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How to Improve as an Endurance Athlete: The Metrics That Matter Most Ep 98 · Find Your Edge: Training, Nutrition + Longevity for Endurance Athletes

• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Hey y'all and welcome back to the find your edge podcast.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: I am coach Chris, and today we're diving into something that I know so many of you are curious about how do you actually measure your progress and improvement as an endurance athlete?
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Now, I'll have to say, as coaches, this is our special nerd out soup.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: We absolutely love digging into these things, because every athlete is so incredibly unique, not only in their goals, but also in their physiology and their genetics and how they progress.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: So whether you're training for your first Ironman, you're training for your first sprint, triathlon, half marathon, marathon, you're trying to shave time off of your 70.3 or whatever, or you just want to get fitter without burning out, this episode is for you because it's not just about training harder.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: It's about training smarter and hopefully also having some fun, and to do that, you need to be tracking the right things.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: So one of the reasons why I bring up this topic is because I've had athletes in the past come up to me and say, well, I'm not getting faster, and then I have to back up and say be more specific.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: What do you mean by that?
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: And I had one athlete say well, my miles per hour on the bike is not any different.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: So if we're only using one specific metric like that, we're probably going to be really disappointed.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: So then we have to back up and, before we even dig into any of these metrics, what are your goals?
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: So, whether it to be to do more pushups or to shave off time off your 70.3 or to run a faster 5k, that's all fantastic, I love it.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: So then that helps us back into what should your training plan actually look like?
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: And again, this is what we do as coaches is we typically take that particular goal and a specific timeframe and we work backwards.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: So where most of us kind of look at okay, I'm training today and I'm looking forward towards my goal, we go all the way to that timeframe or to that opportunity for that goal, and then we work backwards to create what are called cycles so that we can better manage your fitness and then gradually build you up to try to not burn you out.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: So that's the first thing that I want to get into is understanding your load and intensity.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: So that really truly is the foundation to your fitness is what's called training load.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: So training is all about literally overload.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: It is a exercise physiology term where you stress the body just enough for it to, in essence, break down and then adapt and get better and improve through appropriate recovery tools.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: And of course we'll get deeper into some of those recovery tools hint, hint, sleep.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: But if you do too much, too fast or without proper recovery, you risk overreaching or, worse, overtraining, and that's going to be a little bit more chronic and that can take months and sometimes even years to recover from.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: So I'm sure that all of us out there are going to say a hard pass from that.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: So what are the things that we track?
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: So one of the things and this is pretty easy for most of you so one of the things and this is pretty easy for most of you is the volume of your training, and this is everything combined all the running, all the swimming, all the biking, all the strength training that you do.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: So all the walking, even how much time or distance you are training each week.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: You can break this down by sport, certainly, but consider that it's not like you're a separate person swimming or a separate person biking or a separate person running.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Right, we're all one person feeling that load from the time or distance you're training each week.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Some athletes can take on massive quantities of volume.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Good for them, right.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: And some athletes just cannot take a high volume, and you know what.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: That's okay, whichever camp you fall into and a lot of this is genetically determined, that's okay.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: You can all still improve, no matter how much volume you can do.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Now there still has to be some certain amount that you may be able to, or you may need to, achieve, based on what your goals are and what your time availability is.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: But it's not like there has to be a set amount of volume.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: So, for example, runners this is a common one, I see Okay well, how much are you training?
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: I'm doing 50 miles a week, 60 miles, 70 plus whatever, okay, great.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: So they communicate their volume in mileage, but that doesn't necessarily indicate the other things that are happening.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: So sometimes we have to remove that habit in our brain of thinking that there has to be a certain amount of volume in order for us to move our fitness needle upwards.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Some of that is true, but you have to take into account the rest of the picture.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: And here's the next part of that picture is intensity.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: And here's, the next part of that picture is intensity, so how hard you're actually working.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: And typically we're going to be monitoring this by some sort of a heart rate monitor or power.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: So I like for there to be a combination.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: So if you're a cyclist, specifically, definitely I hope that you're using power, because there's a whole.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: That's a whole nother ball game in and of itself, but no matter what kind of athlete, if you can track some sort of physiological marker and from what we have available to us right now, the best thing is heart rate.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: So you can use an optical reader, which is something like a wrist-based heart rate monitor or one that goes around like your bicep, or you can use a chest strap.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: I typically prefer the chest strap.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: That's what we use in the metabolic testing facility.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: But every once in a while people are not appropriately shaped to wear a heart rate monitor.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: I know that sounds a little interesting, but every once in a while I get somebody who comes in who has kind of a caved in rib cage with which the sensors that the heart rate monitor is reading don't sit flat and don't get a great reading to be able to transmit that to your watch.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: So you may have to use something like an arm-based or wrist-based heart rate monitor, so you might have to play around a little bit with that.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: This is also really key in knowing that your heart rate zones are set properly.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: I love that most of us who are just walking into whatever sport, they pick up a heart rate monitor whether it be a Polar, garmin, whatever and the software that you're using or the app that you're using is going to give you some sort of like a generic formula, based maybe on your max heart rate or maybe on your gender, or maybe a combination of different things, and it's going to say okay, here are your zones, and I am a stickler about this.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: They have to be properly set, ideally based on metabolic and lactate testing.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: So, in other words, looking at your ventilation and looking at your lactate in order to create the zones that are incredibly specific to you, and also these vary by sport.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: So if you wanna get really nerdy and you're a multi-sport athlete, I would encourage you to do your heart rate training zones on the bike and on the run.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: If you don't want to do that, or maybe that's a cost prohibitive or whatever you don't have someplace nearby, um, come see us.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: By the way, we're in Cary, north Carolina, and we're a short plane ride away from a lot of folks.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Anyhow, whatever you use.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: If you, let's say, you just do a metabolic test on the run because that is your bigger goal is to get faster on the run, great, use that.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Take those heart rate zones and subtract anywhere from eight to 12 beats so you can round off and go with 10 and use those for your cycling zones.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: It is very easy to do things like field tests, and what I mean by field test is like, say, for example, I often use and our group often use the 12 minute Cooper test, which has a formula that goes into a VO2 number, into a VO2 number, great population data on that created by the Cooper Institute down in Texas, or something like an FTP test.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Typically it's like a ramp style and then that will set your FTP or functional threshold power and then oftentimes that is correlated with your ventilatory threshold or your lactate threshold and then you can use that to determine what at least is going to be your zone four effort, but not a lot of tests are really good at determining your zone two.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: That's really where I like to see the testing.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Testing and that is your superpower as an aerobic athlete is zone two training, not to say that other zones are not important, they absolutely are, but your good majority of training should be in zone two.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: So if you're training too easily or you're training too hard, you're not going to be nearly as efficient metabolically.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: So that's a really important thing to know your heart rate zones so that you can back in and use these devices to track the appropriate intensity, which thereby plays into all of the different metrics that we are looking at for a physiological overload.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Do you see how this all starts to connect a little bit?
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Similarly, we do want, if you are a cyclist, I do encourage people to use power zones.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: You can also use power on the run, that's just not as commonly used.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: That's one of those things that we have a very small handful of athletes that we train with power for runners, but typically speaking, we're leaning on heart rate zones or paces for runners and then for cyclists and this can go for multi-sport athletes too, for cyclists using heart rate zones and power zones, because there may be workouts that we want to lean into, one more so than the other.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: So power zones or pace zones, depending on which sport you're doing, or even swimming that needs to have some sort of regular testing in order for it to stay accurate.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: So regular testing for you might be every I typically don't test my athletes, but every maybe six to eight weeks.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: It all depends on goals.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: There's no set formula.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: It's not like you have to do an FTP test every single month.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: In fact, if you start to not enjoy that, then that's going to decrease your likelihood to continue to train.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: So stretch that out a little bit, because there can be other ways that you can train.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: This is why we love doing what we do as coaches instead of somebody just trying to go at it on their own.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying you can't improve when you're coaching yourself, but this is really the beauty of what working with a coach is so fun that we can look at all these different metrics and help you to determine what is the appropriate amount of volume, what is the appropriate amount of intensity that you need, because those two combinations, if they're increased too quickly, you're going to have a much higher risk of injury, and especially anybody who, if we have your genetics done, we're looking at like collagen and joint health, propensity for injury, more need for recovery.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: That's when things can go very awry very quickly and everybody's ability to bounce back, of course, is different.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: So if we put you in a hole, or if you put yourself in a hole, digging that hole out might be a little bit more difficult than it's worth.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: All right, so let's get into the tools to track recovery and readiness.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: So training is only one side of the piece, like you have to train in order to get better.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: End of story, right.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: And also there is an element of making sure that you are training the sport that you are wanting to improve at.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: So if your goal is, I want to get stronger on the bike to be able to climb hills, okay, we need to be cycling consistently and we need to be climbing hills in order to get better at that.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: So you have to do the training part.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: So specificity of training, that's the physiological principle.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Specificity of training in order to help you improve in that certain thing.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: So, for example, I always use this analogy of if you want to get better at golf, don't spend all your time playing tennis, right, it's just you got to golf, right.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: So the same thing goes for if you want to get better at cycling up hills.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: In the example that I used, we got to have you cycling uphill.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: We can very easily do that with a trainer, et cetera.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: So anyway, that was my example.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: But you don't necessarily get faster during the workout or stronger during the workout.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: You're actually breaking yourself down during the workout.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: That's that's again that's overload workout.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: You're actually breaking yourself down during the workout.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: That's that's again that's overload.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: You get faster and you get better and you adapt during recovery.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: So that's why it's so great to use some sort of tracking tools and man, there's so many of them.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Now One of the ones that's the most available is something called HRV or heart rate variability.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: So there are tools like Garmin or Whoop or Aura that track this and tell us how ready your nervous system is to train.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to get too deeply into heart rate variability.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: That can be a whole nother podcast.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: If you guys are interested in a podcast just on HRV, let me know.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: We'd love to.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: If your HRV is off, typically too low, then that tells us that your body is not ready to train yet.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: So we used to have the tool of you'd wake up first thing in the morning and you'd take your resting heart rate and if your resting heart rate was higher than normal, that can be an early sign of fatigue or illness.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: And if you don't want to wear some sort of device, certainly sleeping, or if you have something you know by your head or whatever, then you can do that resting heart rate trick.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: That's an easy method that you can use.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: It's not quite as specific as HRV, but it still gives you an idea of where you're at.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: We also want to look at sleep quality.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: So, again, these tools are.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: When it comes to sleep quality, these, at least training tools are maybe about 70% accurate on a good day.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: So check in with yourself, hopefully that you're not completely relying on the metrics that are coming off of your devices, but also checking in with yourself and hopefully doing things like um social interactions, um social interactions, meditation, deep breathing and optimizing your sleep quality with good sleep hygiene, which is what time you're going to bed.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Are you going to bed consistently?
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: That's really important for your brain to actually clean itself and start to reset your nervous system.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: So again, we can make sleep quality a whole different podcast in and of itself.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: But this hands down is your number one recovery tool.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: I don't care how many massage therapists you have, how many compression boots you use or socks, or how many tart cherries you eat or whatever, at the end of the day, you have to get sleep.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: So I'll give you an example.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: There is this interesting research study on well, they've done a bunch of research on athletes and on the military as it relates to their sleep quality and their shooting accuracy, both whether you're talking about weapons or whether you're talking about basketball, or whether you're talking about hitting with, like tennis, for example.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: The accuracy and the brain health and the body's ability to recover is so much better when these athletes and military personnel are getting eight to nine or even 10 hours of sleep a night.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: So if you're skating by on six, six and a half, maybe even seven hours of sleep Now, granted, everybody is different, I get that.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: But if you're using that as your excuse of, oh, this makes me more productive, or, um, you know, I just don't need sleep, that is a flat out lie.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: You absolutely.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: We cannot go without sleep for longer than we cannot go without hydration or food, like we have to.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: Our brain has to recover, our nervous system has to recover.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: It's our opportunity where our bodies increase the amount of human growth hormone which, hello, people drug with that.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: People use it as a doping agent.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: But that's where your body naturally increases its HDH and helps you to recover.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: So I cannot emphasize enough the importance of sleep quality If this is something that you struggle with.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: There's so many different resources out there in terms of is there a degree of sleep apnea?
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: Do you have to have that assessed?
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: Are we perhaps menopausal and we're struggling with the quality of our sleep because of hot flashes?
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: There are tools for that.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: Perhaps menopausal and we're struggling with the quality of our sleep because of hot flashes?
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: There are tools for that.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: So there are opportunities to support you and certainly we can help from a nutrition perspective and from a genetic perspective.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: And then, of course, ensuring that, as a coach, we are writing your training plan such that we're trying to optimize your sleep quality and get the right amount of volume or intensity of exercise, considering your lifestyle factors.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: All right, Other things, and just wanted to emphasize, outside of the devices, that subjective measures are still just as important as the actual analytical data, and you can create these subjective measures into an objective tool.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: So things like energy levels, mood and motivation.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: So don't underestimate those and, again, we can turn those into metrics super easily.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: The tool that we use for our practice has something that just allows you to read it.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Um, there's also like training peaks, for example, for our coaches.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: So we've got a lot of different tools that help us to assess what are your energy levels, what are your mood?
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Uh, what's your motivation?
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: And then if you're coached with us, then of course, let us know.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: You know, we might have a really big workout planned for you and you're just not feeling great.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: You didn't sleep great.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: That's a conversation to be had, not like a oh my gosh, I am obligated to do this particular workout.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: That's my favorite, that's probably one of my favorite parts of coaching is the opportunity to say, okay, this is why it looks great on paper that I'm gonna lay out this training plan for this person and I've got all the right workouts in based on their goals, based on their specific things that they need to be working on.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: And then let's say, uh, they don't sleep well or uh, they have some sort of life event come up or whatever.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: And then they say, oof, I don't know if I can do that.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, cool, let's shuffle things around, and it's not necessarily just do the workout that you had yesterday, or then what a lot of people end up doing is that they double up workouts.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, well, I missed my workout on Wednesday.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to do Wednesday's workout and Thursday.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: And then there is almost this thinking like it's set in stone, like that has to be the thing that happens in order for you to improve.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: No, the situation has now changed and that's where I love sort of being like okay, you know what, I'm the one who can push delete on that, and that's the truth, because it may not serve you to be piling up workouts because, again, that overload is so important and, in turn, the recovery.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: So make sure you're tracking things like energy levels, mood motivation.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: All right, so let's move on to some more of the technical stuff, if we haven't gotten technical already.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: Training stress metrics I always have to take a deep breath when we're talking about math behind the magic.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: So what are called training stress scores?
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: So some of the companies like Joe Friel and Training Peaks and Garmin and things like that they have created and some of them are trademarked, which is interesting to me that you can trademark math, but anyway, it's another story.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: We happen to use Training Peaks and they use four different metrics to try to quantify your load.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: So they use TSS, or training stress score, they use CTL or chronic training load.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: I'll explain these all here in a moment.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: So hang tight with me.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: They use ATL or chronic training load.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: I'll explain these all here in a moment.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: So hang tight with me.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: They use ATL, or acute training load, or TSB, which is a training stress balance, which they also call form.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: So when you get into here and you look at these graphs, it's like reading another language for a lot of folks.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: That's why we like to work together as coaches and individually, to ensure that you've got the appropriate training stress score, you have the appropriate chronic training load and acute training load and, of course, the ensuing training stress balance.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: So that's where we get into creating different cycles based on what your goals are and then load your training plan accordingly.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: So, honestly, you don't even have to think about these things.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: You just go do the work and have fun and enjoy your training while we do all the background assessment.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: Now, all of these different things like.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: So training stress score, for example.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: It's a number that quantifies how hard a session was based on your intensity and duration.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: So let me say that again, training stress score is a number.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: So it can be 30.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: It can be 291.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: It could be in the higher the number that quantifies how hard a session was, based on how long it was and how hard it was.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: This goes back to ensuring that your heart rate zones are set properly.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: If your heart rate zones are not set properly, this number doesn't work and the rest of them don't work.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: So, again, I cannot stress enough how important it is to have your heart rate training zones set properly.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, then we have chronic training load.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: So then that is a number that quantifies this training stress score and puts it in to a measure of your fitness over about the past six weeks.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: So chronic load over the past six weeks or so.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: So that's what they call CTL.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: And then we have acute training load.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: So this is more short term.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: So what is the short term fatigue that's been building up over the past seven days, based on your again, your multiple training stress scores?
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: So you might go for like, an hour more intense ride and get a training stress score of, let's say, 70.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: And then you go for a swim and you get a training stress score of, let's say, 30.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: And then you go for a strength training session and that's a training stress score of 40.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: And then you go for a walk and that's a training stress score of 10.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: So now we have this training stress for the day and then how does that go into your acute training load and then your chronic training load, so past six weeks, past seven days, and then what's the actual training stress on the day of All of that is calculated to create what they call training stress balance, or again it's called form or your readiness.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: So a negative score means that you are fatigued.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: All of that training stress score has added up, created a acute, a higher acute training load and it's making you tired.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Acute training load and it's making you tired and at a positive score means you're feeling fresher.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: Some athletes can get to a really high form score and some athletes do not get to a very high form score and we're just different.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: That just is what it is.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: So that's where having, if you use a coach, that's where having a relationship with them is really important because they can track your training stress and this training stress balance or form.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: So that is your freshness, so that you can appropriately recover.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: And then hopefully you see that freshness go higher as you're tapering and getting ready for a specific event or if you're, let's say, in the case of strength training, you're really going for, say, like a good quality one rep max or three rep max.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: You don't wanna be overly fatigued when you're going into types of workouts like that.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: So, taking in all of those pieces into account again, assuming that all of your training zones are set appropriately, because if they're not, it just doesn't matter I will tell you there are some other things that we've seen, according to devices that will throw these numbers off If your altitude score or if your altimeter is broken in your device and it will say, in fact, coach Peter, I'll use him as an example.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: We had, in fact, coach Peter I'll I'll um use him as an example.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: Uh, when he flew to Paris, nice, to do the world championship Ironman, something happened to his altimeter, um, and Lord knows if it was something else, but anyway he, after doing his trip there and back, his altimeter was all whacked out.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: So you know, when we look at this graph to see his overload and to see his training stress score and his CTL and ATL and TSB, it is all out of whack because his altimeter was set such that he was going running around his neighborhood.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: So let's say it was like a six mile run around his neighborhood and his neighborhood is super, super flat, it's not hilly at all, but it had it thought that he did something like 30,000 feet of climbing, like he climbed Mount Everest and back.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: So the training, stress, work for that was insane.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: It was like I don't know 10,000 or a thousand or something ridiculous.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: So that number is going to throw everything else off.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: So if you don't have somebody to be able to look at that or kind of dig into why are things kind of wonky here, then we can sort of go to the next step, of like okay, we need to call Garmin and get our altimeter fixed, get a new device in, ensure all the zones are set up properly so that we can get back to seeing are those metrics showing up the way we want them to?
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, so I know we're getting deep here, y'all, so hang tight with me.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: We got a couple more sections to get through.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Other things that we want to consider when it comes to improving your fitness.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: That we want to be looking at is your technique, your strength and your gear.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: So improvement isn't just about your fitness.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Yes, do we want to develop your engine?
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: If you will, absolutely, but it's also about efficiency and holy smokes.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Not only can you do, but also buy efficiency.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: So some of the things that we want to look at are your form and technique.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: This is massive when it comes to your swim stroke.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: We have had even some of our coaches and myself included, I mean, when I started swimming as an adult.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, terrible, like the amount of effort that I was putting in.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: I would have been really curious to see some of my training.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Stress scores from swimming when I first started was insane.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: I'm like how can I run this, you know super fast, 5k for example, and like I am just as gassed going from here to the end of the pool deck or doing one length and I am so tired.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: So that is all about form and technique, not only for your swim.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: But if you're just a runner I'm not going to say just a runner you're amazing.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: If you are just running or just swimming or whatever sport you choose, keep doing it, especially if you love it.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: But things like looking at your gait, keep doing it if you, especially if you love it.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: But things like looking at your gait, that's where we lean on some of our wonderful physical therapists and if anybody, any of our athletes, start with us, part of what you get is not only a metabolic test and your initial consult with your coach for free, but we also film you.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: So, whether you come in to do a bike test or whether you come in to do a run test, we film you and then all of the coaches look at it and then give you specific and then that gets translated to your coach and then your coach talks you through what are the things that we need to work on in terms of your efficiency, your gait, et cetera, or your pedal stroke, for example, and what does your bike fit look like.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: So we've got a lot of different pieces.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: When it comes to form and technique, that obviously is going to take a little bit of effort.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Mobility and strength same kind of thing.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: So ensuring that you've got regular assessments to help you keep balanced, strong and is not a lot of shoulder mobility.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: So the opportunity to get your arm straight up over your head and do a full extension for a good swim stroke and like an appropriate early catch and pull is just like not even.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: It's like barely even there, right, some folks can even and you know not to say that I'm picking on guys, but generally it tends to be men who are have very limited shoulder mobility.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: So, really working on the mobility to be able to get your swimming stroke to a point where you can be more efficient.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Other things that we want to think about be more efficient.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Other things that we want to think about again gear.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Love this because this is like.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, who's not a gear head?
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Well, maybe you aren't, but still it's really fun to dig into some of the specific nuances of what gear can do for your fitness.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, take, take the gains y'all.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: So proper shoe fit that's super important.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: So if you haven't gotten an appropriate shoe for it, go to your local running store, go do that right away.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: Cycling things like crank arm length so right now there's a bigger lean to going shorter in crank arm length length.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: So, uh, I we especially see this in our more petite women that they are running crank arms that are way too long and they can be far more efficient and effective if they get a shorter crank arm length.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: All right, same thing with just general bike fit, like what's your saddle height?
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Uh, what is the actual geometry of the bike that you're using?
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: Are you able to get aero?
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: And we're going to go into a whole nother podcast just specifically on improving your ability to be aerodynamic on the bike, and what different types of gear like.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: Where do you start?
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: What are the second things, what are the third things that you want to get into to sort of buy yourself some speed, so bike fit, huge crank, arm length, big saddle height obviously that's an important one so that you can appropriately engage your glutes, your quads, your hamstrings in the best possible manner.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: And for swimmers, this goes into wetsuits, so especially our triathletes.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: If your gear is not fitting you properly, if it's too big, it will create like bubbles or air pockets and then you're just you're, you're dragging yourself through the water and, conversely, if your wetsuit is way too tight, then you're not going to be able to breathe appropriately and use that engine and then you're probably going to have some anxiety and perhaps even a panic attack.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: And so wetsuit fit is a huge thing in both comfort and performance.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: So getting into some of the gear nuances and we could go deeper into that, but I'm not going to here but just know that you can certainly buy your way into being more efficient.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: So why not?
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: Because it's fun, right.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: So now we've got one last piece here some bonus metrics for some advanced athletes, although I wouldn't necessarily say all of these things are advanced.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: And if you love data, here are a few more to get into Fueling and hydration logs.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: So we use a very specific sweat log and that's for anybody who has done the fueling and hydration bootcamp that's going to open up as a course here shortly uh, hopefully in the next couple of months, so that you guys can purchase that anytime and do the course and then have live calls with me to go over those sweat logs to figure out what is your losses, so that you can hyd.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: You did not fuel and hydrate properly.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: I cannot emphasize the importance of doing this.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: Typically, what most people are going to do is then they're just going to say, okay, I'm just going to drink a bunch of water or I'm just going to drink more in general, when we can get way more nitty gritty on your sweat rate in various intense uh intensities, uh, various sports and various dew points.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: So those are the three factors that will affect your sweat rate.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: So your sweat rate is not a set thing, it varies.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Now your sodium content or your electrolyte content in your SWIP is a set thing.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: So then how do we adjust your eating and drinking.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: So that's where we get much deeper into in our fueling and hydration bootcamp.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: You can check that out at the endurance edgecom forward slash fueling bootcamp to get on the wait list for when that opens again.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: Another thing if you are a female athlete, you may want to be tracking your cycle, having some level of knowledge of where you are in your cycle.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: If you're not on some sort of birth control that affects different hormones and can affect your performance and recovery.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: So I won't get much more into that, but we do get deeper into that in our longevity program.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: So that's the endurance edgecom forward slash longevity on not only cycle tracking for females, whether you're an athlete or not, we also get deeper into how can you adjust your eating to optimize and work with your hormones rather than against them, and that can also be a great conversation to have your have with your coach.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: Now, sometimes you can't control a race date.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: It may be on not the greatest time in your cycle and that is what it is.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: We do our best to adjust your workouts accordingly, try to adjust your sleep hygiene accordingly so that you can perform as best as you can, and not necessarily using that as an excuse, but using that to dictate the strategy of writing out your training plan so that you can perform optimally.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: Other things that we can we can track environmental stress.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: So heat, altitude and humidity all impact your performance and adaptation.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: So remember that story I gave you about the altitude being off on somebody's altimeter.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: That is going to affect your training stress.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: So as it starts to get hotter, as you start to go up in altitude and as it starts to get more humid, your training should adjust to allow your body to adapt and accommodate to that increasing heat, increasing altitude and increasing humidity.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: So it's let's say you run a and I'm just pulling a number out here let's say you run a 20 minute 5k and then you go up to altitude where suddenly you travel to someplace that's really hot and humid and you're not used to that heat and humidity and you're going out for a 5k and it's going to take you a little bit longer, sometimes a lot longer.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: The expectation needs to be adjusted and this is where I find that a lot of athletes really struggle with this.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: Is they're they're like adapted or they're so used to looking at their devices and saying, oh my gosh, why can I not hold X pace or X miles per hour or minutes per mile or whatever it is that you track, and they get really disappointed with themselves when it's not something to focus on in that environmental stress.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: You have to give your body time to adapt to those different things in order for your performance to improve.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: So give yourself some freaking grace, okay.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: So all of this wrapped up into a beautiful little present, and thank you so much for hanging with me for all this time.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Progress isn't just about going longer or going harder or training more.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: It's about finding the right mix of overload, of training and with, if you're multi-sport, with juggling all these different sports, there should not be a specific expectation of you have to do three runs, three bikes, three swims or whatever.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: It all is going to depend on your goals, how you recover and what you want to actually do with that Right.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: So, and then getting that appropriate support, and that's why we do our one-on-one coaching and that's why we work together as coaches.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: That's a really deep part of our business model is working together with different coaches on your training plan so that we have different perspectives, we have different advice, we have different support from each other, so that we can help you look at your metrics, your lifestyle and create a plan that works best for you.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: So if you want to learn more about our coaching, you can sign up for one of our open houses and you can apply.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: We have limited spots and we're always doing kind of a different little bit of a giveaway.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: This month's giveaway we've got some inside out sports gift cards If you apply and start working with us this month in the month of June 2025.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: So you can head to the endurance edgecom forward slash triathlon training and all of those links will be in the show notes as well.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: So if you're ready to stop guessing and start progressing, then come do an open house with us.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: We'd love to help you find your edge and I would love to hear are there certain metrics that you really like to track or that you actually don't track because it gets you turned away from your actual goal and distracts you?
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: So I'd love to hear more.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: Shoot me an email podcast at the endurance edgecom.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: Hey y'all, thank you so much for listening and I look forward to catching you next time.