Purple Patch Podcast

Effective communication is not just about getting your message across or making your point. It also isn’t just about being a keyboard assassin and sitting at your computer or firing off emails to your athletes or employees. Effective communication empowers the athlete or employee to execute as intended, to believe in the path forward, and have clarity in actions needed for success.   What are these key principles of communication that enable a real coaching relationship to flourish? How can you adapt your communication style to establish trust and confidence? Matt investigates in this week’s episode.  Matt: Defines effective communication across all spectrums Explores the central principles for coaching success Dissects a real-life example of how coaching and communication can and should evolve Outlines his Top 10 components of effective coaching communication The goal? Set you on a path to evolve your leadership style and ultimately become a more effective communicator. .  To submit a question to the podca

No doubt, you listen to this podcast because you are a high-performer in all areas of your life. Some of you may even be seeking the highest level of performance as a triathlete…You want to go pro. Remember, there is a critical divergence between performance at a high-level and going pro. As a time-starved athlete, your mission is to integrate sport into your big life and around the important non-negotiables of work and family commitments. A professional athlete, however, must be selfish and unapologetic around their quest for performance. To put it another way, they integrate life around their sport. The journey of a pro is hard…very hard, but there are key takeaways for all of us here. You don’t have to be a pro athlete to embrace pro habits and characteristics into your daily life. The heart of this episode is built upon personal growth and development. By adopting the characteristics and behaviors of a pro into your life, you set yourself up for long-term progression, improvement, and resilience. You beco

Where do supplements, pills, powders and the like fit in the spectrum of your performance evolution? Are they a key catalyst to performance, or a bunch of voodoo and empty promises designed only to drain your wallet? Today, Matt dives into the nooks and crannies of performance trickery and supplementation - the big promises of maximizing performance gains through supplements, treatments, and interventions. There is a veritable gray zone between medicine and coaching, and this episode bridges that murky gap to provide an information filter and appropriate lens when it comes to supplementation. He details: Factors to consider when taking supplements How and when to supplement Which supplements may actually be useful and beneficial in your daily life The mission of this episode is to simplify and help you focus on what is important. At most, the supplements you take should be a shelf in your cabinet and not the whole cabinet. If you want performance, health, longevity, sex drive and all of the other promised r

To submit a question to the podcast, visit https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/podcast and fill out the podcast question form. ---   Do you need a training intervention? While people seem to be more aware of the cumulative effects of training stress and the need to integrate training into their lives with a pragmatic approach, it still seems that confusion reigns among those who are simply checking the boxes. This week, by request, Matt presents two important case studies for the time-starved athlete. He digs in on the training landscape of these two individuals and, while they may be training for the same race distance, have employed two very different approaches.  Within the discussion, Matt dissects: Classic mistakes many time-starved athletes face How to adapt your training to fit into your time-starved life The need for recovery and how to integrate it within training How to optimize the training hours that you do have Types of workouts that may be beneficial for time-starved athletes  This mission of t

To submit a question to the podcast, visit https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/podcast and fill out the podcast question form. Matt Dixon and Purple Patch were recently featured on CNN with an in-depth piece on Managing Travel. View that story HERE and look for it at airports across the country.  --- Travel can be a corrosive experience, carrying an emotional, physical and hormonal toll that has a great impact on your training ability, as well as the ability to recover. The biggest mistake many of us make is to disregard the negative stressors of travel, and simply cram in, or make up missed sessions, without any focus on the management of the schedule to synchronize with the unavoidable effect of travel plans. The goal of managing travel, therefore, isn’t about making performance gains as much as it is about retaining consistency and maintaining your current level of fitness. Quite simply? You have to develop an athletic mindset in order to manage travel. Whether you are traveling for work, leisure or an even

Change is hard. Most people are not naturally adaptable at thriving in a changing environment and they will lean into familiarity even if that familiarity isn’t positive. Think about it. Most of us like to sink into a familiar couch or slip on a pair of comfortable shoes, even if we are allured by the concept of change. There is nothing wrong with this except that it isn’t the world we live in.  It also isn’t realistic if we are stretching the bounds of our own performance.   Remember our Purple Patch saying: Evolve or die. By definition, this is change.  I believe it is critical to grow and improve, but you must become equipped and familiar to adjust, adapt and, yes, change.   In this episode, Matt defines the characteristics of becoming change-able from the lens of both the coach (or leader) and the athlete (or employee). How do you enact positive change and get buy-in from your athlete or employee? How do you both adapt the best mindset and practices when inevitable change happens? How can you become resi

Matt looks back to give perspective on some of the best episodes this year related to global performance in sport, work, and life. He reviews the pivotal roles of a coach, how managers and coaches can create a culture to thrive, tips on integrating recovery into your multisport life, and presents an inspiring review of how elite performers STRIVE to succeed during his conversation with Dr. Steve Ingham.     Copyright 2019 All Rights Reserved

It is inevitable. You cannot escape failure. Ups and downs are a part of the journey in work, sport, family, and life. When things don’t go well, you’re no less of a high performer and, guess what? You’re still the same person as you were before. Failure doesn’t define you as an athlete or a human being. In fact, it’s part of your complex tapestry. What happens when things don’t go well? How do you bounce back? Most importantly, how do you set your mindset up ahead of time to give you resilience and the framework to come out of these inevitable failures? Matt dives into these lessons, recommendations, and opportunities for growth in failure or poor performance. Failure and losses provide answers to the success puzzle and, if you remain objective and if you retain a thirst for learning, these performances can offer insight on where you might have gone wrong or what you need to work on to thrive. You may have failed in your goal, but you’re not a failure. In fact, managing disappointment is the most crucial par

You are not a Swiss watch and your coach is not a watchmaker.  In this episode, Matt redefines specificity to unshackle you from the pretense of precision. In fact, a focus on precision in every session is a slippery slope that leads to obsession, paralysis of analysis, erosion of confidence, and an overreliance on metrics. You can, however, gain specificity without being precise and if it is done right, it means you don’t have to obsess over every detail to get wonderful and lasting results in sport and life. Stop searching for daily performance treasures. Don’t become so analytical in every session, look for trends of great behavior, and realize that it’s normal to have a bunch of ordinary and maybe even a few catastrophic days, but hopefully a sprinkle of some pretty darn good ones. Give yourself permission to realize that precision doesn’t make performance. It’s a healthy dose of consistency, specific training progressed over time…and a whole lot of patience.     Copyright 2019 All Rights Reserved

It’s no secret that our muscular-skeletal health - our FRAME - takes a pounding in endurance training. In fact, there are whole companies and industries built on muscle health - bodywork, compression, foam rolling, cryotherapy, etc.  Athletes and practitioners take a lot of action in this area to promote adaptations and avoid injury, and yet, we still mess it up. How is it possible that so many well-meaning and highly motivated endurance athletes end up hurting themselves in the pursuit of rehab and performance? Just like our training indicates, sometimes we try too hard. Today, Matt dives into the murky and confusing world of muscle and tissue health. He explores key habits and objectives that promote muscle tissue health and, through another Purple Patch case study, provides a coach’s lens on things to do and even what NOT to do when you feel those niggles start to occur. Enjoy! ____ Matt also teases our upcoming program called the Purple Patch Squad. To learn more or hop on the list to be the first to rec

Today, through the case study of a Purple Patch athlete, Matt outlines a recipe for energy, success, and the ability to be the best person you can be even if you would never profess to be an athlete. In fact, you don't have to be an athlete to adopt an athletic mindset. You don't even have to aspire to be athletic. What you do need is the desire to excel, thrive, and be the best version of yourself. Matt outlines his thoughts around structuring success and performance around: Work Training Your Personal Rejuvenation Habits Get this recipe right and you will thrive in the broader scheme of life. You may not be a world-class athlete, but you are world-class performer.  This episode will challenge you to look for opportunities to shift and refine your approach.   Copyright 2019 All Rights Reserved

Matt returns with a bonus "Ask Matt Anything" episode where he answers your questions related to: A return to training after illness and surgery The Benefits of Attending a Purple Patch Training Camp Plus, Matt makes a special announcement about a new program that's coming soon, The Purple Patch Squad! To submit your podcast questions, email questions@purplepatchfitness.com Copyright 2019 All Rights Reserved

Are you chronically underfed and overstressed? Most time-starved athletes are. In the context of our busy lives, the vast majority of us tend to undercut our calories relative to our training demands. Unfortunately, the cost of doing so is immense. A random approach to nutrition and fueling leads to athletes who are frustrated with energy fluctuations, a lack of portion control, and lower training consistency. This confusion often leads to trying new things and falling prey to the latest eating evangelism. In this episode. Matt shares his thoughts on post-workout fueling with Purple Patch athlete case studies. In each, these athletes have adopted certain eating habits that, inherently, aren’t bad, but can (and do) lead to decreased performance when not executed properly. Through these examples, Matt outlines his quick tips on how to time your meals relative to the time of day you train, what types of foods to eat before and after training sessions, and warning signs to heed if you are struggling. Ultimately,

This week, Matt has an in-depth Coaches discussion with Dr. Steve Ingham, author of the best selling ‘How to Support a Champion: The art of applying science to the elite athlete’, discussing and inspiring the importance of learning and adapting to reach our maximum potential. Dr Steve Ingham is considered 'performance royalty,' as one of the UK’s leading figures in sport and one of the world’s leading performance scientists. He is steeped in high performance and has been integral to the development of Britain into an Olympic superpower.  Steve has gained high-performance insight working at the British Olympic Association from 1998 to 2004, where he was Senior Sports Physiologist and Sports Science Manager; and at the English Institute of Sport, from 2004 to 2016, where he was Head of Physiology and latterly the Director of Science and Technical Development, leading a team of 200 scientists in support of Team GB and Paralympics GB. Ingham holds a BSc, PhD and is a Fellow of the British Association of Sport and

Many triathletes tend to be busy people with very full lives, making participation in the sport a jigsaw of time management, physical challenges, and mental stresses. With the combination of three sports into one, training is not an easy puzzle to create, especially when considering the additional components such as sleep, nutrition, fueling, equipment choices, and environmental stresses (heat, altitude, etc). With all this, it is no wonder that athletes often turn their back on strength and conditioning (S+C) as a component of their approach to performance. Unfortunately, this is a huge mistake. Fortunately, an effective S+C program should not need to consume many of your valuable training hours. Still, in order to commit to a year-round program, you must understand the value of creating a consistent routine.  In today's episode, Matt Dixon goes through real-life case studies of Purple Patch athletes who are challenged with integrating a strength and conditioning into their routine.   Matt discusses four are

As the importance of recovery has increased and the knowledge and benefits surrounding this topic have grown more popular, it has opened the door to a fleet of pseudoscience and heavy marketing that only leads to confusion and dilution of the message around recovery. Today's podcast takes on two real case studies of Purple Patch athletes who have been challenged with integrating a recovery mindset into their busy routines. With each, Matt Dixon illustrates that, in order to integrate recovery in a time-sensitive way and pragmatic way, you don’t have to buy toys or take potions and lotions. You don't have to be fooled by quick-fixes and snake oil salesmen. There is no magical monitoring device. No - recovery is a mindset that must be developed and integrated into your life. We, as time-starved fitness enthusiasts, may not be able to absorb as much physical training stress as a pro, but we definitely manage a large amount of stress in our daily lives.  For this reason, recovery within a time-starved life is a c

This episode features a special conversation with a man who is central to the success at Purple Patch. Matt Hurley is the Director of Coaching Operations at Purple Patch and he’s also an accomplished athlete, becoming overall champion at last year’s Ironman 70.3 Maine. He’s a multiple qualifier to the 70.3 World Championships and is also making quite a name in the SwimRun race scene. In fact, last year, he and his partner (fellow Purple Patch Coach, John Stevens), won the overall victory at the SwimRun San Juan Islands- beating a certain Lance Armstrong and his partner, Olympic triathlon champion, Simon Whitfield, to take the overall win. And yet, in this episode, the conversation isn’t centered on athletic or coaching accomplishments. It’s a raw look at process, performance, and personal perseverance. Matt Hurley speaks openly and honestly about his past drug addiction, years of dealing, and subsequent prison sentence. With vulnerability, he shares his journey of hitting rock bottom, coming out the other sid

Chelsea Sodaro was born to be an athlete. Both parents competed in triathlon and Chelsea also remembers her Dad training for the Boston Marathon! With energy like that in your life, how could you not love sport?! And she did. Chelsea fell in love with running, which took her through college at Cal Berkeley along with a post-collegiate professional running career. She may be a superhuman on the track, but she is also very human, having suffered frustrating injuries and setbacks that kept her from having the running career that she truly desired. But, just like the rest of us, she was inspired by the 2016 Rio Olympic triathlon. She loved watching the build-up to that race and decided to give the sport a go knowing it would provide a new outlet for athletics and beneficial cross-training. Today, she’s just a couple of years into her professional career and in the process of writing history. Chelsea landed on the podium in both of her 70.3 races in 2018, including an overall win at Indian Wells 70.3.  She opens u

This week, it's the story of a time-starved athlete, but not just any time-starved athlete. Cecilia Davis-Hayes is heading into her Residency into her fourth year in Medical School at Columbia and, at the same time, is still competing at the top level of professional triathlon. She is, quite possibly, the most inspiring athlete on the Purple Patch Pro Squad.  How did she discover a love for the sport? Why was Matt Dixon and Purple Patch Fitness a good match for her? How does she successfully balance the many priorities of training and school? What advice does she have for time-starved individuals who also seek success outside of their jobs? To learn more about CDH, follow her:  Cecilia's Website Instagram Twitter Copyright 2019 All Rights Reserved

Today is, by request, an extension on the discussion around Episode 51, The Art of Coaching and Being Coached. It’s an expansive discussion into management and leadership within a corporate setting. There are many parallels between performance within a set of world-class athletes and performance within business teams. Your mission, as an effective coach or leader, is to create sustained performance and long-term buy-in from your team. In order to do this, you first have to create an effective performance model for you, the leader. You see, you can only create a powerful team if you've set up great performance and rejuvenation habits for yourself.  The second part is setting up a framework and culture to allow all to thrive. As a leader and manager, you are a coach and how you set up your performance culture will ultimately determine your effectiveness. This episode illustrates traits of effective leadership by drawing those parallels between coaching and management as it relates to: North Star Goals Short-Te