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Joe Staunton on Anthropocentric Coaching
711 Plays19 days ago
This week, we welcome Joe Staunton, owner of Ceyrest Performance, a coaching and sport consulting company. Joe, with a background in archaeology and anthropology, offers a unique perspective on endurance sports, decision-making, and the evolving role of coaching. The conversation covers how evolutionary traits influence modern choices, the impact of information overload, and the practical application of data and AI in athletic training.
- Evolutionary Context of Decision-Making: Human biology has remained largely unchanged for tens of thousands of years, while society has rapidly evolved. Our capacity for shared knowledge and cooperation is a key evolutionary advantage.
- Mismatch Theory and Modern Challenges: We face issues because we live in environments unfamiliar to our evolutionary adaptations, such as constant information consumption and altered living patterns, impacting well-being and decision-making.
- Simplicity in Training & Nutrition: A core principle for both training and nutrition is simplicity. Focusing on fundamental elements, such as uncomplicate workouts and correct, periodized fueling is often more impactful than complex strategies.
- AI's Role in Coaching: AI is transforming coaching by automating data analysis, allowing coaches to prioritize the human element of their work—building relationships, providing guidance, and fostering intrinsic motivation.
To learn more, follow Joe on Instagram.
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Transcript
Introduction of Hosts and Guest
00:00:08
Speaker
Hi everyone, I'm Andrew. And I'm Michael. And you're listening to the Endurance Innovation Podcast.
00:00:28
Speaker
everyone, and welcome back to Endurance Innovation. Joining me today is ah Joe Staunton. And Joe reached out to me ah through Instagram and said that he enjoyed listening the show. So thank you very much for that, Joe.
00:00:39
Speaker
And suggested that he might so have some interesting perspectives to lend to the ah the conversations that that we have
Joe Staunton's Background and Company
00:00:48
Speaker
on the show. And the the thing that kind of, you know,
00:00:53
Speaker
interested me the most, I would say, is is Joe's background, and that is in archaeology and anthropology. And um as we as we got to talking, and Joe was telling me about how he looks at the world of endurance sport through that specific lens. And ah ah Joe is an owner of ah Say Rest Performance, a coaching and sport consulting ah company.
00:01:19
Speaker
and um definitely leverages some of that archaeology and anthropology training to think about his work with his folks. um He was also a ah ah leading innovation projects at Sport England, as well as himself being quite an accomplished athlete at a whole variety of of sports. so Joe, with that, thank you very much for taking the
Work-Life Balance and Anthropology in Sports
00:01:44
Speaker
time today. I know you've got some ah small humans relying on you and it's a little bit late to where you are.
00:01:48
Speaker
I appreciate you making that time for us and welcome to Endurance Innovation. No, thanks so much for having me. it's As you said, got a little one, so i'm i'm I'm used to all hours of the day at the moment. Yeah, so you'rere the flexible schedule is a bus I suppose. Yeah, I'm nocturnal, diurnal, I've got the whole the whole lot. And you've got to be able to function in all those hours. That's the critical part.
00:02:10
Speaker
Yeah, I can't say I'm particularly good at two o'clock in the morning with ah with a toddler, but I try my best. Awesome. Well, yeah, like I said, thanks again. um And as i was saying in the introduction, um you sent me a few topics that you're comfortable speaking to. And definitely some of these are what we're going to dive into today.
00:02:30
Speaker
um And as I was mentioning earlier, the the interest for me in... a lot in and this is a very big topic, but how do we make the decisions that we make? So I work for my nine to five, ah folks is for a very large ah organization here in Canada. um And sometimes the decisions that people make don't make a heap of sense to me. um So I'm always very curious about how those decisions are made. So having that anthropological lens, I think is ah is an interesting conversation. And of course, here, well we're going to we're going to narrow that focus down to how that works in um in the context of endurance sport.
00:03:13
Speaker
Yeah, big, big one. Okay. Well, I suppose, where can I start on
Sporting Background and Human Evolution
00:03:18
Speaker
that? um Humans are a quite a unique species. And I suppose that's where my my background and my interest started. i So unlike maybe some people listening to this podcast or other coaches, my background is not in sport. I played team sports when I was at school, but ah cycling was something that actually is my main endurance sport. I did a bit triathlon before I kind of focused on cycling, but I only got into that in my early twenties. My my passion for since i was pretty young to be honest like 14 15 was always about humans and about where we've come from why we do what we do why we appear to be special um i suppose in in terms of how we compare ourselves to other animal species and and so my yeah my first academic my undergrad degree was in archaeology anthropology which is is effectively the study of human development so
00:04:06
Speaker
looking at human remains, but also looking at human societies and cultures and genetics to understand where we are, like why we, why we've kind of come to be how we are today and, um, where we might be going as well, I suppose, and how we make some of those decisions.
00:04:22
Speaker
Yeah. And I think the the super interesting thing that I always land on when I think about, you know, sort of the evolution of humans as a species is that we're pretty young species compared to some of the other ones. And and um we've we've developed, you maybe a hundred thousand over the last years or so,
00:04:41
Speaker
the pace of the pace of change of our society is far outstripping the pace of our, and correct me if I'm wrong, our natural ability to evolve. but The changes in our biology are much slower than the changes in our society.
00:04:57
Speaker
Yeah, so effectively we have, I mean, humans, like Homo saen sapiens sapiens, the species that we are now, we haven't really changed in the last 20,000 to 50,000 years genetically. You could... You could ah freeze um a Neolithic man from 10,000, 15,000 years ago. You could resurrect them in today's society as ah as a baby and grow and rear them and they would be they'd be invisible. they'd They'd look sound kind of.
00:05:22
Speaker
They'd be able to adapt to our society, use... training peaks, whatever tools, they're able to do exactly what we do now. Right. There's nothing dramatically that's changed in that period of time. Um, and you nail like the big, I suppose part of the big topic we'll probably have now is, is that societal factor. So that is really the big driving force, which has enabled humans to become this species that we are today, where you're sitting in Canada. I'm sitting on the Isle of Wight in the South of England, communicating via a video call. yup Um, and it's, it's collective, uh, knowledge sharing and storing, which is what humans do unbelievably well.
00:05:57
Speaker
So we are, um, at first a, a social species. So we've evolved, um, very specifically to enable that to happen. um everything from us walking on two feet, our bipedalism um and the way that
Mismatch Theory and Goal-Setting
00:06:13
Speaker
babies are born um is is all designed to enable us to be a social species, which creates something called culture, which is effectively its its own living thing.
00:06:23
Speaker
um And that transcends generations. It stores information, it stores knowledge, it enables you know rapid development over time and enables us as a species to work very, very well together as well.
00:06:35
Speaker
Yeah. And that's our that's our major evolutionary advantage at this point is that that ability to cooperate and into to, as you as you were saying, share knowledge and accumulate it and and build upon it, I guess. Right. Like that's how we we can we can learn from past generations and not, you know, relearn and repeat the same things that we did before.
00:06:52
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And there are a lot of interesting, um, you know, things that have enabled us to be able to do that. So, as I said, when ah babies are born incredibly premature human babies compared to other the mammalian species are born very, very premature. And this is to allow,
00:07:08
Speaker
um because we're bipedal, which is also very beneficial for us as species. We're nomadic, we we travel, we move, we're we're incredible generalists, really. From a physiological perspective, we can do, we can kind of do a bit of everything, right? Like we speak about it in endurance terms. We are, we can, you know, we can, we can jump, we can sprint. Born to run, just you know, kind of famously, right?
00:07:30
Speaker
Yeah, we're born to run, but we, I mean, that's our, our kind of our main modality, but we can kind of do everything. You know, you compare us to other, we can swim pretty well. Um, we're not, we're not dolphin, but we can do pretty, pretty good in the water. we but we can ride bikes way better than dolphins can though. we can We can ride bikes. um we can We can jump. We can sprint. We can lift heavy weights. We can move stuff. So we're an incredibly general species and we can we can train that quite well. um And yeah, things like our bipedalism is is because um as well being able to be born, our brain size, which enables that socialization. That's the effectively the...
00:08:07
Speaker
The thing which differentiates us is that prefrontal cortex, the front part of our brain, which are labels that high socialization, communication, language, um logical thinking side of things.
00:08:18
Speaker
um The brain is very big in comparison to the size of the body. We need to be able to get out you know when we're when we're babies before the brain gets too big and we literally can't be born anymore. Yeah, we won't fit through the birth canal. yeah So um in your ah in your email to me, you meant you mentioned something called the mismatch theory. So this is something i admittedly I don't know a heck of a lot about. Can you talk about it a little bit? Yeah, so effectively the mismatch theory means that We are, we are adapted and evolved to, to live in a place that we currently don't live.
00:08:50
Speaker
So we are, you know, as you said, society's moved on so fast. um we now do things that are completely unfamiliar to what we've kind of evolutionary evolved to be present in.
00:09:00
Speaker
So, Um, we have, we live in different ways. We spread ourselves around the world a lot more than we do. We spread our communities about, we have things like social media, um, we've changed our food patterns.
00:09:14
Speaker
um we've changed our sleep patterns. We've changed the way that we interact with daylight, um and in things like information, right? We're, you know, now we consume,
00:09:26
Speaker
we can consume more information in a single day via scrolling through social media than Victorian person would have consumed in a year. yeah It's phenomenal, like the amounts. And our brains, you know, this theory called the mismatch theory basically saying it's why we have a lot of the...
00:09:41
Speaker
um a lot of you know issues in modern society is as a consequence of this, that we are, you know, it's fantastic stuff, but we're, our brains are trying to keep up with it. um And we're not quite designed to be able to do it.
00:09:52
Speaker
Right, right. um Okay, great summary. So how does that, if we're to, you know, zoom in a little bit on the specific context of endurance sport, How does that um you know elucidate what is happening in in sports? Maybe even like the last 100 years, the last 10 years, last year.
00:10:12
Speaker
Choose whatever time horizon you prefer. Well, I think I could probably go back to your initial questions on how we make decisions. Yes. um So i think when I'm, if I'm starting with ah with a client, a new athlete ah process, I go through, which I'm sure lot of other ah coaches go through is goal setting exercise. It's understanding what client what clients want to do, what they want to achieve and and why they want to do it.
00:10:35
Speaker
Um, and a question I will often ask to them when they've given me what they want to do is I'll ask them why, why, why do you want to do that? Um, and as maybe a lot of coaches will resonate with, you'll often be faced with a blank, blank stare coming back you. Um, people aren't quite sure. Um, and I think this, this is one of the the problems that we have at the moment is, uh, things like social media, uh,
00:11:03
Speaker
are confusing our decision-making processes because we are, we're, we're, we're evolved to live in small communities of people, small social groupings. um There's something called Dunbar's number, which is effectively the maximum group size that humans are kind of adapted to live in, which like 150 people.
00:11:20
Speaker
But now we go on Instagram, we go on Facebook. We have hundreds, if not thousands of friends or people that we follow that we are kind of influenced by yes in in in some small way and um we can feel that we have connection to those people um but we we don't really have connection to them and we're kind of influenced by them in a way as well yeah and and it makes us make decisions which potentially aren't actually in keeping with what we is is our values or what we actually want to do interesting so i see this a lot with with athletes and it's again it's one of those those topics i think is
00:11:52
Speaker
Um, an interesting one at the moment is it's only blowing up this, this kind of thing. It's getting bigger and bigger and bigger. The more people get exposed and get hit from every different angle that people end up choosing stuff or doing things, um, for someone else's reason, um, rather than their own.
00:12:06
Speaker
and Does that have anything to do with the fact that maybe, ah you know, if you're group size of 150 people, that there's a little bit more sort of bi-directional influence? Like you influence me and I influence you versus, you know, what you were describing. and you know, in influencer culture, if we're going to keep using that word, you have people that influence one way only. They're more like a broadcast antenna rather than, ah you know, like a two-way telephone.
Impact of Social Media on Athletes
00:12:28
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. yeah you If you're in that small group or, you know, if you're in a club, like a club setting or a team setting, you're probably surrounded very closely by people that are, you're influencing them. They're influencing you. You're actually having some meaningful connection with them. You're talking to them. You're understanding why they're doing it. They're understanding why you're doing it. You're having two, you know, two-way conversation and and and thoughts on it.
00:12:49
Speaker
Whereas um something like social media, you're absorbing in a day, potentially, know, a thousand other people's ah suggestions as to what you should be doing. And it creates ah it creates a huge amount of anxiety, a like decision kind of fatigue.
00:13:03
Speaker
And I think maybe it's obvious to me some of the some of our listeners, but just spell it out for us. What are the, it sounds like, well, let's let's go both ways. Let's go positive and negative consequences of of having it this way. and What to say, of of being influenced by... yes of of of having this like you know deluge potentially of one-way information flow.
00:13:25
Speaker
ah Well, the negatives are that you become quite extrinsically motivated. So you you try to meet the expectations of what you feel should be getting done. So you will see people doing particular stuff and then you live your life trying to hold up their whatever is that they're demonstrating.
00:13:44
Speaker
But the interesting thing is that... that ah for something like social media and Instagram, that obviously the platforms are designed to grow. So people will put stuff on there, which is designed to get clicks. Like we were discussing before our call and about the topic that we were discussing this, if we were going on a topic that might get more, more clicks, we talk about nutrition. Yes.
00:14:03
Speaker
Which listeners, we will, we will talk about nutrition. I promise it may be a separate episode depending on how much we, how many rabbit holes we dive down in this one. But yeah, I think, um yeah, but but let's put a pin in that one for now.
00:14:15
Speaker
Yeah. So if we would say this, but as the example kind of stands, if we were, if we were doing it for nutrition, we'd get, we'd get clicks and people people are, people doing the same thing. So they might be putting something out there, which actually is designed to get attention rather than is what they want to do. But then someone's seeing that thinking, oh, that's cool. That, that person's cool. Like I now want to do that because it's, they, they think it's cool. And then people will think maybe that's, that's what I need to do to fit in or whatever.
00:14:39
Speaker
Um, so you end up doing something which someone else is showing you, but actually maybe isn't actually what they want to do either. So you're in this bizarre, they're in this bizarre situation. And even if they are showing you what they want to do, I mean, the folks, a lot lot of the folks who are, you know, the social media famous, the standards that they set sometimes are totally unrealistic for regular people or even like, nevermind social media famous, like, um let's take professional triathletes, right? There's this constant feed from pro triathletes. And I totally get why they do it and I love them for it, but of the workouts they do or like the hours of training that they put in. And I know I've spoken to many, many people who tried those workouts. Like, folks, that's appropriate for that individual. That yeah may not really map onto what you're trying to accomplish with your, you know, let's eight hours or nine hours of training volume a week.
00:15:30
Speaker
Yeah. And I think, I think the the skill there is to, you know, so ah ah so much good is on there. So much inspiration, so much motivation, so much good knowledge out there. Um, the, the trick is trying to understand then when you, when you do decide to do something, why it is that you're doing it?
00:15:46
Speaker
And is it actually working for you, uh, with your specific context and your, you know, constraints that you have around your life and what's actually going to be meaningful to you? Yeah. Um, the, the issue is when we, we make those decisions, which, you know, which aren't fitting those, those things. It's when training goes to pot, we try to copy other people. That's when, um, we, we end up feeling like we've failed a waste of time because we're choosing something which we actually don't really, you know, maybe care about for us.
00:16:12
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that there's a couple of couple of thoughts here. It's very easy to fall victim to it And I think I'm definitely guilty of it myself. I have probably a better than average understanding of what I should be doing as a, you know, I kind of recreationally trained still.
00:16:23
Speaker
But I make those dumb mistakes all the time because I read something or I see something that's like, oh, I want to try that. And so, yeah you know, 30 seconds after poo-pooing that philosophy, I'm admitting to the fact that I do it all the time myself.
00:16:36
Speaker
It's so, and it's so distracting. I'm the same. If you go on, you go on maybe just cause you've got a few minutes and before you know it, you're, you're wanting to try tart cherry juice. You wanted to try low torque training. You wanted to try hypoxic tents. You want to try, you want to, and then all of a sudden, you know, even as a coach, I get, I get that. And then I think a lot of, I get a lot of people coming to me saying, it's just, there's just too much. Like make things, make it simple. Just tell me, tell me what it is that I need, I need to do.
00:17:04
Speaker
without the distraction. And I think the distraction is one of the biggest things. It it derails a lot of people's training. it it derails a lot of motivation. It derails yeah a lot a lot of stuff basically. So then ah putting your coach hat on, especially your you know anthropologist stroke hook coach hat on, um if you're giving somebody advice of, let's say, a self-coached athlete who is has the ability to sift through what's useful and what's not useful, how do you how do you guide them on making good decisions?
00:17:33
Speaker
Coming back to that decision-making thing, how do you guide them on making good decisions in this sea of information, positive and negative, and
Simplicity in Training Strategies
00:17:40
Speaker
everything in between? Yeah, well, I think if we, from a goal perspective, if it's choosing what you actually want to be like working towards or training towards, um, it's the like a simple exercise I use with people that anybody you can do is like, would I still want to do this? If it was in a vacuum, if nobody anybody else knew that I'd done this or can see that I'd done it, is this still something that I would, I would want to do?
00:18:01
Speaker
um If you sit back and go, oh, no, actually, maybe I'm doing this because i want to impress that person or or do this, or that's probably, you know, maybe there's a little bit of that that you can use within your goal. But if it's, you know, a strong weighting towards, know,
00:18:17
Speaker
pleasing other people um it's not really your goal it's someone ah it's someone else's so that's question i use my athletes and i think people can do and it's so simple but so effective just to because we put so much time and training effort financial resource like energy into our training so i'm really really passionate as you you know from especially from the people perspective that People are doing things for the right reason, because I really believe that that actually enhances performance. It's one of the biggest performance enhancers, right? If you're doing it for the right reason, you're fully behind it. You know why it matters to you. For sure. It's so much more likely that you'll do all the good stuff that we know from training works. You'll be consistent.
00:18:53
Speaker
You'll turn up. You can, you could be there when it gets tough. ah You'll enjoy the process more. You'll get, you'll get the performance you require at the end. Yeah, you're speaking my language. I mean, I still am a big big fan of, I think it was Samueli Marcora's psychobiological model of of you stop when the perception of effort exceeds your desire to continue. So if to you know to to your point, if your why is really strong, your desire to continue is going to be high.
00:19:19
Speaker
So your your ability to do the hard work and to do it when you don't want to do it potentially is is going to be that much yeah not much improved. Yeah, I completely completely agree.
00:19:29
Speaker
Okay, so so that was on the goal setting, but let's stay let's stay with the topic and let's talk about a little bit about, um let's say you want to you're you're building a plan or you're trying to decide how you want to structure your training.
00:19:41
Speaker
And you know you can pick you can go down to the to the level of a specific workout or you can go stay at like season level or maybe more mezzo level, whatever you prefer. How do you wade through the noise and how do you decide what's going to work for me?
00:19:56
Speaker
Uh, well from a, if I put my coach's hat on and I'm thinking like where, so if we're doing the anthropological lens here, um, I like to simplify things a lot. great So for me, humans perform well when things are super simple.
00:20:08
Speaker
Um, we've spoken a lot about distraction. So I think if you're, if your work, if you're, if your training plan has more than like 10 workouts, different variations of workout in it, then it's probably, you've probably got too much. yeah If you're trying to do everything under the sun, it's, it's too much. So,
00:20:25
Speaker
Because humans, are you know, we we we we like simplicity. We like things being made simple for us. So we reduce, you know, every every opportunity we can to reduce decision fatigue or reduce the amount of decisions that we make is the right is the right place is the right place to be.
00:20:40
Speaker
um And it's the same across the board. I think the the danger, if we go back to the social media thing, is thinking that the minutia is the important stuff. um So I get that from a nutritional perspective as well. People coming to me asking, and it's always about supplements.
00:20:54
Speaker
People are always like, what supplement should I take here? What supplement works? And I'm like, do you know if you're eating enough? yeah yeah And almost always the answer is like, probably not at the right at the right time. So the foundational stuff, I know it's it's probably a message that people have heard all the time, but it's more so I believe important in this day and age is to double is to double down on the absolute basics and the simple stuff.
00:21:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's not sexy at all, is it? But it's... No, it's not sexy. it's It's what makes it... Yeah, it's what makes it count. That resonates with me too, Joe, because when I think about, especially if I'm doing a hard workout, this just a personal experience. And if the workout is complicated, I'm lost. Unless there's, you know, like my garments exactly telling me what the next step is or, you know, Zwift or whatever it is. But if I...
00:21:41
Speaker
If I have to try to remember anything that's complicated when I'm you know working at close to 100%, there's not a chance in hell that I'm going to be able to so execute it. And then there's all these, all these ah you know I'm sure you've seen the work where um the the researchers were trying to train mental toughness. So they would give their their participants um like math problems or that, was it the Stroop test, when you have to like poke the color when when the color is the wrong where the word is the wrong color.
00:22:08
Speaker
And so they're like, they're um cognitively demanding activities while you're training in order to train, you know, mental toughness. But if all you want is physiological, maximal physiological stress, and you want to keep the, maybe the the cognitive stuff, cognitive load at a minimum. So that makes perfect sense to me.
00:22:28
Speaker
Yeah. And, and, and again, like if I, if I, if I bring in some of the the anthropological bit there, like from a, from a social and cultural perspective, we live in a society and culture at the moment, which is, you know, it's, it's focused on like more is more and like harder is better all the time. And we, and I see this, right? Like you see this transcending into into athletes that I work with, you know, people that are highly driven, ah motivated athletes. They always want to do more. They always want to push harder. They always think that intensity is better. Yeah.
00:22:54
Speaker
Um, but we know like from a physiological perspective, when, when we, when we're doing our training, you know, depending, it doesn't matter which model that you choose. Easy, easy stuff, predominantly with some sparing hard stuff, you know, to, to really dumb it down every now and again is the model that's always going to work best consistently over time.
00:23:11
Speaker
Yeah. Um, but again, that's the. I think it's that it's, it's those mindsets, which are the, the coaching side of things I think is getting, we need to be doing more and more and more because we see it's very easy now to use particular apps or or see on social media and you get like weird and wonderful workouts and complicated training strategies, et cetera, which confuses the the magic workout.
00:23:34
Speaker
Yeah. Confuses things. Right. And it makes things, um, makes people doubt the, the, the foundational stuff or the basic stuff is actually the stuff that's mattering to them. that makes perfect sense. I was actually covering a, a track workout for a fellow coach. Shout out to friend of the show, Tara Posnikoff, yesterday. And I was working with some of the, ah some of the faster folks. And were like, guys, you can, and it was, it was a pretty, pretty tough workout. and And they were trying to be very strict on their set rest. I'm like, guys, if you're need to take a little bit more time in your set rest, go for it. Cause then you're the quality of your, of your repeats is just going to improve. So, um you know, it depends on what the focus of the workout is, but, It's a great, I spend a, I spend like an a crazy amount of time, um, like reinforcing or giving athletes confidence that on, you know, if you're on a stat 30, 15s or 40, 20 intervals, that it doesn't matter if, uh, you are doing 38 seconds and
00:24:30
Speaker
22 seconds off yeah or your, you know, or 25 seconds in 10 seconds, your your body is not really noticing the difference between that. It's the spirit of the workout that we're trying to achieve. It's not so much. You're just going to, you're just going to push a little bit harder if you're doing 35, 25s than if you're doing 40, 20s.
00:24:44
Speaker
But it's amazing. people People feel, you know, it's, it's so common. People feel like they failed when they don't absolutely, you know, can completely crush it to the second. Yeah. With certain people, i have to put, my job is putting the brakes on, not, not pushing them. It's just, it's the opposite. So it's like, you gotta slow down. You gotta take a rest day. Yeah. gotta go slower.
00:25:01
Speaker
You have to go slower. You have to take more time to recover. Yeah. It's fun how yeah ah that works.
Building Supportive Athlete Communities
00:25:07
Speaker
So, okay. So staying with this, uh, or maybe pivoting just a little bit, um, Can you give us some strategies to use our, you know, our recently developed human brains and our desire to be part of a collective to maybe shut out the noise, but also to to heighten the positive elements of ah of some of this ah group dynamics? And I'm thinking a little bit about what you said earlier about how when we're in smaller groups and you mentioned clubs and teams, how we can really support and motivate each other.
00:25:41
Speaker
Yeah, well I think the first the first step there is to try is try and forge that, you know, it's called the tribe, whatever, tribe mentality or form your group. So if you're um someone that's quite solo in the past, like seek seek out some seek out somewhere where you can you can get that cohesion, you can get that community element because we know from, wow.
00:26:04
Speaker
thousands of years worth of looking at human development, but also modern day studies on human performance that ah having that tribe will enhance your performance. it It will motivate you. It will bring the best out of you.
00:26:16
Speaker
I think stage number, like step number one is is trying to find that um and doesn't need to be massive. You know, you don't, you don't need hundreds of people. right um You need a few, you know, a handful of, a handful of people, quality people close to you is all that you need to be able to like tick that performance measure off to get, to get that going.
00:26:34
Speaker
And are you looking for folks who are kind of roughly your same interests, abilities? what what how do you How do you think about finding the the best sort of group ah for you?
00:26:45
Speaker
ah You want to surround yourself with people that are ah pushing things, you know, that are are going places that you want to go, right? So understanding where it is that you want to go, surround yourself with those similar people that are maybe ahead of you. You know, you surround yourself with really good people.
00:26:58
Speaker
things These things rub off. Again, proven multiple times over that, surround yourself with excellent people and the excellence rubs off so we want to try and find find those communities right i love that answer and i think um as someone like again i keep throwing up personal anecdotes with if anyone cares but yeah i i do a lot of solo training and and more recently i've the developed a real need for for companionship in my suffering so i i totally totally picking that up Yeah. And i I got it. I have it, you know, similarly with a personal anecdote, I'm, I live on on an island now, small island. I used to live in, i used to live in central London, moved down here to start my family a few years ago. The community is slightly smaller here. So it's still, it's still good. I've got a few people that I go out with that will, will push me, which is, which is great. nice Um, but I think I've, I've tried to recently actually in the last like six months, create this more through my, my coaching network. So I
00:27:52
Speaker
I have a strong like community aspect to the coaching offer that I do now, which is I'm seeing, in it'ss not ah it's not been going a huge amount. I used to work kind of one-to-one with all my athletes. I'm a remote coach and there wouldn't be much interaction between any of the athletes, but I've recently invested in ah in ah in a community platform and got them got them all together. um And it's great, like being able to share ah wins people have had, share stories. it's It's having a really big impact on those on those athletes. And I've noticed...
00:28:21
Speaker
you know, just through a few months of doing this and seeing the impact on their individual, you know, their individual progression, their individual training as well. And for me, it's great for me because I get it through my athletes. I work with some fantastic, some, you know, some athletes are ah ah ah brilliant and it it drives me on. And i get, um you know, I think I get the satisfaction, I suppose, from not only a strong physical performance, but seeing how people have overcome,
00:28:47
Speaker
other things in their life as well, which is associated to, you know, maybe been enabled by the training they've done. They've got a career, you know, a promotion at work, whatever that might be. All of these things are quite, you know, but ah beneficial to the whole.
00:29:01
Speaker
Yeah, ah that's super cool. And it's also so very relevant to you know anyone who's listening who's a coach, who's a remote coach. I'm a remote coach. I have i have one athlete in Finland. I have an ah i have a a couple athletes in the States. I'm in Toronto. I have couple athletes here.
00:29:17
Speaker
so But very few of them do I see on any kind of regular basis face-to-face. It's all remote. So having that maintaining that community is is critical. I know when a few years back when I used to have a cycling studio in downtown Toronto here,
00:29:32
Speaker
that community was sort of, it was easy to maintain because it was like people would show up, you would see them, you would talk to them. That was, it was sort of baked in. We, I think, I guess as social animals fall into that pretty naturally when we're face-to-face, but when we're not face-to-face, that needs some, I guess, ah deliberate attention to make that happen.
00:29:51
Speaker
Yeah. And cycling can be an incredibly social sport on and triathlon. They can be super social sports, but they can also be very solo pursuits as well. Yes. You know, a lot of training can be done. So like solo. Um, so a lot of people get that through their clubs, their teams, their, their group, group rides, group runs, group swims, whatever it might be.
00:30:08
Speaker
Um, but a lot of people don't say, um, it's nice to be able to provide that. And I get something back from it as well. It's, it's a bit, it's a bit of a kick for me seeing how, for seeing my athletes kind of combine and come together.
00:30:19
Speaker
No, that's very cool. Maybe that's something we can offline and I can ask you what you what you're using because it's my coaching practice is real small these days, but it's still something maybe that's that's worthwhile for me. um Okay, I want to move us on. And ah the other thing that you you talked to me about when we were exchanging emails that you're you're interested in um is kind of the the next step
AI in Coaching and Data Management
00:30:42
Speaker
for coaching. And specifically when I say next step, I want to talk about AI-mediated coaching.
00:30:47
Speaker
And this is something that I think you've had um some experience with when you were with Sport England and maybe with some other places. So give me a quick history of of kind of how you encountered it and then we can dive into where you think it's going.
00:31:02
Speaker
So my initial interests were in human performance in general. So that's why I ended up studying archaeological anthropology. It wasn't necessarily through the niche of endurance sport. It was humans humans as a general. and So from there, I then got into endurance sport and into sport in general and all my kind of jobs, um proper jobs, I call them before I did coaching. okay ended up ended up being in some form of sporting environment. So yeah, as you alluded to there, I'd worked for five years for Sport England, which is the is it is a yeah UK government body that um invests government money into grassroots sports back in the yeah UK. um And so my my role there was in data innovation.
00:31:44
Speaker
which is was about testing emerging technologies, automations, LLMs, MLs, AI models um within the sports sector to see ah where there would be benefit.
00:31:56
Speaker
And since ah So leaving now, I started my own coaching business and I've kind of maintained that interest like a lot of endurance athletes do in in analytics and technologies and tools and every bit of data that you can kind of possibly get, get hold of. Yeah. More more and more every day. It seems like more and more data streams.
00:32:15
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. And it's, and, um, So yeah, it's got to the, I'm, I now I've just partnered with a company called Vector, which is effectively a, a training platform designed for coaches with coaches as developers. So I'm one of their coaching developers who,
00:32:34
Speaker
you utilize AI for the benefit of a coach. So where there are quite a few platforms and tools out there, which, um, kind of aim to kill the coach or cut the, cut the coach out by creating smart training programs and platforms.
00:32:50
Speaker
Vector is very much, uh, is designed to utilize the benefits of, uh, AI and new technology to enhance the coaching experience. okay What does that look like? Like, um you know, without making this an ad for Vector, um how does how does how does that work? How does that, what what is the interplay between, you know, what a traditional endurance coach, what they would do and how AI can support them?
00:33:14
Speaker
Well, I think I can use me as an example. So I'm interested in, ah analytics and the streams of data that we can collect on an athlete. And as you said, you can get it from every multiple different angles. Um, heat, sweat, fluid, et cetera, now all coming in and becoming far more accessible for people. Sure. Um, the, the, the issue, I suppose from a, from a coaching perspective is it's quite time intensive, um, to utilize that data and analyze it.
00:33:40
Speaker
Um, a lot of the platforms and tools are quite old that have existed in the past. So, um, wrangling all of that data and making sense of it is, and actually knowing what you want to find from it is one of the, is one of the problems and and putting it all together. Mm-hmm. So I kind of believe ah quite strongly that the role of a coach will change dramatically in the next, well, as of now, and you know, because it's happening, is it's already happening. I use AI tools across across my whole business, not, you know, for for everything really, for marketing, accounting.
00:34:12
Speaker
strategy, you whatever, whatever it might be. right Um, so it only makes completely intuitive sense to me that it's only a matter of time before all of these data streams that were collected are going to be far more easier to, uh, access and to utilize and make decisions based off of using these tools.
00:34:30
Speaker
Um, which then for me means that the role of a coach might potentially change a little bit. Um, I think, you know, in the past, maybe a lot of some, a lot of coaching has been, ah well, I wouldn't say good coaching should always obviously be a, a, a strong mix of objective versus subjective that we should. Yes. look at the human, we should take their, um, subjective feedback. For me, it's fundamentally important when I work with an athlete that they are communicating well and that we're communicating well together and that we, you know, i actually, I really insist on video calls, um, because looking people
00:35:07
Speaker
somebody is quite powerful you know and again from a anthropological perspective like we're designed to read people you know we can up more from two seconds of looking at someone in the face than i could tell from looking at 10 years probably worth of their training peaks data um so yeah how grumpy do you look today Yeah. Yeah. How do you look? Um, so it's fun that for me, that's fundamentally important and I'm quite excited about, um, this revolution, I think, because it'll enable more of that.
00:35:35
Speaker
And, I, as many other coaches probably know that the transformative bit of coaching or the bit of like really getting people to get to where they want to be comes through that connection to the coach. And it comes through the context, the guidance, the manipulation of the data and understanding where they're going.
00:35:53
Speaker
it it doesn't necessarily always come through like a hard and fast, just adding up numbers. For sure. Which can often take a lot of time. So if I understand you correctly, the what what I'm getting from this is that you see AI is relieving some of that heavy lifting analytical work perhaps, or at least yeah augmenting it and allowing us to do more of that, you know, human human side of work, the the interaction and the, you know, that maybe relationship building and and and helping people to get to where they need to go.
00:36:23
Speaker
Yeah, ah for sure. I think the the data side of things, the analytic side of things will become more accessible to, it will democratize it for everybody. So if you're an athlete, you hopefully should be able to interrogate your data in a much cleaner way and a more accessible way, which enables you to make more decisions and make them probably better.
00:36:42
Speaker
um It will enable me as a coach to not spend so much time trawling through data, like scrolling back through workouts or spreadsheets that I've kept. um And I can i can interrogate an asked ask the you know and an agent or an AI bot to give me that data immediately and it will be able to look through you know an unfathomable amount of information ah rapidly. So I can have answers that I need super quick as opposed to having to trawl through things, which then frees up time.
00:37:12
Speaker
You know, my, my philosophy or my, my plan is to be able to free up time to spend with the athletes more, like actually coaching them. So understanding what's going on, how we need to adapt stuff, educating them, um, on how they can adapt things as they, as they go forward. Yeah. Because like through those conversations is where you really learn like what's working and what isn't working. And then you try to fix the things that aren't, um, be, and that's, sometimes it's evident in the data, but.
00:37:37
Speaker
I think, i think you and I are on the same page in terms of like thinking that it's way easier to tease that out from a, from a conversation. Yeah, absolutely. And I, but I think we've all, but we've all been there. mean, you can, you can look at a, you can look at at a training file and you can, you can look at the data, um, and it can look fine.
00:37:54
Speaker
And then yeah you speak to that athlete two days later and they'll tell you that actually it was a complete nightmare. They were like, it was, it was, you know, biblical levels of pain and something's completely wrong. And you you might not have known like, you know, from a, we might not have caught it as a coach. You know, you can't be in there absolutely 24 seven, ah you hours a day.
00:38:15
Speaker
Um, so I think that a lot of these new tools will enable like quicker response, um, and also better, better communication as well and quicker communication. for For instance, for like one thing that I would love and training peaks doesn't do this, don't know, but what, as a coach, what I would love to do is to say, um, you know, let's say I sign a workout and, uh, you know, maybe it's power-based workout on the bike and I would want to tell the program, I expect this to feel like a three out of 10.
00:38:43
Speaker
And then if my athlete reports a feeling like a 7 out of 10, I want to know about it because then there's something going on, right? Or if it they it's like a 1 out of 10, then also I want to know about it. So like that when there is that, let's say, and this is one very narrow specific example, but if there's a mismatch between expected and you know actual ah perceived exertion in my case, then that's that information that ah that is telling me something.
00:39:08
Speaker
Yeah. um And we actually, we know empirically from studies that that is the best measure of knowing how hard a workout is, right? When when yeah when you test every data, you know, your heart rate, power, um any any training load measure, um RPE is always the best indicator of actually what that, the intensity of that workout or what that what the toll of that workout is. so Every time it's the it's the best indicator of, for the athlete, what it meant.
00:39:35
Speaker
Um, so yeah, it's, it's, and I think that's, it's something a lot of good coaches talk about. I think it's a lot, it's something a lot of athletes kind of like poo poo in a way, because they think, well, surely if I've got my whip and my aura and my, my power, like that's, that's gospel. Like that's the only what i need to know.
00:39:53
Speaker
but forgetting we've got thousands of years of um evolving to understand sensations, pain, fatigue. So much better.
Subjective Feedback vs. Data in Coaching
00:40:01
Speaker
Yeah. I remember i had an athlete who I no longer coach. We were good friends too. And she would, ah she would like wear her garment to sleep and everything. And then she, which I do too. I'm not,
00:40:11
Speaker
poo-poo in that part, but she would look at her like the the Garmin body battery score. And if her body battery was like low in the morning, she'd just be like, ah, you know what? I don't feel the the body battery is low. I don't think I should do this hard workout. like, no.
00:40:22
Speaker
to to How do you feel? If you feel fine, go go for it. You know, maybe it was loose on your wrist or maybe you slept on your arm and then it got like jiggled around a little bit and it didn't read your heart rate and HRV properly. And who knows if you were getting good data from it. It's, yeah, you're speaking my language. i totally get it. Yeah, I had to get rid of my, I had an aura for years and I had to get rid of it in the end because I couldn't, I mean, well, just not look at the data. I look at it retrospectively. And I think, again, you listen to anybody that's like really heavily researching this kind of stuff. It's still so new and we don't, yeah we know, we still don't know far more than we actually know about for sure what a lot of this stuff means or where it's coming from. Which is another another area, I think, where we could use some guidance. And this is my like, you know, we we talked to about this, Joe, when we first started talking before we started recording is that I came at it from, you know, I'm ah i'm an engineer. I came at it from a very evidence led or at least a data perspective when I first started coaching. And I was like, oh, more data, better. Give me give me all the information. And then I started realizing that, hey, first of all, some of this stuff is just junk. Like it's not actually...
00:41:25
Speaker
It's not doing what it's supposed to be doing. It's not actually capturing HRV accurately, or it's not actually capturing running power accurately, or pick your whatever metric you want. And then actually have no idea what to do with this stuff, or like how to put it in the context of everything else. And then like, is this is this metric more important or is that metric more important? Do I care more about heart rate or do I care more about power? And these are for metrics that are well-established and we really have a lot of evidence for, but these other things that are, to your point, really new, then i don't know yeah I don't know anyone who really knows what to do with all of that.
00:41:55
Speaker
Yeah, I know. And I think, I think that's part of, that's part of the problem, isn't it? That you've got, we've got access to so much stuff that we don't, we don't know to do with it and people get confused about it. I think as a coach, if I could design an ideal world where I had unlimited amount of time and I could do this, I would speak to every athlete or I'd meet them every day for a coffee in the morning and I'd chat to them about what we're planning to do. And I'd maybe go out with them for a bit and see like, that's obviously,
00:42:20
Speaker
you know, and and what a lot of the ah elites are able to actually achieve with their with their coaches. But for most normal people, um nine to five jobs and us trying to make a living from from coaching athletes, it's not very feasible. But that that for me would be the most powerful way of informing the the training that we're doing. We'd use those tools, all the data um to inform that.
00:42:40
Speaker
I think for me, it's still very much a case of, and I've i've kind of come... you know, over the years, full circle on this as said, I started off being interested in people and the human side of things. I then got quite into data analytics, um, in that for for several years, then got into the coaching side of things and, you know, merge them all together. And I think I'm coming, you know, kind of full circle around now to like focusing on, on people and then using all the data and the evidence as, as tools and appropriately and where they, where they fit in best.
00:43:09
Speaker
Right. um So, Joe, I do want to come back to the air i question because I do have a couple of follow ups. But since we're talking about subjective versus objective you know measures in endurance sports, which is one of the other topics you sent me, I want to spend a little bit more time here and ask you this question.
Personalization in Coaching Methods
00:43:25
Speaker
What is your advice for, let's say, coaches or for self-coached athletes on sports?
00:43:30
Speaker
What should they pay attention to the most? I know you said our PE was really high up on your list. So if we're if we're doing, let's say, swim, bike, run, we can split up, you know, look one discipline at a time.
00:43:41
Speaker
What are you most interested in in those those modalities? And is that is it even context dependent on what you're trying to accomplish? For me, one of the most one of the most beneficial things I look for as a coach is ah in TrainingPeaks, I use TrainingPeaks mostly still at the moment, is the emojis.
00:43:58
Speaker
So i love I love the emojis. I think they are the the they're the quickest indicator of knowing like what's going on and prompting a coaching conversation. yeah As soon as somebody's um hit ah like a strong or like a a strong yes or a strong no or like the strong happy, strong sad,
00:44:13
Speaker
Uh, there's automatically ah a coaching point to be have there. There's automatically a conversation. Okay, cool. Why, why did it go? Why did that go well? And then you don't know where those, these are the conversations which are really meaningful for athletes and which really actually move things forward. And I can give yeah some perspective, like some examples of, of having done that before I've had athletes do VO two blocks.
00:44:34
Speaker
Um, I had one guy and, we couldn't, you know, he was doing them and it was just bad. And we were trying to work out, like trying to work out. And I like right, let's just get on a call. Like we need to, you know, we need to crack what's going on here. And we we talked for it because he would give me descriptions like, yeah, I felt bad on the third one, but I think I paced it right. And You know, we couldn't quite work out and spoke to him and it and ended up being a, it was a nutrition, it was a nutrition issue. Like kind the the the workouts weren't being fueled, but that came about through the, the little, the little red face effectively, because we were able to spot that quite, quite quick and work out why they weren't going well, which prompted the conversation, which then we ended up fitting the, you know, the cog, which was the nutritional part.
00:45:15
Speaker
Yeah, to that point, i was ah was I was running to like that track workout I mentioned. I was just doing it like an easy run commute. Well, stretched it out a little bit. But yesterday was the first day that it was hot. It was 30 degrees and ah and fairly humid. And we'd had a very cold, wet spring. And so it was like the first proper hot day.
00:45:33
Speaker
And I felt like I've never run before in my life. Like nothing was working. Everything hurt. I was like heart rate was like 20 beats high. You know, like what's wrong with me? I just forgot how to run. I'm like, oh, I know it's just the first really, really hot day. And that's just what happens when you haven't done that in a while.
00:45:47
Speaker
And that my workout definitely got a strong, sad face in in in training peaks for that session. Yeah, as it as it as it should do. Everything is wrong. Yeah, it's hard work. yeah Your body's just not conditioned to that yet. 100%. Again, you you could do that. You could have gone and done the same workout, not put your emoji on there.
00:46:06
Speaker
The data, other than looking at the, you know, maybe heart rate was elevated. but Yeah, heart rate versus pace would have been would have been ah a red flag too. Yeah, it would have been a red flag, but maybe it's not something you would catch yeah straight away.
00:46:17
Speaker
Right. It would be something that would maybe be caught a little bit later. So the emoji gives you that immediate, well, something's wrong. Like what's wrong. Oh, okay. It's the heat. Right. Well, what can we do to, know, what can we do to change that or like change expectations on the session or maybe change the session to not smash yourself?
00:46:33
Speaker
Uh, i like that I like that answer because um of the the emoji answer, because it sort of is in keeping with what you said earlier about keeping things simple. So i I threw out a question i threw a question at you with lots of possibilities to go down all sorts of you know all sorts of directions, but you gave me a very simple answer, which I appreciate.
00:46:52
Speaker
think it's it's one of the it's probably the first thing I look for. when i'm if i'm If I'm quickly scanning through, so like my coaching process, I will i'll you know open training things up and I'll scan through for anything that really you know prioritize things, right? Like I'll scan through for anything that media might need looking at.
00:47:07
Speaker
That's my probably my first point of call for whether something needs immediate attention or not. Someone's ill, they need to take a break, well they've some you whatever's happened, those emojis are probably that first easy way for a coach to be able to do that.
00:47:21
Speaker
I love it. Okay, let's circle back to AI. And the question that I had, or the two questions I had, um first is, um do you see the the role more in and in analyzing data and maybe kind of summarizing it?
00:47:37
Speaker
or Or do you see it more as a prescriptive tool of actually recommending or writing workouts? I think the main brunt of where the benefit is going to come to a coach is the pace of doing the analytics. Okay. The, the patterns that will be able to be drawn between the various streams of data that we've got going in. Um, at the moment we can capture all of these various bits and pieces. We can capture our, you know, our HRV, our heart rates, our power, our whatever pacing, whatever it might be, any, any stream of data. The thing we're unable to do completely clear at the moment is overlay all those things together or or correlate strongly between them without quite a lot of manual workload on the on the behalf of the coach.
00:48:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's hugely, hugely taxing if you do it for every workout for a bunch of work ah for a bunch of athletes. Yeah, it's a lot of it's a lot of hours. It's a huge amount of work. So I think that thing, that kind of analytics and having those trends will become very, very simple and very easy for a coach to make decisions off the back of.
00:48:37
Speaker
um And I, yeah, I don't see it. I see it as potentially being able to provide guidance or like suggested, but I think that what will happen is that the coaching role will shunt and shift a lot more into that human side. So it will become far more about working with the person. Right.
00:48:55
Speaker
because we should be able to obviously have, we should be able to have more time to be able to do that. And we should be able to engage more with the athlete because a lot of these tools are doing some of the more brunt work for us. And maybe they will do some of the programming um and some of the scheduling because we can tell it what to do. We can look at the data and we can go cool, right, now write a plan for the week, which is going to have this on Tuesday, this Wednesday, this on Thursday, and it will write it for us, so and which again will save a huge amount of time for the coach. Yeah, give us a reasonable progression of like whatever. Yeah, you can program that.
00:49:27
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense. I'm going to challenge you with this one, though. So if you if you're um you know if you want to keep things simple and you're the most important metric for you is the smiley face, then is the the that deep analysis that you just described, is that more of a marginal gain or is there real value in there?
00:49:47
Speaker
I don't know yet. I think it will be, I'm not sure. I think honestly, I don't think it's really being done. Um, I very much can be done and i think it will be getting done in, in the future. Um, I think it, my, my view on it will stay the same. I think the working with the person will still be the best indicator of what's happening.
00:50:06
Speaker
all of the data will just become a bit more accessible and it will become a more useful tool. It's already a very useful tool and in a lot of scenarios, but it's time intensive as we've discussed to interrogate it fully. So i think the application of it will become far more useful.
00:50:21
Speaker
um And I think hopefully it should enable us to, see things or understand what's happened better and maybe be able to predict stuff better as well in the future.
00:50:32
Speaker
um but communicated and understood and contextualize via a person looking at another person. Very cool. I think that is a ah coaching sort of paradigm that I would love to be involved in because, yeah, the more I maybe I have somewhat similar path to you, but the more I the more I coach, the more I like that that interactive human to human part of it. And the less I I like the stuff I used to really like was as the data analysis, number crunching part of it.
00:51:01
Speaker
Yeah, I'm i'm i'm exactly the same. The more the more and more I get into it and the more I realize that, yeah, the the real the real gains and the the bit I enjoy as a coach as well. I you know i won't lie, the going through lines and lines of data it doesn't interest me as much anymore. yes It's not something I particularly like want to as coach.
00:51:18
Speaker
It's a chore now. Yeah. I want to work with an athlete and I want to see them smiling because they've achieved what they want to do. Uh, they, you know, they've done something that they've never done before. Uh, that, that for me is the kick. That's the, that's the kind of the why for me. And, um, that's the bit I want to see and I want to get back from an athlete. So if there's anything that can enable me that's happened more, um, then I'm all ears and I want to, I'll kind of want to be involved in it, which is what I'm trying to do at the moment. Yeah, that's an answer that definitely resonates with me.
00:51:48
Speaker
Okay, well, look, the last thing, listeners, on on our run sheet for today was ah was Joe's take on nutrition. And obviously, a very hot topic right now.
Nutrition as the New Frontier in Endurance Sports
00:51:58
Speaker
um Mostly, you know, the...
00:52:01
Speaker
previously unrealistic carbohydrate ingestion rates that we're seeing in some of our high performance athletes right like you had cam wharf uh in texas do 200 grams an hour on the bike which is pretty nuts but then he broke the bike record and had still had a really good run in the in in 30 degree heat so he's doing something right um and then you know he's all the all the world pro tour team guys we just finished watching the zero with my boys and i'm sure a lot of those guys were chomping down on quite large numbers of carbohydrates I think my personal kind of gut feel is that this is um this kind of, you know, evolution in carbohydrate ingestion is what's what's a fueling pardon upon the the real performance gains in in endurance sports that we're seeing right now.
00:52:47
Speaker
Yeah, where do you where do you fall on that? And then we can kind of circle back to the ah the evolutionary anthropological stuff. Yeah. I mean, I completely was singing off the same, singing off the same Hinshi. I'm, I, I kind of got into, when I got into endurance, the low carb was a thing. So like 2017, 2018, I did loads of that. I ended up in a really bad place.
00:53:08
Speaker
i It's still kind of a thing. It's still lurking in some corners. Yeah. It was, i mean, it was a, Yeah. And I think my, my level of understanding back then was completely different. I ended up doing my nutrition degree as a consequence of some of the experiences that I had, uh, with getting it, getting it really wrong. But yeah, I'm, I'm completely on the same, completely the same ballpark here. Um, getting, getting, getting fueling right is.
00:53:30
Speaker
Probably the biggest transformational shift I think I see in athletes at the moment. I think training's become, ah it's quite it's quite democratized now. left General base level understanding across you know athletes is pretty good when it comes to training on on the most part, I think. um Nutrition, I suppose, is the new frontier. It's the bit that probably where training was like 10 years ago, i think. you know it's That's where it's kind of at now. It's like it's it's people are getting their heads around it. They're understanding nutrition.
00:53:57
Speaker
their, their carb intakes, their understanding their macros, their maybe understanding carbohydrate periodization a bit better. um so I feel like that's, it is a really, it's an exciting time to be part of it. There's a lot of new stuff happening as well. And again, our understanding is changing every like two days. so but Yeah. That, that, that envelope gets pushed almost, it feels like every, yeah, every little bit, like, you know, it was like 60 to 90, 90 was, was the gold standard for so long. And now it's like 150, 120, 150, 200. where's the limit? think
00:54:25
Speaker
where's the limit well yeah but Well, I think that the limit the limit is obviously incredibly like individual. yeah So that's the name. In terms of another data source, which I expect to come about when someone cracks it, I don't know, I haven't, it might be out there, but I haven't seen it, is understanding what your your personal tolerance and ingestion level is. yes And obviously from a professional perspective,
00:54:48
Speaker
Who knows that that might be quite a predictor in the in the future where we've had VO2 max, et cetera, strong predictors of performance in the past, like, cause we can measure that. yeah And if we can start to measure absorption rate, that's obviously becoming a huge, you know, limiter and, uh, area that people can like super excellent, you know, what is it cause it it's the your causation and correlation, isn't it? Are athletes of the future are going to be successful because they can yeah tolerate enormous levels of carbohydrates? Yeah, because it's because it's crazy because with the training that these guys are doing, they're you know and I think we've talked about this on the show before, but there're you know they're like LT1s are so high. I think Bogotá was talking about 340 or something like that watts and for his lower threshold, which is pretty wild, 350.
00:55:32
Speaker
But even if you're even if you're maximally burning fat at 350, you're still not meeting your needs you're you know you're you're caloric needs anywhere near. So you need to supplement heavily with an exogenous carbs.
00:55:44
Speaker
Yeah. And you're still shifting a huge amount of like glycogen when you're, you know, at that level, especially when you're that pure output that he's producing. And I think the pod, like it was the Peter Tia podcast, wasn't it? And there was that clip that went viral of him saying like, kind of sitting there going, yeah, my zone too is 240 watts. And the cut, like the the clip ends there. And then you watch like the next bit of the conversation and he like, Tade goes on to say, but I'd never, I never ride for five hours there. Cause I'd be absolutely like, yeah. fucked You know, the next day. You'd have nothing left. Because of that. Yeah.
00:56:16
Speaker
because you have nothing left. Yeah. Because your just your total expenditure is just through the roof. But it's it's for those athletes. And I think I said this in the in the last show where I recorded. It's for those athletes that this really matters. It's for the the pointy and for like, you know, like Joe's like me, you know, all my LT1s, like, i don't think it's ever been above like 230. And so at 230...
00:56:33
Speaker
and so at two thirty a lot of that is met by fat metabolism, right? Like I will never need those kind of those those kind of intake rates. So it's kind of, i think it's an important point because yes, this is this is my opinion.
00:56:48
Speaker
Yes, that this massive carbohy carbohydrate intake during activity is ah game changer for the pointy end. It's not for the masses, I don't think. I think the masses are still good with, you know, for our older values.
00:57:02
Speaker
but you Where do you fall on that? Well, I think the, I do agree, but I think the underlying assumption there is that people are still, people are are meeting those, those levels, which you were kind of stating, right? You're 60 to a hundred grams an hour. And my experience of having worked with quite a lot of endurance athletes is that a lot of them are still nowhere near that.
00:57:21
Speaker
I a hundred percent agree with you there. So yeah, I think it's, it's people kind of know, but they maybe don't know how to deploy that or when to do it or how to modulate it, depending on the, you know, the intensity of the workout they're doing, the time that they're doing it yeah or the duration as well. So, um, yeah, I agree. I agree with the principle of what you're saying. I think the reality is ah most athletes will still under fuel, um, like workouts. For sure. I think that now that I think about it, I'm just thinking about like my recent coaching history.
00:57:49
Speaker
i can't think of a single person who I've said, you know what, you had too many car too too much carbohydrate intake in that hard workout or that long workout. It's ah it's never that conversation. It's always the opposite conversation of like, you need to have more.
00:58:04
Speaker
Yeah. And it's difficult to know where that is because, you know, the, the, you only need, you know, a lot of the, the, the guidelines are based on what you require. yeah Like this is what you need to be able to do that, that workout that might change depending what you're coming the next day, for example, as well. So you could be, you could be planning ahead. So um yeah, that, that the ceiling is a, is an interesting topic and,
00:58:27
Speaker
maybe there's an argument for people if they can tolerate, they may be better taking it off because their recovery is enhanced because they're taking on exogenous carbohydrate quicker, which is enhancing their, speeding up their recovery because it's just in the gut, ready to digest, et cetera.
00:58:40
Speaker
No, 100%, especially if the training load is high. I totally agree with you. And if you've got you know hard or long efforts in the next 48, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. um Okay, so let's that's kind of like, you know, we're going to ask you to put that hat on again, your anthropologist hat. And how did ah how did how did humans ah get here? How do we... um ah Smashing 200 grams of carbohydrates.
00:59:06
Speaker
Yeah. we We've evolved to be, um we move, right? we're we're removed We're a moving species. So we're continually going around. And again, like a lot of this is theory, but most of our understanding of like where we've come from is that we would be continual grazers. So like food patterns are one of those things that has changed Okay. Quite a lot. We, we now, but almost all of us live with a breakfast, lunch, and dinner paradigm because that's the way the industrial world operates. Most, you know, when industrialization can't get a lunch break, ye you get a lunch break, right? So you have, you go before you go to work, get a lunch break, you come home again.
00:59:40
Speaker
Um, and from an athlete perspective, I try to change the the the, the, the, the thought process on that so that people kind of break that model, which is quite hard to do.
00:59:51
Speaker
Um, and I tried to get athletes thinking more about pre-workout, intra-workout recovery, et cetera. Like that, that, those are the the models of, uh, like an athlete should be thinking more in those terms rather than breakfast. Obviously they can be slightly interchangeable, but, um, it doesn't always work out that your lunch will happen at the right time to be good enough for, yeah for a pre-workout or, ah for recovery, for example.
01:00:15
Speaker
Yeah. um But yeah, in terms, like going back to your initial question, like where where have we come from to enable us to be where we are today. Um, I think it probably, i think it this, this comes down to quite simply, there's a, you know, your health versus performance debate.
01:00:34
Speaker
So we know that fueling a healthy, healthy diet is probably quite different often to like fueling a high performance diet. Yes. The reason high performance is, is kind of the high performance diet does kind of work is obviously,
01:00:47
Speaker
ah glucose uptake is considerably higher when we're um when we're exercising so we can kind of mitigate some of those effects of like if a sedentary person were to fuel 200 200 grams an hour um please don't do this yes yeah yeah don't yeah it's a strong so like very very fast way to obesity and uh cardiovascular disease and diabetes tonet all of it Um, so, so yeah, I think that's another like topic that I'll often discuss with athletes is that, is that, is that difference and and balancing that, right? Because again, there's a kind of a lot of miss miscommunication there. And a lot of people will then, um, use like performance fuel all the time. So I'll think that they should always be having high glycemic index foods, irrespective of whether it's a pre-workout meal or whether it's post-workout meal.
01:01:34
Speaker
Um, again, it's the context of seeing things on social media, like white, you know, your white stuff, for example, like white rices, white bread, white pasta. Yeah. Great for your pre-workout stuff for your recoveries and your general health. It's not going to be the the better option to take.
01:01:51
Speaker
Right. that's your advice around like fueling around around performance. So then um my follow up to that would be as you, you know, I imagine you periodize the work that you do. You're not always like super high intensity or or long, long workouts with your athletes.
01:02:06
Speaker
So then i imagine you would periodize their their nutrition recommendations as well. Yeah, for sure. And the biggest thing, i think the biggest shift an endurance athlete can make, if you want to make a really big gain, like one, one massive gain is to understand carbohydrate periodization and is to understand how you can manipulate when you take on board carbohydrates within your day.
01:02:27
Speaker
So yeah, In short term, for people that maybe don't know what carbohydrate periodization is, it's it's this principle of fueling for the work required. It's what we call it in in sports nutrition, that you should be consuming most of your carbohydrates pre, during, and and after your workouts.
01:02:42
Speaker
and And that reduces the demand for having to take on board carbohydrates later in the day. It also means that your workouts obviously going to be fueled considerably better and that your recovery is better and your adaptation to those sessions will also be greater as well.
01:02:55
Speaker
Right. And then what's your mix of sort of like the the fast, the you know, the super high glycemic things like sport nutrition or your weight versus, you know, more complex, maybe slower digesting, maybe, you know, quote unquote, better for you, traditionally more healthy, more nutritionally dense carbohydrates?
01:03:13
Speaker
Yeah, so my my guidance on that is you look at what the purpose of the meal is. So again, when we think about it in terms of breakfast, lunch or dinner, that doesn't ah doesn't really give us an indication of what the purpose of that meal is.
01:03:26
Speaker
If we view the meal as pre-workout, Again, that's loaded, right? Like we know that then is, okay, well, it's pre-workout. So it needs to, it needs to do something for my workout. So that's when we think about performance fuels and making things simple.
01:03:39
Speaker
When you say pre-workout, like how many hours before the workout does it qualify as a pre-workout if we're to put a ballpark number of hours? ah Well, if we're going like quite simple on this, if if you've got your training like later in the morning or later in the day, your your main pre-workout meal should come for most people three to four hours before.
01:04:00
Speaker
That's the best. That's kind of gold standard ah guidance around when you should be fueling. Obviously, there are contexts where that's quite difficult to do. If you train before work, it's hard to do. Um, but then that means your, you know, your meal the night before becomes the most important workout. So you're you trying to load your muscle glycogen and your liver glycogen up the night before so that it doesn't drop so much overnight so that you're doing it really low.
01:04:23
Speaker
And in the morning it's about doing what you can. You you get what you can in super, super simple stuff before your workout. Um, it becomes counter, it kind of becomes counterproductive to try and force a massive meal in 10 minutes before, as we've yeah hundredly all experienced.
01:04:36
Speaker
Um, so you go, you go simple. And then we, then we move to our ah health-based stuff for our recovery. So when performance, uh, you executing high performing intervals or or workouts is not, not what we're actually looking to do. We're looking to recover from that workout.
01:04:52
Speaker
We then go for, you know, that's when I go for my, if I'm talking to athletes, my yeah anthropological evolutionary bit. This is the, this is the good stuff. This is what, what we would have had available to us, you know, back in the day kind of thing. That's going to, you know, help the microbiome. It's going to speed up, ah recovery, give us all the nutrients and minerals and proteins and fats and carbs, et cetera, that we need.
01:05:12
Speaker
So that's your mixed, you know, it's varied, varied diet full of, uh, like health foods. Yeah. Yeah. So like fresh fruits and vegetables, that kind of stuff. yeah Fresh fruits and vegetables, um more complex carbohydrates, that's your brown stuffs, your potatoes, et cetera.
01:05:30
Speaker
Uh, more complex, uh, vegetables like fibrous vegetables and nuts and seeds and things like that, which you would also, you kind of want to avoid before a hard workout. Cause they're quite, they're difficult for the gut to digest. Like, yeah you know, nuts and seeds, vegetables yeah fruits they're all fantastic but they are um can be higher in fiber and a bit difficult to for the stomach to digest before a workout i gotcha but then for for potentially for if we're not doing high intensity work then then there's there's more of an opportunity for us to be digesting as we go for example if you're you know at the at the extreme of let's say ultra running like those guys will eat everything yeah on the go because those are very long events yeah
01:06:11
Speaker
Yeah. Where, where, where intensity is not, um, so much of a, of a driver. We, know, it's almost, it's actually better to, to mix, mix things up a bit because you get gut fatigue. Like you wouldn't want to, you're obviously fueling ultra purely on gels or yeah or carbs. you I've tried it. It's not, it's not the best. Nice. You get sick to death. Uh, plus also you need, you you want some of the fats and carbs cause they're also going to provide you with some energy, some slow release energy and slow down the absorption of the carb as well. So if you're taking on board proteins and fats at the same time, a carbohydrate, you're effectively making your carb a slower release energy source as well.
01:06:45
Speaker
So it's benefits to doing that too. And obviously the longer that you go, the more total energy becomes the driver. So calories, in ultra ultra athletes, it's effectively just getting on board fuel.
01:06:57
Speaker
of any of any kind and keep keeping it down yeah and keeping it down yeah yeah awesome um joe i think we got through all of it i'm uh very proud of us yeah yeah it power hour in 20 minutes yes yeah if folks want to follow you they want to learn more about say rest or what else you're up to what's the best way to do that Uh, they can follow me on my Instagram, um, and go to my website, I suppose the the best places to find me.
01:07:28
Speaker
Okay. I'll put those in the show notes. What, uh, what is the Instagram? Is it say rest or is it Joe? on arrest Yes. C E Y R E S T E. Very different easy. I love it.
01:07:39
Speaker
Um, ah yes. And as as I said, I'll, I'll put the links to the show notes. Um, thanks very much for taking the time, man. That was a lot of fun. Thank you very much for having me. It's been a, it's been a pleasure. Awesome. And listeners, as always, if you like what you heard, give us a ah give us a rating and a review. If you're on Apple, you can give us you can write us a review. I think Spotify only lets us get stars.
01:08:02
Speaker
um And share with a friend. Thanks, everyone.