Endurance Unlimited

Anyone who has ever stood at the starting line knows how important confidence can be for athletes embarking on a difficult race. But, as a coach, how do you help instill that confidence in your athletes before race day?Dr. Nicole Adams has wrestled with that question much of her career as an endurance coach, sports psychologist, and an athlete. Adams recommends working with athletes to develop a healthy confidence, or self efficacy, based on training and preparation. Among other things, one of the tools discussed in this episode is a "confidence resume" or a list of all of the things an athlete has already accomplished in training that has prepared them for race day. 

You have probably pushed yourself to your limit before during training or racing, but what if you could push further? As science continues to unlock mysteries about human limits and performance potential, evidence supports the idea that maybe our mind is much more important in endurance than we previously believed.Dave sat down with Alex Hutchinson, New York Times best-selling author of Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance, to discuss his career and the findings in his new book. They covered how Hutchinson approaches sports journalism, what science tells us about human endurance, and how athletes can use that information to improve their performance.

Let's face it. Even driven athletes only have 24 hours in the day. Every athlete has limitations when it comes to how much they can train, but you should be taking more than just their available hours into consideration. Are you thinking about life stressors, recovery, and balance? All too often, athletes "burn the candle at both ends" as they try to make every workout count, and coaches sometimes only make matters worse.Coach Shayne Gaffney explores his approach to maximizing his athletes' time while training, even if that means taking some time off. 

Starting your own coaching business is always a risk. This is especially true when you already have a successful career that you can depend on, even when your true passion might not lie there.Richard Thompson, while waiting for the Australian Supreme Court to rule on a case he was working on, found himself checking the latest results from IRONMAN Melbourne. That's when he knew that helping other athletes achieve their goals was the life he wanted to live.Since then, Thompson has helped build the successful T-Zero Multisport and is now giving back to the coaching community that has given him so much. After speaking to fellow coaches at TrainingPeaks University Melbourne, Thompson sat down with Dave Schell to discuss how he found his "why", how T-Zero approaches hiring new coaches, and how viewing coaching as an "infinite game" has helped him see past short-term wins and ultimately benefit his athletes.

Are you or your athletes struggling with GI issues, fatigue, and poor performance during races even after adjusting your nutrition strategy? You might be suffering from hyponatremia, an imbalance of sodium sometimes caused by over-hydrating. After suffering from hyponatremia himself, Andy Blow, co-founder of Precision Hydration, started his journey to help athletes solve their own hydration problems. Andy struggled with performance issues in hot, humid races, and discovered that his sweat was particularly salty. More importantly, he realized that there were effective ways to measure sweat composition and subsequently replace the water and salt as it was lost. Now, Andy works to help make sure other athletes have the hydration plans, supplements, and knowledge to perform better in challenging conditions.

As more endurance athletes turn to strength training to boost performance, it's becoming increasingly important for coaches to keep up with the latest science. Are you confident you're properly prescribing strength workouts for the biggest impact or are you just depending on the same old routines you're used to?Dave Schell sat down with Strength and Conditioning Coach Jess Elliot to talk more about some of the biggest mistakes she sees endurance coaches and athletes making in the weight room. 

It takes more than athletic experience and luck to build a full-time coaching business. Advancing your business to the next level requires dedication to your athletes, organization, developing a coaching niche, and effective sales techniques. Have you spent enough time working on the tools that will help you build your business?Dave sat down with Coach Tim Ballintine from Koa Sports to discuss how he organizes his business, personal life, and training to maximize his effectiveness. Learn about some of the mistakes to avoid as you start your business and how Tim makes every athlete a priority.

Without proper recovery, training alone might not get your athletes to their goals. At the same time, how much of what we know about recovery is actually based on unscientific assumptions? You might be surprised at how much we don’t know about recovery.Dave Schell sat down Christie Aschwanden, author and lead science writer for FiveThirtyEight, to discuss her new book, Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery. They discussed topics like inflammation, sleep, and even New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady to get to the bottom of our sometimes unscientific approach to recovery.

In its simplest form, training is a method of increasing biological stressors in order to increase performance in an athlete. But, how do coaches know when they push their athletes too hard and actually hurt their performance? This is especially important considering athletes encounter stress from more than just endurance training such as work, personal life, illness, and even environment.Dave sat down with researcher Simon Wegerif to discuss heart rate variability, a precise and easily measured metric that may help reveal when the body is overstressed and likely unable to endure heavy training loads. As even more information about the importance of effective recovery is published, coaches may want to consider adding heart rate variability to the data they monitor.

Endurance coaches have a lot on their plates already. They are physiologists, psychologists, nutritionists, motivators, voices of reason, scheduling experts, and friends. So, how are they supposed to fit "marketer" on the list, too?Dave sat down with triathlon coach, social media influencer, and business coach Jen Rulon to find out how she helps other coaches find their voice online while maintaining her own. They discussed how she built her online coaching brand, how she fits marketing tasks into her coaching schedule, and why she is dedicating herself to help other coaches build their businesses.