- Listen On...
-
Apple
-
Soundcloud
-
Spotify
In this roundtable discussion, we dive into how personal connections between athletes and coaches may be more important than training plans.
Episode Transcript
Intro: The Personal Side of Coaching
Rob Pickels 00:04
Hello and welcome to Fast Talk, your source for the science of endurance performance. I’m your host Rob Pickels here with Coach Connor. Coach Grant Holicky is a regular on our show and he has coached athletes at the national and world level. He’ll be the first one to say his success stems from his ability to connect with his athletes, not just a result of his technical knowledge. In a recent post in his newsletter Holicky wrote, “for me, a coach’s knowledge and experience within a sport are less important than their skills with people. Maybe some have more experience than others or have different training or game philosophy, but they all have experience with the sport. The question is with their coaching style as it pertains to people around them.” In this roundtable discussion, we’re joined by two athletes who have worked with Grant over the years. Robin Carpenter, who currently races for Legion of Los Angeles, is taking his experience on the World Tour into his own coaching practice. Starla Teddergreen has raced on the road for years and has now transitioned to ultra distance gravel events. Today our group will talk about the importance of the relationship between coaches and athletes. Additionally, we’ll discuss why having a support network is important to all athletes, whether they’re coached or not. So let’s take a step away from science to focus on the softer side of coaching and let’s make you fast. Hey listeners, we have exciting news to share from HIT Science, the leaders in high intensity interval training. Right now HIT Science is offering a free course for coaches called The Science and Application of Endurance Training Using AI Platforms. This course includes smart coach AI and HIT Science driven workout suggestions for triathlon, running, and cycling events. Visit hitscience.com and enter the free course through the pop up window.
Trevor Connor 01:56
Well, welcome everybody to another episode. We’ve got a full house here. We’ve got five of us on this episode. When’s the last time we had that Rob?
Rob Pickels 02:04
Never, eh Chris Case’s going away party.
Trevor Connor 02:08
Oh, yeah, that’s right, but we haven’t done this often.
Rob Pickels 02:11
We haven’t. We did do a big wheel race in the snow after that one and it’s not snowing out.
Trevor Connor 02:17
That was last week.
Rob Pickels 02:18
That was last week.
Trevor Connor 02:19
Just for the record, Boulder, Colorado. What was it June 12. We got two inches.
Rob Pickels 02:24
I was in Finland, it didn’t snow there.
Why Coaching Is More Than a Training Plan
Trevor Connor 02:26
Yeah, you suck. You knew why you were leaving. Well, this episode, we’re gonna talk about something we’ve mentioned a lot on the show, but I think we really want to take a deep dive into this because this is really important. It’s also really relevant right now because we’re seeing more and more the rise of training plans based on artificial intelligence and you’ve seen a lot of athletes say, “well, that’s great. I’m just gonna go and get this prebuilt training plan that’s been customized to me”. It also poses a challenge to coaches because coaches who have made a career, Grant, you’re bringing this up, out of just building training plans, well now you have competition. So if you’re gonna stay in the coaching business, that communication, that personal side is really important. So let’s spend an episode because we’ve talked, you mentioned this many times. Why is it the personal side of coaching is so important? Grant, do you want to start us with any thoughts?
Grant Holicky 03:29
Yeah. I think I think the biggest thing is that, to me, coaching as a profession is different than training as a profession. If you’re a professional trainer, you’re gonna go out, you’re gonna write training plans and that’s about all you’re going to do and I used to joke that it’s akin to horse training, you’re going to go out and make the horse run, you’re going to do this, it’s all very viced on science, but I’m sure there’s horse trainers out there that would call me up and say, no, they have personalities, you have to be careful, you have to do X, Y, and Z with a horse as well and so we definitely have to do that with athletes and that’s the difference to me between training and coaching. Coaching brings in the personal side of this, it brings in a holistic interest in the athlete and the two way conversation in the relationship. So I think that’s really important and that’s what I’ve been banging around in my head recently is, yeah, the AI thing, but just in general, what is the difference between a trainer and a coach?
Meet Robin Carpenter and Starla Teddergreen
Trevor Connor 04:27
So really important question to ask and to help us today, we have a couple coaches in the room, but let’s introduce Grant, I mean, these are their two people you know well.
Grant Holicky 04:38
Yeah, these are two people I know really, really well and I’m gonna let Robin and Starla both introduce themselves. Robin, why don’t you go ahead, let everybody know who you are and why you’re here.
Robin Carpenter 04:49
Hi all. Thanks for having me. My name is Robin Carpenter. I’m 30 years old. I’m a professional road cyclist. I’ve been kind of one of those for pretty much all of my adult life. I currently race for Legion of Los Angeles and I actually just started to coach athletes this year. It was a decision I made. I’ve been thinking about tossing around for a couple of years now trying to figure out if it was something I was interested in and I’ve got six athletes right now. I’m actually very excited to learn a bit on today’s show.
Grant Holicky 05:24
Starla.
Starla Teddergreen 05:25
Hi. So I’m Starla Teddergreen. Let’s see, I’m 42. If that’s correct, I might be 43. I’ve lost count at this point, but yeah, I’ve been racing professionally for oh, gosh, we’re coming up on I think 20 years. Started my career doing criterium and road racing, stage racing, raced on UCI teams, raced all over the world and have transitioned over to gravel and mountain bike racing. I’m part of the Lifetime Grand Prix series and spent a lot of time coaching like skills clinics and things like that to help empower women and get more comfortable on the bike and give them a sense of purpose and belonging that they do belong in this space and I also run a program called Distance to Empty, which is my private two year program that I race under, but then we also have a program that helps get Colorado based women on bikes when they wouldn’t be able to otherwise.
Rob Pickels 06:23
Awesome.
Training Plans vs. Real-Life Athlete Needs
Trevor Connor 06:24
Fantastic. Well, let me hit all of you with my first question. Maybe let’s address this first from the coach side and then from the athlete side. Why is coaching and training more than just a training plan and maybe let’s talk about this grant first, from that coach side?
Grant Holicky 06:40
Well, I think let’s just keep it really simple. Trevor, you walked in here today and said, you’re in a brain fog.
Trevor Connor 06:46
I am in a complete brain fog, you probably noticed.
Grant Holicky 06:50
Didn’t sleep last night. Rob came in here, barely fresh off a plane from Finland and so a million different things that could be going on in an athlete’s life and some of them are physical, some of them are emotional, but they’re all going to have an effect on how they ride the bike that day or how they swim or how they run or how they do all those things and if we live just in the data and we’re living just in the training side of things, we’re really discounting those pieces of the puzzle. We’re discounting what’s going on at home, we’re discounting fatigue, that comes from job stress, whether that be professional cyclists and their job stress or masters athletes and their job stress as a dentist. We can’t discount those things. The personal aspect of an athlete is super important and then that’s maybe the emotional mental side, but purely on the physical side. Every athlete approaches training and responds to training in different way. We know well from the research that there are quick responders and they’re slow responders. There are people that are going to do better with high intensity work, versus low intensity work. There are people that are coming to the sport like myself, who carry a little bit of extra muscle and a bit more mass, we’re going to have to train these people differently and the one that knows the person, the very, very best is themselves and that ability to turn to that athlete and ask that ability to get feedback from that athlete, to really understand why that athlete is doing something allows us to train them better and I think that that’s a piece of the puzzle that I will always come back to from the profession of coaching is that people skills. The ability to teach. These parts of the puzzle aren’t necessarily viewed as crucial in the coaching profession. They’re not viewed as the big pieces to the puzzle, whereas to me in a lot of ways, they are the biggest piece of the puzzle. This is everything that coaching is about.
Rob Pickels 08:52
I think something to consider and I don’t want to be overly reductionist, but when you say the word trainer, Grant, I think of that individual who works in a gym, a fitness gym and they might be helping a client, just try to gain some general strength, maybe look better on their wedding day, who knows what it is. All of those things are terrific and they’re very noble. The things that the listeners to this podcast, the people in this room that they tend to be interested in are the endurance athletes and those are two very different subsets of people. On the endurance athlete side of things, something that we have to consider is that these activities consume and engulf somebody’s life and their psyche and everything that ultimately counts as that as a person and that’s where it becomes really important that coaches are able to integrate all aspects of that life together. It’s a very different relationship with that client, if you want to call it a client, as opposed to the person who’s working in the gym and helping that person through proper strength training, proper form, helping them achieve those goals. Very, very different needs.
Grant Holicky 09:58
Yeah, absolutely and I think if we look at the on the level of somebody like Starla or Robin, this is their livelihood. This is everything that their life goes on. I mean, we have enough trouble as coaches or as dentists or as doctors or lawyers separating work life from home life. When you’re a professional athlete, that gets even harder, right. They meld together, there’s no way around those two things. You get in a crash or something goes poorly on a race, it’s hard not to bring that home. That’s your livelihood, you’re worried about your contract for next year, you’re worried about your future. these aspects have to be taken into consideration and it’s very, very easy not to. It’s very easy to look at athletes and go on a train them in a vacuum, this is the way it should work and just because it should work that way. It doesn’t always work that way and if we’re overly caught up in the ‘should’ piece, then we’re really going to be trapped going down the line.
Trevor Connor 10:54
Well, Robin, you’re in your first year of coach and I’m assuming every one of your athletes has followed your plan to the T without question.
Why Athlete Feedback Matters
Robin Carpenter 11:02
Exactly. Actually, it’s funny because one of the things I realized way early on was just how impossible of a job it is to coach somebody if they don’t ever give any feedback. Like the number one thing that I tell my athletes so far is like, please, please write comments in. Like anything at all, it could be two words. Just anything to let me know, like how you felt? Did it go all right? Do you think it went all right? Do you think it went poorly? Like, did you even do it? That whole communication side of things is what Grant’s talking about, where it just lays the foundation for all the rest of the sort of aspects of this lifestyle sport or these endurance lifestyle sports.
Grant Holicky 11:52
So I think one of the things I’m really interested in, because I know it from my angle, but I was never that good of an athlete, but I’m really interested Starla and then back to you, Robin after her is this idea of why is it important from the athletes point of view? That relationship piece, I can look at it from a coach and say, Okay, this is important. This is important and this is important, but I may turn around have athletes go, no, none of that’s important. You’re just full of it, Grant, but why is it important from your point of view and what matters the most?
Starla Teddergreen 12:26
Yeah, I mean the communication part is key. I think in training, the numbers are great, the workouts are great, but none of that matters, if you give me a workout and I look at it, I’m like, Okay, I’m supposed to be doing these intervals, but if I don’t have a full understanding of why I’m doing them and what it is meant to accomplish, then it’s kind of what’s the point? So I think the communication between the athlete knowing exactly why they’re doing the workout, why they’re doing the intervals, why it’s developing them in like a race scenario or just an overall rounding you out as an athlete scenario. It’s kind of pointless and so, what you were saying, the comments is so important. I just had this conversation with a couple of other athletes that I know where they feel their coaches are failing them and I’m like, Well, have you actually communicated with your coach, Why you feel like you’re failing or you’re not progressing? It’s more up to you to communicate with your coach, what’s going right, what’s going wrong, versus you’re just going along, trudging along doing the workouts and not seeing the progress. If you’re not telling the coach that it’s not working, they’re just working blindly and if they’re not hearing from you and they’re not getting the feedback, they’re just guessing. So I think that communication aspect is the most important part of the coach/athlete relationship because if I’m having a bad day, I’m not feeling well or I have a ton of stress in my life and I can’t mentally go into a workout and nail it, then I feel like I’m failing and then I’m messaging Grant, I’m like, put me back together because mentally, I’m falling apart and even though I been doing this for 20 years, I know if I just miss one workout, it’s not the end of the world and I’m not starting from ground zero, but I just need to have that communication with Grant to tell me, you’re fine. Take a rest day, it’s only going to do you more good than bad by taking a rest day and so it’s just like having that communication and that confidence in what I’m doing and what my coache supporting me and doing is just absolute key.
Robin Carpenter 14:45
I so agree with the needing to know why in some cases, sometimes it’s like, if you’re in a really focused environment, like a training camp or something and someone’s telling you to do something, you just sort of buckle down and do it because you know that everything is going to be getting pushed to its limit and that’s an overarching why, but having that consistent motivation to get out there, it really helps to know sort of what the coaches goals are for that workout and it’s also another funny thing about the comments is that I love comments, but then I go and look back sometimes at my old training because we have this training peaks diary that goes back to 2009 and I’m sure we all we all have one of these and you can go back and look at this and look at when you had a big success or when you when you felt really good and I get frustrated with myself for not having written in comments, 3, 4, 6, 8 years ago, when I know that I was feeling really good. I wonder what I did like leading up to that day to feel that way and I go back and look, I’m just like, oh, like, no comment, no comment, no comment. No heart rate, like nothing. Oh, God, what am I doing? How do I recreate this? It’s just such a useful tool, even in hindsight, later on down the road. Yeah, Grants always been a great communicator.
The Value of Support Beyond Self-Coaching
Trevor Connor 16:07
So I want to shift that question a little bit and just ask, not every athlete is coached. Is that personal relationship, is some sort of personal relationship still important for athletes who are on their own? Do you feel an athlete can be successful just following a training plan? Without having somebody to bounce ideas off, share their feelings with, to talk about how things are going?
Grant Holicky 16:32
I think they can, but I also think, as one of my favorite things to say on this podcast, it depends. What are their goals? What are they trying to do at the highest level, I think it’s awfully hard, excuse me, your highest level. It is awfully hard to go out there and just follow a training plan and think that you’re going to be okay. That you’re going to reach that highest level because by nature, we tend to doubt things. We tend to look for anomalous events, we tend to try to explain those anomalous events. I’ve been coaching for 30 years and if I go out there and I try to purely train myself, like, I’m gonna wake up today and I’m going to decide what I’m going to do. I always do too much. Always. If I go out and I really lay a plan out in front of me and then am able to look at my plan, objectively, week in and week out, I’m going to then make better choices, but if I just set that plan two months out, walk away, there are pitfalls all over the place because it’s hard to know when the stress is going to come in your life, it’s hard to know how that’s going to influence your total fatigue and then one last little thing that I’ll throw out there, we bring this up all the time. We bring up SDT, self determination theory, but relatedness is such an important part of the self determination theory, as is competence. It’s really difficult to see competence in ourselves. It’s really hard to look at something and go, You know what, I rip that up, I’m a rockstar and I say that every once in a while by myself, but it’s not that often.
Rob Pickels 18:05
Self praise stinks.
Grant Holicky 18:07
I like self praise, I’m good at self praise, but I’m also really good at self criticism. Really, really good at self criticism and I think most high level athletes are or most striving athletes are. That’s how we get better. So I think that feeling of competence, that helps that come from somebody that you trust and that you believe in and then it’s objective. One of my all time favorite music lines is ‘nobody loves me, but my mother and she could be jiving, too’ and I think that there’s some of that like, friendship pieces that aren’t good enough. Family pieces that aren’t good enough. I go home and I go, Hey, honey, I had a terrible workout. My wife goes, You’re fantastic. You’re awesome. Why are you upset and Robins laughing because I know he gets this at home.
Robin Carpenter 18:55
I was just telling this to my family yesterday because you crash and then everybody wants to know how you’re doing and I was just telling my mom, I was like, look, I can’t trust you guys at all because I’ve successfully inured you over 15 years to this, to the point where you think as long as I’m moving on the side of the road, everything’s hunky dory.
Grant Holicky 19:16
Yeah and then the other piece of that puzzle is relatedness. It really helps to be around people that think the way you do, that are trying to do the things you’re doing or have helped people do the things you’re doing. So going down that path of going, you know, I’m not in this alone is really crucial and I think there’s a million different ways you can take that conversation, but feeling like you have support. Feeling like you are doing this for a reason and you’re getting better. Those are things that can come out of the numbers, but the numbers are very material, right? You can go do the same workout on any two days of the year, be significantly stronger the second time you do it and there’s a million reasons why the numbers might not be higher.
Rob Pickels 19:57
Yeah. Trevor, I think that your question ultimately revolves around what we define success as and I think that for a lot of athletes success is a number. It’s a certain FTP, it’s a certain weight, it’s a certain place in a race and in that regard, sure, you can probably do it on your own following a training plan, but I think in my opinion, success is more around reaching your potential as an athlete, that’s a little bit more open ended and it might not be that number. It could even be higher than that number, but also doing that with happiness and I think that if we bring in that definition of success, it becomes really difficult to go about this on your own. I think oftentimes, athletes, they try to do everything by themselves. Following a training plan, making their own decisions, that person carries a lot of stress and sport becomes something that significantly more difficult than it ought to be. You talk about joy a lot, Grant. I think the joy oftentimes goes away because it becomes solely about achieving this goal. Don’t make the goal, not happy, make the goal am happy, great. I don’t want people to live their life that way. Was something that you mentioned before the subjective versus objective side of things. I think that that’s really important. You know, if people just believe that a coach is only good at writing training plans, then listen to this one point. You can not evaluate yourself appropriately and you can walk into a room and just start talking and 10 people around can all be uh, he’s overtrained and that athlete is like, I don’t think I’m doing enough. It’s amazing however, you take that outside. Look, it’s a totally different world, you can’t do it yourself. I’ve tried, I’ve never actually been coached by anybody and I probably should be, but I just haven’t because I’m too independent or something. Maybe I’m too cheap, who knows.
Grant Holicky 21:36
That, I think we hit the nail on the head there.
Rob Pickels 21:40
Anyway, I digress. I am so bad and I have tried for 20 years to be and understand myself as objectively as possible and I still stink at it, 20 years later and I know a lot to know about sports science and athletes and coaching and everything and if I struggle with it, trust me, other people are going to struggle too, but really the other side and what I do think is ultimately more important, Grant, is the community side. We all need somebody in our life and hey, maybe it’s not the person that’s writing your workouts for you. Maybe it’s your physical therapist, maybe it’s your mental skills coach, but we all need someone to be there. We need our groups of friends, right? We need our community around us and I think ultimately that makes everyone’s life a bit happier.
Trevor Connor 22:26
Hey Fast Talk listeners, this is Trevor Connor. Would it be cool to decide what Rob and I are going to chat about on an upcoming show or how about we answer a question on polarized training you’re dying to know? What about a 30 minute zoom call with Rob and me on your favorite sports endurance topic? This is all possible when you become a Fast Talk Patreon member. We have four monthly membership levels to fit your level of support. If you enjoy Fast Talk, help us stay independent in dishing out your favorite sports science topic by becoming a Fast Talk Patreon member. You can join us at patreon.com/fasttalkpodcast. So grant, I have to share this with you. I was out for a ride yesterday with Gian Carlo, who’s a very strong local rider. He’s raised professionally, he’s a coach himself and we were talking about coaching yesterday and he said, “you want to know how you can identify a bad coach”, I said how? He goes, “they never use the words it depends” and I won’t lie, he said that and I cringe because I’m like, I ride Grant so hard for always saying it depends.
What Athletes Need From Their Coaches
Grant Holicky 23:32
Well, you know at least I got one category where I’m a good coach. So like I think all this stuff’s really, really crucial, but here’s a question for Robin and Starla. What do you depend on your coaches for? Where does that personal relationship really factor in for you guys with your coach?
Rob Pickels 23:52
As a follow up to that, as you’re answering that, can you answer this? Have you ever been self coached throughout your career and made the transition to working with a coach?
Trevor Connor 24:01
Can I also point out the grant is actually following the outline. I don’t know what’s going on here.
Grant Holicky 24:08
Yeah, hit my head. It wasn’t you, Robin. I hit my head.
Starla Teddergreen 24:14
Yeah, so I’ve never been self coached. I would be terrible, I mean, based off of the fact that, yeah, I would be training way too hard and because that’s what I would be questioning constantly and I’ve seen this in so many other athletes is, they see what other people are doing and they’re like, gosh, they’re doing 30 hours a week. I’m only doing 10 and so you’re always comparing yourself with other people and you’re like, I’m never doing enough work and so that is why I would never self coach is because I’d always be like, well, maybe I’ll just do one more hour or maybe I’ll just do five more hours or trying to hit certain numbers.
Grant Holicky 24:55
Where does the relationship really fit in? Why is that so important for you as an athlete?
Starla Teddergreen 25:01
To keep me in control, mostly. No, I mean, it’s so important to me and the reason actually I started working with you is because I’m coming back from a huge health crisis, where I have zero confidence in myself and my abilities just because I don’t know how my body will react on any given day and so having that relationship with you to help me navigate that both in the physical training, but also the mental training aspect of it, to be kind to myself to be patient with myself and to just help me navigate the really rough waters that it can be and so having that just that relationship to help give me that confidence that I am doing the right thing that I am resting when I need to, I am going hard when I need to and then not being obsessed with the results anymore because like when I was like, on a team, it was absolutely results based and it was that worry about your contract and all of that, but now that I’m a privateer and I have all my own sponsors that we actually have a relationship where they care about me and they care about what I’m doing and building. It’s more now about me continuing to grow as an athlete and show others that they can do really hard things, even though there’s a million obstacles in their way. So having that relationship with your coach to navigate all those things more than just the numbers is, I think, more important than the numbers training plan.
Grant Holicky 26:39
So Robin, I know for a fact that you self coach and have done so. Did you do so before and after we worked together?
Robin Carpenter 26:53
Not before, no.
Grant Holicky 26:54
Okay.
Rob Pickels 26:55
Wait. So what you’re saying, yeah, yeah, we’re saying Grant drove you away from.
Comparison, CTL, and Knowing When to Rest
Robin Carpenter 27:00
Yeah, there’s only one way to read that. Just going backwards a little bit said, the phrases compare and despair. When you’re looking at everybody around you and especially in the age of Strava and the non linear timeline algorithm in which they show you things, if you’re cruising around on that website, all you’re gonna see are the activities that have the most kudos or the most interested activities and guess what, I get the most kudos on is any ride that’s over 80 miles and that’s all that you’re gonna see on that timeline. I see it myself and I’ve talked with teammates about this over and over again, is all you remember, like on a day to day basis or semi long term basis is the extremes. You see, oh, man, that guy did a 30 hour week and so and then you see that guy over there did a 30 hours a week and you think Well, man, why am I just such a schlub over here only doing 25. Clearly all of my competitors are doing more than me and I need to do more and it’s just such a it’s such a common problem with cyclists, at least that I’ve found. No one’s lacking for motivation and wanting to be better, but knowing when to lay off is is easily by far the hardest part, when to take it easy, when to recover and having a coach is having that objective outside feedback is kind of the only way. I feel like very time I’ve come to Grant or another coach that I had in the past and said, Man, I just don’t understand what’s going on. Am I fueling correctly and my eating, like I think I’m doing everything right and they’re just like, why don’t you just, why don’t you just lay on the couch for a day or two. 99% of time it solves all your problems. We are just consistently trained both mentally or just mentally trained to constantly be pushing the envelope and constantly be overdoing it just that little bit and it’s it’s easy to get too wrapped up in that.
Trevor Connor 27:00
I agree that that’s a really important point, that one thing a coach really helps you do is stay focused on what you need to stay focused on because as you said, it’s very easy as an athlete, particularly if you’re self coaching, to get caught up in things that are less important. Like what are your numbers? What’s your CTL? I can give you an example of an athlete I work with. He just had his big race this weekend and he is in his mid 50s, has a bunch of buddies that are also in their 40s and 50s and they love to ask him, what’s your CTL? I keep him around 70 and all his buddies are up around 110, 120 absolutely killing themselves and when they hear what a CTL is. Their, no way and they get on his case and he’s got to get that higher. Well, this race this weekend was it was a big race and he finished second in the 50+, but the guy who won the 50+ had traveled pretty far to come to this race and was like, basically still semi pro.
Grant Holicky 30:07
He was a ringer.
Trevor Connor 30:08
He was a ringer, but there was a whole pro category there and they all start together and my guy was was fifth overall and all his buddies with 110 CTL got popped in the first.
Grant Holicky 30:22
Oh, they did.
Trevor Connor 30:24
You know, he’s felt that pressure from them to get on board with that number and I’ve always, this is not to give myself a pat on the back. This is just one case where it did work out. Where I was like, that’s not what’s important.
Grant Holicky 30:37
Yeah and I think that’s interesting is just that, I almost got to the point, personally, where I wore it as a badge of honor. Knowing that I could only do 10 hour weeks or knowing that I was never again going to see, I had kids, I was never ever going to see a CTL over 75 again in my life or 80 and this doesn’t even bring in the problems with those metrics for a lot of individuals and especially if you’re not doing high volume, but just really almost trying to wear it as a badge of honor that says, You know what, I’m doing this in spite of my low CTL or in spite of my low hours of a week and just one thing to throw out there to kind of everybody in this is going along a lot and I think so often my job as a coach is not to push athletes harder. It’s to the pull the reins on and get them to slow down. I mean, we talked so many times on this show about how important rest is and how important the numbers are, but like to me so often, the importance of the numbers is making sure that they’re going easy enough, not to make sure that they’re going hard enough. The importance of the training plan is to make sure they’re resting enough, not to make sure they’re training enough. We can all train plenty. That’s not really what I’m worried about.
Rob Pickels 31:56
Trevor, you had mentioned the word focus and in my mind that brought up something a little bit different and that is, as a coach or as a sports scientist, there is so much knowledge and information out there. There are so many things you can do. You can take one workout and you can change the intensity, you can change the rest, you can change whatever. Infinite number of variables. You have the Norwegians doing this brand new, supposedly training method.
Grant Holicky 32:20
Brand new.
Rob Pickels 32:21
Brand new and it’s hard as an athlete, you look at all of this, just like Robin as you’re talking about Strava. You look at all of this, Oh, well. Robins doing high intensity interval training. Starla, she’s doing the new Norwegian method like God, I don’t know what I should do, but the coach is in a different position and they’re able to say, hey, my job is to always be up on the latest and the greatest and to make the decision of is this the appropriate thing for this athlete. It might be or it might not be, but the coach is in the position to do that because that’s what they have to worry about. The athlete has to worry about executing, but if you’re constantly worried about executing and also updating and you’re always questioning, oh, man, well, I did two by 20 today, but that person was doing two by 30. Maybe two by 30 is actually a better workout. As the athlete, you shouldn’t be worrying about that because then you can’t execute well. So that’s the focus that I was thinking about is distilling the information, distilling the recommendations to something that person can take and do well with.
Trevor Connor 33:26
As we know, when you’re out with your buddies or talking with your buddies and they do a harder workout than you, they never lawed that over you.
Grant Holicky 33:33
No, no, no, never. They never talked about it either. I don’t talk about my good work.
Robin Carpenter 33:38
It’s fully fully a running joke amongst me and my teammates and old teammates to like compare CTLs, like what’s your CTL bro because it’s such a meaningless interpersonal number that has nothing to do with comparing yourself to anybody else. Your number has, I feel like it’s gotten blown out of proportion, but if you 110 could be outer trash and somebody at 60 is great and it’s so different person to person. As fundamental it’s like do you change your your set FTP value on training peaks, whatever, maybe you don’t. I don’t ever change mine. So it’s gonna be a completely different number relative to anyone else.
Rob Pickels 34:22
Does anybody compare recovery scores?
Grant Holicky 34:24
That might be what I use more on training peaks than anything else.
Rob Pickels 34:28
Oh, no, I’m thinking about like, like bragging rights between.
Trevor Connor 34:32
This is what I’m picturing two guys smoking up on the couch and I’m so much more recovered than you.
Robin Carpenter 34:38
It goes the other way. It’s like how low did you get?
Trevor Connor 34:41
Exactly?
Robin Carpenter 34:42
Yeah, the end of the stage race I got to negative 75.
Grant Holicky 34:47
That’s what whoop brought into the equation. Hey, I’m at 2%. Good for you, like what you do wrong here.
Starla Teddergreen 34:55
Me and my training partner. We both use Garmin, the Garmin watch for our tracking and we do that comparison all the time. Like, what is your recovery day? I’m like, I’m a one and she’s like, oh I’m a five and it’s just in joking.
Grant Holicky 35:09
Yeah, my favorite thing is when Garmin tells you how long you should wait to recover.
Starla Teddergreen 35:14
Yeah, you need 72 hours.
Grant Holicky 35:16
You should take five days off, you moron.
Trevor Connor 35:18
My favorite one, I started my Garmin and wasn’t picking up my power meter, so I extended the workout.
Grant Holicky 35:25
Yeah.
Trevor Connor 35:26
I had a two second workout and it told me I needed 48 hours.
Rob Pickels 35:29
Well, that’s what happened when we were in Portugal. Somebody, we had to ride from the hotel to the start of one of the stages one day and you had to restart your track, so you ride the three miles and then you get there and you start a new thing and Garmin ride, 10 minutes, 72 hours of recovery. Everybody’s like, oh no, I’m screwed.
Robin Carpenter 35:50
This is the perfect encapsulation of the what we opened with the AI coaching, if you just have a little bit of bad data in there, everything gets thrown out of whack and it’s hard to hard to pinpoint where that goes.
Starla Teddergreen 36:05
If I actually followed what the watch told me, I would have a rest day almost every single day.
Trevor Connor 36:12
Yep, no, absolutely.
Self-Coaching, Data, and Outside Perspective
Robin Carpenter 36:13
It could be cool. We’d love to see the integration of data and we all love data. We all love power. We love heart rate, we love being able to see this stuff in hindsight and compare numbers and see how we’re improving, but there’s just limitations and in a sport that is such a such a lifetime sport, such a lifestyle sport, there’s a huge component of like human contact that’s necessary and I wanted to go answer that question about the self coaching because I think that’s really relevant and I don’t want to like fake anything here because I have been stopped coaching myself for a couple of years after working with Grant and don’t get me wrong, I loved working with Grant and we worked together for I think, like a year and a half and I made this decision that and it’s the irony is astonishing because it was right at the end of 2019, where I was on the road for seven months out of the year and I probably had 80 race days and I thought man, all I do here is racing recover, I trained maybe for six weeks out of the year from November to mid December and that’s about it. I think I could probably figure out how to do this on my own and then 2020 happened and I did the most self directed riding and training of that I’ve ever done in my entire life. You can ask Grant that, he’s still a listed coach on my account and I check in with him fairly often. Just to bounce ideas back and forth and see if I’m maybe being a moron or even most recently, after crashing at Spartanburg I was like hey, man, I clearance to race nationals in in eight weeks and I have five weeks to train. You got a three sentence paragraph for me. Like, help me out here. What do you what do you think is sort of the right way to go about doing things and he had a totally sort of different approach than I had for myself and I think it’s, well, up until yesterday actually had paid off significantly to be listening to somebody else.
Rob Pickels 38:18
His advice was ramped CTL as fast as possible.
Grant Holicky 38:21
Yeah and let’s get as low as we can on Whoop, there you go. Perfect. No, but I think I one point to make on that. I think one of the things that in Robin and I didn’t work together that long, but it is interesting that we’ve been in contact longer post that coaching relationship than we were when we were coach and athlete and probably you like interact in ways that are really, really important, long after that relationship was over and I think that that is one of the things that I really pride myself on or want to pride myself on as a coach is that those relationships continue. That Robin might be calling me for cycling advice, but every once in a while I hear from with coaching advice and he doesn’t coach with my group. He’s out on his own, but I am all for trying to help that. I want to try to foster that, I want more coaches and better coaches in the business and he’s got a bright future at that. So I really think that interaction and that ability to help and that personal relationship, that rapport is such an essential part of the whole thing.
Robin Carpenter 39:28
I’ll plug it for you if you won’t grant because your newsletter, I think is a valuable resource for anybody who’s in the coaching business and I’ve already learned quite a lot from your three or four that have come out so far.
Grant Holicky 39:42
My rants?
Starla Teddergreen 39:43
Your Ted Lasso one was my favorite.
Trevor Connor 39:46
That’s one that’s really relevant to this episode. You were talking about we have a lot to learn from Ted Lasso because…
Rob Pickels 39:52
Hold on. Wait, you guys actually read Grant’s…
Trevor Connor 39:58
I have that one right here and I almost was gonna read a paragraph from it, but everybody should check this out because I haven’t personally seen Ted Lasso. I kind of want to watch it now.
Starla Teddergreen 40:07
It’s amazing. It’s so heartwarming like I either well, almost every episode I cry, and I laugh my head off.
Rob Pickels 40:14
Really?
Robin Carpenter 40:15
It will warm the cockles of any icy heart.
Starla Teddergreen 40:17
Absolutely.
Grant Holicky 40:18
It’ll be perfect for Robin.
Rob Pickels 40:23
Now, it’s an Apple TV product. Trevor will never watch it.
Trevor Connor 40:27
That’s my issue. That’s why I haven’t seen it. You point out though, that he doesn’t really have any technical knowledge. It was all the personal side, but how successful he can make this team really focusing on that personal side and I think that’s important.
Grant Holicky 40:42
Yeah, I think it’s really interesting. I mean, I remember when I started as a swim coach, we would really poopoo those guys that didn’t come from a real swimming background and then I found myself in this middle part where I was not a star swimmer, I was good, but I was not spectacular. I maybe made nationals once or twice, but I was not going to the Olympics and here I was really wanting to coach and felt like the fact that I wasn’t phenomenal, made me a better coach and as I’ve moved through my career, I’ve found that really the experience with the sport may matter less than the ability to interact and understand the things that go with that sport. Man, I love to pull these 80s references, 90s references when I’m on this show. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was one, but I’m gonna go Days of Thunder.
Rob Pickels 41:29
Days of Thunder?
Grant Holicky 41:29
I’m gonna go Days of Thunder on this one, where he asked Tom Cruise how did he learn to drive and he said, ‘ESPN, it has really good coverage’ and they all look at him and lose their mind, but with how much you can watch cycling these days, with how much time you can spend very immersed in the tactical aspects of what’s going on in cycling. Yes, it really matters to have done to an extent yourself, but that experience within the sport maybe becomes less and less important as the relationships becomes more and more important. When you’re starting out the relationships important, but doing something. Some aspect of training is going to give a huge response, but as we know, is that time goes on under load, time goes on under training, those improvements become smaller and smaller and smaller and eventually we get to a point in our life and I’m here. I’m at this point and Robin, you might be the only one in this conversation who is really, really not at this point. Sorry Starla, but we get to an age where our goal is don’t get worse. I’m at 50 and I joke a 49 and 351 days, but by the time this comes out, I’m going to be 50, but I haven’t I don’t think my…
Trevor Connor 42:43
You are reaching the age where it’s not trying not to get worse. It’s you’re getting worse.
Grant Holicky 42:48
Yeah, yeah. Trying to slow down getting worse, but my my FTP or my, what I use really hasn’t changed in 15 years and I think there was a lot of time in there, there was probably higher than that and there’s a little bit of time that it was definitely lower than that, but it’s that idea of like, keep it going, man. Just let’s keep it going. Let’s keep it going and I think so much of that becomes the relationship because Starla is going to compare herself to what she was at 35. Robins gonna compare himself to what it was when he was full time in Europe racing and being in the brake at Flasher Lea was flashed, you are in the brake and these epic moments that we’re trying to compare ourselves to that may not be relevant right now and that’s where a coach is really important.
Rob Pickels 43:34
There are more female athletes in endurance sports than ever before. Yet, until recently, female athletes simply follow the advice and protocols that have been designed and tested on men. This is now rapidly changing and there are a host of experts bringing light to the perils and pitfalls associated with female athletes falling guidelines that are male specific. Check out our latest crafting coaching module, Coaching Female Athletes for Expert Guidance on Coaching Women.
Trust, Communication, and Final Takeaways
Trevor Connor 44:03
So this isn’t one of our main episodes, so we won’t do our one minute take homes, but where I’m what I’m thinking would be a good thing to do to kind of finish this up. Let’s just go around and have each of us talk about that personal side and what’s most important about it and what you should really be looking for it maybe all started out. I’ve mentioned this study a few times there’s a study that is simultaneously one of my all time favorite studies. And one I’m absolutely horrified by because it’s a study that when you look at the title, I can’t remember exactly what the title is. It implies that software can produce a better training plan than top coaches. And there have been people who have cited that same stop using coaches just go with the software. It’s gonna it’s going to train you better. So I had to check out the study. And what the study did was it used a software program to develop a plan and then it had a One of the I believe was the British national team, top top level cycling coaches develop a training plan for this hypothetical athlete. And then they put it in the training software and saw which one produced a higher CTL with a better balance of TSB and ATL. And you’ll look at and go, that’s great. But you didn’t actually put athletes through these two training plans. And here’s the way that that computer generated plan is going to work, you’re gonna get an athlete, they’ll follow it to a tee for a week. The second week, at some point, the probably going to do a workout and it’s not going to go as planned. Some athletes are just gonna go oh, well, other athletes are gonna go Oh, no, what’s wrong with me? Right, and I didn’t execute that well enough. So no, I’m not gonna get that perfect CTL. So I better catch up. And they’re gonna start doing they’re gonna have more and more workouts that are gonna go badly. And by the time they get to the end of that plan, they’re going to be a CTL 30 off of what the original plan is going to get them to completely overtrained and not be performing well at all right? And that’s the difference between the reality and the, you know, let’s generate some nice numbers. Yeah. And that’s where you need a coach, when things start when the wheels start coming off, the coach can come in and say, let’s talk about this. Let’s adjust and can adjust according to the athlete, because I made that point of some athletes are gonna have the bad work. And it’s fine. Yeah. On others. It’s at the end of the world. Oh, my God, what do I do now? Yeah, good. Sorry.
Starla Teddergreen 46:33
The fact that we’re not numbers, I mean, the difference between me and Robbie, I mean, we’re, we’re completely. I mean, he’s a man, I’m a woman, we’re completely different, where you have completely different needs.
Rob Pickels 46:46
Well, with that attitude. Yeah.
Starla Teddergreen 46:49
Well, and I mean, and we’re racing completely different, I might have been one thing when I was back kart racing, we might have similar, you know, plans and whatnot, but our numbers would still be completely different. But now the fact that I’ve transitioned over to doing 200 mile races is completely different. So if I’m relying on a program, that’s, you know, giving me numbers and saying you should do this, you should do that. That’s not taking into account who I am as an athlete, my experience, on and off the bike. And so I think, yeah, if I was like, listen to my Garmin watch, and I’m like, that might work for the general person who’s trying to become fit. But it’s not taking into account my entire 20 years plus history of training and being an athlete. And so I think, working with a coach, like the most important thing, and I’ve had this conversation with a handful of people recently is that one on one relationship, like when you’re looking for a coach, you are getting into a relationship with someone, and you better be able to communicate with them, you better like their style of communication. Like if they’re just, you know, blowing smoke up your buttons, you know, saying you’re wonderful, and you’re fantastic all the time. They’re doing you a disservice. Like if they’re saying, like, they need to be able to be honest with you and be like, you know, you kind of need to like, if you actually want to progress and become the athlete, and reach the goals that you want to reach, you need to stop screwing around and actually do the work. Or you might need to actually take a rest day like they need to be honest with you, and also be your cheerleader be like you need to have more faith in yourself, you need to know that you actually did the work, and it’s going to pay off and their job and that relationship is you have to trust them. You have to trust everything that they’re telling you and that the work that you’re doing is what’s right for you to reach those goals. Because if you don’t trust the work, you’re going to be constantly wasting energy, like questioning. Am I overtrained? Am I too rested? Should I be doing those 30 hours instead of the 20 that I’m doing? It’s you have to have that full belief and trust in your coach. And that comes from communication from you as much as it does from them. Like if they’re ignoring you and ignoring your comments and your workouts, then that’s not okay. But like if they just give you a thumbs up even like, Yeah, you did a good job, then that gives you that confidence and reassurance that Yeah, you did do a good job. And so I think that relationship is more important than anything because it’s just giving you that confidence. And one less thing to worry about because as athletes, we worry a ton.
Robin Carpenter 49:29
Yeah, I’d like to have left this come off as a hour long advertisement for paid coaching services by half. Coaches here, there are people out there and personalities who who can thrive, self being self coached or following sort of a plan. They’re out there. Right. But I’d say that they’re probably relatively rare to have the self awareness to be able to look at yourself from an objective perspective. And I think really one of the big takeaways from this conversation is that what we’re looking for with the coaches, you know, not only like sort of maxing out our peak performances, but also avoiding burnout and creating more people who are who are lifers in the in the sport and, and keeping more people enjoying the sport and having a coach. And having that personal relationship is a is a huge way to go about doing that. One of the things that I make that I’ve made a huge priority with any new client is to get on a video call, before we do anything together. Before I write any workouts or talk about any power numbers or anything like that is we get on a FaceTime, and we just talk for at least an hour, we just try to get to know each other, try to get to know some background and try to understand what you know, not only what your goals are for sports performance, but also just like, who are you? What do you do on a day to day? What’s your life? Like? How can we integrate this, you know, ostensibly fun activity into your life and keep it that way? But also, have you make the gains that you want?
Rob Pickels 51:13
Yeah, I think if we think about the overall topic of today’s episode, right, and the personal side of coaching and how there’s benefit there, compared to computer AI generated training plans, I think pretty pretty objectively, everybody is going to say right now computers can’t necessarily do what a coach does, right? We’ve talked about our Garmin watches, the recommendations are all over the place. Same thing with Whoop, same thing with everything else. At some point in the future, computers might get there, they might be able to write the world’s best training plan, give it enough really great data, I’m sure that it can find trends that a human could never be able to find. And they would say, Well, if you did exactly this, and exactly that, then your FTP was three watts higher than it was. But coaches are always going to be important. And maybe maybe maybe we get to a day where the coach just lets the computer take care of all the training. Right. But there is always as we’ve been talking about people are, we’re communal, being social, we’re social. We love being in this room together, talking with each other. We love listening to podcasts, we love hearing other people’s voices, right. And there will always be that element that helps people achieve success achieve their potential. And that potential again, is more than just a number. It’s the enjoyment, it’s the self fulfillment. It’s the self confidence, it’s all of these things that come along with that. And that doesn’t necessarily just have to boil down to whether or not you won the race, because nine times out of 10, you aren’t going to win the race. But you still need to feel good about yourself, you still need to have fun with what you’re doing.
Grant Holicky 52:52
So I think, you know, the biggest thing for me and all this is I started coaching at the pool, I was a swim coach. And every day I got to watch those kids walk on the pool deck, and I could look in their eyes. And know and it’s amazing what you can tell when you look in an athlete’s eyes, I had a I had a mentor, just phenomenal resource at USA Swimming that used to say, when you’re talking to an athlete, take your sunglasses off, let them see your eyes. Let them see how much you care. Let them see how much it matters. And when I say that I have that conversation, I get on the verge of choking up a little bit because that relationship that ability, me just saying look in their eyes brings back all these memories of all these athletes that I’ve had the pleasure to look in their eyes, and get that relationship and really understand that. And one of the things that’s really phenomenal about the coaching relationship and and to extend on that, you know, I used to say I could look in their eyes and know when they’re tired know when they’re fresh. Now, that’s why the training peaks comments that Robin talks about are so important. You know, if you know an athlete, you’ve been working with them for six months, and all of a sudden they drop an F bomb in the middle of their comments or they’re beating the crap out of themselves in their comments. You’re going, oh, red flag, something’s going on. Let’s talk about this. Let’s get on the phone. Alright, just call them up. But that, that connection that I’ve been, I’ve been really, and everybody says this as a placation. But I’ve been really fortunate and who I’ve gotten to work with over the years because I’ve had these athletes like Robert and Starla and like some of the people I’ve worked with in the past that took a huge chance on me as a coach. And what I mean by that is maybe that my resume wasn’t what some of these other people’s resumes that were out there that they could they could work with. And what I always felt like I brought to the table was okay, tell me about you. What do you do? Well, what do you love? What are the workouts that work for you? I remember a conversation that Robin and I had years ago in the coaching relationship where it’s like I really feel like I need more of this. And it would have just been so easy for me to have no No, no, I know better, we’re going to do this. And what I did was, and I think it was good. Robert might be shaking his head furiously say no. But was to go out there and say, let’s incorporate it. Let’s figure out how to use it, it’s going to build your confidence. Let’s do it. And as long as it’s not hurting you badly, even if it’s hurting you, like theoretically hurting you, what you may gain out of that from a self confidence point of view is really phenomenal. So that two way relationship between coach and athlete, that reduction of the gap, the power gap between an athlete and a coach, really make it a relationship really make it the coaches, the supporter, the coaches giving direction, but the athlete is the one that’s going out and doing the work. And we have to appreciate that. We have to respect that. And we have to give everything we can to support that.
Trevor Connor 55:52
Well, thank you everyone. That was a fun conversation. I’m really glad we had it. Thank you for coming on the show.
Grant Holicky 55:56
Thanks for coming, guys.
Starla Teddergreen 55:58
Thanks for having me.
Robin Carpenter 55:58
Thanks for having me. This was great.
Outro
Rob Pickels 56:00
That was another episode of Fast Talk. Subscribe to Fast Talk wherever you prefer to find your favorite podcast. Be sure to leave us a rating and a review. The thoughts and opinions expressed on Fast Talk are those of the individual. As always we love your feedback tweet at us @fasttalklabs or join the conversation at forums.fasttalklabs.com. Learn from our experts at fasttalklabs.com or keep us independent by supporting us on Patreon. For Grant Holicky, Robin Carpenter, Starla Teddergreen, and Trevor Connor. I’m Rob Pickels. Thanks for listening.
