The Rich Roll Podcast - Chris Hauth: Endurance Training For Maximum Results

Episode Date: February 26, 2013

2x Olympian, renown endurance multisport coach, former professional (and current blazing fast age-group topping) Ironman triathlete Chris Hauth — who happens to also be my long-time coach — joins the podcast to get granular on his perspectives on effective endurance training methods to maximize performance. Turns out there's more to it than just Zone 2 people! Tune in to dial in your training program and take your performance to the next level. As a quick aside. I am contemplating launching an online membership website that will — in exchange for a relatively nominal monthly fee — provide subscribers with: * Premium written fitness & nutrition content not publicly available; * Monthly or bi-weekly interactive video Spreecasts on focused subject matter; * Periodic (weekly?) newsletter; * Private, interactive VIP community with responsive access to me & other members * Significantly reduced pricing on Jai Lifestyle digital & physical products, gear & workshops, retreats & programs * Free swag such as t-shirts & more I am interested in whether there is demand for such a community, given that it will require a tremendous amount of time, energy & expense on my part to configure, design, launch, serve and maintain. I am super excited about the possibilities and completely dedicated to finding the best way to share a healthy message across the broadest and most impactful platform – so please let me know what you think in the comments section below. Thanks for listening and enjoy the program! Rich

Hey people, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for dropping in. Thanks for lending an ear. Thanks for taking time out of your busy day to listen to the show. I appreciate it. I just want to thank our last guest, Brian McKenzie. I just want to thank our last guest, Brian McKenzie. That was a very popular episode, and it definitely broadened the scope of our audience.

So if you're new to the show because of listening to Brian, welcome, and I hope you stick around. I hope I can deliver content to make it worth your time. And today we have another great guest, my coach. My coach, since I started this Ultra Endurance Insanity, Chris Howarth of AIMP Coaching, sat down with me and we rolled up our sleeves and got into endurance multi-sport training techniques, where he's coming from in terms of aerobic zone training, how he's trained me, why he's trained me the way that he has, his opinions on Brian's opinions, and all sorts of stuff. So it was great. He definitely knows his stuff, and he changed my life. And he is responsible for turning me into the athlete that I've become. So I owe the guy a lot.

And moreover, he's just a great guy, a very solid, solid individual. So it was great to be able to talk to him today. And we'll get to that in a minute. I wanted to do a little calendar housekeeping. I'm going to be doing some traveling pretty soon. So let's see, where am I going to be? March 10th, I'm going to be doing some traveling pretty soon. So let's see, where am I going to be? March 10th, I'm going to be in Tucson at the Berger Performing Arts Center, speaking about plant-based nutrition. If you want to find out more about that, if you're in Tucson and you want to drop in,

again, it's March 10th, go to healthyunetwork.org, healthyunetwork.org. March 18th through the 20th, I'm going to be in Charleston, South Carolina. I'm speaking at the College of Charleston, so I'm really looking forward to that, talking to the college kids. April 14th, I'll be at the Worcester Mass VegFest. So if you're in Worcester or you're in Massachusetts and want to check that out, go to worcestervegfest.com. And then April 20th, I'm going to be in Ottawa, Canada with Dr. Michael Greger. If you've been listening to the podcast, then hopefully you listened to the episode in which I had Dr. Greger on. He was fantastic, and that was a very popular episode. He really knows his stuff when it comes to plant-based nutrition.

So him and I are doing an event there that's being put on by a woman named Deb Gleason who's getting out all the Ottawa fantastic athletes to spend a day with us. And if you want to learn more about that, go to plantpowerottawa.com, and that's April 20th. Want to support the show? Go to richroll.com. On the podcast page or the blog page, you'll see an Amazon banner ad on the right-hand side. If you're going to buy something on Amazon, it would be huge if you could click on that banner ad first, which will take you to Amazon and then buy whatever you're going to buy. And it'll kick a few nickels into our coffers and won't cost you an extra cent. So it's a great way to support the show without you having to go out

of pocket or anything. Also, we're working on putting up a little donation button on my site too for people that just feel charitable and want to support the show because it is a huge, huge time commitment doing this. It takes a lot of time and effort and I love doing it. But I got bills to pay too. So if you're feeling inclined, you can throw us a couple bucks or whatever. We don't have that up yet. I'll let you know when it's going up, but it should be up in the next few days. So what else do we have?

The one thing I wanted to talk about before getting into the interview with Chris is I've been getting a lot of people coming up to me saying you should start a membership site. I'm getting so many emails that it has become impossible to respond to all of them. And I really appreciate all of you out there who are taking the time to write, to tell me your story, or ask me a question, or to raise an issue that you'd like to hear addressed on the podcast. And believe me, I read them all, but there's just no way I can respond to all of them as it is. I have to spend way too many hours every day responding

to email, and it's already taken up way too much of my life. So it's been suggested to me by a couple people like, hey, you should set up a membership site and for a very kind of low monthly price offer kind of exclusive content-wall VIP closed community where members could interact with each other and I could interact with them. We could do spree casts on specific subject matters where I could interact with the people on the call and it would only be available to people who are part of this community. And that way I can focus my energies on helping the people that are members of the community, build that community, provide exclusive video content, and maybe even free swag, wholesale prices on products, sponsored products, child lifestyle products, et cetera. So I'm just thinking about it right now.

I don't have the solution or the sort of identifiable trajectory, but I wanted to kind of put it out there and see if there would be an interest in the listeners in me doing something like this. So let me know. I'd love to hear your feedback because I do want to be able to kind of build this community and serve the audience that is coming to the podcast in the best way possible.

So if you have some ideas about a membership site, what you'd like to see in it, whether you think it's a good idea, a bad idea, what kind of content you would find most beneficial if you were to belong, that would be great. Go to richroll.com where I have this podcast episode hosted and leave a comment there, and I'll be sure to check that out and take it into consideration. So what else?

You want to learn more about Julie Pyatt, my wife, and sometime co-host, go to her music site, srimatimusic.com, S-R-I-M-A-T-I music.com. You can preview and listen to her beautiful music there. And she's on Twitter at Jaiseed, J-A-I-S-E-E-D. Okay, people, so we had Brian McKenzie on, uh, the two episodes ago and it was a very popular episode and he was given an opportunity to talk all about his, his CrossFit endurance program, where he's coming from and what his core principles are. And it was great

conversation. I mean, I sort of expected, Oh, we're going to be at odds with each other or have different points of view on this. You know, he's got, he's covered with tattoos. He's got a pit bull. He's super strong and intimidating. And I'm like the skinny vegan ultra endurance runner guy. And ironically, we ended up hitting it off quite well. And I really liked a lot of what he had to say, especially in terms of how he thinks about form and technique and functional body strength when it comes to overall performance in athletics. And I think there's a lot to be learned there and a lot to be gained. People really enjoyed the episode. And Brian and I have gone back on email a couple times about trying to do more stuff together, maybe doing a monthly segment or getting him on the show more regularly or

maybe finding a way for the two of us to do other kinds of things together. So I'm interested in exploring that a little bit more. But today, what's great about Chris Howell, who's coming on the show today, is he has a little bit of a different perspective than Brian. And Chris has been my coach. If you read my book, Finding Ultra, you know that I talk a lot about him and credit him with all of my athletic success. And his tutelage has really taken me from the couch to the finish line at two Ultramans and Epic Five, and I could not have done it without him. And he shares some of the core ideas that Brian had to share the other day,

but Chris is coming from a more traditional, I guess I would say, approach to endurance multisport racing. He's a very accomplished athlete in his own right, two-time Olympic swimmer for Germany and a professional triathlete who has been extremely successful in his triathlon career. He won Ironman Coeur d'Alene several years ago and is a consistent top finisher at many, many Ironmans and has competed at Kona, the Ironman World Championships at Kona 12 times. And he's now 43 and he's a dad like I am and still continues to compete as an amateur age group, amateur Ironman and half Ironman distance athletes. So he has some great insights on how to continue to stay inspired and push yourself and keep things fresh and also balance the rest of your life with being a parent, et cetera.

And he coaches all sorts of athletes from the professional ranks all the way down to kind of the weekend warrior and has a lot of insight to share. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the

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and I hope you enjoy it. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Howard. This is not your first podcast rodeo. Not podcast. I've never done a podcast on radio. Do you know what a podcast is? Yeah. Do you? Yeah.

Yeah, you do. No, I mean, a lot of people don't. It's funny. I get emails like, how do I get the podcast? I listen to them all the time while I'm riding. I do too. That's when I first started listening to them because you can't listen to music all day going insane so which ones do you listen to um i listen to some sports talk radio um dan patrick show is one of my go-tos uh wall street journal this morning and uh

real time with bill maher yeah i listened to that one too then you don't have to watch it on tv exactly and you're all caught up on your dave meyer's always giving me shit because he's so right wing you listen to bill maher on your headphones again yeah so catch up on my politics with him yeah well you're listening to Bill Maher, but then you're going out hunting. So you're a conundrum. Conundrum. So welcome to the podcast. Yeah. We're here to have you set things straight on proper training advice. A lot of confused people out there, a lot of different ideas spinning around, a lot of popular fads. a lot of uh it's not sexy to talk about basics it never is you know but if you look at the the guys that are that are the best in their respective fields no matter what sport it is there's no uh not a lot of shortcuts and they

actually enjoy the monotony of it because They get the rhythm and their speed and their understanding from that. Right, exactly. And, you know, in fairness, that's their profession, and that's what they spend their entire day doing, and that's their livelihood. And that's not the life of, you know, the average listener of this podcast who's probably a dad with some kids. Oh, we're housekeeping here.

We're at the Georgian Hotel. It's been podcast us, interrupt us. We're all good, lots of towels. So we just finished a lactate test, which if you read my book, I discuss that in detail, the importance of doing that. So Chris is my coach,

is insistent that every three months or so his athletes come in and get on the bike trainer and do a proper lactate test where he can pinpoint with a great degree of accuracy exactly where your fitness is. And so that's how he designs your program around that. Without knowing that, I remember when I first started working with you, you wouldn't even write me a workout until I tested. So I don't, I don't even know what to tell you. You got to test.

Cause I don't know who you are or what's going on until I can look at that data. So that's a huge cornerstone of your philosophy. Yeah, it is. It is. And you combine that with, I didn't have any race results for you.

No, that's right. Yeah. Hey, I swam, we swam on the same swim team back in the 80s. But no data from that, no heart rate data. You didn't have any type of training data. You were just going out and doing some random stuff. So without a test, I was literally flying blind. So yeah, for sure we needed a test ride to get going correctly.

Yeah, for sure. We needed a test right to get going correctly. And then once we started a good dialogue, I got a good handle on your commentary and how you were absorbing the training and what you were observing and so on. Right. And I think coming off of the couch and not really having any experience, not knowing myself how to gauge my effort or what's what. It's sort of like the analogy I always use is when you're like as a swimmer when we were kids, and let's say you're doing a set of, you know, 10 times 100 on the 115 or whatever. I mean, you could tell without looking at the pace clock, you know what your time is when your finger touches the wall and you probably know what your heart rate is because you've done it a billion times. But cycling,

running, these were new things for me. So it's these were new things for me so it's a whole different you know it's a whole different ball game of trying to get used to understanding how the body works in these new disciplines so you know i can't i can't uh overestimate enough how important doing proper testing is hence why we did one today i know we, which I didn't want to do, by the way, because I haven't been training very much, so I knew my numbers weren't going to be that good. So there was a lot of backpedaling. That's the classic test fear, right? And it's just a baseline number.

It's a line in the sand, and the only way to move forward is to have a line in the sand. Right. So now we have that and get you back to where you were. That's right. So let's use this as a kind of launch pad to get into kind of your basic training philosophy. At AIMP Coaching, you've got, how many, you've got like 50 athletes now?

Yeah. And they range from pro ironman triathletes all the way down to the weekend duffer right complete beginners absolutely and uh excuse me so um if you read my book you you know that i espouse the virtues of aerobic training, zone two training, the Z two philosophy. And that all comes from Mr. Howe sitting across from me. And I've had a couple of different people on the podcast talking about a

couple of different kinds of training philosophies. We had Brian McKenzie on last week, who's kind of coming from a very different perspective, a very high threshold, anaerobic based, high intensity, strength focused approach. And Chris's approach is completely different. So why don't you enlighten us a little bit about where you're coming from on all this? Yeah, I mean, for many of us, aerobic training is based also on the time we have available. For many of us, aerobic training is based also on the time we have available.

So if you're looking at only 30 minutes a day, we're talking a whole different training program than somebody, for example, as you getting ready for Ultraman, where you had a fair amount of hours and we needed to build an engine that was getting ready for an endurance event like that. But there's also a big concern with this sport of endurance athletics, whether it's triathlon, whether it's Ultraman, whether it's even long runs and marathon running, is injuries. The biggest concern you have is with injuries. If you're going to start this training and you're going to start it seriously, you want to make sure you stay injury-free. And aerobic training allows you to create that platform while remaining injury-free.

And that's because why? Because you're ramping up so slowly and allowing your body the time to acclimate? Acclimate partially. Also cartilage and ligaments and your body's entire function and platform in order to become more efficient at it and preparing for the rigors of what will be a larger platform of maybe some intensity maybe a lot of intensity depending on what you need and depending on what event you're getting ready for so it's a it's an ideal starting point for anybody getting ready for endurance athletics. And then from there, it becomes a personal question, whether it's how you're absorbing

the training, what events you're getting ready for, how much time you have available, if you're absorbing the aerobic training at all. Some people don't work well with aerobic training. And then we have to look at other options, whether that is more quality and less aerobic work or, you know, completely no aerobic work. Again, it depends on the event and it depends on the mindset of the athlete and what we're getting ready for. Yeah. And how much time you have. I mean, the zone to aerobic zone kind of approach that we've taken or that you've prescribed for me that has worked very well for me is a very time consuming

undertaking for sure. It is. And you, you remember a lot of times how I used to write or tell you in the workouts, it's not about the first two and a half, three hours. It's what you observed those last 90, 120 minutes. That's where things are happening that you only can get that far into a workout by having done the proper aerobic base and then observing wow how hungry am i how did i hydrate was i riding at the proper heart rate because now i feel completely different than those first 90 minutes right and it's not about not about that, you know, let's say you're building up the volume on the bike and that last 90 minutes of that ride is the focus. It's not about crawling across the finish line.

It's about stepping up the volume gradually and incrementally with the appropriate rest days and rest weeks so that when you get to that key last 90 minutes, you can retain your form, your technique, you're very focused on your watts and your heart rate, and you fulfill the sort of prescription of what you're trying to get out of that workout rather than just like, yeah, I did it, I finished it, but you were literally falling apart that last hour. Yep, falling apart and laying on the couch the rest of the afternoon. Right. Whereas if you're running around with your kids or you have a variety of other activities for the weekend, for the weekend, and you're actually able to complete them feeling good and you did

a five hour ride prior, we know we're getting somewhere. Right. And that's, that's been my experience. And I think that one of the misconceptions is that you're just throwing all this volume at your athletes out of the blue. And actually, a lot of times, you know, I can only speak from my own personal experience, but, you know, it's been about holding back and say, you know, there's like, we've been, we just started up again together after taking last year off. and I'm anxious to get back at it and you'll give me a 45 minute run. And I'm like, really? You know, I can't run longer than that. And it's like, no, you know, just finish it, feel good. And then, you know, the next time we run, you'll feel good.

And we'll slowly, slowly, slowly build that up. Don't worry, the work is coming, but the work is not happening now. It's just getting the body ready and acclimated for the training to come. But I remember even during super heavy training periods, getting ready for Ultraman, I would do some ridiculous weekend of Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and I'd actually feel like, okay, you know, because of all of that conscious

effort that went into the gradual build so that when I put in those huge days, I wasn't absolutely wrecked. That's what we're getting ready for. That race simulation. And race simulation is different for everybody. Shorter events, you've got to be ready for the intensity. And in your case, race simulation was simulating an Ultraman. And we had talked about, let's do 60% of the race this weekend. And let's do 75% of the race this weekend and let's do 75% of the race and so on so that you at some point were getting close to having done 90% of the race on a training weekend and coming out of it feeling healthy, injury free, ready to absorb another load of work. Right. And the confidence that comes with that, I mean, was the biggest thing really going

into an unknown like that and knowing that I could do that consecutively over a period of weekends, you know, basically approximate the race distance. Yeah. And if you can do it in training, that's the big thing. Sure. Of course. I mean, you're coming in a little bit fatigued. And then the other aspect is that, you know, this is about about recovering faster it's about being able to absorb the workouts quicker that that you can focus more on technique and form and all the things that come with the three sports that you are doing so that then come the next phase block of training you're doing everything cleaner stronger recovering quicker, so that then, again, you know that you're getting stronger without doing it harder.

Right. Right. And I think that that gets into another misconception, which is that you're coming from a place, or I'm espousing only this place of just doing zone two aerobic work all the time, which I guess i could see that could be an interpretation of the way i laid it out in the book which was not my intention my intention was to say that that has to come first to you know from where i was coming from that was the most appropriate um kind of uh edict to build where i was coming from to where i wanted to be

in an appropriate period of time without getting injured. But now we're like five years into our relationship, right? So the training that you're giving me now doesn't look like what it looked like in 2008. Oh no, oh no. And you know, the part with aerobic training, Z2 work, as you like to call it, is church of z2 yeah everybody like absorbs it differently some people can go two three years just absorbing aerobic work alone and their tests will continue to improve they'll continue to get faster because their body is like a sponge just wanting to absorb it others run out of that after let's say six months 18 months 12 months and we have to prescribe a different type of training so how do you figure that out when you're doing the lactate test i

mean how would you measure that the testing is the clearest indicator for that it shows us that despite the work we've been doing we have not improved the aerobic and anaerobic zones that significantly and then there's a variety of prescriptions and you know what let's you might you probably should just explain what aerobic zone is what anaerobic zone is if somebody's tuning in who's not familiar with these kind of terms and it's just sort of getting interested in maybe doing a triathlon or running or something like that look it back to basics yeah aerobic zone is basically your fat burning zone where you're using less glycogen, less sugar, and you are primarily using fat as a fuel. And then your anaerobic zone

is your main fuel source that you're using for the exercise, for the activity, is going to be glycogen-based. And the combination of the two is always happening. People seem to think one turns off and the other one is primarily going, but it's just what you're utilizing more efficiently in each zone. So when you're going really, really hard, you're using primarily sugars, glycogen. When you're going nice and comfortable and easy, you're using primarily sugars glycogen when you're going nice and comfortable and easy you're using primarily that and so the combination of the two and how hard you're going is just

dependent on what the main fuel source is what the main energy system is you're utilizing and so for aerobic training most of the time you're going to be using a little glycogen and mainly fat and then that conversion happens and what and what is the relationship of of that to what you're eating because i think there's some confusion that if you're burning fat then if you're eating fat that's what you're eating fat, that's what you're burning. No. So illuminate us a little bit more on that because I think a lot of people get thrown off. Well, the key there is also that you're not going to lose the weight just because you're training aerobically. Now, you are creating lean muscle mass and you are thinning out in a different way, as we saw with you.

Yeah, my body changed completely. Exactly. But you weren't necessarily getting lighter that dramatically. You elongated your muscles, created a lot more lean muscle mass. And so a lot of athletes are surprised, despite all the training they're doing, they're not losing that much weight. But I'm mainly zoned to aerobic i should just be shedding the pounds well your body's also preparing for the rigors of this aerobic training which means retaining a little bit more water in order to

go for longer rides it means creating more lean muscle mass so that you might not feel like or you might not look lighter on the scale but you look lighter in your clothes and in the mirror because you're getting leaner. But no, and that doesn't mean you can eat a box of fried chicken before a long bike ride. It's just a fuel source, and the body has enough fat stored in it for years of exercise. It only has about two and a half to three hours of glycogen stored in it for years of exercise. It only has about two and a half to three hours of glycogen stored in it. So you have to just become efficient in how you're utilizing it. Right. And so the way I understand it is no matter how skinny you are,

if you have 0.001% body fat, it doesn't matter. You have plenty of fat within you know that within your stored within your body that you could go ad infinitum forever without without sort of depleting that source so then why is it that we have to then why is it that we have to eat when we're on the bike or what is it that you know why why is nutrition and fueling during training and racing so important if we're doing this aerobic zone training? Well, for sure, like I said earlier, we're always burning a combination of the two. What the primary source is, if it's fat and aerobic in that case,

doesn't mean we're not still going through some glycogen stores. It's definitely still supplying. And then also, I mean, you're still burning calories. And so those need to be replenished and you need to have energy readily available and replaced so that you do have the energy to continue on. Fat alone will not help you continue on. Right, and fat actually won't keep your brain going

either sugar for your brain because or the the mental bonk will take you out of it but and the interesting thing is a lot of times these days a lot of people get enough for to counteract the mental bonk with their electrolyte drinks because there's a fair amount of sugars in those, unfortunately, these days. But if food is a longer-lasting source, it breaks down slower, and we can actually utilize it for a longer period of time. Right. and getting your body to burn fat more efficiently and effectively really plays into kind of what I had to learn and what became the name of the game for me, which is a focus on efficiency as opposed to strength and speed, where efficiency is the name of the game.

And one of the most kind of quoted lines out of my book is something you said to me early on, which is the prize doesn't game. And one of the most kind of quoted lines out of my book is something you said to me early on, which is, the prize doesn't go to the fastest guy, it goes to the guy who slows down the least. And I think that that was revelatory for me, and that seems to have struck a chord with a lot of people reading the book. So explain a little bit more about what that means. Anybody can start fast. We all know that from even playing as children on the playground the tortoise and the hare we all learned that early on too it's it's more about efficiently getting through the distance and all the things that can get go wrong during your race

during the distance what becomes key there is that you got through it efficiently. You still have your mind and wits about you to deal with the things that will go wrong. And then having the fitness to successfully complete it. The other quote I use a lot is we all want to get to the finish line as fast as we can, but using the least amount of energy. So those two are a complete contrast in terms. Fast as we can, using the least amount of energy, that's not going to work too well. But there is a sweet spot in there that if you train it efficiently and effectively, that is quite fast, but you're using very little energy to do it.

Right. That's endurance athletics, athletics basically at its core. Right. And as you explained it to me, what this means is through this aerobic zone training and the higher end stuff that we're going to get into a little bit, so there's no confusion about that, is really building those metabolic pathways, increasing the mitochondrial density in your muscle fibers, which allows your body to burn this fat more efficiently, to use less oxygen to achieve the same amount of work, etc. So that each pedal stroke or running stride or whatever costs you less.

Is that accurate? Yes. The ability to carry more oxygen. I'm not willing to say yet that we'll use less oxygen. We should say neither of us are doctors here. Exactly. It's just the more pathways you have to carry oxygen to deliver to the working muscles, the better.

And you have heard me also say in the past it's like a big network of freeways. And the more freeways you build, the less traffic there will be on the freeways. And so what we're trying to do at that aerobic low heart rate zone training is to build more pathways to deliver oxygen to the working muscles.

That when it is time to up the intensity, to go harder, to race, you have a bigger network of pathways right to deliver that oxygen right and it's there it's there every time my athletes are very surprised as well as you were back in the day that despite spending no time in the upper zones of training you still got stronger there your lactate threshold versus just your aerobic threshold. Absolutely. And I think the other biggest thing that I noticed is, for example, if I'm out riding and you want to attack a hill or you want to pass somebody or something like that, so you're going to go out of your zone two and you're going to get into a higher zone, maybe go ramp up to zone four for a

short period of time for an attack or to crest a hill, the more focused I've been on the aerobic zone training, the more quickly my heart rate will settle back down and I'll recover within that particular effort and get back to a baseline where i can get back into a rhythm again if i've kind of overstepped that aerobic zone too or haven't been focused on that enough when i want to go hard all of a sudden then i'm like depleted and it takes me forever to kind of settle back down and get comfortable again yep it's that settling back in that's the not slowing down right and that's that's efficiency, really. It is efficiency, and it's also maintaining control of your output at all times so that you know I can settle back into my go-all-day pace

and that that is not any slower than when I started my endurance event, whatever that is. Right. And so it's interesting to talk about this and then to look at race results from you know pick any half iron man or iron man and look at the age group results and without fail it would i would say upwards of 70 80 maybe 90 percent of the athletes you'll look at their splits for the run portion and they'll start out real swift and then they drop off a cliff to walking.

And we're talking from 7-minute pace to 14-minute pace or something like that. So that is epidemic in Ironman and even at the half Ironman distance. So what is going on there? What are people doing wrong or overlookinglooking or why is that why does that seem to be the biggest issue that people are facing well i don't know if it is the biggest issue it's just an observation that i'm making oh for sure it is a it is a big issue in the sport and and i say issue it's issue issue it's very controversial no it's um it's one that highlights just the pacing on the bike and how much it costs you if you pace the bike incorrectly and it costs you too much

you will no longer have the energy needed to successfully complete the run and what i mean by successfully completing the run that is coming within a reasonable percentage of your training runs because i often hear athletes at the fish and fish line who are like you know usually i can run 720s all day in training off the bike and for some reason today i wasn't able to break eights well you might want to look at your bike pacing. That's an easy thing to point at. It might be hydration. It might be nutrition along the way too. But oftentimes, it's the pacing.

And it's a hard event to pace. I mean, it's a long day. And you want to get carried away early. You feel good. You're rested. You're tapered. And now, you have to wait six hours to test your run fitness. I don't want to wait that long.

Throwing caution to the wind a little bit. Right, right. What do you think is the biggest mistake that the average kind of amateur triathlete or marathon or runner makes in training and in racing? The classic going too hard on easy days and going too easy on hard days. So they're constantly training in that gray zone of no improvement. If you want to have the clear, dramatic improvement in your training, whether with aerobic or anaerobic training,

you need to make a conscientious decision to go hard on your hard days and really easy on your easy days you can't always go in the gray zone in between those two it's called no man's land for a reason because it leaves you with one speed the one speed syndrome right where you're not going to improve as much as you like you notice that in january february given a normal triathlon season being in the summer, you're going as fast as you go in June. Why? Because you've been training the whole time.

And it usually comes because easy feels too easy, so therefore it can't be right. And therefore you're not rested enough and fresh enough to go hard enough to really have that stimulus when needed. Right. So you need the discipline to go hard enough to really have that stimulus when needed. Right. So you need the discipline to go slow. It's a discipline just like it's a discipline to go hard.

You have to hold yourself back. And that's part of training is resting, knowing when to rest and treating that with the same level of respect as you treat the hard days. level of respect as you treat the hard days. Fourth and fifth discipline of this sport, of any endurance sport, is recovery and rest as well as nutrition. And particularly as you get older, for sure. Yes. Right?

I mean, when you're 20, it's like you can get away with a lot of stuff. As we know from our swimming. I know. We should point that uh it's funny because chris came into my life you know around the the this you know getting involved in ultraman and triathlon and we had some mutual friends and when i decided that i wanted to kind of dip my toe in this world i asked around and chris's name kept coming up so i felt like all right well i was being directed to this guy for some reason. And then as we kind of got to know each other, we realized that, you know, Chris comes from a swimming background as well.

And we had both swam at the same club team. I don't think we overlapped, though. I'm a little bit older than you, a couple years older than you. So I was out of there by the time you showed up. But the Curl Swim Club then became Curl Burke. now i think it's called the nation's capital swim team and for those that that that have some familiarity with why that name changed then you get that joke and if you don't that's the subject for another podcast i think yes you'll have to invite other people for that. Yeah, exactly, because I could talk for hours about that. But anyway, so, and Chris was far more accomplished in swimming than I.

As a dual citizen of the United States and Germany, he represented Germany in two Olympiads, right? In the individual, in the 200 IM? Yeah, 400. 400 IM, both times. So, two-time Olympian, right? And you swam with Yosef Nagy. Nagy? You say it Nagy, right?

Nagy. Nagy, right? And you had swum at University of Michigan, too. A little bit, and then mainly at American University. Right. When Joseph transferred in there. So you were a club swimmer in New Jersey, right? And then mainly at American University when Joseph transferred in there. So you were a club swimmer in New Jersey, right?

Is that where you grew up? That's where you grew up? For when I was in Jersey? Yeah. Yes, I was a club swimmer in Jersey. But you grew up in Germany, too. Exactly. Sort of back and forth. Right.

My first few years in the U.S. grade school were here, in the U.S. when I say here. And then from 10 on in Germany, swimming there. And so it comes time to go to college, and Urbanchek, I assume, recruits you. You show up at Michigan. How does that work? Actually, we've never talked about this. I want to hear about this. This is the other way around, actually.

I was at Junior European Championshipsan championships and um joseph showed up and he was there with a few other swimmers and he i was had my mind set to go to sc oh really that was sort of the german path right a lot of german swimmers swim at sc at berkeley yeah and um i was convinced that i was just going to follow that path. I wasn't good enough to really get the full ride that those guys were getting. But I just wanted to follow in their footsteps. And I met him and he saw me swim. Joseph, that is, at European Championships, Junior European Championships. And he said, you know what?

You should come to this place called Michigan. I had no clue where it was. I went on a recruiting trip, and it was summer in Michigan, late August, early September. And beautiful weather, great climate, walking around in shorts. Got there about two weeks later, the weather started turning quickly, and I learned what a Midwest winter was like. And then he transferred out.

But so Joseph was, was he an assistant coach at Michigan? Yeah, under a bird check. Right, and Joseph was a guy who had been a coach in Hungary, correct? And through, does he come from a science background or what exactly is his- He was a swimmer himself. He was a swimmer himself. And through some sort he come from a science background or what exactly? He was a swimmer himself. He was a swimmer himself. And through some sort of trial and error process, and you know Farbeth

and I, so please explain, he had developed a revolutionary new approach to the breaststroke that involved a completely different way of approaching how that stroke works the fluid dynamics of it and how you train right i mean it was literally like he took the breaststroke stripped it apart and rebuilt it from the ground up and is credited uh as being the basically the sole person responsible for creating mike barrowman's success who was another curl swimmer who went on to break the world record. And did he break it in both the 100 and the 200 or just the 200? And was an Olympic gold medalist. And because of Joseph, basically he was willing to trust Joseph and rebuild his stroke from the ground up

and adhere to this bizarre new way of training, which back in the, this is 1988, yeah, 89, around then, was quite a, you know, it was quite a shakeup. There weren't a lot of people like experimenting with doing new things and swimming at the time. Especially not the breaststroke. Right. Exactly. So, instead of the typical kind of frog kick, he turned it almost into an undulating, almost dolphin-like maneuver where the body moves through the water much more efficiently.

And that helped propel the upper body forward in a wave action because you almost threw yourself over the water. But in order to keep that kick going, you had to come back down with the front end of your body in a certain way. Exactly. come back down with the front end of your body in a certain way. Exactly. To propel your feet to kick that almost wave butterfly kick back again. Exactly. So if you look at the top breaststrokers from pre-Joseph, it's a very stop and start motion.

It's kind of like forward, kind of slower, forward, forward, but it's very herky jerky. And if you look at the top breaststrokers now, it's very fluid. It's like a really nice rhythm. And Joseph really is responsible for that. He said, why are we going up and down so much? Why aren't we creating that into a wave? Basically, he said, there's got to be a better way all right so joseph meets you a young a young and handsome upcoming swimming star it says come to michigan i will rebuild you yes i will make you olympic champion on and no scholarship on and nothing because they already had a full plethora of phenomenal swimmers european swimmers right and barrowman was was there already or he was your he was a like a

year older than you he was uh might have been two years older than me, but he had just returned from Seoul where he got a bronze medal or just outside of the medals. I don't actually remember right now, but he worked himself straight through the ranks to win that gold in 92, convincingly. And with it, he brought along a few other swimmers that are today still big-name coaches in the swimming world. Right. So Joseph convinces you to do this, and you're looking at it like, wow, I'm not going to be a scholarship athlete, but I get to train with this coach that did this for Mike Barrowman, and I get to train with Mike, train with the best, right?

It sounds like a pretty good situation. Yes, it was. And when his wife got transferred to the World Bank in Washington, D.C., he left, and a lot of us left with him to join him at Krollberg, where he got an assistant coaching job job as well as at American University. And from there, that's where the group really developed, whether it was other breaststrokers from Spain and the U.S. We had a pretty crazy group there once.

Oh, yeah. Who's this? Sergio Lopez. That's right. As well as Rock Santos. Rock Santos. Was Tom Dolan there too or was he younger? Tommy was younger at the time.

And he was two or three lanes over, and we already knew that. He was going to be the goods. Yes. Right. Going through. So you leave Michigan, and did you enroll at AU, or you were just training full time? Oh, no, I was there.

That was my main college education. Right. So you go to school there, and how does the Olympics come about for you? They come about as a German national. I mean, does it work like in the U.S., where there's a trials meet, and you qualify similarly? Exactly. You got to get top two, and then there's also time standards. And in some of the events, I didn't make the time standards, so therefore, you can't race in that event. Right. And the time standards are based off the previous year's rankings in the world.

But you get one automatic entry at that point still. And they even changed that in 96. So at this point, though, you still had an automatic entry for if you win or get second in your event and you're within the time standard and yeah right cool i was lucky so you went twice you weren't lucky it was right after the german wall came down right a lot of east german swimmers that should have been on the team um and were better than i was um actually had to go out and make a living. And their training and their time and their comforts in order to focus on the training went away. And I was able to sneak into a few places,

up a few places in the results at German Olympic trials in order to qualify. It seems like it was kind of a weird transition time because you're kind of getting out of the Eastern Bloc, you know, crazy giant Eastern German women with the big necks and all of that. Like that was kind of fading into the background and it wasn't clear what German athletics were going to be looking like in the future, right? And the first combined team ever in 92 right so there was a lot

of jostling as well as a lot of confusion on the process a lot of east versus west there was a lot of that still in place um everybody pretty much knew each other in the swimming world already like you knew who was ranked ahead of you and you knew so well these times. Well, of course. I mean, the world's not that big. Exactly. Especially then in Germany. Yeah. But you also knew that things would shake out a little bit differently just because of the hardships of combining the two countries. And the sports system had literally crumbled in the East. Their facilities, their training, their coaches had been something that had been such an important piece of their training in life for the last 10, 15 years was now gone. And so fighting through that while preparing for the

Olympic trials was challenging for them. Yeah. Interesting. So you have this amazing experience and like most amateur athletes, you know, this chapter has to end and, you know, there's not, there's no money coming in. I mean, now you look at some of these swimmers and they're making big money. I mean, it's still, it's only a couple of guys at the top. It's not like, you know, there are a lot of people making a living, but to see these swimmers competing at the, on the world stage, like well into their mid thirties or whatever it is, it's crazy. I mean, that, you know, when we were swimming, that was forget it. Nobody made it, you know, so. But it's like triathlon these days. Sure. I mean, the top few guys, they make a good,

good living. But there's only a couple of guys doing that. And honestly, I don't know how they do it because the travel is insane, you know, to all these crazy exotic locations. And then kind of, you know, chasing the endless summer to train to and always moving around to be in a new place to train. These are, it's an incredibly expensive sport. And the prize money is nothing. And the sponsor money, unless you're a real top guy, I think there's a perception that if you have a bike sponsor or whatever, you're getting paid all this money. I mean, that's not what's going on here.

No, but in their defense of some of these top guys is triathlon in Australia, for example, is a completely different sport from a fan base and from a support level than it is in the United States. Same as swimmers, right? And swimmers in Australia, you can't get in a cab without getting recognized. And triathlon is very similar there too. They're very passionate about their triathletes and they have a good history of really, really successful triathletes. So that feeds itself with sponsorship money and with a good salary in some cases.

But not in the US, really? No. No. And that won't change. So you didn't get into it for the money? No. After swimming, you thought, swimming, there's no money in swimming.

I'm going to go on a triathlon. One other sport that doesn't make any money. I know. You and I both keep changing. Like, I know what I'll do. I'll do a podcast. That's where the money is, right? I'll tell both my kids.

Why are we so passionate about things that don't feed us? Well, it does feed me, I should say. Feeding in a finance, I guess. Yeah, I know. It does, of course. I got to keep knocking on wood because that's not something. But not like, uh, not like investment banking, which I think at one point you were, you started to explore a little bit,

right? So swimming's over time to turn into an adult. I'm not going to be that guy who's chasing, you know, that athletic dream into his thirties. God, for God forbid. dream into his 30s, God forbid. Yep, I walk away from swimming and become a working man. And I finished my grad school and I moved to New York and get a job on Wall Street. Right. And work my way into some currency trading for a few different firms and sort of decide from there, I'm not really going to be one of those guys. I don't fit in the same way. So I walk away from that a couple of years later and move out to California.

How did you, I mean, what was it about that where you were willing to just say, this is not for me? I mean, was it just like the, what about it? because i think one of the things that interest me and i think is you know part of kind of like what where my book is coming from is that is that sort of getting comfortable with yourself and who you are and and trying to kind of actualize who you're supposed to be or the best version of yourself and and not just settle for some job because that's what you think is the best you're going to get and trying to be more expressive of what it is that you want to do here. So what is it that was inside of you that said, I just can't do that. I can't be this banker.

Well, you actually just said exactly the words that went through my head, settling for this job. I could pretty much take a look at my boss and my boss's boss and see where my career was heading. And it was a lot of money and it was very comfortable, but it was a lot of hours at a large cost on family and your life in general, unhealthy, as well as seeing yourself in 15 years and the leisure suit and the big house in the Hamptons, but not living your life, not being a part of it, but just being dictated by work every day, not just five days a week, but seven days a week. Right. every day, not just five days a week, but seven days a week, was something I say to myself, for me,

I was lucky early on to recognize that that was not my calling. Yeah, I think it takes a lot of maturity and self-respect and courage to recognize that and make a move. And it's hard to break out of something like that. I mean, that's kind of what we're, it's like, hey, that's the brass ring, man. That's what you work for. Now here you are. You're going to like thumb your nose at that? Yes, I did. And when you're at a party or you're out to dinner with whether it's clients or friends and they ask you what you do and you tell them you're a triathlon coach or you're a running coach or an endurance coach and you sort of get the

brush off of like yeah okay well that's nice well what else do you do right like this the adults are going to go talk over here now go you know entertain yourself over with the children yeah and how could you walk away from that? So there's been definitely some difficult times through that. But that's an ego thing, and that speaks to where they're coming from and is more about who they are than you. For sure. I'm very comfortable, and I love coaching.

That's one thing I learned as i became more involved in coaching early on was that i truly enjoy coaching every single part of it from helping people to everybody being such an individual and needing something so different that it is actually a very stimulating profession because nobody is the same. Everybody needs a different type of coaching. Right. And I think also it goes beyond performance. I mean, it's not an overstatement to say that you completely changed my life.

I mean, you changed my life. Like I can't even begin to express how much my life changed because you came into it, you know? I mean, and there was a confluence of other things that were going on, but the effect that you've had on me is profound,

and I could never repay you for that. So it's not a small thing. And I'm thankful to that every day because there's people around me that I've coached all the time that come up and say, thank you, and you had a big impact in how I view things now or how you've made me healthier or fitter or stronger or mentally better prepared. And those were never my, that was not the intended outcome of the dialogue because of the relationship because of the communication between coach and athlete we were able to tap into more than just hey go swim hey go run hey go bike there's there's a relationship that grows from coaching and everybody again takes it on a

different individual role within that. Right, right. And it's an extension of, we haven't even gotten into, your life as a pro triathlete and what that was all about. But the coaching is just an extension of a lifestyle that you decided you wanted to be what your life was about. So it's very pure in that regard. It is, but I've also been extremely fortunate to have some great coaches coach me back in my swimming days, people who were very, very influential

and meaningful to me. So I almost just carry on their coaching and teachings to me and how they coached me is how I coach my athletes currently. And how would you articulate that? Like if somebody had to say, what is your coaching style or what do you think is the most effective way to teach an athlete? Well, those are two different things. I'm not ready to say yet that my coaching style is the most effective. Chris is a hard ass. If you want the guy to pat you on the back

and tell you how great you're doing and keep going and be your cheerleader. If you want the guy to pat you on the back and tell you how great you're doing and keep going and be your cheerleader. I'm not the guy. The German side of him comes out. He's not the guy for that. What did we say? No handshakes. There's a quote that some of my athletes have out there that it's quite funny

because it personifies exactly everything that I avoid. Oh, I mean, the number of conversations that go on amongst your athletes, like even with the guys down here when we're on our Saturday rise, it's like, I mean, because you're not impressed by anything. Like some athlete will have some breakthrough and go, hey, Chris, I did this thing. You're like, yeah. Keep going.

Keep going. You'll get there. Which is good. I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm not a, I mean, I hope you would agree, I'm not a high-maintenance athlete. I'm just like, give me the workout. You know, I don't need you to, you know,

I just need you to give me the honest feedback. I don't need the cheerleading. And that's exactly my type of coaching. I'm not a cheerleader. Right. And that takes on different roles some people enjoy the cheerleading and are looking for that in a coach and i'm not the answer to that but there's plenty of other people out there for sure and but for me it's more about the relationship once again with the athlete it's not about what i give them to

work out i always say whenever i talk to you or other athletes, don't tell me what you did. Tell me how it felt. Tell me what you observed. Tell me what you are seeing through your eyes. Because if I can understand that, I can coach you better. And that's what it's about. Because you can buy a plan on the internet.

Exactly. You buy a book. Get a magazine. They all have training plans that are very effective. But coaching is about guidance, is working with somebody, is helping them navigate through their day in order to have an effective workout, whether that's nutrition, hydration, scheduling, strategy, all those things. That's coaching.

Coaching is being that person that's focused on you in order for you to effectively get through your training. Right. And as a coach, you're also still a competing athlete. And you had a career. How many years were you pro Ironman triathlete? Only about two and a half. Two and a half years.

But during your career, you've competed at Kona how many times? Twelve. Twelve. I was going to say seven or eight. Twelve times at Kona. So an unbelievable amount of experience. You've seen it all. You've done it all.

And you still have this love and passion for it. And you continue to pursue the sport as an amateur now at age 43 43 right yeah getting ready for cabo in three weeks in three weeks and so how does you like how do you stay enthusiastic about racing you know in your in your 40s having been been an Olympic swimmer and having had these super high peaks of athletic success to keep it fresh year after year after year? Well, for me now, the curiosity is how to not slow down.

As we get older, if I can keep my speed from the past, then I'll be doing pretty good as an age grouper. Because if I can still go to complete the Ironman in times that I used to in my early 30s. That's a win. Exactly. So the focus of my training also for me personally is built around that. What am I doing in order for me to ensure that I'm not slowing down? And that is, like we said earlier, recovery and rest and nutrition and understanding myself better. Right. And I would imagine the kind of workouts that you're doing are, I mean, you have so many years or decades of base, aerobic training base underneath your belt,

and that persists. What seems to degenerate as we get older is the strength and the speed right so how does that how does that play into how you create your plan for yourself that how would that be different from somebody like myself or somebody who's coming into the sport you know later in life well exactly like you said the aerobic platform is there and now i just need to be able to sharpen the skills in order to have a successful race and now for me the successful skills are in some levels speed work but in many levels timing my workouts right whether that's three days of solid work and then resting two, three days. I'm also in an interesting cycle where because with my kids

and combined with my training, that when I have my kids, I can't train the same way. So therefore I'm forced to rest. Nor should you. Exactly. So therefore it allows me to train big and effectively the days I don't have my kids. And when I do have my kids, I'm resting, eating, sleeping, going to bed before them. I know what that's like. Good night, I'm going to bed. My eight-year-old is watching a movie movie it's eight o'clock i know i've been there with that one um well let's get into uh a little bit about um training philosophies and i think i

would be remiss if i didn't kind of talk a little bit about uh what brian mckenzie had to say the other day he was a very popular guest that I had on the podcast and he's sort of gotten a lot of press lately and there was a profile about him and his training methods in the recent Outside Magazine article where essentially he's saying in so many words, most multi-sport endurance athletes

and marathon runners are doing it wrong there's a lot of junk miles in there you don't need all this aerobic training uh what you need and what gets overlooked is a lot of functional body strength stuff a lot of high intensity sprint work anaerobic work and he's citing these studies that show that this high-intensity anaerobic work actually functions to boost your endurance more time effectively than the aerobic zone training that article and that's why I wanted to have him on. And I was ready to kind of be very dismissive of a lot of where he's coming from, but also understand like I only have my own experience. I've never done his program, but he actually shared a lot of kind of interesting insights that I think you would agree with that have to do with form, technique, body stability,

core stability, and all of these sorts of things. So I wondered if you could kind of weigh in on your perspective of where he's coming from, because I don't want people to be confused. You know, oh, you have this guy saying this, and this guy saying that. Like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Well, first off, it's individual for everybody, everybody right so what you're maximizing your training time with is basically what your philosophy is with the coaching and and the training so for example if you believe in high intensity and you only have a limited amount of time or you you've had success in the past with it by all all means, don't change what worked. The challenge is that for most of us that I'm coaching and working with,

we're doing events that are 10, 11, 12, 17, 24, 36, 70 hours. 70 hours. I coached a swimmer who swam 135 miles. There's no high intensity happening at any point in that. So everybody's individual, and everybody has different needs. But that being said, it's also what is the best use of training time? And then, of course, like we said early on, what is the event you're getting ready for? I would challenge Brian to see how he does with that training for an Ironman,

a competitive Ironman. Yeah, I think there's a distinction between completion and being competitive, for sure. I call it participating or being competitive, for sure. There's plenty of marathons out there where you can run five, six, seven hours and you're a finisher. And then there's plenty of marathons out there that have tighter cutoff times and you have to be prepared to run more 30 or faster.

It's going to require a different training. And across all sports, you can't compare a certain finishing time or a level of athlete to just the general populace. And what we're talking about here oftentimes is the type of training for the general populace, what works across a larger group, or truly for a level that is looking to complete it in a certain time, place, percentile of finishers.

And again, I can't stress enough that all this stuff is dependent on the athlete, the type of training they want to do, the type of time they have available, and the event, right? It's completely individual. they have available and the event right it's completely individual so as they call it hits training high intensity it works if you have a limited amount of time for sure right but at some point whether you are a pro triathlete or you are a beginner triathlete your body is also going to stop absorbing the high intensity and you're going to have to return at some point to aerobic platform. You cannot just continue at high intensity forever.

Sort of the zone four for you. If you did that for the next six months, you would plateau. And the opportunity to improve is dramatically higher at the lower heart rate, at the lower intensities than it is at the upper one. Right. But it's more time consuming. Absolutely. And it's mind-numbingly frustrating for many of us because we don't have the time, we don't have the patience. Like I have to ride five hours just so that my body can improve a little bit during that last hour of the ride. Exactly.

That seems not efficient. That is not a Tim Ferriss way of going about your life in a time-effective manner. Exactly. Right? Yeah. And we all went, to use the quote, we all went pro in something other than the sport we're participating in sure we're taking part in so therefore we do have other commitments and we do have limited time so where is that fair balance between the two because don't get me wrong i absolutely believe

in high intensity training at the right time i you know use the old example of a pyramid. The wider the base of that pyramid, the higher and sharper and pointier we can build it. If it's just a narrow little platform, we're not getting very far. So we're going to build it really wide and really thick and really strong so that it can carry a huge, huge top to it. Right. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's not rocket science. It's sort of, you know, I look at all of this and go, all right, well, what have I learned? I've learned that, you know, aerobic zone training works for me, that building an endurance base is important. Becoming efficient is important. I've also learned that technique and form is important. And in order to have that, I have to have functional body strength. I've also learned that technique and form is important. And in order to have that,

I have to have functional body strength. I can't overlook that. I need core strength. I need, I can't overstep that gym time and that, and I, and I also need to pay attention to rest and I need to pay attention to, you know, kind of the rehabilitative stuff, like using the foam rollers and the, and all these kinds of things that you need to make sure you're not getting a running injury and all of that. I mean. It's a lot to think about. It is. It's too much. This is what you're supposed to do for me. This is basically our profession though. And you communicating that to your coach,

whether it's me or any athlete, to their coaches, that makes them better coaches for that athlete. That's the key here yeah and another thing on the high intensity stuff is you've heard me say this before too whether it's 80 20 70 percent of your time 30 percent of your time that balance between aerobic and anaerobic work well if you put that out into let's say the 20 hours a week of your training and we said you know what rich right now we need you to be at a balance. Somebody's calling. Right when you were making the killer point, too.

You got interrupted. He's flying in. We'll let that pass. You want to answer? Just let it go. No, we'll let it go. He'll cut this out. No edits, man.

It takes too much time. It's very grating. That's probably Jonathan. Who's calling you? Jonathan. Jonathan Schwartz? Yeah. Oh, cool.

You can come up. I'm going to have him on the podcast too. Talk about his foundation. Oh, awesome. Yeah, so the big point here, if you take the hours that Rich is supposed to be training, and we say, let's say that's 20 hours a week, and we're going to follow currently because based off of the prescription

of the test and what we see you need and your event coming up, whether in six months or 18 months, that we want to say 80% of the time we want to be aerobic, 20% of the time we want to be anaerobic. Let's limit the time we're spending in each zone. Well, guess what? If you take 20 hours, that was awesome. I'm definitely not editing this out.

You take that 5% of the time at Z4? Uh-huh. Well, over 20 hours, that's a lot of time working that high of a heart rate. Right. Continuously. We're not talking a minute here, two minutes there, 30 seconds there. But we're talking a steady dosage of one hour straight of z4 work right and you put that into a long ride or you put that that's pretty hard along with very very hard yeah and how much

time spent in the gray zone none hope none i mean that's that's really the biggest takeaway i think and i think that's the biggest thing that that amateur endurance athletes need to really take to heart is most people are spending most of their time in that gray zone. And they'll reach a certain level of proficiency, but they're going to plateau really quick. And they're going to have a really hard time breaking that glass ceiling. And they're going to have to slow it down, have the discipline to slow it down, and then at the appropriate time, blast it out on the hard end and avoid that and avoid that middle your coach whoever that is should be prescribing some high intensity stuff given on the events you're getting ready for but you are responsible as the athlete to be prepared for that work right in order if you're following the guidelines of the coaching, you will be ready to knock that high intensity out of the park.

Right. And feel really good doing it, absorb it effectively, and repeat it again the next week. Exactly. And I think there's also this kind of momentum behind developing these different camps and that these two camps are at war with each other. developing these different camps and that these two camps are at war with each other. Like Brian is coming from this perspective and you're coming from this perspective where you're going to get in a room and it's going to be like a boxing match or something like that.

It's like, Hey man, everyone, we're all just trying to get healthier here and get more efficient and faster and stronger. The goal is the same. And, and,

uh, there are different approaches and ways of getting there. Um, and, uh, there's nothing inherently wrong with any of them necessarily. So we can all learn and be open-minded and learn from each other. For sure, for sure. And one athlete will do really well with one approach and not well at the other.

Right. And I know that I've, just from my swimming experiences, I know that when I've really curtailed the volume and done a lot of high-intensity work, it's never worked for me very well. I need that base. Maybe a lot of that is mental, too, but all I know is that I definitely perform better when I'm doing it. I see it in my athletes all the time that some of them respond really well to volume. Others respond really well to volume. Others respond really well to quality. Right.

And you as the coach have to figure that out for the athlete. Right. Right. I remember at Stanford, I showed up as a freshman, early season, and I wanted to be really, because like yourself, like we're similar in that, you know, I went to Stanford, I was a walk-on, I was not a scholarship athlete, but I was like, wow, I can go here and I'm going to have the opportunity to train with Pablo Morales, just like you training with Mike Barum. And it's like, you know, you can go be a big fish in a small sea, or you can go be a little fish in a big sea and find out what you're really made of, you know, and look back and go, well, I tried.

You know, I put myself in the situation to be the best, whether you end up developing in that or not. You know, you can't look back and say, well, I wonder what would have happened if I really took a shot. So I did that same thing. And it was the first time that I'd been around like that caliber of athlete. And, you know, they're like racehorses, right? It's almost a different breed of human being. And I remember John Moffitt, who I adore. I love that guy to death.

He's an amazing guy and an incredible swimming talent. And he just refused to do a lot of stuff that the coach said. He said, I'm not doing that like he he literally would take days off all the time because he knew himself so well and he knew what his body needed and he really only needed like some i don't want to put words in his mouth or whatever but he didn't seem to need the volume and he understood himself well enough to know that that was undercutting his potential and tiring him out and he had the wherewithal to say no even though the coach would get furious and all of that to do what was right for him and i'd never seen that before in an athlete mike barriman was exactly the same way and it would drive joseph bananas as well as the

swimmers around him here we all were working really hard to complete the full workout, and especially a guy like Sergio. And you want to impress the coach. Exactly. Or a guy like Sergio Lopez, who was always working his tail off. And then last set of the workout, when the switch had to be turned on for time something, 200, 100 breaststroke, bam, Mike would just lie out of the gates and absolutely nail it.

And everybody would become frustrated, but he just knew when to turn the switch on and when not. And when it was on, it was really on. But when it was off, it was really off. But he also could tell the coaches, I don't need that. I'll do fine. I'll continue to just do my stuff here. I'll be ready when it's time. And that comes with self-confidence, but it also comes with experience. You have to really know your body well and what you're capable of and what you need. And that doesn't happen out of the blue. And it's on the athlete to communicate that, especially as you're no longer in some 16-year-old swimmer who has to listen to your coach on everything or else it's going back to your parents or you're looking for like a

scholarship for someone. As masters athletes, all of us, we need to communicate to our coaches what we think we need, what we're observing, how we feel so that the better coach can come out. Definitely. And what do you think is the biggest kind of misconception among the athletes that you coach in terms of sort of misappropriating their time or their focus in their daily training? Well, there's a few things, but the main thing that you often hear me say

and have heard me say is you can't go too easy. You can't do any damage by training too easy but you can do damage or you increase the likelihood the potential of doing damage by going just a bit too hard right so just being patient and understanding this is the prescription for now if it's not working or if it's we need to figure something else out, communicate with me. And we will then work through it and figure out what the better plan is. I've had many of athletes change their plan with me. They said, you know what, I think I need more of this or I would like more of that.

And I say, of course, let's try it. Let's see what kicks out. If it doesn't work, we know. If it does work, I know. It's a win- out. If it doesn't work, we know. If it does work, I know. It's a win-win. So it always comes back to that communication. I remember once I got to a place where I was willing to kind of accept and embrace your approach and just do as told, there's a sort of security with that. And a lot of it was like, don't be afraid to go too slow.

And I had nothing to compare it against. So I wasn't, you know, sort of running scenarios in my mind of like, well, I should be faster or whatever. Cause I was just happy to be out doing it. But now with a few years of doing this under my belt,

the thing that, that is a challenge for me, um, especially after kind of taking last year off and, and not doing anything very serious in terms of training, is to not be hard on myself when I look at the Garmin or I look at the heart rate monitor and the pace I'm running or the watts I'm putting on the bike and feel like I should be doing better than I'm doing because I know I've been fitter than I am in this moment. And getting

used to the idea of training where I'm at as opposed to training where I think I should be or where I want to be. Like not training at your goal pace, but training where you're at. A lot of athletes like to look at pro athletes or elite athletes and see or compare to how they're training or how they're preparing for a race. And I always compare it whether it's to runners or swimmers because they have a very similar training approach with a lot of interval work and steady stuff like that and none of us whether as swimmers or even track runners or even marathon elite runners they don't train at the pace they're going to race in i mean early on you and i talked about i asked you for your 200 freestyle time and i showed you did you ever swim that fast in workouts for 10 no not even

80 of that well maybe 80 but just around there well that's how much slower than race pace we were going but so many masters athletes so many athletes in this endurance sports, that world that we're in, want to train at race pace. And they still live under the mantra, in order to go fast on race day, you have to train fast. And there's a lot of that out there.

If you want to run fast, you got to run fast. If you want to, you know, it comes up all the time and how will i get better at my race pace if i'm not training at my race pace well you've got to get more efficient at the other paces first in order to have the the setup and the ability to go faster race right the other thing is and this might be in contrast to what brian said but if you can do the motions cleanly and technically sound at a slower pace as you gradually dial up the pace as you gradually get stronger fitter faster you will remain technically sound efficient and clean

in your motions as you get faster right that makes sense i mean i think brian i think he was coming from a place of saying if you can run you know let's focus on you running 100 meters fast and then you can run it slow whereas you're saying learn how to run it slow first and then dial up the dial up the speed and make sure that that that form it remains intact at the faster pace as you gradually get fitter and dial it up more and more speed wise fitness wise all those things if you have good form and technique that will carry that efficiency it's back to that efficiency right and technique is what starts to go when you start to get tired and you see those Ironman splits, you know, starting to drop. I mean, the first thing is, you know, the, the, the head, the neck, the neck starts to go out and the head dips down and you get

the Ironman shuffle going and it's the form that falls apart. Everybody starts chariots of fire, everybody shuffle. And that would actually play into kind of what Brian is saying, which is, you know, with some functional body strength, you can maintain your technique when fatigued better. And I think there's wisdom in that. For sure. Absolutely. Having a strong core, good stability, especially body weight stability, is so key for endurance athletics.

Right. And I don't want to do it. You know, I'm busy. Like, I'm the first guy to say, I hate the gym. I hate doing core work. I hate all those stupid little box jumps and all that kind of stuff

that Jesse Stensland tells me I need to do. And, you know, she's super strong. And it's obviously, intellectually, I get it. And I'm on board. Like, I understand that that is important stuff's obviously I, I intellectually, I get it and I'm on board. Like I understand that that is important stuff and I go, yeah, but I just want to get my swim workout and then I got to get to work, you know, I don't have time. And then that will be the thing that I cut, that I cut out and I, and I don't do, and I know, and I, when I'm, and when I'm doing it, I'm aware that I'm making the wrong choice and I still can't help myself.

it i'm aware that i'm making the wrong choice and i still can't help myself yeah i laugh because i've you know many times i've i've committed to starting yoga at least yeah at least going consistently for let's say five or six or seven weeks and just then evaluating never made it never made it even once because you keep putting it aside and you either focus on the discipline you're going to be doing. how they're just thrashing the water and muscling through it. And I go, if you would just let go of being fit and worrying about, just completely let go of training in the pool and just do drills for the next six months, it will pay dividends like you cannot imagine. And then when it comes to me and the functional strength in the gym and all of that, I can't take that pill.

So I empathize with that struggle you know for sure totally get that um so you got to build that into my plan and hold me more accountable for that stuff those hours are your hours yeah i know well we should get into a little bit uh we could put our propeller hats on a little bit here and we've gone an hour and 15 so i don't want to take up too much more of chris's time but um you know we're sitting in this hotel room and there's a trainer to my left right now where i just did this lactate test um to like i said when we opened the interview to gauge what my fitness is and it goes to this idea of building the pyramid with a broad, you know, with a broad base so that that pinpoint top can be as sharp as possible. And what happens is, without trying to explain this in too much of a long form, you get on the bike, you pedal for, you warm up, and then you do four- minute intervals where the watts increase by 20 or 30

watts or whatever depending upon the athlete and you have your blood pricked uh during those every four minutes to evaluate the level of lactate in your system and your heart rate is monitored and all this data is sort of compiled and at the end you go and you you increase and you increase and you increase until you reach failure or you're unable to maintain a decent cadence of between 80 and 90 rpms and then with all that data you you create a graph on the computer and you evaluate that graph and what you see is an upward slope that as the intensity increases, the resistance in watts increases, the heart rate goes up, the level of lactate in your system goes up, and you try to find that T1 and that T2,

that aerobic threshold and the anaerobic threshold. And what you want to see, and I've said this before on an earlier podcast, is a very gradual upward swing in the curve, right? And where it kind of starts to really pitch upward at a sudden steep increment those are that's usually where you're hit you're going from your aerobic into your anaerobic and then when you're hitting the wall anaerobically correct how am i doing yeah i mean how am i doing with this explanation it's not that black and white it's not like all of a sudden at a certain wattage or a heart rate you go all right now i'm officially anaerobic right like we said earlier there's glycogen and fat

and the energy systems are at play at all times but the longer we can go without there being any type of significant increase in lactate in the system in the blood as we increase that resistance the better right and that's the point that i was getting to and that's what comes from this sort of aerobic based training is you push that curve to the right so the longer you can go before it starts to arch upwards that is really a that that is where you see the efficiency that is the marker of efficiency right exactly and the more gradual it increases rather than pitchiness is how fit you are as you start to shift from one energy system into the next.

So the more range you have in terms of your aerobic efficiency versus anaerobic strength and power. You don't want that lactate curve going up every single time you increase the resistance. Right. You want to be able to gradually withstand those resistance increases even to a point where it's not really noticeable enough and those are the diff those are the that's the difference between the two markers basically one is the onset of blood lactate accumulation where it's spilling over the body cannot process the lactate quickly

enough in order for it to flush out you know your classic lactate threshold and then we also use aerobic threshold where there's an increase in it there's a there's a noticeable increase in lactate but it's still being processed it's still being flushed out it's not like it's overflowing and the good thing is at that number especially for ultra endurance events you can go for a very long time because the body is still processing right the washing out that lactate right right and one of the things that that we realized today and it's february so i'm just getting started and I was sort of like my test is going to be horrible and all of this is that my my aerobic numbers were not that bad they weren't as bad as I thought they were going to be but there was very little room in between when I switched over when I kind of was transitioning out of my aerobic zone into my anaerobic zone

before I hit the wall it's sort sort of like, you know, very narrow window there between. So my aerobic work is good. It's really pushed that curve to the right, pretty decent for this time of year for me. But I haven't done any intensity work, any high-end stuff. So no surprise, as soon as I start to up the intensity level, I hit the wall pretty quick. You call it hit the wall. I call it becoming extremely inefficient there because you haven't spent any time there in a calculated way.

Because the usual response would be, well, then just spend more time there. Well, you need to build up to get to that point where you spend some time there. So that the time that I spent there pays off in the way that you want it to. It's being absorbed.

Right. Coaching, not coaching, but training, excuse me, is all about absorbing the current load you're given. If you can't absorb it, it's not training. Right. It's just going out and doing something. Well, so for the average person out there who's listening who maybe doesn't have a coach, I mean,

how do they know whether they're ready to absorb a workout or not? Well, they'll know based off of intensity that they're also feeling. RPE can get you pretty far because if you say you're going to have an aerobic workout today, I want to just go aerobic. I just want to build my base. It should be at a level that I often say should feel too easy. It should not be this.

A lot of people use conversational pace. Conversational pace, it's very wide. Bandwidth of description. It's more about you feeling as though the workout was not really a workout. It was your go allall-day pace. So if you were asked in this sudden moment to do that same pace for another six hours or longer, that you had the appropriate effort.

Then higher intensity stuff is where we get into the classic description of it should be out of short of breath, and it should be hard, and it should be burning in the of breath and it should be hard and it should be burning in the legs and all those things but it's the aerobic aspect that most people underestimate how easy that is right because they go just a tick too hard and and and the discipline comes in because you want to feel like you got a workout in and in order to do this right you might have to feel like

you didn't get anything out of it, even though you actually did. How many aerobic workouts have we come back from and you haven't broken a sweat? Right. It's frustrating. Right. But it's effective. It's there. Things are happening.

Yeah. And that's also part of the test that you were— You have to believe and you have to trust. And I guess maybe for a lot of people, you have to see some results before you're really willing to to trust but if you look at like all you have to do is like look at tour de france riders and how much time they spend it looks like they're just screwing around just out riding having a good time and they're not they don't they don't look like they're winded at all and that's nobody sees their time in south africa or in tucson or in southern it Southern Italy in the preseason with how easy

they're actually riding. The average triathlete would ride up on them. And these are pro cyclists. They can go way faster than us. But they are at such an easy, relaxed pace. But also keep in mind, they only need to do that for three four five six weeks because they sort of have a pretty big you think so yeah one of the things that i get i get a lot of emails and tweets over uh or people send me tweets i've been doing my zone to work i'm running it my my heart rate is at 140 on all my runs and and they're all proud. And it's sort of a misinterpretation, possibly, of what I say in my book when I kind of describe how I embrace this philosophy of training and how, as a result of proper lactate testing, it was determined that the upper threshold of my zone two for running was about 140 beats a minute. And so how I had to kind of adhere to that and stay strict to that. It's now 125.

It's 125 in the run? Not in the run. We said 130, sorry. Yeah, 130. So now it's different. It's 130, right? So it's funny because people are saying, I'm running at 140. I'm like, no, you don't understand.

That was specific to me at my age, at my, you know, for my body, for my fitness level. You know, I cannot stress enough the importance of you figuring out for yourself your proper zones, but not everybody has access to the kind of situation that you've brought to this hotel room here to get a proper lactate test with this protocol that you've set up. So how can somebody in a DIY way either find out where they can get tested in their area or find somebody to work with

or figure out a way to do it themselves so that they know that they can feel relatively confident that they're training in their right zones? Luckily, there's plenty of field tests that you can do, whether it's on the bike, 2 times 10 minutes at 90% effort, for example, and recording heart rate before, during, and after, maybe resting a few minutes in between each interval. You can even do that interval up to 20 minutes.

That'll give you a good gauge at the track. You can do three times or five times one-mile repeats, depending on how fit you are, a 10K pace. Again, recording heart rate. A lot of those field tests can be found on the internet, and actually Training Peaks and those guys have some great field tests. Right. I usually refer people to Joe Friel's blog or one of his books

or just get the Training Bible, the Triathlon Training Bible or whatever. Extremely effective and extremely close. Sure, I prefer lactate threshold testing because it gives me sort of more data and charts to work with over time. And it's not dependent on weather and wind and humidity and your diet and all those things leading into the test. It is a snapshot. It is what it is.

You can't fake it. There's nothing. There's no tailwind. It's not downhill. Yeah, yeah. So it's a little bit more of a lab environment. But for sure, you can definitely get close with some of Joe Friel's field tests, which are very good.

Cool. All right, man. I think we did it. What do you think? very good. Cool. All right, man. I think we did it. What do you think? Pretty good. What else do you want to say to the amateur triathletes out there? What do you see? Because you're honest and you don't pull punches.

You go to these races. You watch these guys out there and you're just like, I can't believe they're doing that. They only knew. Well, the pacing is a big thing that you brought up. You know, putting your ego in check on the bike. A lot of times I say to people and potential new athletes or athletes that come to me, they often say, well, I'm not much of a runner. I say, well, why aren't you a runner? What makes you determine that? Well, because my

splits on the run are never as good in the percentile of my age group as my bike and my swim. I oftentimes just ask them, well, have you thought about slowing down on the bike in order to find out what you potentially could run? No. Or after working with them for a couple of months, seeing actually you are a runner. You've just always biked too hard because you thought you were a biker and therefore felt you had to ride harder on the bike to get ahead in order to make up for the supposed weak run. Yeah, it's a mental construct that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Exactly, exactly. And the nice thing about this sport is there's a lot of data to be quantified. And the nice thing about this sport is there's a lot of data to be quantified.

And if you see you're in the top 10% in each of your three disciplines, you'll be doing fine. So focus on that percentile. And what is it going to take? Do I need to slow down on the bike enough to have my run? I've worked with plenty of pro triathletes who never have the run they're capable of. I said, until we work on the bookends of this event, being the bookends, being the swim and the run, let's slow down completely on the bike.

Let's give up almost on the race. If you know you can all of a sudden run a 245 marathon on the back end of even an easy bike, and if you can swim a, whatever, 55 or 50 on the front end we can always work on improving the bike that's easy just insert more speed and more power in order to not give up on the run give up the time on the run you know you'll you'll find your sweet spot quickly enough but even a pro triathlete isn't willing to do that. The ego gets in the way of letting go in order to find out just once what I'm capable of doing.

So how is an amateur athlete supposed to think differently? And I don't blame them. You put a lot of time. There's more on the line with the pro, though. There's more to lose, I would suppose. You could say there's more to lose there is you could say there's more to lose but i also find it interesting because they're not paying the same amount of money and cost and sacrifice with a full-time job and or family and all that in order to go to these races and paying six seven eight

hundred dollar entry fees but wouldn't you at least once like to know your potential in the individual or in part of the disciplines? So a lot of work, but you can find out. Yeah, you can. You can find out. So if people want to find out more about what you're doing, how do they do that? They can just send me an email. Yeah. Most already do.

Go to AIMPcoaching.com is your main website, right? That's my main website. Or just Chris at AIMPcoaching.com. Right. And AIMPcoach on Twitter. Yes. That's true. Yep.

You've been tweeting a little bit more lately than usual. What's going on? You're not the only one to comment. I've got a lot of time on my hands. You got to start. Yeah. Like calling it, like you see it on Twitter, man. Yeah. I tried to stay neutral as a coach. Yeah. All right. Good. Well, thanks for being on the show. Thank you. I could geek out, uh, on this stuff all day with you, but I appreciate it. And like I said, man, I owe you a lot. You, uh, changed my life and

you've made me not just a better athlete but a better man so i appreciate having you man my pleasure all right thank you all right let's do it again soon we shall all right peace Thank you. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you