TriDot Podcast .214

Optimized Nutrition to Fuel Your Optimized Training

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. If there was an app that did for your triathlon nutrition what TriDot does for your triathlon training, would you be interested in using it? For me the answer is a gigantic yes and if that’s a yes for you I encourage you to listen extra closely today as we talk about Fuelin can power your performance nutrition. And yeah, it integrates with TriDot. Super cool stuff so let’s learn all about it. Our first guest today is the founder and chief nutrition officer of Fuelin, Scott Tindal. Scott has over 20 years of experience in professional sports and is a nutrition coach to professional triathletes and executives. He serves as an expert advisor to companies on nutrition product development and health optimization. He has worked in professional rugby, cricket, for Oracle Team USA in the America’s Cup, the Toronto Maple Leaves in the NHL and now with Ironman and Ironman athletes. He holds a post graduate diploma in sports performance nutrition, Masters in sports and exercise medicine, and a Bachelors of applied science in physio therapy. Scott Tindal, welcome to the TriDot podcast.

Scott Tindal: Thank you so much for having me. Quite the intro and super excited to discuss this awesome partnership that we’re about to embark on.

Andrew: Also, joining us today to discuss that awesome partnership is TriDot founder and CEO Jeff Booher. Jeff was the chief architect behind TriDot’s training optimization technology. He’s a multiple Ironman finisher himself who has coached dozens of professional triathletes and national champions as well as hundreds of age groupers to podiums and PR’s since he began coaching in 2003. And Jeff, I do want to point out before we get too deep into this episode, we were actually going to record this episode in Kona with the Kona waves and the Kona ocean behind us, but at the time we were going to record you had the chance to ride in the helicopter above the bike course happening live on Ironman World Championships race day and Scott was gracious enough to go let you do that. What was that experience like being in the helicopter watching the professional race out there on the bike course?

Jeff Booher: It was pretty incredible. It’s the first time, second time I’ve been in a helicopter. Once was nighttime in Vegas. That was super cool, but this was a whole next level.

Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff: Being out there over the island, seeing, going out to Hawi and the turn around. It was really, really cool. I think there was six of us in the helo and it was just really cool. If you’re not going to I guess be able to do a podcast, at least you’re called away for something super, super cool. So I had a credible excuse. Scott was gracious enough to reschedule so I appreciate that.

Andrew: Scott had a very specific response when we told him what your opportunity was. Do you remember what that was Scott? Do you remember what you told Jeff?

Scott: I think it was “Get to the chopper.”

Andrew: “Get to the chopper!” Well I’m 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 topic, and then wind things down with our cool down.

UCAN: Before we get too deep into the show today I want to give a shout out to our good friends at UCAN. Here at TriDot we are huge believers in using UCAN to fuel our training and racing. In the crowded field of nutrition companies what separates UCAN from the pack is the science behind LIVSTEADY, the key ingredient in UCAN products. While most energy powders are filled with sugar or stimulants that cause a spike and crash, UCAN energy powders powered by LIVSTEADY deliver a steady release of complex carbs to give you stable blood sugar and provide long lasting energy. I personally fuel my workouts with the orange flavored Edge Gel and the unflavored UCAN Energy powder. Between their Energy Mix, Energy Bars, Almond Butter, and more, there is definitely a LIVSTEADY product that you will love. So head to their website UCAN.co and use the code TRIDOT to save 20% on your entire order. Now that code used to be 10%, but the fine folks at UCAN have upped it to 20% for TriDot Nation. So once again, that’s UCAN.co promo code TRIDOT.

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

Andrew: There are so many sports to try and so little time to try them all so even the most adventurous amongst us probably has a few sports that look intriguing, but they have never personally had the chance to try. Scott, Jeff, for our warm up question today, what sport that you have never participated in would you most want to try? And yes Scott, this question was 100% inspired by how many sports are in your background. We’ll get to that in just a little bit, but what is this answer for you? What’s a sport you’ve never done that you would most want to try?

Scott: I think first pointing out that I’m Australian, we probably missed that in the intro. So apologies for the accent if no one can understand me. But I guess probably American football, or gridiron as we call it.

Andrew: Really?

Scott: Yeah. It think I’d be— obviously a big fan. Lived in Boston; Patriots, Brady. You know. Just watching those guys play it’s obviously very different from rugby union and the sport that I’m more accustomed with. But yeah, I think American football would be my sport of choice.

Andrew: I mean, very interesting this early to find out that you’re a Patriots fan as I am a Miami Dolphins fan. So there’s some interesting things for us to talk about the next time we’re together in person. Jeff Booher, what is this answer for you?

Jeff: It’s funny that he says that with his background in rugby because I would say rugby. I grew up playing football, American football. Loved that and played a bunch of different sports, but rugby has always intrigued me. Just the rules are a little bit different. It feels kind of nonstop. So you’re not stopping and resting as much as normal football. I had a buddy in the Army that played that and he would always go on and on just about how much he loved it.

Andrew: This answer for me is cross country skiing. I’m a Florida boy who moved to Texas. I’ve never lived up north where it properly snows. I’ve never been downhill skiing, cross country skiing, snowboarding, any of that. Never done any of it and yeah, for some reason, cross country skiing appeals to me more than the downhill stuff. I look at it and it’s probably the endurance athlete in me, right? But cross country skiing I’ve always wanted to try it, definitely want to do it. We’ll get to it eventually before this life is over. Alright, we’re going to throw this question out to you, our audience, like we always do. Make sure you’re a part of the I AM TriDot Facebook group. We have thousands of triathletes just talking swim, bike, and run every single day in that group. So the Monday that this episode drops, I will pose the question to you, our audience. Of all the sports out there, which one is one that you’ve never played before that you would want to try? Can’t wait to see what you have to say.

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

DIMOND BIKES: Triathletes and cyclists love talking about their bikes and I, of course, am no exception. I am so impressed by the quality of my Dimond Marquise TT bike. Every detail has been carefully engineered and crafted by the team at Dimond Bikes. My Marquise complete with a custom TriDot paint scheme sits proudly on the set of the TriDot Triathlon YouTube show for our audience to see. Their bikes are industry leading aerodynamic machines and they look awesome. But even beyond that, Dimond as a brand knows how to take care of their athletes and with five different tri bike models as well as road, gravel, and mountain bikes, your next bike should absolutely be a Dimond. TriDot and Dimond are a dynamic race day one two punch. Dimond provides you with the Ferrari of bikes and TriDot training develops your engine. So we are excited to partner with Dimond on some really cool offers. If you are a new to TriDot athlete, we’re offering six months of the Mark Allen Edition of TriDot with the purchase of a Dimond bike. If you are already a TriDot athlete, we are offering a TriDot store credit with your new bike. Head to Dimondbikes.com for all of the info and to dream up your very own Dimond bike.

Andrew: We all know just how critical nutrition is to our day-to-day training and to our racing so thank goodness for the folks at Fuelin who are on a mission to simplify performance nutrition for all of us and we here at TriDot like what they’re doing so much so that TriDot and Fuelin are now integrated. So your triathlon training and your nutrition plan can officially, finally talk to one another. But Scott, before we get into talking about the software and the nutrition and the integration, I alluded in the warmup question to just how many different sports you’ve partaken in at the competitive level. Tell our listeners just a little bit about your personal athletic journey.

Scott: Well, I don’t think it’s as good as you make it out to be to be honest.

Andrew: I’m good at talking people up. I’m a good promoter.

Scott: Yeah, you’re a very good promoter. Look, it’s certainly a step below probably most of the listeners I’m sure. So I did represent Australia junior level in rugby union. To play professionally was always my dream. A busted knee, so I did my ACL, MCL, and lateral medial meniscus in a rather viscous contact so that sort of put the end to that. But probably in hindsight out of every sort of– whenever a door closes another one opens and so for me it sort of allowed me to then travel and educate myself. I got to live in five countries and did that over sort of the course of the better part of 20 years which was fantastic. You know, since that time I guess it’s mainly been recreational and certainly an increased focus on endurance sports. I’m a big believer in experiential learning so I jumped in this year and did my first 70.3 and my first marathon.

Andrew: Alright.

Scott: I wanted sub 5 for the 70.3. I wanted sub 5 for the 70.3 and missed out on that. Next one I will have a TT and won’t have over four and a half thousand feet of climbing because I picked, apparently, a tough course at Port Macquarie to do my very first one on which a lot of people were sort of very surprised at. So I also had a terrible chest infection and came off antibiotics two days before. So no excuses, but yeah. The next one will be a little bit better.

Andrew: Next time you’ll get it. Yeah, you’ll smash it.

Scott: Yeah and then I did the Sydney Marathon just recently in September and I targeted 3:30 and got 3:29 and I will say that I used TriDot in my training leading up to that. I did concurrent training. Training for a marathon whilst also training for Busso 70.3 and used TriDot and Fuelin and yeah. It was pretty nice. Up until then I had never run over 32 kilometers and so the plan works. The two integrations work really well together and given that I’ve got two children under the age of two, I guess this year’s been a bit of a success in terms of sporting endeavors and family life.

Andrew: Absolutely a huge success I’d say and very cool going in on this conversation. I’m glad people have already heard and established that you have personally have tested out the TriDot and Fuelin connection. What did you think, Scott, of the training as it was getting you ready for that marathon?

Scott: Yeah, well I think I reached out to BJ and said, “I don’t know if I’m doing enough run training to be honest.”

Andrew: Yeah.

Scott: And they all looked at it and–

Andrew: A common sentiment.

Scott: And we looked at it and you know what he said? “Look you’re concurrently training for a triathlon and a marathon so we’re really happy with it.” I trusted the process which you have to do. Obviously I questioned it which, you know, is in my nature. Lots of zone 2 training. Some really good interval work. Some anaerobic stuff thrown in there. I still did biking and swimming and yeah. Honestly, I got to race day and I felt fantastic and coupled that with the fueling and did it all. As I say, it worked out really well. It was a very hot day. I think it was 34 degrees celsius which is…

Andrew: Yeah that’s hot. Yeah.

Scott: …nearly 100 Farinheit and maybe overland. You know, it was like apocalypse now with people dropping left, right, and center.

Andrew: Sure.

Scott: Just due to the heat. You know, I had my hydration and fueling plan and sort of just kept on trucking through and it was pretty good. So yeah. Really, really pleased with how it all went to be honest.

Andrew: Yeah, I’m sure Jeff is glad to hear that and I’m not surprised by any of that. I am curious because you with Fuelin, you guys integrate with all the popular training platforms that are out there and so we’re happy to be the newest one that you’re integrating with. From all the options out there you had to train for that race and to train for your half Ironman coming up, what made you want to try TriDot for your training?

Scott: To be honest it was testing. Yeah, I was testing the platform and testing the integration and seeing how it worked and I guess, you know, it’s certainly N=1. But I think as we roll this out and we get more and more feedback from athletes and probably very similar to what you’ve done with TriDot in the past. It’s all about feedback and we’re all about athletes giving us insights into what they’re seeing and how the two– As you said, we’ve worked with other platforms in the past and what we’re seeing with those integrations and certainly it’s a different integration with TriDot because of the AI nature of the training and how it adapts to what the individual is doing and that’s very much how we approach Fuelin as well. It should be adapting each day and each week based on the training, the training volume, the training intensity. So I thought it was super exciting to see a platform be able to deliver a training program in that sort of adaptive manner. So I think the future is very bright I think for Fuelin and TriDot to be honest the way that they work together.

Andrew: Yeah, we certainly think so too and Jeff, let’s kind of get into kind of some of the common ground. There’s some very cool common ground between our companies, between what we’re doing, between what we’re doing for athletes, between the way we approach tech and AI and coaching. So Jeff, for you as you were kind of looking at integrating with Fuelin as a nutrition partner of TriDot, what common ground did you see here? What did you see in Fuelin that made you really want to work with Scott and his team?

Jeff: Really it was Scott and his team. We first met a little more than a year ago I guess at Endurance Exchange. I had seen them, heard of them. We get approached a lot by different companies with different ideas and technology and we don’t always have time to check them all out and you could tell even from the first time we met them the sincerity, their knowledge, their depth of knowledge and what they did, the excellence in which they did that. We continued that with several conversations throughout the year, you know, both doing our due diligence and really approached things very similarly. I know we sat together in Nice. I think we were going to meet for an hour and it ended up being two or three or something like that. We just kept talking and talking and talking and joked like, “We should just like start a podcast now. We should have just recorded what we talked about for the last three hours.”

Andrew: It would have made my job easier.

Jeff: Yeah. But so much of Scott and Jonathan’s and their whole team’s approach, like he just said, he was doing his own groundwork, his own experience, testing it for himself, very hands on, very committed to quality, very keen to take the long-term approach playing the long game, doing the long work that’s required to get to the end point. So that quality, that’s something certainly that’s in our DNA and so as we look for partners and want to associate with people, we look for those long-term relationships that are going to be the pioneers, the innovators. They’er not scared to go out there and do something that’s custom and different and unlike anything else out there and you’re going to make some mistakes and stump your toe and you want to have a partner there that’s going to help you recover. What did we learn? Let’s move forward and make something that’s really awesome for our athletes that’s going to deliver, you know, like just the legacy platforms just can’t do. There’s just so much potential out there and we’re just– This is the tip of the iceberg, just getting started and even Blue Sky and talking about the plans ahead like what can we do after we get this integration done and there’s so many other ways that we can research and couple our data to be able to provide a whole lot of value for our athletes. So a lot of common ground.

Andrew: Yeah there’s a couple really specific things that I thought were really cool that we were talking about in Kona. With just both of our companies being tech companies that empower coaches to coach athletes in different ways, there’s some really cool kind of common ground there I noticed that you guys were talking about from a tech standpoint. What are some of the similarities between TriDot and Fuelin?

Jeff: Tech being, I mean, different tech, but the same approach. The same AI. The same we’re learning from what we’re doing improving. It’s not just a template and that’s– It’s funny. It goes beyond the tech similarities. As we were talking, I don’t know if it was Kona or Nice or somewhere, but we were talking even about as we approach coaches in talking to them about the technology. There’s so many times as with change in any industry, they can be fearful or resistant or scared. You know, is it going to take over their job? And it’s not that way at all. We’re doing things that human beings can’t do. Technology can do things and it’s the common struggle for us both in just educating coaches and athletes the same that what the technology is and how it can serve you better, help put the coach back in the coaching. It gives the coaches more time to coach and work with the athlete and not trying to do the science stuff, the tech stuff, the data stuff. Machines can do that. Technology can do that a lot better than we as humans can. And when they learn that and they don’t feel like they have a target on their back, someone’s trying to put me out of a job, and when they see how it can deliver so much more for their athletes it’s really cool. So kind of being on that journey I guess on the marketing side, the education side, in addition to the technology side is cool. You know, we found each other talking and the other would just be nodding their head. Yeah.

Andrew: Yep.

Jeff: Same experience.

Scott: Just on that, what Jeff’s saying, I think it’s so important because we get this comment a little bit with our program as well. You know, is it going to take away the role of a nutritionist, a dietitian? I actually counter that with exactly what Jeff said. Like writing a macro program, yeah it is difficult, but it’s not impossible, but it is like not the fun thing to do as a coach. Like writing a macro plan. Great. Okay, you understand the science and all that, but coaching an athlete and talking to them and helping them. You know, like not everyone can do that and I get that from a financial standpoint, so obviously we are helping those that maybe can afford to do that, but what I would also say to those athletes where they are on the cheaper platform actually having a consultation with one of the nutrition experts or even your own dietician or nutritionist in conjunction with Fuelin it just makes a huge difference because coaching is coaching. Talking human to human about someone about the intricacies or the difficulties that an athlete is facing and working through those. Like, it might be as simple as like give me a few different breakfast options that I can actually eat and same with dinner and then why are you struggling with eating afterwards. Oh, for such and such a reason. What gels have you actually tried in session fueling and then working through that and it’s problem solving. That’s what coaching is. It’s problem solving and getting a different result as a result of the intervention that you apply. So I think to Jeff’s point, exactly what you’re doing with TriDot, it’s allowing the coach to do the coaching and it is such an important point for I think athletes to understand, but also coaches to understand from the nutrition perspective with Fuelin and then with TriDot as well that it could make life easier and actually allow you to do a far more enjoyable part of your day-to-day job.

Andrew: Yeah, so I’ve for a couple years now tracked my nutrition and what I eat and what I take in during the day with an app called Cronometer which is basically just a food log, right. You just punch in what you eat and it kind of keeps track of what you eat. There’s no recommendations. There’s no plan or anything like that. It’s just kind of a way for you to visualize what’s actually gone in your body for the day. So I am very excited to get my hands on Fuelin and have my TriDot training communicating to Fuelin and to have the two working together. So Scott, just kind of catch our audience up here. What is Fuelin and what does it do exactly for the athlete?

Scott: Yeah, so it’s the world’s first training based nutrition app. Because it syncs directly with TriDot it provides the athlete with a nutrition plan that directly relates to the training being prescribed. In other words, there’s no more theoretical nutrition plans. Okay. All the because of this you might do this. It is truly fuel for the work required. We remove the guess work. So the athlete simply has to train, fuel and recover. We are built on nutritional science, no BS. It’s high protein, variable fat intake and periodized carb intake based on the training intensity and volume that TriDot supplies the athlete with.

Andrew: So what does Fuelin look like for the user? When you download the app, you create an account, you fire up the app, what is there for the athlete?

Scott: Yeah, I think that’s a great question. I think firstly athletes should know it is only iOS at this point in time. There’s no Android, but it will happen, it’s just on the road map.

Andrew: Sure.

Scott: It’s always about priorities.

Andrew: Yeah.

Scott: You know, initially the user is guided through the setup process involving some onboarding and then syncing up to TriDot and syncing TriDot up to Fuelin. Along with allowing Apple Health if they want to use that. You require Apple Health certainly if you want to use a food tracker such as My Fitness Pal, we’ll use it. We have spoken to Cronometer and are looking at that.

Andrew: Yeah, yep.

Scott: Although we are just in beta phase testing with our own AI food tracker which will sit within Fuelin which is super exciting because you just talk to it.

Andrew: Cool.

Scott: I think that’s going to be a game changer for most athletes in terms of– You know tracking macros is one of those things that most athletes hate to do so I think if we can make it a little bit more fun and a little bit easier then I think that will go a long way to improve macros for athletes.

Andrew: Absolutely.

Scott: After they’ve sort of connected it all, the athlete will run their plan and then fairly immediately they will see their entire week as a snapshot and then they can dive into every day to see their specific nutrition plan based on the TriDot training that’s been provided. We do use a carb colored traffic light system to assist the athlete with recognizing two key elements and this is really important for the athletes to understand. So firstly the color of the day indicates the amount of carbs relative to the athletes body weight and so this is in grams per kilogram. So a red day, when they see that it’s lower amounts of carbs. i.e. around less than 1.8 grams per kilo. It’s not low so we’re not talking keto here. Keto would be less than 50 grams. If you think about 1.8 or two grams per kilo body weight. We’re nowhere near that at any time. It’s just considered lower amounts of carbs relative to the other days. You then have yellow which is moderate, moderate amount of carbs, so between 1.8 and 4.4 grams per kilo of body weight and then green which we consider a higher carb day and that’s more than 4.4 grams per kilo body weight. Now I know those numbers probably don’t mean a whole lot to individuals, but certainly they will learn that as they go through the Fuelin program because education on nutritional science is very much a big part of our pillars and our endeavor to educate athletes.

Andrew: Love it. Yeah. That’s great.

Scott: Then the second part of the carb traffic light system is around the individual meals. So when an athlete goes into their day they will see colors associated with the pre-session fueling, the in-session fueling, and post-session fueling. So red is a lower amount of carbs around 30 grams. Yellow is a moderate amount around 50 grams, and green is a higher amount around 100 grams. Athletes tend to get very excited when they see a lot of green on their day because they know they can be eating a lot of carbs.

Andrew: Yeah.

Scott: So effectively with these colors the athlete becomes conditioned to immediately recognize what the amount of carbs is within the day and also across the week. And secondly they’re conditioned to understand what type of meals they are eating based on the color. So what I always say is like think of science 101, think of Pavlov’s dog. It is all about conditioning the athlete to recognize something as simple as three colors and understand then what they require. Now, obviously those colors I’m talking about, grams of carbs, is important, but ultimately it’s them recognizing what those colors mean in terms of foods. So when they see a lot of red they know it’s a lot of vegetables. There’s fruits and vegetables thrown in. That’s the majority of what their plates are going to look like. When they start to see yellow, they layer on top of that so they might consume maybe some more fruits. They might have some higher glycemic type vegetables, so think potatoes, other root vegetables, pulses, beans and then if they see a green day or a green meal they’re obviously thinking, depending on the position relative to a race or high intensity session, they’re thinking they’re probably going to be layering in some bread, some pasta, some rices on top of that to get to that total 100 grams. And that’s really important for the athletes to recognize that we’re not delivering a set menu. We’re not delivering like a meal plan where on a Tuesday night you’re getting told to eat chicken or fish with vegetables or rice. It’s up to the athlete and that creates a sense of empowerment.

Andrew: Yeah.

Scott: Because what they start to do is recognize, “Okay, this is the color. These are the foods I’ve got in my fridge. I can make this work.” Or I’m eating out at a restaurant or a cafe, I look at my app, it’s a yellow meal. Okay, I know that’s roughly 50 grams of carbs. Okay I can have the rice, the quinoa and the salmon and that meets my macros, that meets my meal and there’s no panic because you’re suddenly eating out. It just– What it does is allow Fuelin to fit into your day and I think that’s really important for every athlete. A nutrition plan is only as good as the one that allows the athlete to succeed and it fits their life and I truly believe the system we’ve got in place allows an athlete to thrive because it is adaptable to whatever their lifestyle or their life situation is.

Andrew: Well, I just have to say for one thing, I absolutely adore with all of my heart the color coded system. I color code everything in my life. Jeff, how many color coded documents have you reviewed for me in the past couple years.

Jeff: All of them. Yep.

Andrew: All of them are color coded in some way.

Jeff: They are.

Andrew: But it helps my brain organize. It helps my brain just kind of separate out this is different from this is different from this is different from that. That sounds like that’s what Fuelin is doing for me. This is a lighter day and a heavier day and a more medium day in terms of the carb consumption and yeah. It’s already speaking to me. It’s already jiving with me. I remember the moment I came onto TriDot training. I genuinely when I was trying TriDot on the two month free Preseason Project, I didn’t think I was going to like it because I didn’t think I was going to like waking up, looking at an app, and being told what workout to do that day. I was used to just waking up and oh, do I feel like swimming today? Do I feel like running today? And I instantly adored being told what to do and just not having to think about it, not having to guess, not having to make decisions. So I feel like, I haven’t tried it yet, but I feel like Fuelin kind of pointing me in the right direction of what I need for that next meal. I think I’m going to like that Scott, but we’re going to see once I get my hands on it. That's for sure.

For our athletes listening right now, who would benefit from using Fuelin? Is Fuelin most beneficial for kind of the pointy end, the more competitive end of the athlete spectrum? Is it useful for all of our triathletes and endurance athletes listening today? Is it useful for our friends, our neighbors, our spouses who aren’t endurance athletes, but want to eat healthy? Who is Fuelin for? Who should be using this?

Scott: I think the easy answer is everyone. So everyone who’s into exercise and wants to maximize their nutritional intake for health and performance. That’s what Fuelin is for. I don’t think it’s any different from like TriDot. Anyone who wants to improve their exercise and I don’t think you have to– I think training is always one of those words where sometimes it’s a little bit too full on for some so sometimes we’re thinking “Oh maybe we should call it the exercise nutrition app.” Because I know for my mum, she hears the word training and she’s like, “Oh, that sounds way too hard.”

Andrew: Oh wow.

Scott: Where as if you told her it was exercise or just general movement–

Andrew: That’s too serious.

Scott: Yeah, it’s sort of too serious. So I think in that sense like anyone who is moving or exercising or training I think it’s certainly applicable. I mean we have from professional athletes, Skye Moench, Rachel Zilinskas, Holly Lawrence, a few other male athletes who I can’t mention at this point in time, but you know.

Andrew: Sure.

Scott: You know, they’re on it and it goes right through down to mothers and fathers of those professional athletes to regular age group athletes who are all benefiting from this. Our view is that a healthy athlete is a high performing athlete. So our focus is ensuring that athletes are educated on nutrition and understand why they are eating the way that they are with Fuelin and I think that’s really important as well. Like, what we often get fed back to us is they came in with the view of improving say their 70.3 or their Ironman, but actually in the end they realize that it improved so much more than that and from a day-to-day basis in terms of improving nutritional habits that’s actually had a significant impact on their health and that’s so refreshing to hear on a daily basis from athletes. We do recommend getting blood tests done and things like that for looking at health and performance markers, but you know when an athlete comes back and says “Wow, my lipid profile has completely changed and my doctor was asking me what I did.” You know, they might get a DEXA scan done and suddenly their fat mass index has dropped several points. As a human being they become a healthier human being and the carry over is that they actually perform better at their 70.3 or Ironman or marathon.

Andrew: Yeah.

Scott: I think sometimes that distinction between health and performance is lost as well and so I think what we’re really centering on is, again, coming back to education and getting athletes to understand how the two work together and how training and nutrition is going to serve them in the long run.

Andrew: Jeff, I know we say in your bio every time you’re on the show we talk about how you’ve coached professional triathletes, you’ve coached youth and juniors at a very extremely competitive level, and you’ve coached everything in between. Just from your time as Coach Boo, as Coach Booher, working with athletes what difference did you see in between athletes fueling correctly for the events coming up and athletes kind of not being able to take that as seriously for one reason or another?

Jeff: It was a complete game changer. We always needed a nutritionist to come work with our kids. We were watching what they were eating, educating them. The ones that were really serious about it took that part seriously too. They were watching what they ate. Sometimes their parents were picking them up from school driving them straight from there to practice and they had to eat the right things or they were just going to be dead in practice and I love what Scott was saying about who it’s for. Everybody being intimidated by training because we have that same mentality with training. Using TriDot optimized training they say, “Oh, I only have this amount of time. I don’t have very much time.” We always say well it’s all that much more important that what time you do have is used right.

Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff: Then just about being healthy, being injury free. So you enjoy just recreational, yeah, wouldn’t it be sad if your recreation got taken away because you got an injury, overuse, or not doing the right training right. So I think all of those things are probably even more important in the grand scheme of things than the high performers. Staying healthy, being healthy, What time to exercise that you do have, recovering from it, fueling well. If you have a limited time to train, wouldn't you want to go into every single workout ensuring that you’re going to get the most out of it and you were going to recover after it. So fueling right is the way to do that. So it doesn’t matter if you’re crossing the line first at a major race or a recreational weekend warrior. It’s a fourth discipline. It’s a game changer.

Scott: I just think to your point Andrew as well, I always laugh when athletes are like, well anyone actually I talk to. I talk to friends and they don’t have this notion of a plan and they think, “Oh that’s so complicated.” and what not. But when you’ve got a plan you just wake up or the night before you look at it and go okay, that’s what I’m doing.

Andrew: Yeah. Yeah.

Scott: Again, it’s removing the guesswork and it’s removing that decision paralysis. You just look at it and go, “Okay, well that’s what I’m doing and that’s what I’m eating.” and low and behold because you do it consistently you start to get results. It’s like nutrition and training is no different in that respect. If you do it consistently and you do the right thing consistently, over time you see results. It is actually that simple. So when people, when friends, when athletes, when anyone says “Oh, I don’t really want a plan.” It’s like, why don’t you just try it and see if it works because it may just simplify your life and that is one of the most frequent responses we get from especially time poor individuals where they’re like, “Oh my god, it just simplifies my life.” Because I know what a red meal is. I know what a green meal is. I look at that. I have my regular four choices because we’re all creatures of habit. We all eat very similar meals throughout the week and yes occasionally we go and mix it up. But when you know what your red breakfast is, you've got your two or three choices, you just eat it and you don’t have to think. I think in today’s world, technology should be making life easier, not more complicated and unfortunately so many things are making it more complicated at this point in time and you know, we will get better. I know we’re nowhere near perfect and probably the same for you Jeff. You’ll probably agree it’s like tip of the iceberg of where we are, but the systems that are in place certainly within Fuelin are definitely in the right direction to simplify an athlete’s nutritional intake. I think that’s a huge part of what we’re trying to deliver to the busy, the time poor athlete or the time starved athlete.

Andrew: I was talking in Kona with TriDot coach Joserra from Spain. He’s one of our head coaches in Spain. Wonderful, wonderful guy. He’s been on the podcast a few times now, but Jeff, Joserra had a quote from you. You said this to Jose about TriDot. You said, “TriDot right now is the worst it will ever be.” Because every day it’s getting a little better. Every day the data set is getting bigger. Every day the technology is getting smoother and better and faster and smarter. I’ve worked for the company for over four years. I had never heard you say that before and I just got chills. I was like “Oh my gosh. That’s so true.” But that’s echoing exactly what you’re saying Scott about both companies. As the AI improves, as the tech improves, as the understanding gets better, as the athlete experience grows. Yeah, just onwards and upwards. But by now Scott, I think our athletes get a general sense of what Fuelin can do for them and how it works, what it does. I kind of want to take a step back and hear how you got started in the first place. How did Fuelin come to be?

Scott: Yeah, well it started on Google Sheets to be honest.

Andrew: Love it.

Scott: Anyone who has ever talked about this, I literally was mirroring an athlete training program. So they were on a different platform and I was mirroring that on Google Sheets. It was actually an athlete called Sarah Piampiano who was a female pro athlete…

Andrew: Yeah. Yep.

Scott: …under the guidance of Matt Dixon. I started working with her because she had gut issues and fueling issues. So we started working together and I started developing a system whereby I mapped out every pre-session meal, in-session fueling, and post-session fueling and all the macros across the day and it took me forever to do to be honest. I think it was taking me about two or three hours when I first started to build out her program and that worked really well. I remember in 2019 she podiumed at every race she competed in that year. Unfortunately Kona didn’t go well. She got sea sick in the swim. She was a terrible swimmer and she will absolutely say that so I don’t feel bad saying that. But, yeah, no, Sarah was amazing to work with and she provided me with a lot of feedback as to what we were doing and really helped to devise the system. The color coding system actually wasn’t my own and I don’t ever claim to say it was. It was based on the paper that was written titled, “Fuel for the Work Required” by James Morton from Liverpool University. That was sort of a paper that I really– he was one of my lecturers in my post graduate studies and he was just a super smart guy. I mean, he’s worked with Tour de France and all sorts of other– Liverpool Futbol Club and what not and just a fantastic individual James. I thought his framework for how he had delivered this periodization of carbohydrates which has certainly changed since that initial paper and you know, the ideas of training low, sleep low, and then training fasted. He certainly will be the first to admit those sort of thoughts and processes have changed and it’s gone through that evolution. I think athletes are now catching up to that perhaps fasted training isn’t the thing that everyone thought it was. But you know, I went from Google Sheets and then I was lucky enough to meet Jonathan Lee who is cofounder. We were put in touch by Matt Dixon actually and he was an age group athlete and so we set up a company, created a web app. Initially had athletes and we were testing it and had athletes paying for that which I thought said something when athletes were willing to pay actually $100 a month for a web app. It was pretty unique and so we went from there and then gradually continued to evolve it. We’ve got a fairly small tech team that we managed to create an iOS app and I think we’re just coming up to two years now and onwards and upwards. You know, integrations with yourself with Training Peaks, Today’s Plan, Final Surge and I think just under 1000 monthly users and it’s all heading in the right direction as you said and as Jeff said, I think it’s a long way from– What was the quote? It’s probably as bad as it will ever be. I think that’s probably a good summation of where we’re at as well. Like one thing we’ve never spent any money on and probably a lot of athletes will agree is the UX and the UI. It’s all been by ourselves so I think the first thing we will be doing is completely revamping the user experience to make it look a little prettier, but the focus has always been on the functionality and the algorithm in the background and what it does ensuring that athletes are fueled correctly based on their purpose and what their focus is. For me, like there’s a lot of shiny apps out there that look incredible and you open them up and then you try to actually do something with them and they just don’t do anything and you’re like, “Oh, well it looked good.” but the function was just very poor. I think we pride ourselves on the results we get again from a health and from a performance perspective.

Andrew: I think we could say safely that there’s some shiny looking apps that claim to do what we can do and they certainly cannot do what TriDot does. That’s for sure. We are one of a kind in the training space and I know Jeff will be the first one to say that. But Jeff, I’m curious to hear. You mentioned that at Endurance Exchange in Austin, Texas you were connected with Scott. Some conversation started going and for you with all the different apps and the different things that we do get approached by to potentially work with or integrate, what made Fuelin stand out as oh man, our TriDot athletes would benefit so much from using this for their training as well? What kind of made you really want to focus on this as our next integration?

Jeff: Well, I mentioned quite a bit of it earlier. Just the dedication, the attention to detail of Scott and Jonathan and his team and actually being hands on working with it. Not having a shiny looking thing, app, out there that there’s no substance behind it and so all of these things getting to know them. Back then in learning about them, of course, reaching out to all of our coaches across the world and asking who had heard of them, who had worked with them, and just getting good initial feedbacks. I know Rinny Carfrae had an athlete, Colin Cook had many athletes, so there’s a lot of personal experience and results. Like with our training that’s one of the things we go for. It’s not a philosophy or theory, theoretical. It’s what delivers results and repeatable results. So as Scott just said a second ago, he prides himself on the results that he delivers for athletes. Not how it looks, not these other things, and you need to do those eventually, but having the priority of the algorithm and what’s going on underneath the hood. So what is that and has the hard work been done? The years of research and all to be able to deliver that. So that’s been great just having that comfort I guess and a long-term mutual commitment to excellence and partnering and knowing that there’s so much more that we can do and having him– he’s talking just about the Android, but I know there’s other things on their roadmap of things that they’re excited to do and see and deliver and that healthy hunger, but good enough never is and let’s keep improving together.

Andrew: So I’m curious, Scott, on what this integration looks like for the athlete. You’ve been using these both in tandem together. For a TriDot athlete who also gets a Fuelin account, how will the two talk to each other and work together?

Scott: Yeah, it’s pretty seamless as I said. When the athlete on-boards, they provide access to TriDot so Fuelin will get the app to receive messages from TriDot and so that makes it very easy. If the athlete wants to use Apple Health, as I said, they just need to ensure that that’s connected at the time when they download the app and they get a step-by-step process. Then that allows them to use what you described, the macro food tracker similar to My Fitness Pal, Lose It. I think that distinction again, they are macro trackers. That’s simply what they are. They tell you the grams of protein, fat, and carbs and total calories, but they’re not actually taking into account the amount of training you’re doing or when to eat those meals. So whilst we use a macro tracker within our app, we’re actually a nutritional planning system and that’s the big distinction between what we are. Like people will say “Well, what’s the difference between you and My Fitness Pal?” and it’s like, yeah we can use a macro tracker, but we actually plan out your nutrition as opposed to just tracking it.

Andrew: Yeah, no. No very, very cool. Yeah. I can’t wait to get my own hands on this and myself using these two kind of back and forth. I always love it, Scott, I do want to kind of talk about this because at TriDot we have a very indepth system for kind of taking care of athletes. We have our customer support. We have our ambassadors that help answer questions for newer athletes and all sorts of things to make sure our athletes are educated and having a good experience with the brand. In talking with you guys, Fuelin also goes above and beyond in taking care of the athletes, making sure they’re educated, making sure they understand what they’re seeing in the app and can use it properly. So just talk to us about what Fuelin offers in terms of athlete support and nutrition coaching.

Scott: Yeah as I mentioned I think we’re huge believers in education and support. So the athlete receives a very in depth nutritional support guide when they’re on-boarded to assist with that journey. We have live Q & A on a weekly basis. There’s also in app chat to provide support and there’s a coach supported Facebook group. We do have differing programs within Fuelin for coaching support. So two programs, one called Copilot and One-to-One have unlimited support in the form of chat in Fuelin. They also have the ability to get reports analyzed by the team; reports such as DEXA Scan, bloods, metabolic testing, etcetera. That’s all part of that program. One-to-One also has weekly video calls with a nutrition coach. For Pilot and Autopilot which are the cheaper tiers along the program, they also have the ability to book a consultation. As I said, I think it’s one of those things that I would encourage every Pilot and Autopilot athlete to do at the time of on-boarding because I think it just gives that human element to it which it just pays dividends in the end. The overarching response and what we see in terms of success is those athletes that do have an initial consultation at the start when they start to use the program, their outcomes are always better. So, that’s where I think the support can come in and again, like some people will talk about cost of programs and things like that and I think for a consultation of $100 with some of the coaches, plus a $39 monthly fee for $139 you get a daily truly personal nutrition program based around the work you’re doing, i.e. the training that TriDot’s getting, and a human-to-human 30 minute consultation. You go and see a dietitian or nutritionist in person and it’s probably going to cost you upwards of $180, anywhere from $180 to $350 and you’ll end up with just a static PDF and some theoretical guidance. So I think when you actually step back and you look at the value for money it is quite exceptional.

Andrew: An attribute of TriDot and Fuelin we haven’t talked about yet is both are adaptive. TriDot training is adaptive in terms of what your workout sessions are. Fuelin is adaptive in terms of what you’re being given because what you’re being given is based off of your workout session. So Scott, when we say Fuelin is adaptive and it’s going to change based on what your training is telling you to do, how adaptive is it? Is it flexing day to day? Is it seeing, oh you missed this workout, you skipped that workout? Is it going week to week? What can an athlete expect in terms of how much it actually changes based on what you’re doing?

Scott: Yeah, that’s a really good question actually. So obviously we base it on the work that is planned out based on the TriDot program the week before. If the athlete and currently if the athlete wants to rerun the plan on a daily basis they can just simply hit the button “Rerun My Plan” and then that will update in real time. One thing we are working on with Garmin and then the integration back to TriDot is that in real time, every hour, it will actually update based on the training that the individual is doing. Now, saying that even with– and again it’s something the athlete should understand and I think I saw this with TriDot as well is that sometimes missing a training session isn’t going to suddenly radically change everything. Like, okay, you missed a 60 minute run. It’s not like we’re suddenly going to drop you 500 calories or something like that because it’s the entire week that we’re accounting for. So I think that’s really important again that athletes understand that whilst you may not change– you may not hit all your sessions throughout the day or throughout the week, it probably won’t have that big of impact on the overarching nutrition plan for the week because it’s big picture. Look at what’s happening over seven days rather than in that exact moment and if you fall out of the plan for the seven days, you’ll still get the result. Now you can update it in real time much like how TriDot automatically goes through, but I think in the overarching scheme of things your nutrition will probably only change very slightly based on that change in your training that actually happens.

Andrew: Jeff Booher, while we have you on the podcast and while we’re talking about the dynamic nature of TriDot training, this honestly this is a question I see every so often in the Facebook group is people wondering how much does a missed session affect tomorrow? How much does things– is it more day to day? Is it more week to week? Can you just talk to us about kind of the same question for TriDot? I mean, how much does what you do day to day affect what you’re doing tomorrow?

Jeff: Like Scott said it depends on what was missed and it’s not just one session. It’s like a school, I equate it to. You’re learning something, you don’t do good on a quiz. They’re not going to fail you, send you back. You know, nothing radically changes. You get a little remediation and then you move on and in training you don’t make it up sometimes. If you missed an intense session you might have a little bit more intensity later in the week. So those three intervals increase by two minutes a piece. It’s not a big, major thing. It’s the cumulative effect. But if you start missing multiple workouts, two, three, four, five a week, you’re going to see some more dramatic changes in there. Ours goes through– I don’t like the word adaptive. I almost cringe when I hear it. Because there’s things out there that it’s more of a template and it’s just like you run one mile this week, a mile and a half next week and you know, it’s very basic, very rudimentary. One of our phase generations when that happens there’s more than 11,000 simultaneous calculations happening every time and it’s not radically changing every time, but there’s so many different things that are being optimized to account for that athlete to have the very best training that they can. So I guess it really depends on what was missed and how long it was missed, multiple things. Was it a quality session or was it an easy zone 2 ride?

Scott: And it’s funny you say– I remember, Jeff, we were talking about this in Nice as well because we were talking about calculations and things and I remember it. I was like, you know, at any one time on the day there’s about 100 calculations going. It probably gives you an indication of how little has to change in nutrition because you are like, “oh wow, we have like 1700 calculations.” and I was like, “okay, you just trumped me.” Also on that point, I think something that we often get and this is something we’re working on to display to athletes to understand the nutrition plan a little bit more and continue that education process. But say for instance on a Friday they’ve got a swim. Now they may miss that swim and they’re like, “Oh, my whole nutrition plan has got to change,” but they’re not thinking about what’s happening tomorrow. So on the Saturday they’ve got their big brick session. They’ve got their 4-½, 5 hour brick session and they’re wondering why their Friday is green and again, going back to the green higher carb, why am I eating a higher carb day on a day where I’ve got a 30 minute swim or actually I even missed my swim and I’ve rerun my plan. It’s not changing. Why are my carbs not going down?” Well, it’s because of tomorrow and because we want you to be fueled appropriately for tomorrow so that when you go and do your 4-½ hour session that TriDot’s giving you at zone 3, you smash it out of the park and you feel fantastic. If you’re not aware of that and you suddenly do a low carb day on the Friday because you’re not training, low and behold Saturday sucks, Sunday hurts like hell, you come into Monday, you don’t want to train. That’s what we hear all the time. I feel very strongly about this and I do get pretty passionate about it. It’s like, don’t– just look at what’s happening in your week to week. Don’t focus on the immediate now. Again, we’re all told to focus on the immediate and be in the present and all that, but sometimes you actually do have to look into the future to actually see what’s going to be required at that moment in time.

Andrew: Well I am very excited to try this out. I’m very excited to hear our TriDot athletes get their hands on Fuelin and report back how they’re feeling in their sessions. At the end of the day we want our TriDot athletes to enjoy their sessions, get the most out of their sessions and we believe wholeheartedly that being fueled for them will do that. So Scott, for our athletes listening who want to get rolling with Fuelin, how do they get going? And probably more importantly, what usability tips should we know to get the most out of this integration?

Scott: Yeah, so we’ll share a link with a specific landing page for TriDot athletes to go through.

Andrew: Well put that in the description. Yep.

Scott: Yeah. TRIDOT20 just as a code we’ll give them 20% off the first month. We just did a Kona special. We only ran it for 48 hours, but I’m pretty sure we could probably reopen that up which was a fairly significant percentage off. I think it was around 70% off for the Autopilot program for the year which we’d be happy to– because of the partnership I think we can roll that out again for a period of time. So that’s in terms of links and all that, we’ll share those in the post notes and that’s probably the easiest and I think as much as anything it’s going to be– You know, what we talked about doing is some live Q & A’s with the TriDot athletes. Continuing to, again, educate them on nutritional science and how to actually maximize that whether they’re on the program or not. Our thing is we just want athletes to understand nutrition and do it better. Now hopefully they do get on Fuelin and they see the benefits of that, but at the very least we just are going to be there to support every TriDot athlete along that way. I think in terms of key points for TriDot users and this is something very important for them to understand is there are three key metrics that we use from the TriDot sessions that are really important for the athlete to understand. Now we use session duration, that’s obviously covered by TriDot. Session intensity, that’s also covered by TriDot. The session start time is very important. So if you only have one session per day and your training is in the morning before 7 o’clock in the morning, which is the majority of athletes, we default to this so nothing would have to be done. However, if the athlete has multiple sessions of training or trains later in the day or the evening, then you need to go through your weeks’ plan and update the start times within TriDot. This ensures we deliver the plan that is specific to your training week. If you don’t do this, it will impact when we give you meals and snacks and what those snacks and meals look like from a macronutrient standpoint. I know the TriDot team has worked on the ability to update and made it easier within the platform. Usually what I would recommend is actually doing it on the desktop version. I find that for every platform just doing it on the desktop version on a Saturday or a Sunday before the next week, go through, update the times that you’re going to be doing your sessions. Once that’s done you just hit “Run My Plan” in Fuelin and as they say Bob’s your uncle will deliver the plan to you.

Jeff: We have one relatively new feature where athletes can set their preferred time of day for all of their sessions throughout the week. So if they kind of have a schedule– at noon I do this, in the afternoon I do this, in the morning I do that– they can set those for the whole week and it kind of stays static and then they just change the ones that move on a daily or week to week basis.

Scott: Yeah, I think that’s great and not talking about future features, but there was a discussion we were chatting about where an athlete might be able to choose– because again, we’re all creatures of habit– You know, on a Monday this is the time I train, Tuesday this is the time I train, and back to nutrition, it’s always easier once the plan is set, it’s easier to move one session than move every session every day. Once you’ve got that base plan in front of you, you look at your week and you go “Okay that’s my training plan. What does my nutrition plan look like? Oh okay. So I’ve got a fair few green days in the week. What does my fridge look like? Oh, wow. I actually need to go out. I need to buy some more rice. I need to buy some more bread maybe some pasta. Gee, I don’t have enough fruit in the fruit bowl. I don’t have any sweet potatoes or potatoes. Okay, I’ve got to go and get those. What does my protein look like? I’ve got no fish. I’ve got no chicken. I’ve got no tofu. I need to then–” If you do that on a Saturday or a Sunday before the coming week, it means you can organize yourself at Whole Foods or whichever shopping supermarket you shop at and go through and actually have everything available for you so your environment is set up to succeed. If you don’t have the food in your fridge or your pantry, you are not going to succeed. We can write the best bloody plan, nutrition plan for you, but if you don’t have the food to eat, you cannot execute it. And that again, practical coaching standpoint. It’s all about the practicalities of nutrition. You don’t eat macros. You eat food. Set yourself up with an environment that will allow you to succeed.

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

Vanessa Ronksley: Guess what time it is everyone? That’s right. It’s Coach Cooldown Tip time and I’m Vanessa, your average triathlete with elite level enthusiasm. Our featured TriDot coach today is Donnye Winship. I first met him in Utah at the TriDot ambassador camp and we were actually neighbors at our accommodation. Let me tell you what an amazing person he is. You know the calm, cool, collected type who has a heart of gold? And he also has the soulful nature where helping everyone he meets is a massive part of his mission. Donnye is a financial planner and he also founded Bright Owl which is a product for home emergency lighting or even those times when it’s 4:00 a.m. You know that time when you’re trying to get your training under way without turning on all the lights and waking up all your family members? Well, this product would be very helpful for you. So Donnye has a long history of swim coaching including a USS Swim Team Beginners, Masters, even Junior Nationals. He has been an athlete with TriDot for over four years and a TriDot coach for the last year. He specializes in long course athletes and emphasizes swimming and the mental side of training and racing. He is extremely passionate about his athlete’s successes and is quick to point out positives in absolutely every situation. So I would love to welcome Donnye to the cool down.

Donnye Winship: Thanks Vanessa. Glad to be here. Looking forward to talking to you. Hello my fellow TriDotters.

Vanessa: Yeah, that’s right. Now I have recently seen a Facebook post about this little creature that you take pictures of and the creature’s name is Graditoad. So I would like to know more behind how this all started.

Donnye: Gratitoad is a little, rubber, green frog that we got at church. Our pastor passed it out as a reminder that we should always be grateful for everything we do or have in life. Kids loved it. One trip we went to Washington, D.C. we decided to bring it with us and kids loved it so much that we just turned it into a family tradition. So it goes on every trip that we go on and we try to take pictures of Gratitoad. We try to take pictures with Gratitoad as though he’s a family member and then on my first triathlon I decided to take it on the race. So he’s been on every race with me as well.

Vanessa: Aww. That is so special. I love practicing gratitude with my own family and my kids call it gratefuls. We talk about our gratefuls all the time. So what a wonderful thing that you have instilled in your children and all of us as well. Thank you so much for sharing. Now, this is all part and parcel to your coach tip for the day about the mental aspect of training and racing and I know a couple of your athletes and they say that this is definitely one of your strengths. So what do you share with your athletes about the importance of training the mind and not just the body?

Donnye: When we first started– I say we. When I was a swim coach, my boss and I started messing with the mental side of sports because we found that every athlete works their butt off in training and they become phenomenally fit and just great athletes. Then they’ll go into a race and bomb it. So we started exploring the whole mental side. For instance we had a 400 IM swimmer. Fantastic taper, she gets off the block and after the 100 butterfly she was almost a 25 in front of everybody. Just undoubtedly fast and was just going to crush the entire race. Then all of a sudden she stopped and everybody caught up to her. After she got out of the water we were talking to her and she told us she just freaked out because she didn’t see anybody. She thought she did something wrong. Mentally she was not prepared for the race and since that point even in triathlons I would talk to people and I would find so many limiting factors in their belief system that stops them from being the best that they can be. So I listen closely to what athletes are telling me as they’re talking so I can pick up on their mental cues and then I start probing and pressing to find out where they are mentally. I think every athlete should work on the mental game. It could be as simple as closing your eyes and getting a birds eye view of yourself succeeding. Just convincing yourself that you can succeed. For some people it’s a little bit more difficult. We will probe what their limiting factors are and then we’ll find positive elements and we’ll start interrupting those negative patterns. Usually your thought process is cyclical. Think of it like a record. It just spins in a circle and it’s going to play the same thing over and over and over just the way it was written. So if we have a negative belief written and it’s just playing over and over, we’re always going to stop or limit ourself. But if you scratch that record it stops. So we’ll find what our limiting factor is, what’s holding us back, and then we will start interrupting that with positive thoughts.

Vanessa: Great. I had a question about how you get your athletes to first of all recognize this pattern of thought that they have and I find that the first step to changing a pattern is to recognize that you’re doing it in the first place and a lot of times people don’t even recognize that they have this negative thought pattern. So do you have any suggestions on how to first of all recognize that something is not happening as well as it should in the mind?

Donnye: Ask yourself why. I guess if you were trying to figure it out by yourself you would start by just asking yourself the question why. The tricky part is recognizing that it happened in the first place and when you do you just have to keep asking why. Well why did I do this? Then you’ll come up with an answer. I mean, the human mind is developed to answer questions. We’re always going to answer questions. If you ask yourself “Why am I such a loser?” I guarantee you, you’re going to find an answer. But if you ask yourself “What am I going to do to become successful?” You’re going to search for an answer and you’re going to start pursuing that. So you’ve got to start asking yourself the right questions and you start with simply why. So learning how to recognize it can be challenging, but you have just to simply start with the question why and then when you can recognize it and you start seeing your limiting beliefs or your negative beliefs, once you catch them you’ve got to be prepared to interrupt it with some positive beliefs.

Vanessa: That’s a really valuable aspect of training and I think as you said a lot of people put so much emphasis on training the body and our mind is way more powerful than we give it credit.

Donnye: Absolutely. In any sport it’s 80/20. It’s always 20% physical, 80% mental and the mental part always starts with the self belief that you can do it and I’ll give you a simple example of how we start with many, many athletes because when you start probing, when I start talking to people and you start probing, if you take it too far it gets really emotional and we don’t want to take it that far, but you can simply just start by reflecting back to that one sports event, that one triathlon where you just felt unstoppable. That when you finished it was such an overwhelming positive feeling that when you think of it now you just get goosebumps all over. Then start tying that emotion and that thought to red buoys on the swim, timing mats on the run, turn arounds on the run, turn arounds on the bike. Start forcing yourself to think about that moment in various different parts of the race so that when you run over that timing mat, boom. You’re thinking those positive thoughts again. You’re on that turn around, boom. You’re thinking those positive thoughts again so that you can keep mentally staying strong.

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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