Building Powerful Triathlon Training Habits

TriDot Podcast Episode 271

Building Powerful Triathlon Training Habits

Intro: This is the TriDot podcast. TriDot uses your training data and genetic profile, combined with predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to optimize your training, giving you better results in less time with fewer injuries. Our podcast is here to educate, inspire, and entertain. We’ll talk all things triathlon with expert coaches and special guests. Join the conversation and let’s improve together.

Andrew Harley: Welcome to the TriDot Podcast. Really important episode of the show today that hopefully will help you both in your life and in your triathlon training and racing. We are talking about how to build good habits. And this, man, what a crucial topic. Just go to your local bookstore and find the habit shelf of the bookstore and you'll see how many people are just wanting to write and learn about how to become better people, have better habits in our day-to-day rhythms and lives. So I can't wait to hear from two of our TriDot coaches so we can learn, as triathletes, how to have good habits in our triathlon rhythms. Our first guest is Coach April Spilde. April is an IRONMAN U Certified Coach, International Sports Sciences Association Master Trainer, and the founder of Grit to Greatness Coaching. Additionally, she serves in the Air Force as the senior enlisted leader of the United States Air Force Academy Equal Opportunity Office. April's triathlon journey began in 2019, and now, as a coach, she excels in helping beginners and back-of-the-packers discover their true potential. Coach April, welcome back to the TriDot Podcast.

April Spilde: Hey, Andrew. Thank you so much. It feels so great to be back, and I cannot wait to talk about this. This is one of my favorite topics.

Andrew: And that's exactly why you're the right person for the show, April, exactly why you are. Our next guest joining April is Coach Rich Soares from Boulder, Colorado. He hosts the 303 Endurance Podcast. Rich is a USAT and TriDot Certified Coach, and he's been coaching triathletes since 2017. He's been coaching with TriDot since 2021, and he's been podcasting since 2015. That's way longer than I have, that's for sure. His triathlon journey began in 2006, and he is a five-time IRONMAN finisher himself. Coach Rich, how are you today, my friend?

Rich Soares: I am great. I'm so glad to be here with the two of you talking about this topic. Honestly, this is the secret sauce today. So I think we're going to have a good chat. This is —  looking forward to it.

Andrew: Well, I am Andrew the Average Triathlete, Voice of the People and Captain of the Middle of the Pack. As always, we'll roll through our warm up question, settle in for our main set conversation, and then wind things down with our Coach Cooldown Tip of the Week. Lots of good stuff. Let's get to it.

Warm up theme: Time to warm up! Let’s get moving.

Andrew: Across the wide world of sports, there are so many athletes, so many coaches, so many legendary figureheads that, man, there's just so many fun people to admire. My question today, as our warmup question, is: if you could have the autograph of anyone in the wide world of sports, whose autograph would you want, and what item would you want them to sign? April, kicking this over to you first.

April: Alright. I was thinking about this, and I actually kind of made the mistake – I met this person, and I did not really understand the amazingness that they were about to unleash…

Andrew: Okay, alright.

April: …in the world of Kansas City Chiefs. That would be Patrick Mahomes. I met him on the field. It was a Military Appreciation Day, and I was one of the lucky people to get picked when I was stationed at McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas. So when I went out there, we were all waiting in line and, you know, waiting to get a picture with him. And I was just kind of like, “Oh, this is cool,” you know, not understanding who this person is. One thing that really struck me about him is that, well, one, he just got done with this really hard, arduous practice, and then he was standing out there on the field, under bright sun – we were out there for at least an hour, and he was just going through the line, and he was so friendly, kind, and just really receiving. Like, he made it known that he appreciated our presence. And I got a selfie with him, but I never actually had him sign anything because I just did not know my history there. I think back to that, I'm like, man, I wish he would have signed, you know, a picture or a, I had a, like a little mini football with me. I wish he would have signed that; that would have been so cool. But yeah, I got to give out a shout out to Patrick Mahomes because he really impressed me greatly, and he still does, obviously.

Andrew: Coach Rich, what is this answer for you?

Rich: Well, let's keep it, let's keep it in the NFL realm here. So growing up here in Colorado, you know, my hero was John Elway, #7, right? #7, everything. Three Super Bowl Championships, you know, owner – I always looked forward to, you know, someday meeting him in person, and finally, a few years back, I had the opportunity to meet him in person, and April…

Andrew: He did it. He got the autograph.

April: That's awesome.

Rich: So, there it is.

Andrew: Well, Rich, now that can't be your answer to the question. That's just a, that's just a side story.

April: No. You got it already.

Rich: That is— but that is the athlete who I would have wanted to get an autograph from, and the item that I would want to get it autographed on.

Andrew: Okay. That's fair.

April: “I already got it.”

Rich: Check.

Andrew: Yeah, that's fair. I get that argument. This was an easy one for me. I'm going with Roger Federer as my athlete, and if I could have him, just like, one of his Wilson Pro Staff tennis rackets he played with in his career – to have a Roger Federer racket on the wall, with a Roger Federer signature, as a Roger Federer fan – would be it for me. Easy pick here. Well, we're going to throw this question out to our I AM TriDot Podcast audience. Make sure you're a part of the, I AM TriDot to the Facebook group. I will pose this question asking you: if you can have the autograph of anyone in professional sports, whose autograph would you want, and what would you want that on? It'll be in the Facebook group. It'll be in the community hub. So go find the question, and let us know what you think.

Main set theme: On to the main set. Going in 3…2…1…

Andrew: Building better habits in our life. There's some people who are very good at that. There's some people who struggle a little bit more with that than others. But man, it's something that if we all just take a day, take a conversation, and think about it – examine our habits, examine our rhythms, examine our routines – there could be some room for improvement in there. You could be a better, smoother, more efficient triathlete with some better habits. And guys, I'm not gonna lie to you. I'm not great at this. I'm not great at building new habits. I'm not as intentional as I probably should be. So I'm excited to see what I can get out of this conversation from Coach April and Coach Rich. Something I really admire about so many of our TriDot coaches – and April and Rich, you guys both fall in this category – I have yet to meet a triathlon coach who is just, kind of, sitting back on the experience of what they already know and just coaching off of that, right? Like, the hunger that most endurance sports coaches have to improve themselves, to grow in their coaching knowledge, is just really, really incredible, and the fact that you two are on this conversation today is because of that. The two of you have seriously taken upon yourselves to learn how to build good habits so that you, I'm sure, can pass that along to your athletes. So let's just start here today: of all the things that you could have pursued, to just think of how to grow as a coach, what made you interested, in the first place, in how to go about building better habits? Coach April?

April: I love that question, Andrew. I think that one of the best habits that any coach, regardless of your field, can acquire is to be a lifelong learner and to always be curious and open-minded to what are the things that I can continuously add to my toolkit to bring to my athletes, or bring to the people that I have the privilege to serve. That really was the impetus for me wanting to study habits. I started my triathlon journey in 2019, and I wanted to know: what are the things that are going to help me be successful? If I'm saying I'm going to commit to something that requires blood, sweat, tears, requires sacrifice, sometimes, in those other areas of life, such as your key relationships or your profession. I think I want to know how to ‘crack the code’ so I can make it as efficient and doable as possible. So, I didn't have those routines cemented from the start. As we know, when you start something new, it can be really difficult to build the routines or figure out and ‘crack the code’, if you will, on what is needed to be successful. I think the ability to understand what the number one item is, or the smallest thing you can do, and line that up in a way that's going to make everything else easier or effortless, is the key to any type of adventure that you're taking on, whether that's sports, whether that's business, whether that's a relationship. It applies across the board.

Andrew: Coach Rich, same question over to you. What just got you so interested in this topic?

Rich: Well, to your first point about having a growth mindset, I think that's really how I ended up kind of being here in the first place. As an athlete, I got to this point where I really don't know if I want to take my physical journey further, but I really want to take my knowledge journey further. And that's actually what started the podcast. Just having a format to invite coaches to come and talk about topics so that I could learn, and that my audience could learn, was like this, you know, half genius idea, but it's still true today. I am just as curious today as I was then, and us being here with April is a part of that. This whole topic, you know, I've got a new relationship with this topic, having worked with April, who, you know, she and I have a little bit of a value exchange. I'm helping her with her athletic goals, as an athletic coach, but she's helping me grow as a business owner and helping me in other aspects. This topic is very relevant to my personal growth today, and we have some examples from a webinar that we just did on this topic just this past week.

Andrew: Yeah, and we're very excited to hear about that. We're 10 minutes into the conversation and, April, I'm already going to throw a question your way that is not on our run sheet for today. So buckle up and let's see–

April: Let’s do it.

Andrew: Let's test April's improv skills here. Obviously, in your introduction for the show, we mentioned your air force experience, your military experience, and I imagine that anyone with a military background of some kind, a lot of routines are coached into you, kind of built into your life by default, when you're working and living that military lifestyle. Not to ask about that specifically, but, you know, I think some people gravitate to that field, and that way of life, better and easier than others and probably take to that easier than others. So I'm wondering, April, just having that be your lifestyle and your career field, what do you think makes one person probably more naturally suited to building new habits than someone else? If that makes sense?

April: No, I think that makes a lot of sense, especially thinking about it from a military context. There's a lot of training, even indoctrination, into creating habits that are built on success, such as preparing your uniform, such as making sure that you show up to work on time, making your bed. I mean, I went through six weeks of basic training, learning how to fold hospital corners on a bed with six inches. So I would definitely say the military lends itself to habit building as a form of excellence, right. I would say the difference maker is the ability to understand the ‘why’. Why is this important for me to know how to do this, or how to carry myself? How to march? How to command a formation? How to give orders and stand confidently on the direction that you're giving? Like, that all comes down to how you routinely lead, and how you routinely interact with individuals, and how you routinely look at the purpose behind your interactions.

Andrew: Rich, I just want to ask you, as we start getting in this conversation, do you feel like there's hope for everybody here? Do you feel like anybody can form a new habit, or is it just that some of us are going to be swimming upstream on this no matter what? What do you think, Rich?

Rich: Well, first of all, there’s going to be a lot to what helps you develop a successful habit, but a big part of this is: is this really what you want? What's your motivation to change? Are you really committed to change? How easy do you make it for yourself to change? Do you have that time planned to change? Where does that fit in your priority list? What accountability do you have? That becomes a little bit of the secret here, is figuring out what's your relationship to this habit that you're trying to create?

April: I think too, it really comes down to finding what's the easiest thing you can do because discipline is very fickle. Like you need just enough discipline for you to form the habit for it to actually become automatic, because discipline is finite. Contrary to a lot of belief, and speaking from someone in the military where discipline is preached, you have to be able to ‘break down the code’, if you will, as to what is the thing that is going to cause you to trip into the habit. There's a great example in B.J. Fogg's book, Tiny Habits, for exactly this scenario, where people hate flossing with a passion and could not figure out how to make it a habit. So what he challenged them to do was just floss one tooth. Just show up, floss one tooth, and that's the only commitment you have to make. Then what would happen is people would make that one tooth, and then, because they've started it, they would do the rest of their teeth. And that's how they built over time with that, just subtle practice. Not trying to reinvent the wheel or do all the things all at once. That's not how change happens. It has to be very slow. It has to be very methodical, and it has to be easy and convenient. We are creatures of habit because we love convenience, and we love the ability to not have to waste energy on routines.

Andrew: I think April might have just gotten me to start flossing. I don't know. We'll find out here in a couple hours when I go through the bedtime routine.

Rich: One tooth.

Andrew: So let's get into the science here, because it's really interesting. Because, like, if you, again, if you go into a bookstore, and you go in and open up any of the self-help books, right? Whether it's a book on forming habits, or whether it's a book on ‘six ways to the better you’, or something about leadership or whatever, whatever. Anything kind of in this umbrella, you know, you can label it self-help, you can label it mental skills, this and that. But there's actual psychology here, right? There's actual science going on. There's things happening in our brains, and that's kind of what we're getting at here today, is the actual science to forming habits and letting that impact us as triathletes. So, April, let's kind of take it to square one, to the science level. What is a habit, and how do they affect our thoughts and our behavior?

April: A habit is a routine. They're the things that we repeatedly do day in and day out, and they're often subconscious. We're not actually thinking about it. There's a great stat from Professor Fred Luskin from Stanford University that talks about how we have up to 60,000 thoughts per day, and 90% of these thoughts are repetitive. Meaning, we are literally thinking the same things over and over again. I say that because habits really are not only an action, but they're also how we talk to ourselves. If you are able to recognize when you say to yourself, I need to quit smoking versus I am a non-smoker, the person that identifies as a non-smoker, even though they haven't successfully quit yet, has a much higher likelihood of finding success because they are able to connect that identity. So when you talk about habits, you have to bring awareness to them. You have to bring them from the subconscious to the conscious to be able to find the first step to unlocking how to change. I think when people realize that if you can find that smallest thing to do, then you can start to move to the path of automaticity and being able to succeed in your behavior change.

Andrew: Yeah. Very, very interesting. Coach Rich, what are some examples – as we kind of take what April just said about what a habit is in the first place. Let's take that definition and apply it to the field of triathlon. What are some examples of habits that triathletes either could or, maybe, should have, or put a little bit differently, what are the common places habits manifest in our triathlon rhythms?

Rich: Yeah. The ability to train consistency means that you're not missing a lot of days, right? You're following your training plan. You're executing your training plan. You're getting in all the workouts. You're getting them in at the duration that they need to be done, and, sometimes, I get athletes that struggle to get everything in, right? It's hard to get everything in, or they leave it to the end of the day. So creating that habit of when you're going to get that workout done – and it just depends on your schedule, right? – But getting that time figured out, and then working backwards to how you set yourself up for success. So if we're going to really dial this into a specific example: let's say you're the kind of person who you're good at training in the morning, so that if you can get up early enough to get it done before work, you know it's going to get done, right? It's going to be automatic if you can get up on time. Getting that habit of getting to bed on time, getting that patterned in, so that you do get to bed in time to have enough sleep, to be rested for that early morning workout so that you can get everything done and get to work on time. Building that pattern and having the reward system, finding some reward system for that, right? What's your cue to start that habit every night, and pattern that in. Over time – and there's some science behind this, and April will be happy to go into – but it starts to create the neural– Neuroplasticity is a thing, and you start to develop new neural pathways and that becomes, this is now your default over time.

Andrew: It's funny you're using the word neural pathways. For anybody that trains with TriDot – in your app, there are videos that show you how to do all the run drills, the bike drills, the swim drills. And Coach Jeff Raines, who's a podcast regular, he's the one who wrote the original scripts for those drill videos, right? Because he has collegiate university degrees in biomechanics and how the body should be moving in these drills, and so he wrote these scripts. As I was working with Jeff Raines to make all of those drill videos, I noticed that a lot of them have a lot of the same words, because he's telling you, as an athlete, in this video, what is this drill supposed to be doing for you? And many of them, that's exactly what he says is: this drill is helping you build those neural pathways to get this motion in the body, to just be remembered by your brain and become natural to your brain. And it's building those pathways for your brain to recognize: when I'm doing this – when I'm running, when I'm swimming, when I'm biking – I want my arm to move like that. You throw that word out and boom, all of a sudden I'm hearing Jeff Raines's voice in a drill video. But yeah, the science there is very real, right? The brain making those connections is a very powerful thing to building habits. Coach April, what do you want to add there on the science?

April: Yes. I mean, the brain loves to take shortcuts. It’s very much–

Andrew: Wow.

April: Yeah. It's very much based on the evolution of how the brain works with that ‘lizard brain’, if you will, the limbic system – when we talk about how things trigger us to action, your body literally is looking for the opportunity to take the least amount of effort to get the results, right. So thinking about it in that context, there's another great stat from Wendy Wood from the University of Southern California, that 43% of our behaviors are driven by our habits.

Andrew: Wow.

April: Yeah, 43, I mean, almost half of what we do is driven by repeated routines, and if you're not in tune with what you're doing in your routines, that can set you up for a life, a lifetime, of heartache, of issues, of setbacks. It's no wonder that people feel like they can't reach their full potential. Well, if they took the time to look at what they're actually doing on a day-to-day basis and getting to the root of their habits, you can make an incredible amount of change. It's exactly how we change – is through our habit awareness and intentional movement forward.

Andrew: To bring triathlon back into it, you know, as Coach Rich was just talking about some of the different places where a triathlete can have habits. For me personally, if I'm personalizing this, I typically don't find it difficult to actually get the swimming, biking, and running into the routine. Like as a triathlete, those are the fun things. That's why we're triathletes. We like to swim, bike, and run. So yeah, I'm going to go do my swim, bike, and run workouts. It's not tough to get that into the schedule. But for me, it's all the auxiliary things that support that; the fueling properly, the sleeping properly, the actually taking the time to work on my mobility, stability, stretching, recovery, strength training. All of those things that support the swimming, biking, and running are the things I struggle to really get into the routine. I might kill it for like two or three months, where I'm doing those things. I'm ticking every box. I'm on top of it. I'm like, “Man, I'm an awesome triathlete.” And then all of a sudden, you know, life flares up, and you just lose track of all of it, right. So, April, as you're saying that, like, okay, 42%, 43%?

April: 43%.

Andrew: Yeah. So, roughly half of your actions are tied to routine. Like how much – whether it's applying it to my triathlon part of my life or just my life-life, right – if you look at making even some of your routines a little bit more efficient, could I win that time back? Could I carve out the right amount of time to get some of those things into the schedule that I struggled to get into the schedule? Maybe I'm getting a little bit ahead here and a little bit too specific.

April: Let's talk about it. I think this is perfect because you're hitting on things that I'm sure a lot of people can resonate with right now. All these things that feel like they matter equally; all these things that feel like you have to do them or you're failing. The truth is that you need to identify one thing at one time, and work on that until it becomes automatic, then you can move to the next. So for you, you really need to take stock of, is it my strength training? Is it my nutrition? Is it my sleep? Is it my quality time with my spouse and my child? What is the most important thing? What habit can I build to support that importance? Then once I have that automatic, and it typically takes anywhere – the research that's been done on habit formation is 66 days is the ‘rule’, if you will, for how long it takes to form a habit, but depending on how easy or how difficult it is, it can be anywhere from 18 days to 250 days. Like it can be a wide range, but 66 is the average. So if you really want to do this, if you really want to make this a priority, you have to take stock of what is the one thing you can do at a time, don't try to do it all. You won't succeed. You have to build it one at a time. Try it out, and don't judge it. If you can't do it, if it's too much, take it down even further. So if it's going to bed at nine o'clock – maybe you go to bed at 10 o'clock every night, and you want to get to the point where you're going to bed at 8:30 or 8:00. You don't just go right to 8:00. I would encourage even taking it, maybe even 10 minute increments, where you set up the ability to lay down or unwind around 9:40, and then you're in bed by 9:50. Then as you start to pick that up, maybe try going to 9:40, 9:30, right, as you're working your way down so that you can get the routine that you need to make it work. Then once you've built that, then you can look at the next one. One of the things that I used when I was training for IRONMAN Alaska, that was the keystone habit for me. It took me a lot of trial and error, but I realized that, in order for me to get up early at 4:00, when I have a spouse who's still asleep, I need to pack my gym bag, or my swim bag, the night before so that I have the motivation to get up out of bed – not wake him up while I'm trying to fumble around, and get dressed, and find my stuff – but literally be able to walk out of the room, grab my bag, grab my nutrition, and head out. That was the thing for me that unlocked the ability to have the motivation to get out of bed, to do my training. That's individual to me, but that's the level of scrutiny, and the level of ability to be flexible, to find what works for you.

Andrew: I know there's a principle when it comes to looking at the habits we have, the habits we get stuck in, the habits that we – when we're trying to form a new habit, there's the principle of the ‘habit loop’. That's a term I've heard that I, admittedly, am not super familiar with what it means or what it is, but I'm hoping, and trusting, the two of you can explain how this applies to the science here that we're talking about. April, let's get into it. What is a ‘habit loop’?

April: Oh, this is the bread and butter of what makes a habit a habit.

Andrew: Okay good.

April: Yes, and I think that this really can help with understanding how to break something or how to build something. So, I'll go through the loop and, Rich, do you want to maybe apply it to a triathlon habit or something?

Andrew: Ooo, love it. Love it.

April: So the habit loop, it's a neurological cycle that governs how habits form and persist. It first originated in Charles Duhigg's book, The Power of Habit, which I highly recommend adding that to your library. Then it was added to by James Clear's Atomic Habits. And this whole catalog is an excellent library to have on the study of habits, and I recommend it across the board for coaches, and for athletes, and for anyone that's interested in learning how to change. But how it works is, the loop starts with what's called a cue or a trigger. That is something that signals to the brain to initiate a particular habit, and I like to give the example – because I am a coffee fiend – that I have, and I go back and forth on whether or not I want to try and break this habit because it does add a lot of quality to my life, but I have a habit of around noon or 1 o'clock, I want to have a second cup of coffee. I'm in the middle of my work day. I've already put in a huge load of productive work, and now I had lunch, and now I'm like, “Okay, I got to get ready for the second half of the day. What would make me feel better right now? A cup of coffee.” And it's kind of interesting because other office mates, too, have that same urge. What the cue is, is the coffee maker goes off, or someone brings it around and I can smell it, and I'm like, “Okay,” start salivating already, “Let me go get some.” So the cue for me is smelling coffee. That trigger is that time of day. I'm in that slump, right? And the craving is the motivational force behind that habit. And what you crave is not the habit, but the change in state that it delivers. This is so powerful, Andrew. The emotional state is what you're looking for. It's not actually the thing that you're doing that's causing you to crave it.

Andrew: It’s not coffee?

April: Yeah. It's not coffee.

Andrew: I don’t want the coffee?

April: It's comfort. It's comfort. It's something that – it's the ritual; it's everything that is associated with the change in your emotional state that is causing you to want it. The cravings, they differ from person to person. So my craving for coffee could be different from yours, but that's it. It signals a certain time of day for me, and it brings me comfort. Then you have the routine. Okay, now that I know I'm going to make my cup of coffee, I'm going to go percolate it. I'm going to go mix it up and bring it back to the office, and we're going to get to this next section of productivity. This is the actual habit you're performing, which can take the form – and this is another powerful thing – it can be a thought or an action. So habits aren't just our day-to-day actions, they're also the thoughts that you allow to persist. So if you have a negative bias, right, if you are one of those people that sees the negativity in everything, that's a habit. So being able to understand how that is negatively impacting you is another powerful way to change how you think. Then we have the reward, and that response delivers a reward. Rewards are the end goal of every habit. The cue is about noticing the reward. The craving is about wanting the reward. The response is about attaining the reward. We chase these rewards because they serve these two purposes. One, they satisfy us, and two, they teach us. First, rewards deliver contentment and relief from a craving, such as my coffee addiction. Then second, rewards teach us what actions are worth remembering. So you can take this all the way back to childhood. If you had a traumatic event, and then you learned, “Okay, I shouldn't do that because it's going to get this response.” That can carry over for years and not be applicable to every situation, but because your brain hardwired it to be a fight or flight response, or a trauma response, then you have created this behavior that's automatic. You're not even conscious of it, and it could be serving you in a very negative way. I want to just end with this on the habit loop. If a behavior is insufficient in any of these four stages, it will not become a habit. That's so incredible to really think on. If you can break it in any point, if you can break the trigger, if you can break the routine, if you can break the reward, it will not become a habit, and that's how you effectively break it.

Andrew: Yeah. So to form a – we're getting ahead of ourselves – but to form a habit, you've got to reinforce all four of those than I imagined.

April: Yes.

Andrew: Coach Rich, take this much deeper than that in terms of personifying the habit loop for the triathlete.

Rich: Yeah, and I'm going to try to just follow what April just laid out in terms of the loop, and starting with that craving, right? What is it that we are craving that would drive the habit for training consistency, and that is really that change of state, right? You are trying to arrive at a change of state that either gets you to that next race, or gets you to that next RunDot score, or that next SwimDot score, or whatever that next goal is. You're trying to – that's what's so powerful about the sport, is that there's so much personal transformation that happens, not just physically, but mentally, and just behaviorally, that can be so empowering in every part of your life. So you've got that craving for that change of state. You want to get that done. So you get it done. And then there's that reward system of – you're looking back at that 95 or that 100, that unicorn – you got that accomplished. You did it well. You get this dopamine hit because, “Hey man, I did it.” You know, it's either the runner's high or it's the unicorn high. You get that feedback, that reward. Then you're like, okay. So then you're looking at tomorrow's workouts, and what can I do to be ready for those? But you know, in here, there's a lot of places to fall down, right? So how do you find that habit that doesn't allow you to fall down? Here's where we look at this, you know, kind of another layer deeper. Yeah, you might crave this change, but maybe you're having a hard time mustering the effort today, right? So what do you do? You now crave not being in the position of being at the end of your day, not having done your workout today. That feels like crap. You know, you're like, “Ah, man, I don't feel successful today. Okay. I want to change that. My craving is not to feel this way. So what am I going to pattern? What am I going to change so that I get it done tomorrow? So I don't have that negative cue, that negative feedback?”

April: Yeah. I think that's really great. I think the constant review. Rituals of review reveal those results, right? So if you want to be able to understand why you're not performing in the way that you want to perform, look at it, and take an honest review of, and stock of, how you are showing up, and then how are you talking to yourself. If you're calling yourself a loser, guess what? You're right. If you're calling yourself a winner, guess what? You're right. So all those things really do come into play, and they're all interconnected in this incredible way. It just really comes down to having the self-awareness and the ability to take stock of how you are showing up.

Andrew: April, you mentioned earlier that it's just tangibly – in our triathlon rhythms, right. If we do exactly what we're just saying, we're looking at our next goal – whether it's a certain level of fitness in one of the sports, or a certain race results, or a certain race completion – whatever our next goal is, if we're looking at, “Okay, what is the next habit I need to change right now? Like, what is the next – whether it's a new habit I'm forming, or an old habit I'm breaking, or something that I'm implementing in my training – I've been trying to implement in my training.” You mentioned, it's good to start small, start with one thing, start with incremental changes. What is the most effective way for an athlete to look at what their triathlon routines are right now and identify either the most effective new habit to form or old habit to break, for them?

April: Oh, that's a great question. One thing that I do with my athletes – especially if I've noticed there's a pattern of them not showing up, or maybe there's a pattern of them speaking negatively about themselves. Let's talk about if they're not showing up for their workouts. One of the things I have them do is take a stock, or an assessment, if you will, of their day. So looking at what time are they waking up? What are they doing in the morning? What is their morning routine? Like really hour by hour, breaking it down, so I can look and see how – maybe there is something that they're not conscious of. What are they listening to on the way to work? When they get to work, what are some of the conversations typically that are occurring? What are their feelings? Tell me about their lunch hour. Are they taking a lunch break? Are they giving themselves some type of rest or ability to step away? When they're at home, oftentimes, when someone's had a very stressful day at work, it's extremely difficult to want to do a workout. So maybe looking at optimizing what is the best time for them to successfully show up for their workout? So getting stock, or taking a time audit of their day, is always a really great place to start. It just also helps reveal maybe some things that they weren't tracking. Maybe it would be easier if they prepped their clothes the night before. Or maybe it would be easier for them if they prep their nutrition instead of waiting until right before they started their workout. Those are things that sound easy, but when you talk about, like, how that all adds up, it can be a significant barrier to someone wanting to do something. To do something that maybe they don't feel extremely motivated to do because motivation is also fickle. So giving yourself the best opportunity to say yes to something by removing those barriers is the way to go. So performance = potential - interference. The more you can remove – interference you can remove – the more potential you can perform.

Andrew: I'm curious, just as coaches – I mean, you both work with numerous athletes, right, racing anything from sprint up to Ironman – but the both of you have experienced racing at every single distance, and when you're working with your own athletes, what triathlon habits – whether it's swim, bike, run, just training disciplines, recovery disciplines, strength. We've thrown out a lot of things already – but, what are the handful of things you want to see all of your athletes making habit in their own triathlon rhythm, at some point working with you? I'll go Coach Rich on this one, and then over to April.

Rich: Yeah. The two things that I see that get sacrificed, that are essential, are sleep and strength – I'm going to say strength/mobility.

Andrew: Sure. Functional movement, is what Dr. B.J. Leeper would put there.

Rich: I'll tell you what, if one of my athletes was to sacrifice one of the five things – sleep, strength, swim, bike, or run – I would actually prefer they sacrifice sleep and strength the least. They're that important. I'd rather negotiate around the length of a swim or the number of runs of the week.

Andrew: Very interesting. Yeah, so, whatever habits they need to get into their system, into the rhythm, to get those two things firing, is what you're going with here.

Rich: Exactly. I would say, yeah, let's get those habits nailed first. Then once you have those habits dialed in, we know that's just going to happen.

Andrew: 66 days later, once that’s dialed in.

Rich: 66 days later, yeah, then we can start to work out, “Okay, now let's pick on these other

things. What's the next priority? The next lead domino?”

Andrew: April, what is this for you?

April: I think too, that it's really important to see how there's kind of a halo effect that happens with habits. When you start to do things that are aligned with your goals and aligned with your motivation, there's other habits that kind of naturally come along with it. So if you are, like Rich said, making sleep a priority, sometimes, just by a natural attrition, you start to eat better because you're more aware. You're more awake. You start to show up and perform better at your workouts. So you start to, “I really enjoy this feeling. I like how I feel when I'm doing well, and I'm well rested.” So you start to see a benefit there. I think the power of ‘habit stacking’ – which is the ability to layer on top of each other habits, keystone habits, that make that difference – is also really powerful and can be incredibly motivating when you, again, identify what those things are and make it easy to do. So the things that, when I think about working with my athletes, the number one area is their mentality, that I focus on. Especially working with back-of-the-packers and working with first-timers, I hear a lot of self-confidence issues. A lot of those scripts that run across, like, “I don't know if I can do this,” or, “This is crazy. I don't know what I got myself into,” or, “This looks like a really hard workout. This scares me,” right? I look at that, and we work on changing the script. And the two things that I do to help them is: focusing on finding something to be grateful for, and reframing negative thoughts. Like everything that you're feeling – that fear – that's normal, but how can we reframe that as an opportunity versus a guard rail, or something that can hold you back, or stumbling block. So we look at, “Okay, this does matter, let's reframe this thought. You have the opportunity, the potential to get better here. You have the opportunity to go through this experience so that it's not new to you on race day. You don't feel like you're left out, or that you are not trained well enough, or that you don't have what it takes because you've gone through this. You've built the resilience. You've built the ability to adapt. Look at all this evidence, right?” So having the ability to walk through, with them, on changing how they frame things is massive, and that also changes how they view life. That, to me, is why I love being a coach because triathlon, for me, is about transformation. If I can transform someone's life, and how they view themselves, and how they show up in their family, how they show up in their work, and how they show up in their workouts or on race day, that, to me, is the beauty of being in the position that I'm in as a coach.

Andrew: There's two, kind of, ways to change your actual habits, right? There's the building of a new habit, which is something that you want to be doing that you're not doing. So maybe it's, “Man, I go crush my workout, but I'm not very good at getting in my post-workout nutrition on the back end. I skipped other things, and I skimp on that. How can I build a new habit,” right? There's a plethora of examples, right? Of good habits that we could have that some people – everybody's list of which habits you have and which ones you don't are going to look very different. So for every triathlete out there who has a new habit they want to build – right? We've already talked, you know, Rich talked about sleep and strength. There's nutrition habits. There's hydration habits, right? I mean, my wife and I, how many days we get to 3 PM and say, “Man, are we dehydrated? We're probably dehydrated.” Like, that's bad habits, right? That's not having the proper habits built in to make sure we're hydrating throughout the day as Texans – but regardless, whatever an athlete – listening to all this whole conversation, if they're like, “Man, okay, I know for sure I'm leaving this podcast episode, and the next habit I need to tackle is Habit X – what are the actionable steps they should take to, not just try it for a couple of days and then fall off the wagon, right, but to actually make it a true habit. April, what do we do?

April: Alright. So there's several things that you can do, that I recommend, that focus on that habit loop, right. So when we talk about the first part of the habit loop, that cue or the trigger, if you want to build a new habit, you have to make it visible to you. It has to be front and center. It has to be something that you see right away that cues you to do it. So make it obvious. Another way to do that is to pair it with an already existing habit, like I talked about with habit stacking. You can also gamify it a little bit. So there's all kinds of apps out there that are habit trackers, and TriDot is a really great one. Unbeknownst, it is a great one because, like Rich said, you have this workout, and then you have a result. And that reward is a unicorn, or that reward is your coach saying, “Hey, you crushed that workout,” or something that makes you want to come back. So step two is make that habit attractive. Focus on the benefits. And this may sound ‘airy fairy’, but it really does work wonders on your mindset. Find something that brings you the benefit of why you're doing that habit. Find something that rewards you in that action. Make it easy. So we talked about the cue, we talked about the craving, with making it attractive, and then for the routine, you want to make that routine as easy as possible. The more interference you can take out of it, the easier it is for you to perform that habit. So reduce friction, remove obstacles, prepare tools, prepare your gym bag, prepare your nutrition. Literally trip over your running shoes. Well, don't fall down the stairs, but put your running shoes by your bed. Make it convenient. Keep it readily available. Then for the reward, you have to make it satisfying. You have to make it satisfying enough for you to want to do it. I think a great way to do that is to celebrate. Now, you don't want to celebrate by doing the very thing you're trying to stop doing, but you do want to find something that is equally satisfying that can make you feel a sense of accomplishment.

Rich: But yeah, to April's point of making habits easier, and to this analogy of the first step to flossing your teeth is just floss one tooth, take the obstacles a step further. Have the shoes and the running gear right by the door, even, maybe, the water bottle right by the door so you're all set to go, and make the goal just to get out the door. If you get out the door, you're going to run.

Andrew: So Rich, let's talk about the inverse. Let's talk about: you have a bad habit that you want to break. Ironically, on the TriDot Podcast, we had a warm up question one time that was, “What is your triathlon bad habit?” Because not everybody's got one, but most of us probably have one or two or three. So if there's just a bad habit, like, just for an example, I think of skipping your run drills, right? That could be a bad habit. I just go to the track, and, you know, I might have the seven minutes to do my run drills, but I just– Let me just get into the running part. Okay, well, that's a bad habit. Skipping that is a bad habit. So, whatever somebody's bad habit could be, that's kind of holding them back from progressing in their triathlon journey, Rich, how do we break those?

Rich: Yeah, that's a great one. And let's just go with this, the running drills example, because I think it's a great one because I think a lot of people do. It's really easy to do because you're just looking at that, “How do I get that unicorn on this?” So you want to get right into that, kind of, Zone 2 and whatever it is you've got going on after your warmup part of your run. This is where, as triathletes, we kind of have to think of the long game here, right? You can't think in terms of, you know, not just always short wins. You got to think of, “Okay, what I'm really trying to do, is I'm trying to change. I'm trying to grow. I'm trying to get stronger. I'm trying to get faster.” So trying to tie today's behavior to the reward of that next RunDot score, and if you are investing, and if you create a habit of doing those run drills, doing those A skips before every run – or choose the one on the area that you're trying to develop, and you start to pattern that in – now you see, five weeks later, that you've just bumped your RunDot where it hasn't been moving. Now, you're actually starting to feel like you're feeling lighter on your feet, and you're not feeling like you're pounding the ground, because those A skips are transforming your run gate so that your foot is landing more directly underneath your center of mass. It just happened because you were ingraining those neural patterns because you were rehearsing it. You were doing it over and over. You were doing it every single time you go out, but you have to think of it as: when's the best time to plant a shade tree? 30 years ago, right? When's the next best time? Right now.

Andrew: I want to end our main set today – and then we'll kick it over to Vanessa for our Coach Cool Down Tip of the Week – but I want to end here, just with, again, the athletes that you're working with, right. You guys are very intentional on talking about habits with them. So, just, maybe 60 seconds each, and then we'll kick it over Vanessa, just kind of give us one story of one athlete you've worked with, and one habit that you've seen them form since working with you as their coach, just as some inspiration as we close our main set today.

April: So I'm going to, I'm going to deviate just a little bit, Andrew, because I do think this is a really relevant story for the power of consistency, and I think it can hit on a lot of notes here. There's a story about Jerry Seinfeld, and how he's a very prolific, profound comedian. He's known worldwide for his comedy. When he was first getting started, and he was asked, “So how did you become this amazing comedian?” And he said, “One joke.” What he did was he took an annual calendar – kind of like what you'd have on your desk, right – he put it up on the wall, and he challenged himself to write one joke a day. And after a year – you know, the challenge being I have 365 jokes and having that added to his repertoire – he didn't feel successful because he had 365 new jokes. What made him feel successful is that, when he would write that joke, he would put a giant red X on the calendar. When he looked at the calendar, and he saw that the days were unbroken, that's how he knew he was successful. It wasn't necessarily that the joke was good or bad, but it was that he created the habit of consistency to constantly work on his craft. I think that can apply across the board for triathletes. When you are showing up, it is – consistency is king. When you are showing up for yourself, whether it's good, bad, as long as you are continuously trying to improve, you're going to get better. You're going to move forward, and I think that is the most beautiful thing about understanding how powerful habits are.

Andrew: Coach Rich?

Rich: You know, I’ve got to think that one of the areas where I think I have felt like the greatest focus on habits is in swim training and being an on deck swim instructor at Pool School and trying to develop those habits with your athletes. You only have them for the two days, so you're trying to give them as much feedback, and trying to get as much reps in, as you can. But what I really find is the follow-up work is so important. Whether it's an athlete of mine that went to a Pool School that's remote, and we're having to follow up remotely on, “Let's keep after this. Let's keep looking at video. Let's keep focusing on this,” because keeping the accountability, and the conversation, and the focus going beyond that weekend is what can really lead to long-term success. And that's just one example that I see often.

Cool down theme: Great set everyone! Let’s cool down.

Vanessa Ronksley: Hey friends, it's cool down time, and I'm Vanessa, your average triathlete with elite level enthusiasm. Now today on the cool down, I am honored to be in the presence of Coach Kurt Madden, because I can honestly say that if you're in his presence, you are going to instantly feel amazing and feel like you can do absolutely anything. I think this stems from him living his life with peacefulness and inspiration with every step he takes. This is probably why he had a successful 40-year professional career as an educator – within the coaching community, as a teacher, an assistant principal, a principal, and as the CEO of five different nonprofits in the charter school system. In the endurance sport world, he has earned every single one of his accolades – ranging from second place overall in the Leadville 100-Mile Trail Run all the way to winning the Ultraman World Championship, not once, but twice – with large doses of modesty, grace, and gratitude. He began coaching triathlon in the eighties, and is now a full-time TriDot Coach. Kurt has been married to his wife, whom he fondly refers to as Queen K, for 44 years, and together they have two sons, Kip and Kai. It is truly an honor to have you on the cool down, Kurt.

Kurt Madden: Thank you so much, Vanessa. It's great to be back.

Vanessa: Now, not only have you been a top 10 overall IRONMAN World Championship finisher, you also are a champion at eating pancakes. Can you tell me a little bit about this?

Kurt: What we used to do as a family, is that when I was a science teacher, and my wife and our sons, Kip and Kai, we would literally take off, like, the day after school got out, and we had a tent trailer, and we would just go ahead and start heading from San Diego, and we would just head east. So for six weeks, we were just, like, off the grid. Like anytime we wanted to go anywhere, we would just stop, and that was really, really, really cool. So we were in a town in Colorado called Ouray. We would stop at a place called the KOA Campground, and it was nice. I mean, it was clean and things like that, but, traditionally, they had a pancake breakfast. So I think back then, I don't know what it was, it was like maybe $5. So one day, you know, we were there, and I just got this wild idea. My sons were at that age, like, “Come on, Dad,” you know, “Do something kind of scary.” Like, “I'll double dare you, Dad. Come on, you can do it.” So I don't know. I just kind of got developing this rhythm, and the guy brought out like two, and I ate two, and then I ate two more, and then I ate two more, and then I ate three more. And my son's eyes were getting big, like, “Dad, where are all those pancakes going?” And I'm going, “I'm not sure if it's elevation or what.” When we wrapped it up and put a bow on it, Vanessa, it was scary. I ate 24 pancakes. I don't think I ate pancakes after that for about a year.

Vanessa: Oh, that's so funny. My cheeks hurt, I'm laughing so hard. I love it. Alright. So we are here for a wonderful coaching tip. So what can you share with us to help us all get faster, and better, and everything like that?

Kurt: Well, I think today, a good tip, I always kind of refer – as I work with people, and even myself – that we're going to try to go to ‘shark mode’ today. I think it's that mindset, and that's really where it starts. It's like, the question comes up, “How can I get the ‘shark mode’ during the swim?” Regardless of where you are – you could be a beginner, you could be an intermediate, or you could literally be a shark already. So I wanted to share with our listeners, Vanessa, just a couple of things I've seen from my experience, my knowledge. I'm very fortunate. I’ve lived around water my whole life so I think swimming is the thing that, really, at an early age, I got started. So I think the first thing that we want to remember – and this is your MIT, your ‘Most Important Thing’ – 90% of swims, you get to wear something called a wetsuit. Your wetsuit, I know, is your very best friend. But rule number one, mindset number one, is to let the wetsuit do the work. I'm going to repeat that one more time. Let the wetsuit do the work because you have to think about: maybe in training you have something very small called the pull buoy. Now you've got a pull buoy around your entire body. In other words, you're not going to have to work quite as hard because you are literally on top of the water. The wetsuits we have today, we've come a long, long, long, long way. If I look back to pictures in the 1980s, when I was a pro, to be very candid, we didn't have wetsuits. Everything was just: now you line up, and you just go ahead and do that. So we've come a long way. But that mindset, if you're working 30% less because the wetsuit is doing the work, you're saving that 30% of your efforts to use on the bike and on the run. So it's that mindset, and you're repeating yourself on the swim – if it's an olympic, 70.3, or a full – let the wetsuit do the work. So I think that right there, that is huge versus, “ Oh my gosh, I'm really struggling with my stroke. I don't feel good. I can't develop a rhythm.” So there's no need to push too hard on that. So that's the first thing. The second thing we need to remember: the unique thing about swimming is your face is actually in the water. It's not like when you're running, you can just take in ambient air. The number one thing to remember – and I just go back to my degree in exercise physiology – you're going to inhale naturally. That's never a problem. Just like when you're running, just like when you're on the bike, you never have to think, “Hey, I've got to inhale.” Your body's designed to do that. Aha. The thing you really need to think about is exhaling. Because if a person does not exhale when they're swimming, biking, and running, it's fatal. The first thing that happens, you develop a lot of CO2. Secondly, your heart rate really starts going up very, very quickly. It would be like running, doing a 5k assessment, and say, “I'm going to hold my breath, and I'm going to breathe every five steps.” That would probably be a disaster. So on the swim, you need to remember to exhale, exhale, exhale. And again, the question comes up out of your nose and your mouth? If you're swimming out of Zone 3 or Zone 4, you definitely need to get all that air out quickly. So when you're turning your head to the side to breathe, it's a quick inhale. As soon as your face gets back into the water, you're breathing out again. So exhaling, exhaling. So when I work with athletes, those are the first two things I start with. Let the wetsuit do the work, exhale, exhale, exhale. The other thing that comes up often in conversations – and, again, there's a difference in philosophy, but I've done this for many, many years, and I've coached a lot of swimmers, and I watch fast swimmers all the time – the number one thing that you see with them is they breathe every single stroke. And, again, there's some debate on that, but I'll tell you why I think it's beneficial. It goes back to what I said. When you're breathing more frequently, your heart rate stays down. You can blow off that CO2, and, again, when that happens, you don't need to overthink it. I have a lot of people – I ask the question, “When do you breathe, or how often?” They go, “Well, it kind of depends. I do a little bilateral, then I do a 1, 2, 3, then I do a 1, 2, and then I do a 1.” My brain is so small, I can't make it that complex. If I do it every single time I'm breathing, I know I've got a great rhythm going, and I think that's something to do. The disadvantage, though, many times if you're breathing on one side, you kind of have a blind spot. You don't see where that opposite arm is entering, and that's why when you're doing your drills and things, that bilateral breathing should straighten out. As we say in Pool School, get those hands right on the railroad tracks. So that's something that I think is just imperative to, especially in a longer distance, breathe every stroke, breathe every stroke, breathe every stroke. Lastly, the thing that I would say – especially, that's the beauty of Garmin watches – break the race distance up into chunks. So in 2000 yards, check for understanding with the athlete. Every 500 yards, it should vibrate on your wrist. You don't have to stop and say, “Gee, I wonder what my split is.” You felt the vibration, check the box. Then you go another 500, then you go another 500. If it's a 70.3, then you've covered 1500 yards when you feel that third vibration. “Okay, I've got 500 yards to go. Okay, the wetsuits doing the work. I'm exhaling, I'm breathing every other stroke.” Many times though, it'll go off one more time, and you look up like, “Wait a minute, I'm not quite finished. So it was either me, I didn't go straight, or maybe it was a little bit long.” But I find, to get to ‘shark mode’, if you do that again, and again, and again, and again, as I study the top swimmers and interface with them, these are all things that they do on a regular basis.

Outro: Thanks for joining us. Make sure to subscribe and share the TriDot podcast with your triathlon crew. For more great tri content and community, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Ready to optimize your training? Head to TriDot.com and start your free trial today. TriDot, the obvious and automatic choice for triathlon training.

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