TriVelo’s 12 Biggest Lessons of 2020

This episode of the Get Fast podcast is brought to you as it has been all year by Tribello Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. You are joined, as always, by your host, former Australian Ironman champion Jared Donnelly. And I am Jordan Donnelly. And in today's episode, we are reflecting on the year. It's one of my favorite episodes to do. We did it last year. I personally find so much value in reflecting on the year because you think back to what's happened, and so much happens in 12 months of fear. Everyone always says when it gets to Christmas time that the year has flown, but when you take the time to actually reflect and look back on what you've achieved, what you haven't achieved, what you've done, you really find a lot of value. And whenever we sit down and do this, we write a list of 12 things, but often we come up with 30, and that's why I really like this episode. So we'll get into it pretty quickly because there's a lot to get through, and it's one of my favorite conversations to have. And I. I would encourage a lot of people to do this in their personal life as well. I do it every year. I've been doing it for a while, pretty much since I was an adult, and I just find a lot of value in reflecting on the year, and it helps you set up the next year really well. So get into point number one of our 12 lessons of Christmas, the 12 lessons of 2020 from a Tribalo point of view. And we promise we'll only talk about COVID once because everyone's had enough of that. But number one, and one of the biggest things themes of this year was we spent a lot of the year looking at nutrition, and we learned a lot more about nutrition. We had Dr. Harry Wiesinger on the podcast, and we've just looked into it a lot personally as well. And nutrition has always been important, but I think this year we really found extra importance in it, and it came up for a lot of athletes as well. So let's talk about, you know, taking control of your nutrition.

Yeah, it's really good to reflect on the year, and it's great to get to the end of the year. A lot of people's mindset before we start talking about Harry. A lot of people's mindset. I've been quite intrigued throughout the year because it's been one of those years like no other. There's so many negative things in the world that have happened, and because of that, I really believe, from my point of view, my perspective, there's so many positive things have come out of these negative things. And we've said many times over the journey, for every negative thing there is always a positive. And if you've just got to find it, and the hard part is identifying it because you feel so crap when something bad happens to you. And the examples are enormous, you could lose your job. That's pretty hard thing to face. You could get a better job. And what a turnaround from such a disappointment. That's just one example. You could be really struggling with fitness and health and all of a sudden you've got more time this year and people's health has. You know, there's a huge amount of examples of people who've lost weight and become a better human being, health wise. There's also examples of people who've gone the other way, but they're just examples of, you know, the way you think about the way you frame the year and reflect on it and then try to do something about it for the next period of time, whether it's another year or six months or three months, whatever your targets are. I just think this is such an important thing to do exactly what you're talking about. And if you don't do that, you're not really being accountable to yourself. I think you're actually avoiding facing up to good and bad things. And as we've said many times, you learn more from crap things that happen to you than all the good things. Every lesson that I've ever learned in sport has been from a disappointment. So I think this is kind of what we're trying to. We're trying to frame the mindset of what did we learn this year? What are the things, the key things that stick out in our minds that we can actually use going forward?

It's a classic, isn't it, that. It's just the irony is so extreme that you can't learn or grow unless you've experienced a failure or mistake. And it's how training works, it's how your body responds to training. You can't get better at training. You can't grow your fitness without your body going through pain and suffering and training. It's the same with every area. You can't grow and learn unless you make a mistake or. And the irony of that is just so funny to me.

Yeah. And you look at all the very successful businessmen in the world, a fair percentage of them have been bankrupt and yet they've come back and learnt from how they stuffed up that and made it a better version. And I'm not suggesting that that's the extreme case, but from what we're trying to do to our listeners is get them to understand that it might feel like it's bad at the time, but if you frame it correctly, you can actually learn from it and grow as a person and become a better human. And not just in your physical performances, but everyday life. If you carry the same philosophies that you do in your training into your life, you'll actually find that you'll succeed as well as you do in. Most people that have come across our table have improved through the journey. And we've had some people who've said, you know, I just want a program. I don't really mind if I improve. And I just find that attitude quite almost shocking to me because I. I just feel like you want to be a person who's going to grow as much as possible. And, and I'll say to them, well, I can, I can give you a program, but you will actually, without even trying, you will improve just by being consistent and having structure and not doing anything else, just doing that. And you don't even have to train hard, but if you have some structure and some consistency, you will progress.

Just the theme of kind of what we're talking about with growth and challenge and reminds me of one of my favorite quotes of all time, and it's hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times.

Wow.

It just circles around and it's just kind of the nature of how you go through things. When you're struggling, you learn a lot and you really grow and you become stronger for it. And then you actually have a good time. And then because you're having a good time, you kind of relax and ease off the pedal and then, oh, you're in trouble again. And then that cycle, it's fascinating, isn't it? Yeah. It's kind of the theme of what we're going to talk about today, I guess.

So. Sorry to digress off the first point, but I just think that that'. And no matter what you hear in the next 12 Christmas goals or things we've learned, you know, the main thing that we're trying to get across is, you know, we should be all helping each other in society. And, you know, that's why we love what we're doing, because we are seeing progress in people in their journey as athletes. And you can put that into other aspects of your Life. So let's fire away with this.

Yeah. Yeah. So we were gonna launch straight into nutrition and taking control of your nutrition. And one of the main points was you gotta be accountable for what you eat.

Yeah. It's your decision. Funnily enough, no one spoon feeds you after you're two or one and a half. You know, someone's controlling everything you're doing up until that point. And it's only, you know, one year out of possibly 90. The rest of the time you're in control of what you put on your fork and put in your mouth. You're in control of when you open the pantry door, what you wanna do. You're of when you open the fridge, what you want to eat. You're in control of what you do at the supermarket. So there's no excuse. You are making the decisions about what you eat and you are what you eat. And if you look in the mirror and you're not happy with that, then you have the opportunity to change that. And I think that's the biggest thing I've learned this year, and it's actually two years for me since I've been on this journey through the help of Dr. Harry, is to understand that every decision you make has a consequence with food. And it's the same in everything in life. But, but the, the evidence in food is always there, isn't it? You grow bigger as a person and a shape that you don't like, or you remain the shape that you do like and, and you're deciding what, what food and the amount of food that you consume.

It's an interesting topic because the topic of weight has become taboo to, to a point where you aren't allowed to comment on people's weight. And you know, for, for a reason. You don't want to shame people for their weight. You don ever be in a position where people are getting put down or feel negative about themselves for what they're eating? That's not what we're trying to do on the podcast at all. And it's a little bit of a hard position for us to be in because we're talking on a public forum and we want to talk about this in a non judgmental way. But I was really impressed when Harry came on the podcast and put it in a way that isn't judgmental, it's just kind of factual. And you just said we are a gluttonous society and we've been set up just to be addicted to food pretty much. And it's just the way that things are now, you know, food companies are just trying to get you to consume more. And that's just the way it is. And it's actually made society put society not a very good position. We all fall trapped to it, we all fall victim to it. And you have to really be aware of that to try and change it and to try and stop it. And I had an interesting experience a couple of weeks ago talking to a friend and he's training really hard and training really well. And he's leaned up a lot and he's had a lot of comments about how lean he is. And he kind of starts saying, I don't comment on your weight, don't comment on my weight. And it's unacceptable to comment on someone that's overweight. But it's acceptable for people to talk about how skinny or lean you are. And I think that as a society we just need to be not afraid of talking about the facts. And you don't, like I said, want to be putting people down. But let's talk about what you were just saying before. Who's responsible for your accountability and let's try and approach it in a way that can help.

And yeah, not judgmental. And that's the key. The difference is we are quick to judge everybody. We form opinions on what we see. And if we see an obese person, then we form an opinion straight away that they don't care and we have no idea about anything to do with their, their history, their medical, anything to do with what's happened in their life. Yet we judge them. And the same with someone who's the complete opposite, who's not eating healthy and they're too lean, we straight away say, oh, there's a psychological problem there, which possibly is true, but we're just judging people and that's not what we're saying here. We're trying to say that if it's your desire to be a better athlete and being a leaner athlete is going to help you achieve that, then that's what we're here to help you with and to help you and guide you to understand what foods will help you be at the race weight or training weight or living weight that you want to be as compared to just, you know, going to decide what you want to eat yourself. So some guidance is what we're doing. We're trying to get across, I think.

Yeah. And to be honest, it wasn't, you know, we got Dr. Harry on to help with the guidance because he's the expert. But, you know, we were experimenting with ourselves. And you were experimenting with Dr. Harry just for your own well being. And you openly admitted on the podcast that you'd put on five or six kilos that you didn't want to and you wanted to know how to get it off. So, you know, firstly, you were just starting with yourself. You're not telling anyone else that they have to do it or need to do it. But it just, it he, the big lesson around this nutrition was he really put the accountability on you and said, yeah, we are a gluttonous society. We're addicted to food, and we have to stop that process. We have to break that pattern. And for me, one of the most powerful things he said on the podcast was, how long can you go hungry for? Because for most of us, once we're hungry, within 10 minutes we're eating. And that might not be a problem, but it's a problem when we're overeating. So that question really stuck with me. It's because so often you just get hungry and you go straight to the cupboard to satisfy that hunger. And so I started challenging myself and saying, okay, if I'm hungry, how long can I go before I eat? Can I go two hours? It's so uncomfortable. Can I go three hours? And you find that you really can and you can be more accountable for your time of when you eat and what you eat. And you don't just have to do it mindlessly and be kind of robotic about it and do it unconsciously, but it is difficult.

Jordan. Actually, we're talking about a coffee after the ride this morning, funnily enough. And as a society, we were taught to have three good meals a day. And I saw a documentary last night on intermittent fasting and how valuable it was in not ending up with Western diseases. And, you know, it was fascinating to hear another. You know, we're always seeing things on documentaries, but, you know, it was, it was certainly an eye opener. But yeah, there's, there's so much that we can learn from, from understanding how to go about things and getting experts to help us along that journey has been fascinating.

Yeah, I guess we'll wrap up the number one point. And we didn't want to start off with a controversial bang. We just wanted to really highlight the fact that it was a big learning for us this year, you know, about what you can do with your mind around food and breaking habits that create that gluttony, I guess. So point number two is, and I think this is going to be in line with a lot of the themes of these lessons is this year it was less about the training side. And a lot of these, the biggest lessons were around other factors of life. And I think that's because of the pandemic. A lot of people had to stop and reassess a lot of their life. And number two was what we learned this year about strength and conditioning, and we'll call it body alignment, because we did a lot of work this year on what's called traditional strength and conditioning. But we had a different coach who has a bit of a different approach to it. And we're really excited for a lot of the tribal athletes who are going to get access to that next year in 2021. But that was a big eye opener for both of us to learn something different and really pay attention to that this year.

Yeah, the 1% is, I think, is the theme of what we're talking about because we spoke so much this year about the training, the actual day to day training sessions and if you're a runner, the running sessions. But what did you do when you didn't have your runners on? You know, and as a cyclist, what did you do when you weren't on your bike? And that's just often been left behind. And today that's kind of, I think that's the theme of this is really what are you doing to facilitate the improvement outside? It's almost like the businessman who just works in his business 16, 18 hours a day and never works on his business. He's just in there working flat out, just, you know, and he. I've had so many examples in my own career where as soon as I've stepped back, things have opened up and I can see a bigger picture. It's the same with this. Doing the things that are going to contribute to your improvement, such as strength and conditioning or the body alignment. And we have certainly been taught some lessons about how to do exercises that are going to enable you to hold form better as a swimmer, as a runner, as a rider. And I think that's probably it in a nutshell.

The word we would use that we learned is restore. You know, doing exercises outside of training that restore your body and allow you to keep training. And the expert that we have on this, that we're going to get on the podcast next year, really talks about what you just said. You know, you're working your body so much, training, training, training, you're even working your body poorly when you're working at your office because you're sitting in a poor position and you need to undo that Somewhere if you're not, your body's just going to get worse and worse. And so you need to actually be spending the time undoing that and balancing that out. And that was a really big key learning for us this year.

Yeah. And there's so many examples of athletes who've had on podcasts. Actually, the most recent one with Natalie, where she had a major surgery on her hip and she hasn't been injured since, because during that period where she was recovering, her main focus was on never letting this happen to her again. And, you know, she was saying to extreme lengths how much time she spent rehabbing continuously from that point on. It's not something she just did for that injury, it's something that she continues to do. And I think this is what we're trying to get across here. I have so many athletes who get an injury and then they rehab it and then never do the rehab work again. And I'm saying to them, you need to do that for life now so that this doesn't reoccur, because it occurred for a reason in the beginning. Poor body alignment, the muscles aren't working in sync with each other, and you need to keep that going. You need to keep the flexibility, the suppleness, the strength, so that you can hold the form in the position you want to. To compete.

Well, absolutely. Number three, another 1 percenter. Something that you've discovered this year is just how important sleep is.

Yes. So much so that I now have an aura ring which some people might say is a little bit over the top, but it's just reaffirmed in my mind that I already knew I wasn't getting enough sleep. And it's now telling me each day that, you know, last night I had 5 hours 20. Admittedly, it was a training session that I had to get up at 3:55 for. But the fact is, I went to bed too late, and I was watching that documentary we're talking about, and I ended up with 5 hours 20 sleep. And that's just not a good way to function each day. And you need to have more than that, especially when you're training and working. And it's forever making me accountable. And anything that's going to do that is a good thing. So sleep is a priority. It has got lots of recovery in it that enables us to reestablish ourselves and reset for the next day. And it's an unusual phenomenon. The whole world goes to sleep. It's something we all do, and everybody accepts that, but we all push the barrow to As a teenager, you're not happy unless you've got 10 hours. You're just sleeping a lot. You do need it. The hormones and the growth that's happening, you need more sleep. And a lot of adults find that hard to see. Teenagers, oh, you're always in bed, you're always sleeping, but that's what happens in that period. And then as you get older, it seems like you need less sleep, but that's actually not true. We do need good quality sleep where we're in deep sleep periods and recovery periods and sleeping. So if one thing that you want to reset for the next year is to concentrate on going to bed earlier than normal, the wake up time is going to be the same because of what your schedule is. And if your schedule is, it means that you start early in the morning, then do what I'm not doing and go to bed earlier. And it is a habit that I formed for so long and it's a hard one to break. But that's my goal is to, because of this accountable piece of machinery that I'm carrying around with me is reminding me daily when I open up the app going, oh, I only got 65% out of 100 for my last night's sleep, you know, so it's telling me data that I know was happening but it makes me now do something about it.

Definitely to me it was. I had a lot of big learnings this year. This was also one of them. You know, taking a positive from COVID For me, the COVID period completely reset my body clock. I started because, because life stopped, didn't have any, anything on, didn't have, you know, late night sport training, late night social activities, the whole, my whole world stopped socially. So I suddenly started going to bed earlier and it completely changed my year. My body clock reset. I would never go to bed before 10:30, 11 previously and I started going to bed by 8:39, going to sleep by 9, 9:30, winding down by 7 o'.

Clock.

And it got to the point where I stopped looking at my phone once it hit 8 o' clock. And the change was incredible. You just felt so good throughout the day. You woke up ready, Ready? Yeah. I've already noticed since we've opened back up how poorly it's gone back straight away to. You just start staying up a little bit later and the mornings get a bit harder. And for that period, that was such a big learning. So you need to keep taking that.

Isn't it ironic that when you had nothing to go to and no activities that were gonna Keep you busy. You went to bed earlier, but when you've got all these activities that are gonna keep you busy, you go to bed later. It's just quite bizarre.

What do you mean? I mean, that seems obvious to me.

No, no. But you know, you got a busy day tomorrow.

Yeah. So you should go to bed earlier.

Go to bed earlier. And what we do is we go back to our old habits. I've got a huge day tomorrow. I think I'll go to bed at 11.

It just feels like you're trying to fit in more, you know, and so you end up. You end up just still chatting to people or hanging out with people till 10 o', clock, which you miss through the COVID period. You miss that social side, but you also learn that it's incredibly valuable to get that sleep. And it really, it really changed things for my day, which is very in line with number four. And that is, you know, the importance of sleep for recovery. But the importance of recovery. And you've just put even more emphasis on that this year.

Yeah. One thing that I think I've learned, especially when we had to train in a bubble, was 5k or inside. So during winter, no one really cared about the bubble, the 5K bubble in Victoria, because it was too cold and wet anyway. So we just moved everything inside. And that is very fatiguing when there's, you know, when you compare a two hour trainer session indoors compared to a two hour ride outdoors, the amount of freewheeling you do outdoors compared to indoors, it's quite remarkable. So two hours indoor I reckon equated to a three hour outdoor. So I found that we needed more recovery. We could only train in blocks that were shorter, that had more recovery straight away. So we changed our whole periodization because of the amount of time we were spending on the trainer.

Used to experiment more with three weeks on, one week off. Sometimes two weeks on, one week off. And now you won't pretty much let anyone go more than two weeks.

No, not if they're spending all the time on the trainer. It's. It's too fatiguing.

Yeah.

And. And it really worked a treat.

Yep.

So recovery was a. You know, I've always been a believer in recovery, but just not, not just physically recovering, but mentally recovering too. By doing things that are going to relax you. And normally you would do things socially that would rel. But, you know, during the recovery, during the COVID period, we, we would spend more time. I guarantee a majority of households would start to get into Siri documentaries or read more and they're really good things to wind down and you know, have an interest outside of, you know, your family or your work or your, or your passion, you know, just, you know, and that would be a conversation point with people. I'm reading this book. Have you read that? Or I'm watching this, you know, series. It's, you know, it's caught our attention. It's been fun to watch. So. Yeah. So the recovery mentally and physically.

Yeah. Point number five, walking is undervalued.

Something that I vowed as an athlete I would never do. I just despise walking and always have and what a waste of time. It's, it's slow getting from A to B and I can run nearly as fast as a car most of the time. If I was going, you know, around, up to the shops, et cetera, by the time you found a car park, I'd already be there. So. So coming from a running background, walking is not something that I really embraced. But, but I found that this year it started off really because I saw sky cycling team was, was part of their regime for training was they had to walk. That was, that was a session every day. They had to walk. And, and I just thought what's, what's this walking about? So kind of investigated a little bit about that and, and started doing it myself and I was, you know, my big walks were 5 minutes at start, 10 minutes and progressed to 15 minutes.

Which was, I think if I remember correctly, it was a bit of a shock to you when you started walking. You went, wow, my body actually is quite incapable of walking. Which you know, is, is almost a little bit shameful to realize when you such a professional athlete.

Yep.

To go, wow, I actually can't, my body can't actually hit my legs can't handle walking. 15 minutes.

Yep. And the first two or three minutes because I've been sitting at a desk all day or training in a bent position on a bike. I hadn't stood up straight for, for years. So. So walking really loosened my whole body up, took away some aches and pains. As an aerobic activity, I was still burning calories by walking. Not a great deal, but it was also really good for clarity of mind. I had so much thinking during that walking period. If I was getting stuck in at the desk with whatever project I was working on, by the time I came back from the walk, I had a really good plan of. And I work worked so effectively for the next two or three hours. So making sure that that was part of my routine each day and taking the dog for a walk was also an added bonus. The dog got got out as well. And you know, I really enjoyed taking the dog, you know, as part of that routine. I felt like if I didn't get with the dog, I was, you know, cheating the dog a little bit. So, so there was so many good things about it. And you know, you can do a walk around a 200 meter block if you wanted to. You know, the worst extreme case is in a jail cell walking four steps up and down. But there's evidence to prove that that can maintain fitness even in a minute space. So don't complain about doing a block that's, you know, not very big. You don't have to go for two hour walks. If you can progress and you've got time to go longer, then I advise that there's just so much benefit, so many positive things about walking and that.

Point you made about getting clarity. I think you would even say to me a couple of times, and you know that this is pretty bs, you'd say, I don't have time, I didn't have time to go for a walk today. And that's just totally untrue because you'll be more effective with breaks and that is just proven beyond reasonable doubt that take a 15 minute break, you'll be sharper and much more effective and much more productive at your desk. But we can fall into the trap of thinking, I've got so much to do, I just can't leave my desk. But I think eventually you hit the point where you knew it was better for you no matter what.

Yeah, the productivity thing was really, I think, the driving force for me because it was just too obvious to me. And look, I used to go for a ride to break it up. But you know, to go for a decent ride, I would always think, oh, it has to be at least an hour. Yeah, half an hour maybe just. And the time it took you to get organized and, and what, what does it take to walk? Put your shoes on, open the door and walk, you know, and you know, if it's raining, you put an umbrella up. There's just no reason why you can't do it.

Absolutely. So number six, six lesson of the year. Last year our, one of our lessons was you need to focus on your weaknesses. People, you know, don't focus enough on their weaknesses because they're tough. And this year you're saying, make sure you're still playing to your strengths.

Yeah, sometimes people can go to the extreme and only concentrate on things that they're really poor at. But if you don't bring along your actual strengths at the same time, that will actually diminish in its value. So I'm a big believer in everybody training with a balance. Sure. Your mind and focus is on things that you need to improve on your hill climbing or as a runner, you know, you're sprinting at the finish or as a, as a cyclist, you're finishing, sprint positioning, you know, all those things that you, that you're probably not a strength of yours, you know, obviously work on those things. But the things that you're good at, you know, particularly the races you choose, choose races that are going to show off your strengths. Don't choose races that are going to show up your weaknesses. Yeah. And you'll have a much more enjoyable experience. And, you know, there's obviously outliers. You know, Sean Wilkerson would be an example of a big, strong, heavy guy who needed to lose weight doing ball. Ball. That's an example you used this year.

Yeah, that was a podcast we did this year. And if you want to listen to it, the title was called How 100 kilo cyclist became the Ultimate Hill Climber. And that's the moral of the story.

Yeah. And. And you know, that is someone who really worked on their weakness and it became a strength. So much so that I used to be quite scared when I was going to go riding for him, how much he'd hurt me, where for eight months out of 12, you know, I was playing with him on every hill. But, you know, all of a sudden the tide turned and so it is possible to make a weakness of strength. Definitely. There's so many examples of that. Sure. Concentrate on your weaknesses, but don't forget about bringing your strengths along because that's the thing that's got you to be a good athlete in the first place.

And something you mentioned just there, which is 0.7 and it feels like we've mentioned it 100 times on the podcast this year. So it has to be a lesson to remind everyone. Is that pick goals that suit you.

Yeah. And I'm forever seeing people at a coffee shop or at the pub or just being overwhelmed by their mates saying, I'm doing this. And then all of a sudden the groundswell happens. Yeah, I'm doing that too. Oh. And you're the only one not doing it, so. Oh, okay, I'll do it. And then you happen to be picking three peaks, which is a 12 hour event, and you weigh 100 kilo, and that's going to be the worst day of your life. So that's just one example of picking something that's, that's got massive consequences to make it not enjoyable. And I'm a big believer in picking stuff that suits you. So at the end of the day, yeah, sure, be a part of that coffee shop, but have a say in. Listen, guys, is that really what we want to do? Bring some common sense to the discussion and not just pick the extremest thing that you can possibly think of? Is that what we're trying to prove here? You know, what's the goal of what we're trying to prove? That would be, you know, bringing some relevance to the conversation is, is, is really important if you're being swayed by a group of people. And if, if, you know, if you want to be a sheep, that's okay. But you know, if not, pick your own individual goal.

Absolutely. Lesson number eight, and I quote you on this one, you said this will be on the list every year forever. And that is consistency is still the king.

Yep. And people are probably so they can be caught. My middle name is Ram on about consistency again. Well, unfortunately, if you don't have that, you are not going to succeed. Let's just use a worker who gets a really good high paying job and it goes for three weeks and you've got another worker who just gets a steady income week in, week out, and he has 52 of those weeks. And the other guy is a contractor and he has a great job that earns him three times as much as the guy who gets the income and then he has four weeks where he has nothing. Then he goes again, he gets another contract at the end of the year. The guy who's done 52 weeks might have earned 52,000, 1,000 a week. This other guy's had four contracts that add up to 32,000, but they were big paying contracts, but in between he had nothing. So the consistent worker is actually better off. The guy who does consistent training day in, day out, even if they're not high intense, balls to the wall sessions compared to the guy who smashes out four or five days and then has six days off at the end of the year, the guy who's just ticked along will be in a better position.

Perfect way to put it. Lesson number nine. And you know, we said it's been spoken about way too much this year. Everyone is sick of talking about it. But you know what we learned from COVID because learned some pretty valuable lessons with regards to training.

Yeah. Where do you begin with COVID I just think we undervalued the indoor aspect of training. We. I did. Probably most people didn't want to do it because it sucked. It's boring. It's not why I ride a bike or not, why I run or not, why I want to stay fit and healthy. But when you're got no other choice, you have to actually adapt. And I had a saying at the start of COVID Adapt or get left behind. And. And I knew zero about Zwift. I'd done a lot of training indoors, but I'd done it staring at the wall, listening to music, because you preferred that over Zwift.

You said, I don't need a game.

I don't need a game. But once I got into it, I saw the value that we could. We could pick the eyes out of. Out of a Zwift game and use it to our advantage and not do it every session, but use it for the value that we would as a tool. And we could implement our own training programs into the Zwift program. And then we could do races, handicap races. So it was the controlled environment. So Covid created this science experiment indoors. I had no one sick. I had no one crash their bike. There was plenty of people on Zwift running through each other. And that was one of the things we had to say on our first bunch ride a couple of weeks back, I had to stop everybody and say, listen, we have been used to running through each other, but today we have to go around each other, okay, let's not crash. So as a science experiment, it was controlled. We were. We were really writing exactly how a program should be written. And the improvement in everybody's fitness who did the program was astonishing. I've never seen results like it. I've never had in one week, 45 new FTPs in one session. You know, it was. It was so gratifying to see people improve. And as I said before, COVID was pretty shit. But look at the positive side that we got. For every negative, there's a positive. So we learned that indoor training isn't such a bad thing. And next year, when we have a winter, and if it's a normal year with no Covid, we won't hesitate if it's raining on a Saturday morning, for a bunch ride to jump on our Zwift Saturday morning endurance session and get the same workout, same value, if not more.

It's a perfect way to summarize it. Control training is awesome. I think that's how you said it.

Yep, yep.

And you spoke about adaptability into there. And that is lesson number 10, the ability to be adaptable. And not just to the pandemic. You know, it applies to every level. Be adaptable within the session, within a race, within a week. You know, things can stuff up within the week, within the month, or within a pandemic.

Yeah. And the pandemic highlighted it more. So I think that's why it's in our. In our 12, because we haven't had to be tested with adaptability very much over our journey. We have a set routine of our life and this year that was turned upside down. And so when it came to a race in previous years, if things went wrong, a lot of us would fall to pieces and lose the plot. And as we talk about limiting your losses, instead of just making the best out of a bad situation, people would just drop out or give up. And I found this year we had a lot less of that. People cracking it with things not going well for them in past years, people would lose the plot and not be adaptable and not try and make the best of a bad situation. And I think one thing Covid has done is made us more adaptable because you think about every single thing we've had to do in families, look after our grandparents. We've had to think of ways so that they are not going to get sick, so they don't go to the shops. We've found ways to get food to them, to zoom video with them so they feel not lonely. There's so many things that have happened that we've created a better life through this negative experience. And same with training. We've. We've really adapted to a hundred things that have gone against us, yet we've come out of it better. Athletes with worse conditions than we've ever experienced. We couldn't even go for an endurance ride more than an hour outside. What do we do? We ride three hours indoor and then do one hour outdoor and we still get four hours. If that's not an example of adaptability, I don't know what is. Say you're only allowed to run for an hour and you're a triathlete. Or you ride five hours indoors and then go and run one hour, and then, you know, the next morning you do another hour and then the next day you do another hour. So you end up at the end of the week with the same amount of hours that you're going to do, except it just has to be broken up a bit.

Yep. Yep. Lesson number 11, the value of aerobic fitness and how vital it is to.

Every program yeah, and I think I keep referring to Covid teaching me lessons. I think I knew that lesson, but I didn't know how many of the athletes that we coached weren't getting that point. And at first when I said to athletes that we were going to ride the Ergo for three hours, they almost were sending me to the asylum because they thought that that was just crazy. And those same athletes ended up doing three and a half, four, four and a half, five and some did six. I've done four six hour rides through this Covid period on an Ergo. I didn't think I would ever do that. But you can do that and you need to do that. The aerobic fitness is one of the reasons why our athletes have improved with so many pbs. I know it's a controlled environment indoors, but most of them were doing those two hard sessions indoors anyway, during a normal period on a trainer. So what's changed? Well, the aerobicness, the aerobic fitness of the indoor training where there's pressure on the pedals for two and three hours at a time, no traffic light, no coffee, just continuous riding with pressure on the pedals where you might not be at your limit, but you are not dropping your heart rate down. You're holding your heart rate at a period where you're just building this engine. And those Saturday morning endurance rides, they had hard bits in them, but the majority of the ride was at 75% with hard bits in it. So two to three hours of 75% pressure on the pedals, no stopping, and then throw in 110% for a minute here and there. Boy, you know, what a difference our aerobic fitness gained from that covert experience.

And from a triathlete perspective, we had a lot of triathletes this year smashing their running PBS without any interval training, especially through the COVID period. A lot were just not maintenance programs or BASE programs, not doing high intensity interval sessions, doing BASE training, aerobic training, yet still improving their five or ten kilometer time trials, which is an experiment in itself. Which proves exactly what you're saying.

Yeah. And people think aerobic fitness is long runs. Well, aerobic fitness is easy runs and it can be long, but it's not with intensity. Anaerobic fitness is with intensity. Aerobic fitness is a pace that's sustainable for a long time, but you can do it and get gains in aerobic fitness for 30 minutes.

Our final lesson for the year is discipline. And we just learn a lot of lessons about discipline and it kind of ties in with our very first point about food but it ties in for a lot of things we've learned this year. Discipline with your walking and your 1 percenters and your food. And we spoke about it a lot throughout the year, especially when we did the podcast on what I said is one of the best books I've ever read and definitely a life changing book was David Goggin's book Can't Hurt Me. And it was. If you didn't listen to the podcast, it was just an extreme example of how mentally tough we can be, how much more mentally tough we can be than we realize when we're put in situations where we have to be and how much more we can discipline our mindsets. And that was quite a big learning for a range of reasons this year.

Yeah. Some of the stories you've told me from that book, which I should get to read. The examples he gave, the particular one you were talking about off air was when they were in the freezing cold water. Talk about that and talk about how that relates to what we're talking about.

I don't know if you need to read the book, so I reckon I've reiterated every story to you. But we were talking about the fact that our minds are conditioned to seek comfort and we're always looking to go for the comfortable option. And his whole goal with life is to find the uncomfortable option, which is so hard to do. And when he was in his Navy SEALS training, they put them through some gruesome stuff. But one of the examples was they would put them in the freezing cold water and make them do sit ups for hours on end because they wanted people to pull out and they would just make them sit there until they were hypothermic and shaking. They just wanted them to be as cold as possible. So they'd pull out and the guys around him would be suffering and they couldn't cope with it and they would pull out. Or some guys were really mentally strong and they'd have strategies to get through it and strategies to pretend it wasn't cold or. And he was so crazy that he would, he wasn't looking for strategies to make it easier, he wanted to make it harder. And he would, he would sit there saying, I wish it got colder. You know, I don't want it to get warmer, I want it to get colder. And that's just him seeking that discomfort. And to me, that is just so telling for, you know, what we're capable of in so many things. And I apply it to my own life. Even as soon as you wake up, you're seeking Comfort. And we spoke about how when your alarm goes off, the first thing you want to do is turn it off. And it's so hard to just not turn it off and just get up. And it's just an example of straight away in the day. Are you choosing the comfortable option or are you trying to discipline your mind to become stronger and choose the uncomfortable option? And that's why I spoke about with the food thing, how long can I be hungry for? Could I last six hours if I had to? And it's just a game that I find really valuable.

People would ask, well, why would you want to do that to yourself? Why are you making your life so difficult? What do you say to that?

Well, this is probably the biggest learning and why I think it's so valuable is because when you can do that, it gives you belief that you can do anything that you're trying to do. It conditions you to have belief in yourself about what you can do when you're taking the weak option. Always when things get tough, you don't actually believe in yourself.

So that's a great answer.

Yeah. As athletes, we're really good at suffering. We're really good at putting ourselves through a tough training session. We're really good in that aspect. And we can do it a lot, but we don't do it in all areas of our life. And that's what I found this year, is that I could challenge myself more in other areas.

Yeah, Yeah.

I think in summary, just. Yeah. The answer is if you're willing to put yourself through that, you're making yourself stronger. And he calls it, you're callousing your mind, and your mind's a muscle and you want to make it stronger. And the stronger it is, the more you can handle. And when hard times come along, you can handle it.

Yeah. Fantastic. I think that sums up a lot of what we've learned this year is, you know, the adaptability and the consistency and the mindset. If, if you allow yourself to take the easy option once, there's more likely that you'll continue to do it. And we, we do do that as humans. Once we've had an experience, we'll replicate it because, because that was the easy way out of it and not necessarily the most beneficial outcome that we want to achieve. But, you know, there's decisions you make all the time and it's, and it's based around this point of discipline. You don't want to live your life, you know, like being a hard ass the whole time, you know, but you can do Both. You know, there's times when you need to make tough decisions that are going to be more beneficial for everybody around you, including yourself, rather than taking the soft option. You can think of so many examples where you don't want to get involved in something because it's the easy option, whereas if you think there's something not right, you can choose to turn your back on it or go and help. And I think this year has taught us through the fires and through the pandemic that we are definitely a human race who do genuinely want to help each other. And if I can finish on that idea of being grateful for what you've got and also being gracious and thankful that you're in a position where you can have structure and progression in your life and being fairly privileged to be in this position to be able to compete and. And push yourself and test yourself when, you know, I've got thousands of examples that has happened this year of people who are very close, who are struggling to breathe and to walk, who were very fit and healthy people. And I'm sure there's people out there who've had people pass away. So it is perspective. And I think that at Christmas is something you really need to think about at the end of the day. And, yeah, that's kind of where I'd like to leave this discussion, even though it's a bit emotional way to do it. But I think it's so important that we understand where we're at in our life and what things we can do to help others. And at the end of the day, the more you can help others, it's incredible how that makes you feel good about yourself and you don't do it for that reason, but you feel good about, you know, the way you're living your life. And I think that's the most important thing about these topics that we're talking about. There's so many really detailed things in there, but at the end of the day, they mean nothing unless, you know, you're willing to be that sort of person that you quite go to sleep with and say, well, you know, I did the best I could today, and tomorrow I'm going to have another crack.

Really powerful way to finish. That is it for this year from Tribalo coaching. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you for listening all year. If you've tuned in, we really appreciate it and we hope we've helped you in some way. That's, like you said, is the goal of this podcast. I do get a lot of enjoyment when people email us or message us or just tell us on a ride that they love the podcast. And yeah, we hope we can keep bringing it to you in 2021. That's it for this year. Merry Christmas from us. Happy New Year. Enjoy the holiday period. We'll have a couple of weeks break and we'll be back in the first week of January with a new podcast and ready for 2021.

Look forward to it.

Thanks very much for listening. We'll see you next.