 minutes on the run. And we said, well, you could have done this before the case study. So we just thought we'd include it in this episode and just say that if you heard that case study a few weeks ago with Lauren, one of her big sticking points and her big goals is to improve her running. And yes, after a short time on the program and not improving her run for so long to certainly improving it by five minutes, it was pretty hilarious for us. So, dad, welcome to a case study. We've got a good one ahead. You want to describe Fiona's situation for us?

Thanks, Jordan. And this is one of the most enjoyable athletes that I've ever coached, I think, because I think I learned a lot more about coaching than I have with any other athlete. And it's always good to have a case study and focus on the things that we've done well as a coaching group for our athletes. And it sounds like we're always pumping ourselves up about how good a job we do, but it is also the other way around. The athlete has a huge amount of trust in what we can provide. And I was really challenged by Fiona because she definitely had an unbelievably good work ethic already. And that was never going to be the issue. It was always going to be, how can I best manage her to do actually less. She was such an endurance athlete. She was so well disciplined. And over 20 or 30 years, she'd been, you know, if you, if, if you looked at the sessions she'd been doing, you know, she could run 20 to 30K, you know, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, no problem. And for some people, that's. That's just like what. That's. That's incredible running. And, and sure, she had some ups and downs over that period where she probably, you know, had some injuries as a result of that, but she just loves training and she just loves the process of being fit and being organized. And she has that in her work ethic. She's super structured. And that wasn't the reason she reached out to us. It was more getting someone to get on board with the way she trained and give us some tips about changing some things, which she knew she had to do. She knew she had to change some things, but she wasn't willing to give up everything. So when I said earlier I was challenged as a coach, normally I would really want to only let people come on board who are going to really follow and trust our process. And they've reached out to us because they feel that they're not improving and they're not progressing and they may feel They've done a good job up to this point, but they just want to go and improve more. And so they eventually have to, you know, make that call to say, look, this is what I've done. How can you help me get that next 5 or 10%? And. And that's essentially what she did. But she had a lot of provisos where, you know, I don't want you to stop me doing these monster days of training. And so, you know, I'm being challenged right from the very first sentence of our. Of our interview was, I want you to coach me, but I don't want to change. And. And I think that's really difficult starting point, isn't it, where you've got a keen, enthusiastic athlete who wants help but is really reticent to change anything that they're doing. And so that was my first challenge, was to have discussions about her. And this was an unbelievable. I felt like this is the most teamwork I'd actually ever come across, where I had to compromise a lot and I had to ask her to compromise a lot, and we had to meet somewhere in between, and we both agreed to do that. She agreed that she would trust the process and do less training if it looked like she was going to improve. And I had to agree to let her continue to do a lot of training that I felt over the top, but it kept her mentally happy and content. And. And so we agreed to disagree on that and meet halfway. And we had lots of periods over the last 18 months where I would have to text her and say, you're dropping back into your old ways. Let's just pull it back a bit. And to her credit, she would absolutely go, yeah, I was waiting for the text and I knew that I'd done the wrong thing. I knew I'd gone too far and I always had to bring it back to. Look, if you want to improve it, doing more is not necessarily going to get you that improvement. Doing it smarter is going to get you that improvement. And she agreed, and there was nothing she disagreed with, but she just had this love of training, and I'm trying to get that into a different way of thinking. Whereas if you train with a little bit more specific intent, you will actually get the two results you want. You can still train the way you want to with less volume, and you'll get more improvement from. From the sessions you're doing. And I suppose that was the starting point.

Yeah, exactly. It's funny, we. We get athletes too, you know, throughout the. Our. Our form, when they once they start with us. And, and as you said, you know, we really asked them, what's your training been like? And the volume was huge. And one of her goals was, ironically, she wanted to improve her run base. And, and this just highlights the example of where the coach's value is, because you had to say to her, you know, you've already got an elite run base, you know, that's actually not what you need. Whereas she didn't realize the volume of work she was doing, how much of a she had. And that's, that's what we were talking about or I was referring to in the intro when it's, when we're saying it's not just a, always a simple case of a linear progression that we're looking for. With an athlete, the coach's role can be a range of things. It's the programming of what sessions to do, it's the, it's the schedule and what order to do them in, but it's also the how to approach sessions. Identifying strengths and weaknesses in an athlete, giving athlete confidence in what they need to do or what they're already good at. It's a whole range of things. And in this case it's, it was not about training harder or training well. That was already two big ticks there. And she'd already managed her own training really well up to this point. But as you said, it was managing her fatigue and managing her load and managing her mindset that if she changed things, she wasn't going to go backwards and she wasn't going to lose any of what her strengths were. And so it takes us through that first compromise of the first kind of, I'm not going to say argument, because it's never an argument, but the first compromise where she's saying, I don't want to, I don't want to come in and do less. And you're saying, well, we kind of, that's kind of the first thing we have to tick off. So how did you approach that first challenge?

So we kind of made a deal and I said to her, if you can do the sessions that require some more intensity and you can tick them off and reach the targets in the sessions that I'm asking you to, then I will let you continue to do. If, for example, on a Tuesday we had a high intensity bike session that was meant to be an hour 30 with 20 or 30 minutes of specific high intensity target power numbers to reach. And Fi was used to doing two hours on a Tuesday. And so if she could hit those targets week in week out for the first month and still do two or three hours training, then I would be okay with that. But the minute that she couldn't achieve those targets in that high intensity session, she had to agree to drop back the, the duration of, of all of her training in the, in those bike sessions and run sessions. So, so that was great. She, she definitely got the idea straight away. Or geez, these sessions are really quite difficult and they are making me quite tired because for the first time she'd been training specifically to power numbers. And, and you know, when we said earlier she was an endurance monster, she would train each day to feel her RPE was really good. She had a really good understanding of. And she would just be pushing herself to a point where it was really similar training every day. So all of a sudden now we're changing it from today's an easier day and tomorrow's a harder day. And so getting. She understood all those concepts, but she just, you know, she was just happy, happy training. And now she's got to a point where I actually want to do, I want to do an Ironman and I do think I need to change some things. So she was on board with that. And so that was the first compromise was really me saying, well, if you can reach the targets, then we can, you know, we can still do some of those added extra time duration to the session. But the minute you're starting to get too tired, we're not going to know that for at least three or four weeks into the program. And I think that was a really good compromise for both of us to go into the, into the first block with that agreement for sure.

And then the next key thing was she just, she said, I'm not interested in improving my 5k, 10k half marathon run times. You know, I'm not. Of course you want to improve it somewhat, but she wasn't interested in that. She said, I don't need to be tested for that for the swim. I'm not interested in improving the numbers that drastically. It's the Iron Man's kind of the kitty goal. And you're saying that's fine, but this is our process. We still need to test these things. And there's key reasons for that, even if it's not your goal to improve them. And it was interesting for us because we're so data driven. But this wasn't so much about the data, even though we still test regularly and we still look at all the data. Yeah, again, that was another compromise. We had to get her on board with the testing side, even though it's not the primary goal.

Yeah. And look, one of the reasons I said, look, fair enough. With a swim and run, we can get by the program without testing you a lot in those disciplines, but on the bike, you haven't used power properly. And in order to get you to ride some changes in your training method, which is having some harder sessions, we need to actually test you on the bike. And she was okay with that. And so once she understood that, here's my FTP number and I can take a percentage of that for this session session and I can try to ride in the ranges, she was all on board with that. And, you know, that was enabling us to really quantify straight away whether she was overdoing the endurance training to not allow her to hit the targets. And certainly the lessons that she was learning about this was a, that, you know, this is a number that we train to. It's not a number that's going to define you as a writer or as a runner or as a swimmer. It's just initially a number to train to. So that was a really good lesson for me to get that message across that, yeah, sure, we want to train, we want to test you as an FTP and we'd like to test you in the water and as a runner just so that we can train accurately. And the second reason, and as long as I explained these reasons to Fee, she was on board with it, I said, the second reason is I want you to get used to executing. And she said, no, no, I am the best executor. You know, you just watch me. If you want me to run this pace or that, that effort on a bike, I can do it. And to be fair, she could. She was really good at it. But I said, this is going to be a little bit different having to ride to power, so let's just see how you go at executing that. And so learning how to execute in a training session around tested numbers was going to be a new experience for rather than doing it at 2rpe. And it just, it made another good summary for me that, you know, people are really good at RPE if they have worked at it a long time. But, but, you know, all of a sudden she was saying, oh, God, I felt like I was doing a really good effort in those 30, 15 sessions. But when I looked at the numbers, I was fading because I was writing too hard early and I felt like I was doing it easy early. And to be fair, she was. And that's the nature of being accurate. To power rather than rpe, because you're fresh at the start of the session and by the time you get to the end of the session, you know, the rpe, you know, you're suffering badly. And the numbers will show you, the numbers will show you're actually dropping out of the ranges. And so that was great for her to see that. And then she really was on board with, you know, these are my numbers, this is where I need to train at. And you know, and then learning how to execute properly in those sessions was a real learning experience for her. And that was one where she took on board and you know, having a session where you're just not doing the same Tempo or Zone 2, where you're actually training at Threshold or VO2 was, was going to be, you know, something new that she hadn't done for a long, long time. And so those three reasons, you know, working out what you're training to, learning how to execute and then training at an intensity that's above what you've been doing before. And she was totally on board with it once I explained those reasons and that's the relationship we were having. And look, to be fair, most people are on board with it once they understand that. But you've got to understand where she's come from. She's just done it this way for her whole career and done it really successfully. But she wanted that next step. And when you said she wasn't that keen on improving a 5k, 10k and half marathon, I know you were generalizing there. But, you know, we all, if we asked, you know, if we're asked to have a truth serum, it would be, well, yes, you know, I'm not doing all this training just to stay the same. I actually want to, you know, see, see some improvement. And she did want to do that, but, but she wasn't really wanting to be tested all the time for, for running. And that was a compromise that we in our processes had to, to come up with, you know, with another alternative way to make sure that she was running the, the, the right amount of intensity on those days. And, and then, you know, eventually she did to embrace the swimming testing with no issues whatsoever and couldn't wait for another 4k time trial or 3k or 2k or 1k, whatever we were giving her in the pool, she was right on board with it. And, and then eventually, you know, she would, could see the value in, you know, understanding well, you know, if my 10k times this, you know, if I can do some training that's going to improve that then I will actually be able to run a better marathon come Ironman Day at Port Mac.

Yeah, look great summary there. And I think one of the biggest lessons there is that it's a reminder that testing isn't the only reason the testing, we do the testing not just for improvement between blocks. You know, that's not the only reason. You just highlighted some really key reasons outside of aiming for improvement, of why testing is important. And in feeds case it was to make sure she's not over training in, in her training blocks. You know, so even if you're not aiming to, if you're not, if the training isn't geared around running improvement and I think this is what we'll talk about in terms of her Ironman racing is that she ran really well, but she has more speed in her and she has more pace in her to, to improve. And that was kind of the result of her race last weekend, which we'll get to. And your, your kind of analysis for her was you've got more in you running wise and we can do that, but we need to focus on the running training. And I guess the summary is that we still want to test anyway even if the primary goal isn't, you know, maximum improvement between testing blocks. You ticked off some, some major goals there that, you know, when we're actually doing the training, we need to use numbers from testing to make sure we're not over training under training to make sure we're actually in the right zones. Because if you're not testing then we're just training blindly really. So it's not just about testing between blocks to improve. It's about making sure that we're training well and training to quality and not overdoing things. I think that can't be understated.

Yeah. And also I think because she's trained herself for so long, and I keep saying that and done it very well, she just needed someone to guide her around confidence about am I doing it right? Is there things I could do better? What are the things I shouldn't be doing that you can see? And that to me was great because she really trusted us when she came on board because she'd heard so many podcasts so she already had that trust. And when we got to talk about how we could improve her, she was up for whatever the advice I was giving her and she would implement that if she understood the reasons why. And that's the, that was the fun part of coaching fee. She was, she was, you know, someone who was going to be on board as long as she could understand the reasons why. And look, everybody's going to be like that, aren't they? But, but you know, this is someone who'd done it one way for so long. And remember, change is something that human beings don't like doing. You know, I want to, I want to still be the same athlete. I want to improve, but I don't want to change anything. And you know, that just can't work. We, we have to change something to improve ourselves, otherwise we're going to stay the same forever. So I think that's what she was really reaching for, someone who could give her confidence about what she was doing was okay. And what are the things that are going to allow her to get that Ironman after 23 years later when she first did Port Mac in 2001, can I do another one, you know, 23 years older and am I doing the right training for that or do I need to do something completely different? And I think that was the, that was the great realization to me was great. This person's really on board. There's so many things we can change here, but we have to do it really subtly so that she will agree to it. And stopping her from being an endurance monster was one thing I couldn't stop, but I had to try to coerce her to say that less is not better all the time.

More is not better.

Sorry, more is not better all the time. Less is better than more.

Exactly. Right. And so from a data perspective, I mean she, she did improve her FTP a lot, which is great once you start training to power. She, she improved that quite quickly and then changed by accident. The power does change itself, but she definitely got that improvement that we'd like to see from an FTP perspective. She backed off the volume in areas and that definitely helped her freshen up. And then she just wanted that confidence that, yeah, she could get to the Ironman and complete it, really, and complete it in good shape. And you know, fast forward where she followed the process for this 18 months and she gets to Port Mac last weekend after all these years, as you said, what was the mindset going in? How confident were you both as coach and athlete and what was the race plan and outcome?

I must say I was the most confident I'd ever been with any athlete going into an Ironman because she was just embracing the endurance side of it. Right. You know, she came to us already fit for. She could have done an Ironman, you know, before we worked together, but would she have done it with the right plan and, and her execution, that would have been the key things that will let her down for sure. And she knew that and that's where we were helpful to her because we could actually guide her to say okay in the swim. She started with us having huffing and puffing after 50 meters and all of a sudden 18 months later she can knock out 4k. That to me was an incredible improvement on the bike riding to the power on a course like Port Mac, which has got, you know, nearly 2,000 meters of climbing and it's a brutal course and it happened to be the worst weather ever you could imagine on the day, on the week last weekend for those who are following it, it was just horrible raining and it's really hilly and undulating and a lot of, you know, dangerous corners and fast downhills and hard uphills and, and trying to learn how to execute in those conditions is tough on a dry day with, you know, with such undulating courses and, and you know, getting a plan for her to stay in the ranges was going to enable her to, to really hit her run target the way she wanted to and you know, understanding how to run to a pace and even though you feel good early, you don't, you don't, you be patient and you stay in those. And so that they were the things that we were able to give her in the race plan. And, and she was so analytical before the race about what, what pace she could do swim, bike and run and were they the right paces. And so we had a really great discussion beforehand about, you know, what she thinks she can do in training and now what, what she can do on race day. And you know, we had a bit of a discussion about her running plan and, and you know, we had this discussion, I'm not joking, eight weeks before the race and she was adamant she wanted to run 5:20s to 5:30 pace for her for her marathon on, on Port Mac day. And, and I said, well, you know, you need to, you need to prove it to me over these training race ready sessions. Can you do it? When we're doing some 10, 14, 16, 21k runs off the bike. Show me that you can do this pace. And to her credit she, she backed up a lot of those big five hour days, six hour days and got off the bike and ran around that 5:20 to 5:30 pace, which was, which was fantastic. But we didn't, you know, it's, you know, running 21k off the bike, it's not the same as running 42. So, so I'm saying, look, I think you're around more 5:30 5:40 runner and you know, she was so super determined to prove me wrong. But ironically in the race, you know, to her, her credit again, understanding what race plans are really helped her make good decisions and she realized straight away that, you know, somewhere in the 535 to 540 was going to be her range like we talked about. Even though she wanted to run 5:20 to 5:30. And she found that out very quickly and she was hell bent on making sure that she didn't fade because she knew the discussion we would have post race would be, you know, I told you Fee, you couldn't do that. And anyway, I didn't have to have that discussion because she ran one of the best even paced runs and that's why I was super confident in her going into this race because she had that endurance base which enabled her to understand that, okay, I can't run, you know, under 5:30, but I can certainly run between 5:30 and, and 5:50 as her range is what I was advocating her range was. And she did it, she ran the whole way and she was passing people and she said that's the most enjoyment she's ever had. Jordan about any race she's ever been in, people yelling at her, going, oh, far out, way to go. You know, you're running so well, everybody else is walking around that point and, and she's just running through the field, you know, at steady pace and you know, when, when, when people are running or walking 6 to 7:30 pace and someone's going past them at 5:30 to 5:40, you know, it's, you stand out a lot because you are doing something completely different to what everybody else around you is doing. And you know, I think that gave her the biggest buzz was, you know, I've executed my swim and ride, I've executed my training for 18 months and now I'm getting to reap the reward of all the compromise, the dedication and here it is, it's coming to fruition right now and I'm seeing the value of having a coach athlete relationship. And that was so good to hear her say all of those things in her post race discussion and gave me goosebumps hearing her, you know, just really, you know, almost be just so grateful that, you know, we met each other and we had this journey together. It was a really good, I just loved the whole story and I've just enjoyed coaching her from the start to her finishing performance on the weekend and seeing her run down the Finish line was. Was pretty special.

Yeah, it's a great. Just a great overall case study and story. And I love this specific example because we've mentioned it a few times. But yeah, the coaching process isn't just about the training sessions and the numbers. Sometimes, sometimes a lot of people already have that and they just need instead a bit of guidance around. Just make a few key changes here and there over a consistent period and just someone to keep, as you said, keep them back on track. They might slide off the track a little bit and it's like, actually, no, just come back here and that's all you need to get the result you want. And yeah, we looked back at her kind of first goal she wrote down for us, and one was, can I do an Ironman again? And I think the wording was get to an Ironman level again or just have the confidence to do it. And then the second one was, yeah, maybe even qualify for World Chance. And the result was she did the Ironman. She executed it so well and came second place in her age group at Port Mac last weekend. That was an immediate qualification to the World Champs at Nice. So that's very, very special and that's a great result and a great way to finish this case study.

Yeah, and her sending me the photo of her qualification certificate in front of the World Championships banner that they have behind all the people who qualify. It's such a great text photo to get. And yeah, it's like we talked about early on our podcast, the journey home after an event where you've been successful. You know, you get in the car and all you want to do is Yahoo and yell out and scream and. And that was the, that was the feeling she had, which was, yeah, you want to shout out to the world, but, yeah, you're just talking to yourself. It's. It's great. It's a. Yeah, I could not be happier for her and can't wait for our journey to continue. And, yeah, hope that the listeners have got some value out of, you know, it doesn't have to be all about data and just improvement all the time. It's. It's a special, special relationship you can have with someone who's sharing a journey with you. And at the end of the day, whether you, you achieve a podium or whether you just improve or you just succeed in completing, these are the things that you're doing it for. And as I always say, if you love something that you do, you will eventually succeed. And she's a really good case example of. She just loves being fit and being healthy and training and you know no matter whether she qualified or not for the World championships the fact that she completed the Ironman was something of an achievement after 23 years away from it.

Yeah that's a great way to finish. If you're someone that resonates with that story whether you want data improvement and structured training or whether you're someone that thinks you just need some guidance about some key things to change then you can hit us up@triballowcoaching.com and apply to get coached by us. That's Traveller coaching.com As always we have our FTP guarantee because we will test you to start with we will, we will not compromise on that. We'll get, we'll get the testing done somehow some way and if you don't improve in your data then the coaching is on us. That's our eight week guarantee. So thanks as always for listening to another case study episode. We'll see you on the next one. It.