040: Matt Dixon on customising training

Matt Dixon is a professional triathlon coach and founder of Purplepatch fitness. Matt is former professional triathlete and elite swimmer, now coach and has set up a highly successful performance training and coaching support business. Purple patch has a roster of numerous world class triathletes that Matt and his team of coaches have supported to hundreds of ironman and half ironman victories. But they also have a slogan of 'Performance Training for Time-Starved People' which is fascinating as a growing group of their clientele are executives searching for an outlet and a health and performance goal but clearly having to manage work, life and their sporting endeavours.

Thanks to Andy Blow from Precision Hydration for putting me in touch with Matt.

I caught up with Matt at his family home when I was speaking over in the US.

Triathletes - performance driven people

The intellectual challenge of triathlon

How to do a triathlon poorly!

The value of failing

Work ethic

Not allowed bottles on the pool deck… 

It’s great to work hard but in order to maintain balance you need to recover

Why do we train?

Drop weight, drop weight drop weight…poor behaviours

My actions, my behaviours, my mistakes that proved fruitful 

Subjects like strength & conditioning, nutrition and recovery were only given lip service

The barometer of success is more work

The four primary subjects of consistency endurance component, nutrition, recovery and strength & conditioning as an educational. Recovery is part of the programme - the Recovery Coach

Stressors - the components of recovery

Stress, recovery & adaptation 

Supporting people that are ‘time starved’

How did Purple Patch start? 

I want to change the way endurance sports are coached 

The scaling problem - without diluting quality 

Set up your business with multiple oils wells

Content marketing opens an environment of sharing globally 

The best coaches to have worked with are those which have an environment of sharing

Elite and professional athletes unapologetically driving towards world class performance 

Amateur athletes to improve but not at the expense of the other areas of your life 

Purple Patch attract people that are time starved and high performers 

Redefining what it takes to be successful 

the classic sense for many coaches is to take a training programme and dump it on top of life 

We don’t start with the training programme we start with life 

The growth of executives searching for a sporting outlet

A training programme cannot be just about the prescription of training

Empowering athletes to make adjustments 

Prescription is the first act of coaching, but it’s the execution of the why that is imperative 

Purple Patch focus on triathletes but also globally performance driven individuals 

Which habits keep you performing well? You can follow Matt on twitter @Purplepatch https://twitter.com/purplepatch If you’re interested in more from Matt, have a listen to his podcast episode 59 and 66 are particularly good ! https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/podcast He also offers squad based training support, that you can look up https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/squad 

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