WEBVTT
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00:00:09.714Trail and Ultra Runners.
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00:00:10.756What is going on?
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00:00:13.228Welcome to another episode of the CoopCast.
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00:00:35.790As always, I am your host, coach Jason Coop, and this episode of the podcast is about a phenomenon that tends to pop up in the headlines every few years, and that is overtraining syndrome, underperformance syndrome and the whole host of other descriptive words that we use to describe when athletes start underperforming for whatever reason or reasons.
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00:00:45.067So on the podcast today, please welcome Sophie Herzog, who is the owner, co-founder and primary performance analyst at the Mira Center for Athlete Development.
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00:00:57.506At the Mira Center for Athlete Development, at the Mira Center for Athlete Development, she is responsible for deploying a host of specialists to help monitor and counsel athletes that are at risk or in the throes of under performance syndrome.
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00:01:08.246Also on the podcast today, we bring on CTS coach Ryan Anderson to provide his professional input on how he helps manage this process with his athletes.
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00:01:11.509All right, folks, with that intro I am getting right out of the way.
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00:01:19.688Here's my interview with Sophie Herzog all about underperformance syndrome and how we can help manage it as athletes and coaches.
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00:01:25.283All right, sophie.
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00:01:26.507Well, welcome to the podcast.
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00:01:27.469I appreciate you coming on.
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00:01:28.865Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
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00:01:45.772I was thinking about this recording earlier today and it brought me back to one of the very first recordings that I did with one of my colleagues and friends, corinne Malcolm, on overtraining syndrome, and at the time it was a and this is still the case.
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00:02:14.594It was an extremely hot topic in the ultra marathon world and you know how the media cycle kind of plays out with these, with the various buzzwords overtraining syndrome, underperformance syndrome, whatever we want to call it, and we're going to get into some of the vocabulary got its foothold within the community and all of a sudden everybody has self-diagnosed or diagnosed others from afar with overtraining syndrome.
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00:02:16.183We're going to talk a little bit about that.
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00:02:18.069But I just thought it was interesting.
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00:02:22.812This is like coming almost back full circle, you know, three years ago, when I very first started the podcast.
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00:02:27.383We're now kind of talking about the same topic but I think we're going to put a different, a little bit of a different lens on it.
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00:02:35.721But before we get into that, so the listeners can know you just a little bit better, why don't you give everybody just a background of who you are and how you got into sport?
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00:02:41.473Yeah, yeah, it's really interesting what you're saying in terms of the topics coming back.
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00:02:48.022Oh, yeah, we'll touch on that later.
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00:02:48.444I guess from myself.
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00:02:52.819So my background is not an endurance sport, so I come from a football or soccer for the American listeners background.
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00:03:22.092I played football and here in Switzerland for Basel football club with the guys from early age and super into it like, yeah, cooking in the academy and was the first girl there and I think quite ambitious, quite put a lot of pressure on myself and, yeah, developed an eating disorder when I was like 14 and, yeah, shot myself in the foot with that and sort of.
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00:03:26.820That was the first rather large experience with underperformance, I would say.
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00:03:29.747But and it carried on for a long time.
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00:04:00.034I think I was probably at different forms of eating disorders and disordered eating for a period of about 10 years before I before, whilst I was actually then stopping to play football and starting with triathlon which, unfortunately, I must admit, also had to do with work, it was definitely my thoughts that this is a sport where you expend lots of energy, which, yeah, so it was not solely the decision oh yeah, this is fun, so let's try that.
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00:04:05.951I was basically thinking this is something I can be good at and I can also expend lots of energy.
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00:04:35.261So, yeah, with that I was also doing a master's and then a PhD at ETH Zurich in biophysics, also not directly related to to sports science, and, as you can imagine, like doing a PhD and trying to do or trying to train 20 plus hours a week is not directly or necessarily a recipe for disaster, but there's definitely some time and energy constraints involved.
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00:04:49.307So you know that again ties back to other experiences or renewed experiences with on the performance, and that's, yeah, why this topic has such a big, had such a big impact in my life.
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00:05:20.267I would say yeah, speaking of the PhD and athlete management, I've now have had three elite ultra runners who I've been coaching throughout their elite career and have gone through this being a PhD student while being an elite athlete to finishing their PhD and being a lead athlete, and I can tell you firsthand there's a market difference and there definitely tends to be an apex right around when that thesis is going to be defended, where the stressors is otherwise specified.
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00:05:29.307The non-training stressors that we'll get into a little bit tend to have a very abrupt peak, and it's not one that happens on one single day.
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00:05:33.745There's usually a timeframe that's associated with it, and I have both.
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00:05:45.007I will say that both I've done it pretty well and I've also kind of screwed it up a little bit in terms of trying to load, manage everything that's going on with those two different roles that those athletes play.
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00:05:48.589So what I'm trying to say is your plight is something that coaches feel as well.
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00:05:59.810Yeah, and it's also like, even if you're on the other side, as an athlete or as a student I think it's not always easy to put or to analyze where you actually at.
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00:06:02.783You know sometimes you cope better than you know.
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00:06:11.548Naturally, like, if you look at everything objectively, you think like you should be really struggling but for some reason, like you're thriving, which you know.
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00:06:20.254Maybe that's already a warning sign, Because then, yeah, you know like you might be striving still, but there is a big fall coming.
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00:06:36.189Or you know you should be striving as you should be really flying, because basically you have less loads than before, like, for example, after you you finish your phd, but sometimes that you know that loss and pressure is a bit like after a big race.
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00:06:43.829You know like you feel empty or like that something that has been a target for so long is not there anymore.
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00:06:45.512It's also not super easy to handle.
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00:06:52.346So it's a very complex thing, as is on the performance, as we'll probably speak about, or as is performance as well.
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00:07:05.163Right, and we're going to spend the majority of the time talking about overtraining and underperformance syndrome, but there's one kind of like last piece of table set that I want to make sure gets communicated to the listeners, and that's the work that you've done with Mira.
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00:07:11.923So can you explain to the audience first off what it is and then specifically how you function within that organization?
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00:07:20.850Yeah, so thanks for letting me do that in the first place and actually maybe chronologically, it's easy to just explain a little bit.
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00:07:32.130So I did finish my PhD, a little bit like so I did finish my PhD and then I ought to have a break and just focus a little bit on my sports.
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00:07:39.966And then I actually got the opportunity to work with Olaf Alexander Buu and the Norwegian triathletes Christian Blomfeld and Gustav Ili and also Angie Niener.
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00:08:13.786So I jumped straight into another high performance environment opportunity and, yeah, like it was maybe even more fast paced environment than I had before, like in my own sort of rhythm, and did that for a few months and then, only after I stopped working with them, I had this complete break, or shutdown, as I said before, and I experienced severe underperforming and unexplained as we'll talk about later.
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00:08:18.399So I didn't know why am I not performing, because I thought it's a great opportunity.
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00:08:25.209Now I just focus on sports for a bit before I orient myself and find something to work on.
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00:08:27.319But the body didn't cooperate.
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00:09:26.333So there, that's where, like, this topic of an experience that I've had several times in my life materialized like very obviously, and that's where I started having conversation with David Stombach, which I think you also had on the podcast before and, and he was at the time a professor at the NTNU in Trondheim but did a sabbatical in Switzerland, which is where I live, as he has a Swiss wife, and we had several conversations about this topic, and he was at the time leading several research projects where Irina Talsnes was involved, doing a really interesting case study about a world-class cross-country skier, which is one of the scientific frameworks that we are using now with MIRA, and MIRA was sort of yeah, that was the original thought that we had.
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00:09:50.551We want to make the sports world a better place in terms of we want to help athletes that don't have the support network, such as a B-Trick turn set or the athletes that are at the very top, but not just in their underperforming state, but also in terms of how can you actually prevent it.
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00:10:06.874What kind of education goes into preventing situations like that, not just for the athlete itself, but also maybe for coaches or development programs such as sports high schools or universities, but even for parents.
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00:10:21.313So just basically providing a support environment and a sort of a holistic athlete management system that helps athletes in their development program.
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00:10:22.600What athletes would be eligible?
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00:10:22.860for this?
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00:10:25.644Can any athlete out there, recreational athlete, elite athlete from the US, in their development program?
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00:10:27.206What athletes would be eligible for this?
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00:10:30.328Can any athlete out there, recreational athlete, elite athlete from the US, from any other country?
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00:10:32.910Can they reach out to you for these resources?
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00:10:44.408Yeah, definitely, and actually I think and maybe we'll come to that later but I think not even only athletes are eligible for it.
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00:10:56.969I think if you, if you look into the corporate world, into the any kind of high performance environment, the issues or the constraints that we're having and the problems that we're dealing with are very much the same.
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00:11:05.615You know it's very much always a question of load management and kind of that, two opposite forces.
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00:11:27.768You know the load and the recovery and in the end you want to adapt and optimize for performance instead of breaking down, and I think that's difficult to to get right so we're going to talk about overtraining and or underperformance in the whole alphabet soup of acronyms that we've now conjured up to describe all these different phenomenons.
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00:11:33.466This is going to be a timely podcast release because it's going to come out in late April, early May.
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00:11:38.407A lot of athletes are staring their main events in the face.
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00:11:44.306It's they're coming up in the next eight to 12 weeks and they're going to want to ramp their training up.
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00:11:55.826And kind of alongside that, whenever you ramp your training up, there has to be some sort of load management component in the background, because you can't just add stress if you don't take it away from somewhere else.
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00:12:09.660And many of the athletes out there that are listening to this are going to have a personal reference point with either doing too much training or doing too much too quickly or not recovering from the training that they applied that they thought that they could actually handle.
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00:12:12.966So I use that to.
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00:12:20.250I use that to kind of like level set everybody that you're going to go through this, because ultra marathon is a challenging sport just like any other endurance sport.
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00:12:24.869We kind of want to maximize the stress that we put on our body, but we still need to do it in a really safe way.
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00:12:33.044So, before we start, there's this whole range of things that have been described over the years in terms of how to.
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00:12:45.023How do we actually want to describe either doing too much or not allowing the proper time and or effectiveness for the recovery process to actually take place?
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00:12:52.124I'm going to let you describe the different like flavors of this and what most people would just call overtraining or overtraining syndrome.
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00:12:52.986So you're the expert here.
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00:12:59.451Describe the different flavors of this, and why do we need different flavors of it, or does it actually matter how we describe them?
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00:13:04.615Yeah, it's like you say it's very confusing and I think you know science is kind of.
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00:13:10.152It's like you say it's very confusing and I think you know science is kind of known for having multiple terms to describe the same thing or sort of the same thing.
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00:13:36.509And I think the term underperformance or unexplained underperformance syndrome is basically it's not a new term, it's not like a new kid on the block, I think it's more just a bit of an umbrella term, whereas other terms are maybe used to describe prolonged underperformance, depending on either the severity, the duration or the cause of the issues.
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00:14:12.328You know, like over training sort of implies very much that the causative factor is the training itself, whereas I think in the in it's very rare that training alone is the causative factor, and I think that's a little bit why I, me personally, prefer the term on the performance syndrome and the addition of the word syndrome, I think, kind of explains that there or it kind of is emphasizes this multifactorial, these multifactorial causes possibly.
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00:14:25.769But yeah, in a nutshell, I think what these terms all have in common is that they occur and that that's what makes it so complicated and difficult to really put a finger on.
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00:14:28.522It is that they occur on a continuum right.
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00:14:35.475If you, for example, you do a race, then you feel extremely fatigued at the end.
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00:14:40.263Hopefully, so that is acute fatigue and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
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00:15:08.783However, if you then carry this fatigue into something chronic, then the further you move across to the right on that fatigue spectrum towards functional overreaching, which is something that you can still recover relatively quickly from, with potential beneficial adaptations, you know, for example, in a hard training block.
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00:15:30.102But then the sort of the how do you say like the transition from this functional overreaching to non-functional overreaching, where you possibly don't have beneficial adaptation anymore, to then something called overtraining at least in research definitions it's.
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00:15:43.750You know it's a continuum, but these transitions are very vaguely defined or not defined at all, and we also don't really have a proper way of diagnosing someone.
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00:15:56.004To say like you're now non-sanctually overreached or you're now over trained is very hard to do and I think a lot of the plight with the vocabulary has to do with that last point.
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00:16:09.134We're trying to use the vocabulary either over training and I'm using I'm emphasizing the word over, intentionally, the training being too much, versus under recovery, the recovery not being enough.
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00:16:23.251We're trying to use those pieces of vocabulary to help give us guidelines for how to fix the ailment, because if the training is truly over and then you remove the training, you should actually get better.
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00:16:33.591And raising my hand here, the first experience I had in this arena managing this with athletes the dominant vocabulary that we used was overtraining syndrome.
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00:16:46.712This is back in the early 2000s is starting to, you know, kind of a kind of a merger, where you started to describe it and in my you know kind of naive, maybe non you know non analytical brain, I'm what I would think is.
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00:16:54.557Well, if I had an athlete that was truly overtraining and I started managing that athlete, let's just train less, right, the training is over and you train less than.
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00:17:09.981While there's a magic fix to it Turns out it's a little bit more complicated than that, and trying to figure out what is over and what is under and how to actually make the course correction isn't as black and white, but you see athletes and you consult with athletes that are actually dealing with this.
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00:17:24.445Despite all the poor vocabulary and these vague transition points as you describe them, is there a common theme that runs between the athletes that you're working with, meaning they're all coming in and these are the things that they?
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00:17:30.046These are the things that they are describing, and here's how we can get a better fix on how to move forward.
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00:17:37.172Can you just generally describe that, that process, as you're managing athletes that are kind of coming in the door seeking your counsel?
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00:17:45.480that's a very good summary that you made there and I think, yeah, there is a common denominator and that's like athletes are not performing.
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00:17:53.494So that's again like why, I think, on the performance is maybe better suitable or at least they're not consistently performing.
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00:18:00.740I think what is quite common is that you have quite a stark variability in performance.
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00:18:08.926So one day you might feel great and then the other day you feel pretty rubbish again, and that's kind of like a little bit of an up and down constantly.
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00:18:19.425Stagnation is another one which is also not strictly on the performance, but like you're just you're feeling like you're putting a lot of effort in and don't see the rewards.
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00:18:32.903And I think these three things so on the performance, performance variability and performance stagnation what they usually cause in athletes is that athletes do not reduce the load.
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00:18:38.222When they see this or experience this, they have a tendency to push harder.
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00:19:06.413They oftentimes also have a tendency to maybe be a bit more extreme in terms of you know whether that's intensity, volume or actually you, or actually manipulating their diets, for instance, like thinking, okay, maybe I need to lose a few pounds here, and I think that's oftentimes what pushes them actually in the opposite direction of that overtraining or fatigue continuum and with that.
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00:19:11.576So now we're talking about physical symptoms and with that.
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00:19:14.269So now we're talking about physical symptoms.
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00:19:46.157Obviously there's also oftentimes and I guess we'll talk about that later but if you are actually monitoring subjective factors such as motivation to train or mood swings or mood in general or other like completely non-training related factors, such as stuff like sleep quality or libido, things like that then, which you could say is psychological or health related, then you see changes there as well.
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00:19:47.641But these are more variable.
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00:19:48.623I would say like the.
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00:20:07.134If we're speaking about athletes, then the performance related, like on the performance, stagnation and variability are the most common ones, and these often also go in line with, you know, changes, for instance in in subjective exertion.
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00:20:09.641So how hard is a certain effort?
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00:20:18.442If the rate of perceived exertion all of a sudden feels a lot higher, then that that's kind of a warning sign as well okay.
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00:20:31.652So if the common denominator is performance decline and or performance variability those two components one of the things athletes are going to struggle with is those are lagging indicators.
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00:20:39.037You don't know if you're over, over-trained or under-recovered or whatever vocabulary we ultimately ascribe to this.
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00:20:45.039You don't know that until after the fact, right After you've already made the mistake or you're starting to make the mistake.
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00:20:55.555Right, you've kind of teetered over the edge, or you're teetering across the blurred line, right, instead of hard edges I think that's a better analogy Athletes will want to know, like what can they do to stay out of it?
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00:20:57.381Stay out of that blurred line in the first place?
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00:20:58.211Right?
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00:21:07.476Are there early warning signs to you might be getting closer to this blurry edge that they can then kind of step back from or at least take assessments from?
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00:21:15.609And I'll preview the answer, or I'll kind of like preview a little bit of the dialogue is there's all sorts of monitoring that we can put on our athletes.
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00:21:19.560I have a Garmin Fenix 7, which isn't even the latest Garmin on my watch right now.
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00:21:24.942Every morning it gives me a card and it tells me how awesome or not awesome I'm going to be every single day.
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00:21:37.766And there's an infinite number of variations of that, whether they're rooted in a wristwatch or a ring, or subjective monitoring or performance monitoring or all of the above.
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00:21:40.739How can athletes take an assessment of that?
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00:21:42.492Athletes and coaches taking an assessment of that?
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00:21:51.579To stay further away from this blurry line that ultimately the athletes kind of end up in your care after they've stepped over it, what can they do in advance to prevent it from happening in the first place?
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00:22:02.650Okay, I wanted to sit down with Coach Ryan Anderson to see how we monitor athletes for early signs of underperformance.
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00:22:21.201So I think this all comes down to honest and consistent communication, and that's texting with the athlete, regular phone calls and good, consistent feedback via training peaks and the post activity comments.
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00:22:30.920And for some athletes they are succinct it's two to three sentences, and over time I learned how to take so much information out of those two to three sentences.
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00:22:32.800Others it's two to three sentences and over time I learned how to take so much information out of those two to three sentences.
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00:22:37.011Others it's two to three paragraphs and naturally you get a lot of information out of that.
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00:22:37.993Either way.
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00:22:51.810I don't care, as long as it's consistent, because if there's not consistency in that communication then I'm constantly having to guess or follow up and like okay, can you tell me a little more about this?
00:22:51.810 -->
00:22:58.817Because for some athletes they may get in a habit of only reading feedback when things are going well or vice versa, when things are going bad.
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00:23:05.561And of course in both of those examples it's only half the puzzle and when you have the full picture then you learn their mood.
00:23:05.561 -->
00:23:09.839You can discern through their feedback either way and how things have been flow.
00:23:09.839 -->
00:23:13.449You can discern through their feedback either way and how things have been flow.
00:23:13.449 -->
00:23:27.541But really consistent, honest communication is the foundation with this, and data comes into play as well, whether that's tracking their performance on interval workouts, endurance runs, looking at their heart rate data and using HRV for training as well.
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00:23:35.951HRV for training as well.
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00:24:14.682Yeah, that's again a very interesting one, and I think that's something that I learned, or where I learned a lot from the Norwegian culture and I think or maybe you could say, the Scandinavian culture, because I think what is slightly different there, especially when I compare it to my past as a football player, where I was used to just come to practice and the coach would say this is what we do today, and you just go there and execute and there is zero ownership or responsibility of or, yeah, like the whole program that I'm good, like what I'm actually doing, whether I should actually push through today or not.
00:24:14.682 -->
00:24:23.332And obviously I was not involved in the training planning or in the training process with my football coach, because the training was not individualized for me.
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00:24:37.076But then, even as an endurance athlete, I came to triathlon and I thought I would just need to find the perfect plan and then execute that plan and everything was going to be fine.
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00:24:55.734And I think what the best athletes have in common is that they're very intelligent in terms of when do I have to push through and when do I have to adapt and maybe do less today in terms of doing more, like in the long term.
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00:25:07.604So having that long-term thinking over short term, or that long-term gains over short-term gains and obviously there's a lot that goes into that.
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00:25:17.384You know, there's a lot of learning about yourself and also I had to learn that you cannot develop that in just one year or in in half a year.
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00:25:40.336It takes a while to really get in tune with your body and be honest with yourself, and I think that's obviously where a coach can be extremely helpful, like a coach that checks in regularly, even obviously beneficially, sees you and can actually see whether you know, if you say yeah, I'm fine, whether that coincides with your body language, with your facial expression.
00:25:40.476 -->
00:25:47.874You know small indicators that could potentially tell something about the state of the athlete.
00:25:47.874 -->
00:25:54.855And then, like you said, of course there's nowadays we can track all sorts of different things.
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00:26:11.663I mean, monitoring is becoming everything, but I think it's very much about finding that balance between those things that are packed, you know and even there you have to be careful, you know, is an overnight heart rate or an overnight hrv?
00:26:11.663 -->
00:26:13.597Is that actually telling the full story?
00:26:13.597 -->
00:26:18.032What is the difference between, maybe, overnight measures and a morning measure?
00:26:18.032 -->
00:26:29.096I think marco altini does a good job in terms of educating when to do, when to use what and what are the nuances that are provided by those metrics.
00:26:29.096 -->
00:26:37.299And I think the athlete has to have an interest and an education, so to speak, in terms of learning how to interpret those signals.
00:26:37.299 -->
00:26:41.240And sometimes you have to overturn signals, that's for sure.
00:26:41.240 -->
00:26:50.804You know in a race you're not going to stop just because it feels hard, but you have to learn when you know, for example, example, a pain is not good anymore.
00:26:51.464 -->
00:27:08.352So this, these monitoring things, I think they include a variety of different factors and that's also something that we at muller we have a sort of a holistic assessment that we do, which is actually available for free on our website.
00:27:08.352 -->
00:27:13.895So this includes just it's a questionnaire about a variety of different things.
00:27:13.895 -->
00:27:15.376So we have five categories.
00:27:15.376 -->
00:27:25.986It's questions about training, health, recovery, environment and nutrition, and that's something that you can repeat on a regular basis, let's say every.
00:27:25.986 -->
00:27:52.262It depends a bit on your state, like if you're in an underperforming state and you do it more frequently, let's say every three to four weeks, but even if you are in a good state, then we generally recommend that you do a submaximal test, whether that's on a, like a standard loop, or on a treadmill with an incline, or a stationary bike or whatever.
00:27:52.262 -->
00:27:54.432It just has to be relatively standardized.
00:27:54.432 -->
00:28:05.962You do that every four to six weeks, and then you could also fill that questionnaire, and that usually provides you with quite quite a good insurance system.
00:28:06.023 -->
00:28:08.755So to speak, so I'm hearing kind of two two.
00:28:08.755 -->
00:28:19.190Two themes emerged to this question of how do we help keep athletes outside of this blurry range of stepping into over training or under performance.
00:28:19.190 -->
00:28:22.740The first component that you mentioned is actually quite interesting.
00:28:22.740 -->
00:28:27.673It's this aspect of individualization go, it goes back to coaching 101.
00:28:27.673 -->
00:28:29.796And I can speak from my personal experience.
00:28:29.796 -->
00:28:43.067I've probably consulted with maybe up to 30 athletes that are in some form of overtraining and underperformance, whether I got them there or another coach got them there, or however they got there.
00:28:43.067 -->
00:29:00.603They come from many kind of different angles, but one of the common undercurrents amongst all those athletes that I can rack my memory right now and remember right off of the bat is that they had a training program that was not tailored to them specifically.
00:29:01.483 -->
00:29:14.125It was either a static training program, it was either a program that was copy pasted from another athlete, it was a program that hadn't been individualized to the feedback that they were actually giving the coach.
00:29:14.125 -->
00:29:18.777There's a whole different ways that you can unindividualize or not individualize a training program.
00:29:18.777 -->
00:29:25.001It's not necessarily volume, right, which is kind of the fallacy that we run into a lot.
00:29:25.001 -->
00:29:27.751You just train a lot and then you're automatically going to be overtrained.
00:29:27.751 -->
00:29:46.701The theme, one of the themes that are one of the more common undercurrents that I think that you're trying to allude to here, is just to have a program that's individualized to you, individualized to your strengths and weaknesses, how much volume you've done in the past, how successful that volume has been, the frequency of the training that you're doing, the frequency of the intensity that you're doing.
00:29:46.701 -->
00:29:57.094Are you doing two workouts per week, three workouts per week?
00:29:57.094 -->
00:30:00.284All of those you know that may loo of workout care characteristics that has been successful in the past can be a really great blueprint, blueprint for future.
00:30:00.284 -->
00:30:12.150And then the second thing that you're mentioning is this monitoring component, and I'm going to leave a link in the show notes to I've had Marco since you mentioned him by name, I've had him on my podcast twice to discuss this, very, this very aspect.
00:30:12.150 -->
00:30:13.295And you're absolutely correct.
00:30:13.295 -->
00:30:33.696He does a brilliant job of explaining all the different nuances and applicability of not only a heart rate variability, which is kind of his bread and butter, but a lot of the other monitors and wearables out there, but some component of monitoring that, when I internalize it it helps reinforce the individualization piece.
00:30:34.590 -->
00:30:37.019None of those things are perfect and they can't stand alone.
00:30:37.109 -->
00:30:46.623We're not going to get perfect red, yellow, green stoplight systems, like we all kind of want to tell us if athletes are ready to train or not ready to train, or whether they should go hard or go easy.
00:30:47.330 -->
00:30:59.693But we can do things that can help us, that can help the subjective side of things, either confirm or deny or give us a better direction on where to actually take an athlete.
00:30:59.693 -->
00:31:08.251Those are the two things that I'm kind of like hearing from you that if athletes are ramping up their training, be mindful of what's worked for you and how much you've done in the past.
00:31:08.251 -->
00:31:14.200Not that you shouldn't exceed it, but just be mindful of it, like kind of like look at your previous training and has it been successful or not.
00:31:14.200 -->
00:31:36.131And the second thing is just have some sort of feedback loop whether that's a wearable that you use or a constellation of wearables, or subjective feedback or, hopefully, all of the above have something in place that serves as a little bit of a check and balance to make sure that the pathway that you're actually taking is going to be one that is continually sustainable for you yeah, I can agree more.
00:31:36.211 -->
00:31:41.583I think the word sustainability is also one that actually we emphasize a lot.
00:31:41.583 -->
00:32:04.094I think again, that long-term thinking, in terms of what you can actually just like, it always depends, like if you have six weeks and you know after six weeks you're never gonna, you're never gonna put a foot in a running shoe anymore, then maybe it's a different story, even though probably you still don't want to risk all your bone, your bones and your joints and all that.
00:32:04.094 -->
00:32:05.979But it's a different story.
00:32:05.979 -->
00:32:16.702But if you want to optimize for a very long time frame, I think sustainability has to be an aspect to consider and I think it should also be a talking point in whoever you're working with.
00:32:16.702 -->
00:32:39.650If you work with a coach, then sustainability, especially within your context of living, like whether you're working or whether you're studying or whether you're a professional athlete is definitely something that has to be considered into creating a plan, and we are very much of the opinion that the athlete has a prominent role in that planning.
00:32:39.650 -->
00:33:03.241You know, maybe not in the specific session prescription, but definitely in the, you know, the adaptation of the plan or the adjustment of the plan, because he can be the best coach in the world, but not even his or her training plan will be perfect, because he has to adapt it based on what's happening around.
00:33:03.750 -->
00:33:10.299And yeah, that's where I think communication is really key and that doesn't come natural to every athlete.
00:33:10.299 -->
00:33:17.080And I think that's maybe also from a coaching perspective, where sometimes you have to figure out a little bit.
00:33:17.080 -->
00:33:23.761You know, how can you bring your athlete to communicate with you, or maybe it's just not.
00:33:23.761 -->
00:33:33.424You know, chemistry is not there, and then maybe it's also better if the athlete works with someone else, or maybe works in a group where the coach sees the athlete every day.
00:33:33.424 -->
00:33:57.844I think, for me at least, communication is definitely something that is crucial for everything know himself or herself better in terms of communication, or communicating to the coach, or to the partner or to the whoever whoever is involved in in this athlete environment.
00:34:00.851 -->
00:34:11.782Okay, I wanted to check in with coach Ryan again to discuss further this balance between objective feedback and subjective feedback and how we can use the interplay between both of those to help monitor athletes.
00:34:11.782 -->
00:34:13.797Ryan, what do you have to say about this topic?
00:34:14.931 -->
00:34:19.862So I hit on earlier about the importance of a consistent, honest communication.
00:34:19.862 -->
00:34:22.378That's the foundation of all of this.
00:34:22.378 -->
00:34:29.072But we also have data training peaks, interval workouts, hours, their normalized grade pace trending throughout a block.
00:34:29.072 -->
00:34:44.023And HRV is another one specifically using the HRV for training, because it's been talked about on this podcast quite a bit that it's the most valid measure as opposed to the Garmin reading overnight or the Coros or whatever.
00:34:44.023 -->
00:34:48.516But there's always caveats with data and I'll give two examples here.
00:34:49.030 -->
00:34:52.311So last year I wanted to leverage HRV data more.
00:34:52.311 -->
00:34:54.958I got the HRV for training coach account.
00:34:54.958 -->
00:35:04.335I was encouraging my athletes to get the app do the measurements in the morning, making sure they had the correct information on how to do those measurements correctly.
00:35:04.335 -->
00:35:12.494And specifically I wanted to use it with my high volume athletes because naturally they can be closer to the edge of being cooked a little too much.
00:35:12.494 -->
00:35:25.016It's important to monitor when they need the recovery and I wanted it for the historical data so I could look back and find the patterns of hey, they responded really well to this load of training.
00:35:25.016 -->
00:35:30.293This was a period of too many interval workouts that the numbers weren't looking great with their HRV.
00:35:30.293 -->
00:35:37.293So athlete, a high volume athlete loves to exercise, enthusiastic about all things, he's checking his HRV.
00:35:37.293 -->
00:35:42.003Everything's like green Green score is good and consistent for a while.
00:35:42.003 -->
00:35:55.297And four, six weeks later, after we start this, I come to learn he's been rechecking his HRV until he gets the green score, so he gets the score every morning.
00:35:55.516 -->
00:35:57.681It's gamifying the monitoring process.
00:35:58.449 -->
00:35:59.954Exactly, exactly.
00:35:59.954 -->
00:36:02.539I have to hit the green so I can do those 20-hour weeks.
00:36:02.539 -->
00:36:07.856Coaches put on the training plan Because if I get a yellow he's going to text me, he's going to take something away, and we can't have that.
00:36:07.856 -->
00:36:10.969So naturally that throws all that out of the window.
00:36:10.969 -->
00:36:22.059And then another athlete they were getting anxious upon their measurements in the morning because, same thing, they didn't want to get a yellow or a red.
00:36:22.059 -->
00:36:26.572That would then kind of trigger the stoplight system that we had of.
00:36:27.193 -->
00:36:34.862If you get a yellow, text me and let's just see how everything's going, okay, you're doing a bunch of interval workouts not surprising.
00:36:34.862 -->
00:36:38.396You had to stay up late last night with the kids not surprising.
00:36:38.396 -->
00:36:40.405Okay, we're getting two yellows.
00:36:40.405 -->
00:36:43.673Let's investigate further and likely alter training.
00:36:43.673 -->
00:36:45.538If we get a red, full stop.
00:36:45.538 -->
00:36:48.443Likely there are some recovery days in there.
00:36:48.443 -->
00:36:53.382Whatever, this athlete also loves exercising, has big goals.
00:36:53.382 -->
00:36:55.878They don't want to see their training changed.
00:36:55.878 -->
00:36:58.916And they were getting very anxious upon the measurements in the morning.
00:36:58.916 -->
00:37:02.458Of course that's going to throw off the readings.
00:37:02.458 -->
00:37:12.719And so, with these two examples it just reminded me of what is the core of my coaching philosophy that communication is so, so important.
00:37:12.719 -->
00:37:14.978I wasn't throwing that out with these athletes.
00:37:14.978 -->
00:37:18.340I was just thinking it would be another fail safe.
00:37:18.429 -->
00:38:16.101And back to that point earlier of hey, this is more historical data to see how they're best responding and not responding to training, but with these two athletes it was also a good reminder of don't just like implement these things as specifically, like measuring the data and forget the communication piece, or like having oversight if, like, you're getting good, reliable data or not yeah, our coaches will say our coach, our coaching group at cts will say that we're not only coaching athletes with the physical prescription that we're actually giving them go out and go run two hours on wednesday and do a five hour long run on saturday or whatever that physical prescription is but we're also coaching them on how to be coached, and especially for newer athletes, who this is and this is the case with a lot of athletes that we see come in the doors is their first foray into coaching.
00:38:16.101 -->
00:38:18.701They kind of don't know what they don't know right.
00:38:18.701 -->
00:38:20.931They don't know how valuable the feedback is.
00:38:20.931 -->
00:38:22.675They don't know how valuable the data is.
00:38:22.675 -->
00:38:28.737They don't know how valuable just saying, man, I was really clumsy in the first two kilometers of the run, or something like that.
00:38:28.737 -->
00:38:39.436They don't know how valuable everything felt Great, those three words, right, everything felt great, or today was a good day, those simple pieces of feedback.
00:38:39.436 -->
00:38:47.335They don't realize, like, how valuable that is when it's stacked up over periods of time and that feedback becomes kind of kind of becomes consistent.
00:38:47.992 -->
00:38:54.489But all of this I still come back to and view it through the lens of a.
00:38:54.489 -->
00:38:59.739It is a way to individualize the training for a specific purpose.
00:38:59.739 -->
00:39:06.036We have these general concepts of we can only increase volume to so much and by such a degree or whatever.
00:39:06.036 -->
00:39:19.188However, whatever philosophy you actually want to use, the overriding theme across all of that is looking at a individual, sophie Coop, whoever you know, whoever we're actually working with what do they actually need?
00:39:19.188 -->
00:39:28.746How do they need to be, how do they need to communicate on a two-way street, what volume we're applying, where intensity we're applying, and things like that, and that's not easy.
00:39:28.746 -->
00:39:31.434I want to, kind of, I want to get back to sub.
00:39:31.434 -->
00:39:37.565I want to get back to the sustainability piece and flip that on its head a little bit, since this podcast is timely.
00:39:37.585 -->
00:39:39.952We're getting into the meat and potatoes of the training season.
00:39:39.952 -->
00:39:48.407One of the things that athletes are going to want to do is undertake a training camp, which is inherently an unsustainable component of training.
00:39:48.407 -->
00:39:51.856They're going to go out, they're going to do some sort of race recon.
00:39:51.856 -->
00:40:00.295Some elite athletes will go do an altitude camp or a team camp or something like that and intensify their training in some way.
00:40:00.295 -->
00:40:04.628They either intensify it by doing more volume over a concentrated period of time.
00:40:04.628 -->
00:40:08.670They either intensify it by doing a higher frequency of workouts, harder workouts.
00:40:08.690 -->
00:40:11.117There's a number of different ways that you can slice and dice it.
00:40:11.117 -->
00:40:15.346The whole point of it is these training camps kind of offer like an isolated environment, so to speak.
00:40:15.346 -->
00:40:27.369Remove them from their day-to-day environment and they can increase what they would normally be able to do, and the hope is the hope is that will reap a superior adaptation as compared to the sustainable training that they do.
00:40:27.369 -->
00:40:45.751You know that they do week to week and I'm wondering what your perspective on that particular component is, because many times, once again, if we talk about an overreaching or overtraining or underperforming athlete, you're seeing that you're part of that mixture of training that they're doing is how are these training camps constructed?
00:40:45.751 -->
00:40:57.525So do you have any guideposts or guidelines for athletes that are undertaking these potential training camp opportunities in terms of what's tight, how should they actually go about designing them?
00:40:57.525 -->
00:41:00.291What things should they take into consideration when doing so?
00:41:00.472 -->
00:41:02.757yeah, I think it's a.
00:41:02.757 -->
00:41:07.601It's an interesting and a complex question because I think it depends very much on the athletes.
00:41:07.601 -->
00:41:28.449It depends whether you're an elite athlete, you know where maybe a training camp isn't that much of a jump in terms of volume, compared to when an age group or an amateur athlete goes for a weekend away even, or a week away, where the jump in training might be significantly more.
00:41:28.449 -->
00:41:30.795And also the training environment, you know.
00:41:30.795 -->
00:41:49.257For an amateur, maybe they don't have to work, maybe they don't have their family around, whereas for an elite athlete, maybe you know, their training environment is sort of optimized to a degree where even when they stay at home it's relatively the same, whereas they can focus on their training entirely.
00:41:49.257 -->
00:41:53.230So I think that obviously the context is important.
00:41:53.230 -->
00:42:09.030And then I think training camps like or, yeah, like with training in general, I think I think steven styler said that research we put it recently that training is a an optimization challenge and not a maximization challenge.
00:42:09.030 -->
00:42:11.996I think that goes for training camps as well.
00:42:11.996 -->
00:42:27.954So it's not about trying to cram in as much training as possible in those whatever days you have available, but actually trying to optimize something in terms of an ultra context.
00:42:27.954 -->
00:42:47.273Maybe you want to simulate your race over a three-day period or for an Ironman athlete, maybe you want to do the Ironman distance over a two-day or a three-day period, which is very specific.
00:42:47.273 -->
00:42:56.581So you're trying to optimize something, but you're not necessarily trying to maximize for something, and I think that obviously speaks to specificity.
00:42:56.581 -->
00:43:16.255It doesn't necessarily speaks to speak to how we're going to adapt to that then as well, which is the other important piece for you know, optimizing versus maximizing, because the end goal obviously is adaptation, and I think that's where sort of the holy grail.
00:43:16.255 -->
00:43:17.277We still don't have it.
00:43:17.277 -->
00:43:37.077You know we don't have the training metric that we have to follow in terms of having a guarantee that we're going to perfectly adapt to the training that we're doing, and therefore it's also very difficult to sometimes fear the load or manage the load effectively for optimizing whatever goal we're setting.
00:43:37.978 -->
00:43:50.027So I think, from a practical perspective, what I think is always a good advice is that you shouldn't be needing another holiday after you're finishing your training camp.
00:43:50.027 -->
00:43:56.659But it's fine if you're tired, you know, it's fine to need a, a few days easy.
00:43:56.659 -->
00:44:00.027I think getting out of your comfort zone is a good thing.
00:44:00.027 -->
00:44:08.351It's even better if you can combine a training camp with actually having fun and having a good time around people.
00:44:08.351 -->
00:44:33.005But yeah, there's this, there's a few, and I'm sure I'm not the first one that says that you know, certain things in training camps are obviously not beneficial, which is, you know, trying to lose weight at the same time, or trying to, you know, go hard every single day, or combine it with excessive alcohol consumption in the evening or going partying every single day.
00:44:33.005 -->
00:44:36.838I don't think that's that's a thing within your community.
00:44:36.838 -->
00:44:39.730So I don't think I have to necessarily emphasize that here.
00:44:40.485 -->
00:45:06.791So the way that I frame it up and athletes always want to do this because they want to, in their mind, to use your vocabulary they want to maximize something and what they're trying to maximize is their time out on feet but the way that I'm internalizing it is just the way that I think that you want other athletes and other coaches to internalize it, as we're trying to optimize and we might be trying to optimize for the audit, the end adaptation that we're trying to, that we're trying to achieve I.
00:45:06.791 -->
00:45:22.173The framework that I like to use when setting these this up is, if you're going to increase your work output by X, let's just say that's two hours a day, right, and that would be a double for a lot of athletes.
00:45:22.173 -->
00:45:25.733Most athletes aren't training two hours, or most normal athletes aren't training two hours a day.
00:45:25.733 -->
00:45:27.592Well, let's say we wanted to decrease it by two hours a day.
00:45:27.592 -->
00:45:33.192You also need two hours a day to not train, an additional two hours a day to not train.
00:45:33.192 -->
00:45:43.869So not only are you allocating an extra two hours a day for the actual training component you're at, you're allocating an additional time of one X on top of that to just not do anything.
00:45:43.869 -->
00:45:57.010So be prepared to double whatever the increase in training actually is throughout the day in order to get the benefits from it, because you also have to rest more, and that's where this all kind of like comes down to it.
00:45:57.010 -->
00:46:21.855I can always ask an athlete to, instead of waking up at five in the morning, wake up at three in the morning to get an extra two hours, but that's not going to benefit them nearly as much as having the extra two hours of time availability to go and train and then have another two hours of availability on top of that to not do anything and just rest and absorb and absorb the training.
00:46:22.365 -->
00:46:32.275So I think like the first thing when we start to design these training camps for athletes is start to think about the whole picture of time and where all of that time is getting allocated.
00:46:32.275 -->
00:46:33.518Am I traveling?
00:46:33.518 -->
00:46:38.849Am I having to do a transport from A to B in order to do like a point to point or recon or something like that?
00:46:38.849 -->
00:46:57.442The training activity is going to take X, and then I'm also allocating some amount of time for nothing like block it off in your calendar few work things as possible, if any of those decompress as much as possible.
00:46:57.442 -->
00:47:18.434I do think that, like when we talk about, in terms of reducing the risk for a training camp, to be part of the over or under negative part of the equation, baking in the recovery side of it, is an intentional part of it, is a big part of it all because a lot of times we can find the time availability, but what we fail to do is to find the time availability on the recovery side.
00:47:18.545 -->
00:47:19.650Yeah, a hundred percent.
00:47:19.650 -->
00:47:33.119I think that's also something that maybe people do not always appreciate that actually elite athletes spend a lot of time more, a lot of their time that they have available more on the recovery.
00:47:33.119 -->
00:47:38.266You know they take naps every single day, which I think is a huge performance enhancer.
00:47:38.266 -->
00:47:43.398And also, you know, oftentimes their logistics are optimized.
00:47:43.398 -->
00:47:57.626You know oftentimes they live in a place where they don't have to travel that many minutes or hours to a pool, for instance, or to a place where they can actually do their hill reps or their long runs on the trails and all that kind of stuff.
00:47:57.626 -->
00:48:20.661But for some, obviously and that's also like if you take triathletes that's why they go to resorts where they have the pool and the gym and the track in one place, and that can sometimes be extremely beneficial simply because you spend or you save that time going from one infrastructure to the other or from one place to the other.
00:48:21.364 -->
00:48:25.625Another factor I think that I haven't mentioned before is obviously nutrition.
00:48:25.625 -->
00:48:37.552I think if you do increase the training load, it's always a very good idea to be on top of nutrition, rather taking too much than too little.
00:48:37.552 -->
00:48:49.572It's a great time and place as well to experiment with your rice nutrition, where hopefully you'll fuel enough as well, and also like don't spare the protein with.
00:48:49.572 -->
00:48:55.054Don't spare with the protein, because I think, in terms of adaptation, that's where you know.
00:48:55.054 -->
00:49:04.811Example, having a protein shake before going to bed can sometimes be extremely beneficial, simply because our output is so much higher as we need it for recovery.
00:49:07.806 -->
00:49:18.246Okay, I wanted to check in with Coach Ryan one final time to talk about how we build in extra recovery for high volume athletes or for athletes who are increasing their whole training load.
00:49:18.806 -->
00:49:30.764Earlier in this podcast, or perhaps after this little snippet, you or the guest mentions this concept of if I'm going to add two hours of training above their mean, I've got to.
00:49:30.764 -->
00:49:32.947I would like them to have two hours of nothing.
00:49:32.947 -->
00:49:46.688Air quotes on the other side of that and that's just a logical way of looking at it, of if I increase load to absorb that load, get the most benefit from it, I've got to have a balance of recovery on the other side.
00:49:46.688 -->
00:49:48.452So how do we get to this?
00:49:48.452 -->
00:49:53.530To find that right load goes back to that principle of communication and feedback.
00:49:53.530 -->
00:50:00.447Look through their historical data in terms of when they hit this level of volume.
00:50:00.447 -->
00:50:06.768They kind of crashed and burned when we were doing three interval workouts in the course of 10 days.
00:50:06.768 -->
00:50:07.731It was too much.
00:50:07.731 -->
00:50:13.429We're trying to use the data that way and then couple that with their subjective feedback as well.
00:50:13.429 -->
00:50:30.235And how I approach this with athletes if let's call it moderate stress, in which they're not necessarily time-consuming their work stress, their life stress is not excessive Typically a four-day recovery block will do the trick.
00:50:30.936 -->
00:50:33.969One rest day, three recovery runs, 45, 60 minutes.
00:50:33.969 -->
00:50:35.775That's pretty straightforward.
00:50:35.775 -->
00:50:36.617Everybody gets that.
00:50:36.617 -->
00:50:39.614I don't care if we're doing 15 hours a week, eight hours a week, that's standard.
00:50:39.614 -->
00:50:41.492Nine times out of 10 works really well.
00:50:41.905 -->
00:50:45.889If I'm going to categorize a high-stressed athlete, they're time crunched.
00:50:45.889 -->
00:50:56.637It's the scenario of like I've got to plan my schedule down to the minute to fit in my run and then go pick up the kids from practice and everything With those.
00:50:56.637 -->
00:50:58.547They're already so close to the edge.
00:50:58.547 -->
00:51:00.713I just give them a full week recovery block.
00:51:00.713 -->
00:51:12.273I throw in two rest days in there, three recovery runs that 45, 60 minute duration and a couple of endurance runs because they're already so close to the edge of being overstressed.
00:51:13.496 -->
00:51:17.956Again, going back to that principle of we're going to have nothing on the other side of that.
00:51:17.956 -->
00:51:25.748But yeah, those are two basic ways I approach the recovery and the whole theme of this episode consistent, honest communication.
00:51:25.748 -->
00:51:31.449Whether you're self-coached or you are coached, I think that's an important thing to hit on.
00:51:31.449 -->
00:51:39.351The self-coach athlete can still do this, whether it's leaving comments that are private to themselves and Strava, you can do that.
00:51:39.351 -->
00:51:51.936If you have a training peaks account, you can leave your feedback in there and, again, if it's consistent, you can go out and tease when you're thriving and when oopsies, I crashed and burn, I need to like, felt like I needed two weeks off.
00:51:55.646 -->
00:51:56.226A hundred percent.
00:51:56.226 -->
00:52:03.288So I want to leave the listeners with a little bit of a summary of some of the monitoring that you were talking about earlier.
00:52:03.288 -->
00:52:18.996I'm going to link up in the show notes a blog that, that that you recently wrote with some of the previous podcast guests that now I'm looking at the author list here, so the previous podcast guests that I've had on here and it's and the title of it is an athlete's career insurance.
00:52:18.996 -->
00:52:20.139I love that title, by the way.
00:52:20.139 -->
00:52:34.032Implementary implementing of monitoring tools to prevent underperformance in sport and insurance is the best way to put it, because you can't completely prevent it, but you want to put systems in place to mitigate the risk as much as possible.
00:52:34.032 -->
00:52:44.090And that's what and that's what an insurance policy you know is ultimately like set up to do is to try to mitigate, is to try to like mitigate things that are that could actually kind of go awry.
00:52:45.226 -->
00:52:52.715You have this five pronged approach of monitoring tools and in order in an order of the chart that's in the, that's in the blog.
00:52:52.715 -->
00:52:58.007It's training diary psychological or sorry physiological tests, resting it's in the blog.
00:52:58.007 -->
00:52:58.871It's training diary psychological or sorry.
00:52:58.871 -->
00:52:59.454Physiological tests, resting.
00:52:59.454 -->
00:53:00.219Heart rate and heart rate variability.
00:53:00.219 -->
00:53:01.485Psychological questionnaire and medical health controls.
00:53:01.485 -->
00:53:04.842We're not going to be able to go through every single one of those components.
00:53:04.842 -->
00:53:07.112That would take, you know, five, five podcasts.
00:53:07.112 -->
00:53:41.735But I'm wondering if you can kind of leave the listeners with a workflow, so to speak, of how to actually use that in practice from a day-to-day perspective, week-to-week perspective, and when they would see things that would cause them to titrate their workouts up, and then the opposite, when they should, when they start seeing things that should, that could cause their workouts to titrate down, and the things that they should be taking into consideration as they're actually using some of these monitoring tools yeah, I, I think, maybe as a first comment, it depends obviously a bit how much time you want to invest in all that.
00:53:42.425 -->
00:53:54.731It might be that if you're not a professional athlete, you're only tracking your heart rate, for example, and then you have one barometer that you're going to track and that's fine as well.
00:53:54.731 -->
00:54:26.170Then you have to be really mindful, for example, to your heart rate and your rpe, and sometimes actually can be beneficial to focus on less parameters more, but in the end it's you know we are big proponents of just having a selected or a handful of parameters that you track on a regular basis, and whether that happens in an Excel sheet or in training peaks or in a journal, it doesn't really matter.
00:54:26.170 -->
00:54:42.273Obviously it depends a bit whether you self-coach or you work with a coach, because if you work with a coach, then I think a digital training diary is obviously a good way to as a conversation starter, right, especially if you add comments.
00:54:42.273 -->
00:54:45.204We would always recommend to add comments.
00:54:45.204 -->
00:54:51.318Like you said before, even something very short can be a good feedback for the coach.
00:54:51.318 -->
00:54:52.849Just everything is fine.
00:54:52.849 -->
00:55:01.791So you know like you, you know there's no problem, I think, for elite athletes or also if an athlete is struggling.
00:55:01.951 -->
00:55:14.219I think very frequent check-ins are extremely valuable, you know, just not just for a recovery, from a recovery perspective, but just simply if you're not well.
00:55:14.219 -->
00:55:20.307I think it makes you feel good if I ask how you are every single day, or maybe not.
00:55:20.307 -->
00:55:20.929How are you?
00:55:20.929 -->
00:55:25.751Just like in a standardized way, but like, how are you today, you know, is it a little bit better than yesterday?
00:55:25.751 -->
00:55:27.512I think it makes a difference.
00:55:27.512 -->
00:55:34.125And so these are things deviating slightly from, let's say, those five components.
00:55:34.125 -->
00:55:46.518But I think the training diary is really maybe the most important tool that you have, and then it depends very much on how much time do you want to allocate to it.
00:55:46.518 -->
00:55:48.994How many variables are you actually tracking?
00:55:48.994 -->
00:56:06.217I think it is a very good idea to include subjective factors such as motivation, moods, maybe things that you're not directly relating to training but can often tell a lot about where you're at.
00:56:06.217 -->
00:56:12.835You know, I think maybe your partner or your spouse is also a good reference point for that.
00:56:12.835 -->
00:56:15.735Just, you know someone that holds up the mirror.
00:56:15.735 -->
00:56:23.378If you're not reflective enough to judge whether you're in a good mood or how has have I been more irritable?
00:56:23.378 -->
00:56:25.025How have I been sleeping?
00:56:25.025 -->
00:56:36.219All these kind of things, libido and, like I said before, I think these are things that actually tell us a lot, even though there's sometimes not maybe not so comfortable to to really dig in.
00:56:36.358 -->
00:56:49.268Resting hard, rent and hrv I think are great tools just to track, let's say passively, and also for a coach maybe, like if you see changes there, it's always a good thing to have it.
00:56:49.268 -->
00:57:04.666You know, if you see some something is completely out the norm for a longer time periods, I think one-off readings are not normally a reason for concern, but if it's something that is changing for a longer time period, it's something that could indicate certain things.
00:57:04.666 -->
00:57:07.945But context is always king, right, I think.
00:57:07.945 -->
00:57:13.157For example, now we have allergy season, so this could have an impact on HIV for sure.
00:57:13.157 -->
00:57:21.530If you're a woman, I mean in l luteal phase, usually your resting heart rate is just higher, your hrv is lower, your sleep score is lower.
00:57:22.271 -->
00:57:29.572It's just something that you have to know and you can add context and then it's usually less of a concern.
00:57:29.572 -->
00:57:40.199Again, like I said, if you're a coach, then having an eye on that and rather ask once more than once less is usually beneficial.
00:57:40.199 -->
00:57:46.347But also from an athlete perspective, giving more information is usually better than giving less information.
00:57:46.347 -->
00:57:47.309Yeah.
00:57:47.309 -->
00:57:59.065And then psychological questionnaires is something that if you really feel susceptible to like a lot of changes or in your mood state, then that's something that you can add.
00:57:59.065 -->
00:58:06.726It's not something that is necessary, from my perspective, to do, like for anyone, for everyone.
00:58:06.726 -->
00:58:06.987Yeah.
00:58:06.987 -->
00:58:16.061And medical checks I think that's just something that is sensible to do once a year or depending on, like, when you go to, before you go to altitude.
00:58:16.061 -->
00:58:19.974I think it's definitely sensible to check your iron status, for example.
00:58:19.974 -->
00:58:25.873Just make sure that you're healthy on a regular basis is usually a smart idea.
00:58:26.594 -->
00:58:48.557Out of all of these, though, is it fair to say that the training log, or the training diary, is the hero component of it, because you started out with that and then kind of breeze through the rest of them, but either because it's a more consistent measure, or whether it kind of like it can like alchemize both the performance side of it as well as the subjective component of it.
00:58:48.557 -->
00:58:53.905Do you feel that, if athletes are to focus on anything, is that where you would steer people towards?
00:58:54.047 -->
00:59:03.217yeah, without a doubt yeah, and that's what I haven't mentioned, sorry, like I haven't mentioned the testing, like I have mentioned it before.
00:59:03.277 -->
00:59:19.146I think it's something that we usually do on a regular basis, like every four to six weeks, and I think most athletes have some sort of standardized session in their program where, like you can see a little bit like how you're developing.
00:59:19.146 -->
00:59:26.269And again, that's not like a, it's not a competition, you know, it's not I'm gonna have to win this session.
00:59:26.269 -->
00:59:30.965It's not a pass fail, it's more of like a little bit where you're at.
00:59:30.965 -->
00:59:41.512And if you do that over a long period of time especially like taking cross-country skiers again as an example like they have different periods in the year.
00:59:41.512 -->
00:59:47.190Like you know, summer is usually preparation phase, so you do a test when you start your training.
00:59:47.190 -->
00:59:57.699So you know, maybe you have 10 years of data where every single year you test in the beginning of june and you can also see the long-term development.
00:59:57.699 -->
01:00:07.364And then also, maybe you're panicking because you feel so unfit, but actually, if you can compare it to 10 years of data, you can add a bit of context.
01:00:07.403 -->
01:00:07.744Exactly.
01:00:07.925 -->
01:00:14.898You can see like, look, actually I was even more unfit three years ago, but then I had a great season.
01:00:14.898 -->
01:00:28.315So I think it just gives you a little bit more confidence in what you're actually doing and obviously it's also very helpful for planning the training process and managing the training process as a coach.
01:00:28.746 -->
01:00:37.155Yeah, you hit the nail on the head on why the training diary or the workout log can really be the hero is because you have more data points.
01:00:38.067 -->
01:00:43.775You have data points every single day and then, if you want to take just the critical workouts, you've got two to three data points a week.
01:00:44.425 -->
01:01:08.112And if you're consistently evaluating those, week after week, month after month, year after year not to say you don't like physiological the physiological testing loses, it's, starts to lose its cost benefit analysis the more you analyze the training, because the training just kind of gives you the best snapshot of where you're at, because it's so consistent.
01:01:08.112 -->
01:01:16.967The physiological test, although you know it gets more accurate standardized test, whatever it is, it's still a snapshot of one single moment in time during that one particular day.
01:01:16.967 -->
01:01:28.427And so for the athletes out there, if you wanted to boil down this whole you know podcast into something like really simple keep track of your training and evaluate your training on a day to day basis.
01:01:28.427 -->
01:01:38.318You don't have to get as sophisticated as looking at all the artificial intelligence that comes out of the data or anything like that Just what did you do, how much of it and how did you feel?
01:01:38.318 -->
01:01:40.769It really doesn't get any more complicated than that.
01:01:42.815 -->
01:01:44.378Yeah, exactly, couldn't agree more.
01:01:45.264 -->
01:01:46.550Well, sophie, this has been great.
01:01:46.550 -->
01:01:54.353Will you, before we go, will you let the athletes know a little bit more about like, where they can find more about you, more about mirror, more about the work that you guys are doing?
01:01:54.485 -->
01:01:56.239Yeah, about you, more about mirror, more about the work that you guys are doing.
01:01:56.239 -->
01:01:58.146Yeah, so our, I think you will add the website.
01:01:58.146 -->
01:02:02.836So I think usually it's best to just visit the website.
01:02:02.836 -->
01:02:06.469We have, I think, quite some interesting articles there.
01:02:06.469 -->
01:02:11.378They're all for your educational purposes, so they're for free.
01:02:12.085 -->
01:02:26.978We are also on social media platform Instagram, linkedin and X and yeah, so you can fill the if you're dealing with or if you don't know what are your of risk of underperformance.
01:02:26.978 -->
01:02:30.172So it's a risk assessment, it's not a diagnosis.
01:02:30.172 -->
01:02:43.652We have an assessment of your risk of underperformance on our website which you can also fill in for free, and if you fill that, then it is up to you whether you want the consultation with us.
01:02:43.652 -->
01:02:47.596We also work with organizations and teams.
01:02:47.596 -->
01:03:29.668So if you're part of an organization or part of a team or a federation which is interested to prevent underperformance, or even if you're part of a team or a federation which is interested to prevent underperformance, or even if you're part of a corporate organization and you think actually you know things like we haven't talked about allostatic loads, but if you're affected by burnout or underperforming employees, you know just like work-life balance is geared towards the overload side, then I think that's also something where we can help with implementing systems that can recognize or prevent ideally prevent that in the first place.
01:03:30.030 -->
01:03:30.592That's excellent.
01:03:30.592 -->
01:03:33.137I will have links to all that in the show notes.
01:03:33.137 -->
01:03:36.925So thank you for your time and, more importantly, thank you for the work that you do with athletes.
01:03:37.126 -->
01:03:38.050Thank you very much, Jason.
01:03:41.606 -->
01:03:43.110All right, folks, there you have it.
01:03:43.110 -->
01:03:43.630There you go.
01:03:43.630 -->
01:03:58.547Much thanks to Sophie and coach Ryan for coming on the podcast today and helping us try to understand this sometimes mysterious aspect of underperformance syndrome, overtraining syndrome, overtraining, whatever you want to call it.
01:03:58.547 -->
01:04:24.117It's been known by those names, as well as many more, over the course of my coaching career, and it's something that we are always constantly keeping tabs on as coaches and as athletes, and, as we discussed during the podcast, there are a number of both communication as well as technological tools that we have used to try to get a fix on this problem, and what I have found throughout the course of my coaching career is there is no one silver bullet.
01:04:24.117 -->
01:04:37.659You have to really alchemize all of those to make correct decisions on how much training load is enough, where you might be actually stepping over the line, and then course corrective measures to use when you think you have actually stepped over that line.
01:04:37.659 -->
01:04:45.793All right, folks, as always, this podcast is brought to you without any advertisers or sponsors in any way, shape or form.
01:04:45.793 -->
01:04:48.746There's no discount codes or anything like that you'll ever hear on.
01:04:48.766 -->
01:04:55.835This podcast is something that I'm very proud of and something that I have been insistent on ever since the inception of this podcast.
01:04:55.835 -->
01:05:07.932So if you want to help support this podcast, all you have to do is go to my website, jasoncoopcom, and subscribe to Research Essentials for Ultra Running.
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01:05:14.114We take scientific topics like the one that we talked about today and we break them down into much greater detail.
01:05:14.114 -->
01:05:19.952We've had a lot of coaches and high-level athletes be subscribers of that content and they all absolutely love it.
01:05:19.952 -->
01:05:36.793I get a lot out of producing that content each and every single month with my contributors and co-authors, professor Nick Tiller, phd and Stephanie Howe, phd, where we break down the latest science and research as it relates to ultra running.
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01:05:45.985You'll go check that out.
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01:05:48.190The links to that are in the show notes.
01:05:48.190 -->
01:05:50.516And that is it for today, folks.
01:05:50.516 -->
01:05:56.445We're going to come back next week with another killer episode, but until then, I will see you all out on the trails.
