Welcome to another potluck conversation with Grant Holicky, Rob Pickels, Trevor Connor, and Dr. Griffin McMath. In these discussions, we pick topics that we find interesting and break them down using a mix of science, humor, and our own experiences.
Is it better to have a well-rounded, balanced life or a focused, unbalanced life?
Performance coach Steve Magness says that to achieve anything, you need to be unbalanced. Meaning that to achieve excellence you have to commit to a point where other aspects your life may suffer. Coach Rob Pickels asks the team if they think this is the best way to approach our sports and life or if we feel that finding balance is best—even if it means not performing at the level we know we’re capable of.
What are some good workouts to start the early base season?
It’s the time of year when many endurance athletes are just starting to get back to training and are looking at months of base work before their first event or race. Motivation often isn’t high and, more importantly, the ability to suffer through a hard workout often isn’t there. With this in mind, Coach Trevor Connor asks what some good workouts are to use in those first few weeks as you get back to a regular training routine.
You’ve heard of overreaching, but have you heard of over-communication?
Communication is at the core of coach-athlete relationships. It’s also at the core of all relationships, whether it’s between family, friends, teammates, or coaches. Good communication is essential, but an important question that Dr. Griffin McMath asks on this episode is whether there’s such a thing as too much communication. Does the message get lost when we share too much or is there no such a thing as over-communicating?
So, get ready for some definite over-communication from our hosts, and let’s make you fast!
Episode Transcript
Trevor Connor 00:05
Hello, welcome to pass doc, your source for the science of endurance, performance or not. Did you catch that? Rob, I did it right? No,
Rob Pickels 00:11
I wasn’t listening. I didn’t care.
Trevor Connor 00:13
I read it this time.
Rob Pickels 00:15
I know just for you. There is two people that have their computers open.
Trevor Connor 00:19
You’re not one of them. You actually have it in front of you, and you closed it. It’s
Grant Holicky 00:23
a potluck, a
Rob Pickels 00:24
potluck.
Griffin McMath 00:24
I’m ready in case I need to research something on the dime. It’s
Trevor Connor 00:29
time for a potluck. For a potluck. We haven’t done one of these in a while. I’ve been excited. It’s the best.
Griffin McMath 00:35
I feel like your pent up potluck energy. Each of you,
Trevor Connor 00:39
all right, who wants to go first Griffin?
Grant Holicky 00:41
I don’t know. I don’t have a question at first I got voted off the island today.
Griffin McMath 00:47
Pretty usual
Rob Pickels 00:48
last time, verbatim. That’s, I think that’s what I said that you were,
Grant Holicky 00:52
yeah,
Rob Pickels 00:53
I have a question for you all as I was driving home the other day, which is when all my great potluck, you know, questions come to me. I came up with one that I think is pretty good. We talk a lot about riding bikes. We talk a lot about training. We talk a lot about endurance sports. What I’m interested in while grant strips out of his cycling clothing. What do you have outside of endurance training? What do you have outside of cycling? What do you have that you engage with, that you love, that you just love to spend time doing. And ultimately, what I want to talk about is the question, is it better to have a well balanced, well rounded life where you were engaged in a lot of different things, or is it maybe better to be unbalanced and focused and to maybe at times, put your eggs all in one basket. Go all in with cycling. You don’t do anything else in your life but ride bikes. Who are you? What do you think is best? I
Grant Holicky 01:52
don’t know why everybody’s looking at me, because it depends, just
Rob Pickels 01:55
waiting for the next piece of clothing to come off. Yeah, is this like strip pot looking
Trevor Connor 02:03
the other way. I’m
Griffin McMath 02:04
like, What have I done to deserve to be in this room right now wrapped
Rob Pickels 02:07
in a blanket?
Trevor Connor 02:08
Yeah,
Grant Holicky 02:09
it’s chilly outside. It’s chilly inside.
Griffin McMath 02:12
I think the answer to this question is it’s so dependent to the individual. There are people who do so much better in life when they have focus, when something that they’re doing, they throw themselves into to the point where it almost becomes their identity. I think there are people, at least for phases, where that’s appropriate, and I think others that does not work,
Rob Pickels 02:32
being all in on one thing you’re saying does. Yeah, I
Griffin McMath 02:35
feel like I can think about a conversation you and I had. It also depends on someone’s goals. You know, goal check if your goals are aligned with something that requires that, then yeah, that might be appropriate. But if not, Oh, was that a profound answer that you’re looking for? That’s great.
Trevor Connor 02:51
That’s perfect. I will say that I love that Rob sent this question because I know that we’re going to probably land on different sides of the scale. I love the focused on balanced life.
Rob Pickels 03:02
I saw that coming. Holy crap.
Trevor Connor 03:07
You came up with the question because you knew that was, you know what? I
Rob Pickels 03:11
thought, actually, Trevor, I thought you were gonna throw the knuckle ball because you are so obviously the person that is focused, that is unbalanced in their life, that I thought you were gonna come in and say, Well, I think that balance is the greatest thing in the world.
Trevor Connor 03:26
I’d be fully honest here when you sent that question, I’m like, Rob, just put down a bear trap with some pretty tasty food in the middle. I know it’s a bear trap. I’m going for the food, but
Rob Pickels 03:38
knowing you, you’re gonna try to take that food faster than anyone else has ever done. Of course, I’m
Trevor Connor 03:42
gonna grab it really quick. I will start my answer with in my late teens and my early 20s, I did a ton of sports. I was one of those. I loved doing sports. I did a whole bunch. I was okay at all them. I wasn’t great at any of them. And really thought that was the way to live, though I was probably being unbalanced in the amount of sports I was doing, but tried to kind of keep it balanced do a mix of things. When I got serious about cycling, there was a point where I went, This is really fun. I really enjoy that seeing how far you can go. I love the discipline. I love the all the little things that you nuances that you can improve and make better. And just went, you know, what? As much as I love doing all the different sports. I kind of enjoy this challenge more.
Rob Pickels 04:33
Yeah, let’s take a bigger picture than that. Trevor, so, you know, obviously Cycling is a big deal to you. Obviously running your companies is a big deal to you. Do you like and do you try to, say, keep your loci of foci in a very small area? Or do you try to have 1012, other things? You go to the theater, you’re reading books about Russian literature, you’re learning. Doing the cello. I don’t know what it is, where you just have so much going on and everything’s kind of getting equal attention
Griffin McMath 05:05
the cello, yeah, is he then smoking a stogie?
Grant Holicky 05:12
Quite obvious.
Rob Pickels 05:14
Would he play?
Trevor Connor 05:15
So first of all, I’m gonna say, Do you want to go into these recesses of my brain? Yeah, yeah. I do. I do. The answer your question is yes. As much as I try to be focused and really dedicated what I’m doing, I’m on those people that’s not good at saying I have to let go of everything else. So I have a piano in my bedroom that every day I look at and say, I’m going to get back to playing the piano. Every once while I sit down and play. You can ask my girlfriend, I drag her to the Denver theater all the time to make her see shows that she’s like I would never go to that we are fighting right now over Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer musical, what you’re going to see?
Rob Pickels 05:53
It’s a surprise. You really what? You just let the cat out of
Trevor Connor 05:57
the bag. Want to go? Huh? Look
Grant Holicky 06:00
at that little theater is not my thing, man,
Trevor Connor 06:04
musical on rude off the Red Nose Reindeer. I did. I grew up on Rudolph the Red Nosed. This is the live version.
Grant Holicky 06:11
Yeah. Okay, have fun. To have fun. I think the really big question with this question is, if you are all in on a sport and you are unbalanced with a sport, I think everybody likes to look at that unbalanced piece as a positive. Oh, I’m so in. I’m focused, I’m on that what they’re missing is that other things are going to suffer, and they’re going to suffer badly. So to a little bit of your point, Griffin, we have to start with, what’s the goal? If you’re trying to be the best in the world, you’re probably willing to make some of those sacrifices. But if you’re 51 years old like I am, and you have a wife and two young kids, I can’t I can’t go all in on anything, because they’re gonna suffer, and that’s not okay. And they’re gonna suffer because my psyche will suffer if I’m not well rounded. And again, Griffin made a note earlier that if you start defining yourself by something, then it gets very, very dangerous, because every aspect of your life is going to be defined by that. I went out and raced, and I raced poorly. It’s not just I had a bad race, it’s I’m bad. Your self worth change, yeah, and the self that’s really what gets dangerous, and I would even go so far to say is with the most elite and most dedicated athlete, that also is incredibly dangerous, and it’s really bad for them. Now, some definitely feel like that’s where they have to go in order to be successful, but I do think we can make a bit of a split between living the unbalanced life and an unbalanced psyche. Yeah, right, the unbalanced psyche of I cannot separate what I do from who I am, and then the unbalanced life is, there’s just so much time in my life that’s going into this endeavor.
Rob Pickels 08:09
You know, this is partially inspired by I was listening to the high performance podcast, and they had Michael Johnson, the 240 meter sprinter, on and he was recalling a conversation he was having with someone, another high performance athlete, and they were talking about their lives, sort of looking back retrospectively, and about balance in their life, and ultimately, how they didn’t have balance, but how they were 100% okay with that, you know. And Michael was like, I never, literally never, once missed a training session, right? And I love to run. I was literally every day doing the thing that I love to do. And people say, Well, what about the birthday parties you didn’t go to? What about the weddings that you missed? What about x, y, z? And he was like, it doesn’t feel like a loss to me. Yeah. And
Grant Holicky 08:55
I’ve said this a lot about starting with, what are your priorities, right? Starting with an honest conversation with your coach, with yourself, with your family, what are my priorities? And I remember doing this for years with my teenage swimmers, and I’d say, what are your priorities? List them. And they’d list family. They’d list, you know, school, some would list faith, some would list social life, and swimming would end up third or fourth or fifth, and then that same swimmer would stand there and say, I want to make
Rob Pickels 09:24
Olympic trials. These two are not growing with each and where
Grant Holicky 09:27
you are and where you want to go. This isn’t going to work. That’s okay, though, right? That’s okay. You don’t have to go to trials. For some people, they can make that list, and they can go to trials. They’re that gifted, or they’re that far ahead, or wherever they might be. But then on the other line, you’d have people that go family swimming or swimming, family, school, whatever. And then I always sat there as a coach, and remember going, Well, hey man, you put swimming first, and now you want to go to prom, as my dad used to ask. Me when I was a kid, well, you’re lying, then are you lying now? Right? Which is it? And it’s all okay. As a coach, I never want to be the one that said you have to do this, right? It’s all okay, but I think it has to come from the athlete, because you’re absolutely right. Michael Johnson’s absolutely right. I look back at stretches of my life when I was a very focused athlete and I didn’t care what I missed stretches where I was a very focused coach. I can’t tell you how many years in a row. I think it was like five or six during a stretch where I spent my birthday on a pool deck for eight, nine hours that day I spent
Rob Pickels 10:36
almost every birthday at a track meet, and I loved it. Now,
Grant Holicky 10:41
I didn’t have a single problem with it, but that started to change as I got older and I had kids and I met my wife, and they became more important to me than me. That really shifted.
Trevor Connor 10:54
I think that is something that you tend to see in pros when they’re younger and hungry and want to get to the elite levels is actually a lot harder, because you have to learn how to do everything, and you have to build the fitness so often that’s the point where it’s you don’t have time for family, you don’t have time for all those other things. And you see, it’s later in their careers that a lot of the pros then start building a family, because they figured out how to balance the training and the racing. And eventually they go, You know what? Family is more important, right? Go into another race well, and
Grant Holicky 11:25
I’ve watched a lot of athletes have families and then watch their careers start to disintegrate a little bit. And people are like, Well, it’s because they had a family. And I sit there and I laugh and I shake my head and say, No, but that individual, that family was more important to them than training, and then what they’re doing. So for them, it degraded their sport, and that’s okay. They’re probably fine with it, but there’s plenty of athletes out there where having a family didn’t degrade their sport, because they’re still in a place where they can a make it work, because their list of priorities is in some degree of balance, but others that they were so focused, and they had to be so focused, that when they had that focus, start to be drawn away a little bit. They’re just not what they were before. And we need to see that from the outside and applaud it like good for you. That’s success. And I think it’s almost, in some ways, I might get in trouble for this, but it’s almost when women decide to have a family and continue to race. They are walking into it, and they are on a schedule, man like they know what they need to do. They know how they need to do it. They know when they’re going to race, they know when they’re going to train, and they really define it. And they can be incredibly successful doing that, because they have the help, and they have but they have everything sorted. The guys end up in this place, and I think what gets them in so much trouble is, especially when you have young kids, being a father is very nebulous. You’re just supposed to kind of be there, but it’s not as structured. It’s you’re not as needed, and it gets very, very hard to define where you go and what you do, and you end up feeling a lot of time, like I’m away too much, or something along those lines, because you’re not walking in making a active plan choice. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to say it’s harder on the dads, and it’s on the moms. It’s way harder on the moms, but it’s more defined for a lot of the
Rob Pickels 13:26
moms. Yeah, interesting. You know, grant you brought up a point of you had certain stretches in your life where your focus was in one area a different stretch. It’s in a different area. And it reminds me of Steve Magnus, the author and coach, you know, looks at balance over the course of a long time, right over the course of a lifetime, or over the course of a decade, maybe over the course of a year. I don’t quite know exactly where he cuts things off, and I think that that has become, in part, how I look at things. I don’t know. I don’t I’m almost in a transition. Personally, I think, where I used to be all about balance, all balance, all the time, and I think that it’s become more difficult to actually achieve that. And you definitely can achieve it over a 24 hour period, right? You probably can achieve it over a week, but when we talk about months and years, so on and so forth, and I think that you can and, you know, like, I’ll say for me right now, like training, it’s not a focus. You know, focusing on projects outside of here has been really fun and really exciting, and that’ll last for a time, and I know that things will probably change, but yeah, I
Griffin McMath 14:38
think another way of looking at the question that you asked Rob and then going back to, you know, how you talked about an unbalanced psyche, I think there’s two things to consider when you want to know, am I going to be someone who throws myself completely into this or leads a more, you know, balanced life? There’s two ways you can either look at this from a risk per. Prevention aspect of if I have an unbalanced psyche and I lose this one thing, will I lose everything that makes me me, so like the cup half empty approach. And then there’s the if I’m only filling my cup with this one thing, is this going to be a rich enough life for me and a rich enough existence? So not just the what could I lose if this goes badly? But what else could I gain? I think is the other way to look at it. Yeah, one thing, I
Trevor Connor 15:28
think that’s really important here, because you brought this up and Griffin, you’re bringing this up too. Now I’m not sure unbalanced life and only having one thing are synonymous. No, I
Grant Holicky 15:38
would agree with that. That’s kind of what I was alluding to earlier. I think an unbalanced life is when you’re starting to define yourself by that one thing. And that’s where it can get really dangerous.
Rob Pickels 15:49
And what I’ll say is when I initially just for clarification, Trevor, and then I’ll let you continue, what I was initially thinking of was perhaps dedicating energy to limited number of projects at the expense of other things that you do deem important but are not giving the energy that they deserve to. Yeah,
Trevor Connor 16:11
this great conversation, but we do have two other questions, and we’ve been going for a bit. So
Grant Holicky 16:16
none of these questions matter, because none of them are mine. You know
Rob Pickels 16:20
why it was a great conversation, because I asked a great question. It was
Grant Holicky 16:25
a good question. I don’t know that that has much bearing on you as a person. Does not we’re talking about we need to.
Trevor Connor 16:33
I 23 potlucks, and you finally got one. Don’t,
Grant Holicky 16:36
don’t define yourself by your success and failures, you’re still average Rob.
Rob Pickels 16:44
No, I am not average Rob. Average Rob is a YouTuber. I know he’s great and you should, if people haven’t watched average Rob, you 100% should, because he’s just like a normal Belgian dude and his brother, yep, but he does all of this stuff. He’s ridden a couple times with Matthew Vander. He’s done like Formula One things like the average guy trying to it’s it’s good. He said, It’s good stuff,
Grant Holicky 17:08
you’re mediocre. Rob,
Susie Sanchez 17:14
hey coaches. This is Susie Sanchez. I’m the director of dei and membership programs for USA Cycling. We’ve been working with fast talk labs to upgrade our coach certification and license renewal program. Right now, coaches need to earn six the EUs this year to renew their license. Learn more about our new program and get started on great coach education courses from fast talk labs at Learn dot USA cycling.org
Trevor Connor 17:39
Okay, so my question, I’m going to go with a training question, and it’s usually what I’m thinking about at whatever the time of year is. So we’re in November right now, and I’m just getting back to training. And the question I have for all of you is, what are good start back up workouts at a little bit of context I’m going to give before you guys answer this, I am thinking about this right now because I’ve always had a routine for November and December. I tended to do shorter threshold work, just to get my legs used to it again. Last year, I took somebody’s advice and I did these not killer, but all high intensity, 32nd or under intervals to give that a try, and I felt kind of good, but I came last year out of the base season, way below where I normally come out of the base season. So I’m just wondering, what’s the good mix for something that will both get you used to going hard again, because I haven’t gone hard in a month. But also set you up well for the season. Well,
Rob Pickels 18:44
my couch is about a half a house away from my refrigerator, so I mix in, I mix in some nice, you know, threshold sparkling water, threshold efforts. But my eye racing, my sim rig is about a 10 second sprint from the bathroom, so I make sure I get my high intensity intervals in as well.
Trevor Connor 19:04
He had one good question, sitting down just the rest of the episode.
Grant Holicky 19:09
Mediocre. Mediocre strikes again. Well, you know, I think I like doing some high end stuff, but I think there’s always that misconception that I talk about wanting to do high end or intensity year round, that that’s all I want to do year round. I mean, you still need to ride base. You still need to ride I definitely do more threshold and more tempo with my athletes a little bit in the off season. What I tend to do when we’re coming back is sprint work like True, true, 510, second sprint work, get that technical piece back, get that high end, nice and high, and then balance that out with I’ll probably do more tempo with my athletes this time of year than any other time of year, in part because we’re in color. COVID, so I’m not gonna go out and do a four hour base ride. Maybe I’m two hours on the trainer, so I’m gonna do a little tempo in there.
Griffin McMath 20:07
How does sprint work align during the holidays? Though?
Rob Pickels 20:10
I’ll tackle this one because I love boulder Junior cycling program that grant and I both very familiar with when the kids are younger, I feel like they do a great job of hiding interval workouts. For some of the kids that you know, let’s let’s be honest, like you’re too young to be doing interval training. You shouldn’t really be thinking about showing up to practice and doing a workout. But what about a relay race? Right? Right? That’s kind of like a hidden workout. You get a couple relay things. It’s fun. Your team’s racing that team, but you’re putting in a really hard effort. I like to kind of do these, like, hidden sort of workouts, like, Oh, we’re gonna do some cadence drills, but because you’re pedaling faster, I’m gonna raise it up to 120% of FTP for a couple seconds, you know? And this kind of gets the legs moving again. We’re like, we’re sliding the peas into the mashed potatoes a little bit, you know. But this is also a place where I’ll do sprints during base riding. Like, hey, you’re gonna go out and do an hour or two a base and I want you to throw in four, six, you know, 510, second sprints. No big deal, right? But every time that person does that sprint, they are recruiting every muscle fiber they have in their legs. Those motor units are turning on. They’re being used, right? Because, if we’re just going out and we’re riding 65, 70% of FTP, how much of our muscle are we forgetting about that 10 second sprint? It’s really nothing. You’re not taxed at the end of that workout, but you’re using every muscle fiber in your body. And
Grant Holicky 21:43
cadence tends to come up, balance on the bike, tends to come up, feel tends to come back a little bit. There’s a lot of really nice benefits that come with that 22nd little cadence. Sprint, same thing. There’s a workout I use a lot in the early season. 22nd cadence, Sprint, some standing, some seated really high cadence, really big end up sprint. Heart rate jumps through the roof. Really nice to get that up. Every once in a while you feel like you did something not gonna wear
Rob Pickels 22:09
you out. Yeah, you look at the TSS at the end of the workout, it’s like one point higher than if you do them, perfect.
Griffin McMath 22:14
So for adults, the peas and, you know, sliding the mashed potatoes are a base ride with some sprints here and there,
22:21
yeah. Why not? And so what are the
Grant Holicky 22:22
sprints? The peas, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, okay.
Griffin McMath 22:26
And they’re compliant with it even in the holidays, these workouts, yeah,
Rob Pickels 22:29
I would say so, because it’s non grueling or taxing. Yeah,
Grant Holicky 22:33
that’s the thing. Like during the holidays, if you can put something in like that, it’s only a 90 minute session, or an even an hour session, 45 minute session. Yeah, you can go out and do four or five sprints a the athlete feels like they did something. Yeah, that’s a big win, right? When you can mix something in during base season and the time’s limited and they can walk out feeling like they did something, that kind of helps people roll a little bit more. But is
Trevor Connor 22:56
that enough? Because that’s basically what I did last year, the workout that I did through November and the first part of December was I would do 10 sprints separated by three minutes, and then just do one set of 3030s and like I said, by the time I got into January as like, boy, I’m 3040 watts behind where I’m normally at at this point. No,
Grant Holicky 23:17
I wouldn’t say that’s enough. I mean, I still definitely am working tempo and threshold. I think I’m probably working more tempo this time of year than threshold. Just this is the time of year. I’ll do tempo again, because I can’t do a four hour base ride. I’m gonna do two hours with some tempo in there. And you almost feel like you’re cutting the corner a little bit. I don’t know if there’s a huge physiological difference. There really isn’t. But again, the athletes going to feel like they got a little bit more done. And I think that’s a big benefit. This is the thing that I will say, Griffin, to your point, athletes, in my experience, tend to be more compliant when they’re doing something that requires effort. If I’m giving somebody just get on the bike every day, do 45 minutes easy I watch athletes lose compliance with that because they don’t feel like it’s enough. It’s not a big deal, whatever. If they’re going in, they’re doing sprints one day, a little bit of tempo the next day, easy ride the next day, if there’s a schedule and they have to change and move and kind of put some effort in and plan for it, they tend to be more compliant, really, because they feel like they’re getting something done. I’m doing the work I did this workout. Good for me. Pat on the back. The streak is rolling. Go to the next thing I
Griffin McMath 24:31
would have thought, you know, like end of q4, people’s work stresses coming along. The holidays are coming along mediocre.
Grant Holicky 24:41
Rob doesn’t understand that at all
Griffin McMath 24:46
these compiling factors at the end of the year that really burn us out, or make the idea of getting up and out into the cold or doing these workouts like a little bit more you have to hack to get that motivation. I
Rob Pickels 24:59
don’t think the grand. Is talking about programming anything that is overly daunting. We’re not talking about like, right? You know, five by 530% VO, two intervals that you are just dreading doing, but it is enough that you take it serious, right? I
Grant Holicky 25:16
think there’s a middle ground, right? If it’s just get on the bike, or just get out and be active, or just it’s easy to miss that. It’s not a big deal. It’s not enough. And I think a lot of athletes in their mind go, if it’s just an easy day, it’s okay to miss it, especially during the holidays. I think when they’re in the role of the schedule, right? Like a lot, like easy day, I gotta do my easy day. It’s just doing something that feels like you worked. It’s like everybody in the United States the day of Thanksgiving, they all go for a walk. It’s the whole population goes for a walk after before Thanksgiving dinner. And I think it’s almost that justification for a lot of people, if I can eat my brains blow up because I did a walk. For a lot of us during the holidays. I think that’s a bit of the mentality that I like to get into is I’m going to do something. I’m going to hurt myself a little bit. I want to feel it because, hey, that is my escape. That
Griffin McMath 26:10
sounds like the old Listerine commercial with the old man who was like, unless it burns, it doesn’t work.
Trevor Connor 26:14
But curve another side to this is, this is where you see this big transition, where everybody still remembers not all that long ago, when they were probably on race fitness, or some of the best fitness of the year, and able to go hard, and then you take some time off, and then you get back to training, and you go out for those rides and just look at how slow you’re going, the power you’re putting out everything else. It’s just depressing, and
Grant Holicky 26:38
it hurts because you don’t have those natural painkillers right now.
Rob Pickels 26:42
Trevor, to sort of you had asked a follow up question of, is that enough? And I think, you know, Grant and I are really describing what we’re doing in the off season, which is, we never truly go away from doing workouts, right? You know? And this is a time I’ve mentioned it before that I love doing 3030s you know, maybe I don’t do as much as I do when I’m, like, really in a big build phase, but as I’m, you know, transitioning into kind of work for an athlete, I’ll transition those 3030s into more vo two Max aerobic power efforts by pulling those 3030s together, right, instead of 30 on 30 off. Now we’re going to do short, you know, blocks, a couple minutes at that workload. And I find athletes can do okay with it, because their body’s used to going it’s just not used to going for a duration at that so it’s not as shocking as if you were just going out and doing a vo two level effort for the first time. And I’ll do that for a couple weeks. As you know, you can get some big gains really quick at efforts like that, before I transition back to more of a longer threshold, sort of build that takes us through the base and the build phase before I then go back to more Max aerobic power to sort of tune up for a race. It’s kind of the ebb and flow that I have with the high intensity for me, but it is a nice transition to take the 3030s they’ve been doing in the off season, smoosh them together a little bit, take out some rest, and suddenly you have a much harder workout that they’re already used to, kind of doing. It’s an
Trevor Connor 28:17
interesting thought. So the last question I want to ask you guys with this is the motivation side. And so I can tell you, for example, I went back to what is my standard for November and December, four by five minute threshold intervals. So it’s not a killer workout, but it’s that start to get you back into training doing intervals. I did my first set last night. I admit to you, I finished the first five minute interval and just went really and then had the thought go through my head of now, I’ve got to do this twice a week, every week for a while. And then started thinking about the cake that my partner bought that’s up on the counter. That could be so I am feeling very little motivation to do this, to get back, you know, I know a couple weeks from now, once I get into the routine, it’s going to be fine, but I am struggling right now, and I know a lot of athletes struggle with that, get back on the bike, or get back to training, and now you got to do this work, and it hurts. You haven’t hurt in a while. What do you do? So interesting. Your thoughts on this, and I will admit I did have the thought, I remember back to what you saying, which is, all swift races are just threshold workouts. Yeah, I had the thought of, maybe I do a couple weeks of jumping into Zwift races and just remember how to hurt again.
Rob Pickels 29:31
No, if there’s a minute
Grant Holicky 29:33
and a half, they’re not, they’re way above threshold, right? My point with Zwift is there’s just not a lot of high end. It, for the most part, falls into that middle, middle area, right? One of the things that I like to do as a coach with the holidays or this part of the season, is ask people when they’re going to travel, when they’re going to be home, when they’re going to be doing this, where they’re going to be like, Okay, where are you in your life for these things? Yeah, because one of the things that I think works really, really well is, all right, we’re gonna do three weeks of work here before we get to Christmas, and then Christmas week, don’t do anything like I really don’t care what you do. Take it off. Relax. Because I feel like I get, as Griffin was asking about, I get a higher level of compliance for those three weeks leading in, and then, lo and behold, they actually will do something over Christmas, because they feel like they’re rolling a little bit, but if the light is at the end of the tunnel, so to speak, for that little break and oh man, I don’t have to bring a bike, or I can just do what I want. People tend to do better with that. You need to chunk it up. And I think that’s where it gets hard this time of year, because when’s the first time you’re gonna throw a leg over a bike and really race Trevor
Trevor Connor 30:50
March, probably, yep, it’s a long way well, it feels like
Grant Holicky 30:54
a long way away, and it’s hard sometimes to feel like what you’re doing now really matters to what you’re doing. Then, yep. And I know, we know it does to an extent, but it’s just really hard to wrap your head around that. And the holidays, there’s cake on the counter. And, I mean, my solution would have been to eat the cake on the bike,
Trevor Connor 31:15
but doing the intervals, yeah, sure. I
Grant Holicky 31:17
mean, you know, like little bites here and there. It’s
Rob Pickels 31:19
just the goo. 30 seconds is plenty. You get
Grant Holicky 31:23
a lot down in 30 seconds. But I think you know, for me, that explains so much to me, that idea of you can you don’t have to limit yourself during the holidays. You can go have that extra food, or you can go have the extra beer, you can go do those things. It’s just a very defined time that you’re gonna go do it.
Griffin McMath 31:46
I think having an accountability buddy, as I like to call them, also really helps. That’s not your coach. So that when you want to call someone and gripe about my coach, put this really hard workout on the thing, and I’m not really feeling it, I’m feeling it. That’s a problem really, yeah, because I was the person that someone called yesterday, and I was like, tough love, go do it.
Grant Holicky 32:05
Well, no, I
Griffin McMath 32:06
think that they didn’t expect it. Well, I think that’s
Grant Holicky 32:09
that’s beneficial, but I think it’s not always the best thing in the world to have that person that you call and you get to complain to because you’re undercutting your coach, and you’re undercutting the relationship by doing that, you should be calling your coach and saying, I don’t want to do this to your coach
Rob Pickels 32:25
for what it’s worth. She didn’t do it,
Trevor Connor 32:32
and with that
Griffin McMath 32:33
for what it’s worth, that was what I said on the phone. Like, that’s good advice. Love, you got to do it. And if you’re feeling like you’re in a funk, that’s the thing you should report back to your coach.
Grant Holicky 32:43
I agree. You have to send that back to your coach. I agree. So Griffin,
Trevor Connor 32:49
think we killed that question. Griffin, you have a question for us.
Griffin McMath 32:52
You’ve heard of over training, you’ve heard of overreaching, but what about over communicating? So where are we going to draw the line between a coachable moment versus not picking every single thing, but they’re not swinging so hard that the athlete doesn’t even see the value in a coach at all. So there’s this spectrum, right? So what are the signs of over communication that we would notice just like we’d see the signs of over training or overreaching, and can you course correct
Rob Pickels 33:23
real quick? I do want to point out that when I initially read this question, I was thinking from the athlete perspective, the athlete over communicating, but hearing you describe it now it sounds like it’s more of a coach over communicating to the athlete. Yeah, interesting. Going
Trevor Connor 33:42
even broader to is there such a thing as just generally over communicating? Do you lose the message? Yes, it depends. It depends. Yeah,
Grant Holicky 33:51
I don’t Yeah, it depends. We were talking about this in the motivational interviewing episode with Dr bracken. Look for it. It’s coming soon. You’re really gonna enjoy it. Actually, I thought it went really, really well, but one of the things that we brought, I brought up in that is pedagogy, which is the science of teaching, science of learning. One of the tenants in that is, as the teacher to step away and let the student figure it out for themselves in ways. And I think that one of the things that we need to do in general as coaches is do less. What’s the scene in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, where he’s trying to learn to surf, and the dude’s like, do less. Dude, do that. Well, now you’re just laying there. You gotta do something. Anytime I say, do less, that’s what I think of. But when we talk about it, when we’re teaching coaching, okay, here’s I’m teaching somebody to hit a baseball. Here’s what you’re going to do now, let them swing at 567, pitches, and don’t say anything, and then come back and say, How did that feel? Don’t try to draw it back out of the athlete, to speak some more, to get in a place with the athletes describing how they felt, and then maybe you can course correct or change a little bit of what their direction is, and then try to bring them into a place to try again and then step away. But I do think over communication from a coach perspective is a problem. It’s funny because I was listening to that question from the athlete perspective, and all that was going through my mind was there’s no such thing as over communication from an athlete.
Rob Pickels 35:30
And I was thinking that too. But now I think this question is about me, and so I don’t want to answer it.
Trevor Connor 35:35
Oh, that, Rob, that.
Grant Holicky 35:41
Oh, get over yourself. Mediocre. Rob, answer the question.
Griffin McMath 35:45
I mean, so what would be the signs then, of over communicating?
Rob Pickels 35:49
I think that when communication is good, it’s relatively even between the athlete and the coach, between the two parties, whether it’s an athlete or a coach or not, right? And I think that when we see signs of over communicating, the other party begins to communicate less than average, right? And communication starts to flow one way, you’re inundating that person and they’re just not even responding anymore. And I mean, hey, sometimes people don’t respond, right? I mean, you miss the text message or whatever. That stuff is very normal. But I think that when we see this sort of chronic one way, that’s probably when one side is maybe communicating enough. And I do try to personally tailor my communication with each athlete. Everybody does it differently. There are some people that I WhatsApp almost every day, right? Multiple times a day, right? And there are other people that I’m like, forcing them to get on a monthly, you know, video call with me, and I want to be able to meet people where they are. And sometimes that takes constant, you know, adjustment. I
Grant Holicky 36:54
think that’s a good point. I mean, there definitely is people that during cross season I’ll have a conversation with every week. It’ll be brief, it’ll be on the phone, 30 minutes, whatever, but it’s weekly, yeah, and I will admit that I feel like that’s too much, because I feel like that starts to move into the realm of hand holding, or if the same thing is being said over and over and over again, it can move into the world of badgering, sure, yeah, we need to. We need to do this like we keep talking about doing this. And I almost think that sometimes that the talking about it prevents the doing it. You got to step up and do this and sort this out. And it’s also the type of communication and you can play around with, I do think the writing down how the race went is very, very valuable, if they can do it right away, because the emotions are raw, and that all feels very raw, and then that changes dramatically, even if it’s two, three days later and we’re talking about it, sure it’s a very different set of emotions. It feels differently. We justify it, or we we explain it, or we do all those things in that little brief period of time. So the type of communication we use is really valuable, too. So
Trevor Connor 38:12
I’m going to give my answer to the question, which is not about the coach, not about the athlete, it’s just general communication. And this is just my opinion. I think less is always more with communication, if you have an important message to convey and you just state that message, it gets heard. If you try to state two messages, then each message becomes a little less, and the person you’re trying to communicate 20 messages, I guarantee you, most of them aren’t going to be heard. That’s part of the reason we decided on the main episodes of fast talk. We end with the take home, the one message, because we do say a lot of things on the show. So now let’s just give you that one message we really want you to get from the show, and I think that’s particularly important with coaching. You know, I think my dad tried to teach me all this every sport when I was a kid. And like, if I was playing tennis with him, I’d do a swing, and he would tell me, Oh, you did this wrong work on this and then the next swing, Oh, you did that wrong work by you know, within five minutes, he gave me 20 things, overloading, right? And then he goes, Why aren’t you listening to me looking back on as an adult? I’m like, I wish I just turned on and go. Give me one thing. Let me work on it.
Grant Holicky 39:24
Yeah. And I think layering information really works well. Like we’re gonna do this now we’re going to put this on top of that. Now we’re gonna put this on top so stay focused on that first thing. See if you can bleed into the second thing, and then see if you can bleed into the third thing. One thing that that jumped to mind, that I will say that, that I couldn’t get over and I just wrote it down. It’s like sometimes too much communication means that you’re not communicating at all. Just because you’re talking, just because you’re going over stuff, doesn’t mean you’re actually getting anything. We know, grant,
Griffin McMath 39:57
we know, speaking of grant, can you stop? For a second, I think you’ve said
Trevor Connor 40:02
enough. That was such a layoff. I could see all three of us rabid dogs.
Grant Holicky 40:12
Screw all you guys.
Griffin McMath 40:13
I do kind of pull together some of the signs that each of us have talked about a little bit at a few as well. I think when you start to see that the person, whether it’s the athlete or your coach, whoever you’re over communicating to signs of confusion, I think, delayed or hesitant start so you’ve over communicated something so much that someone is almost paralyzed to then go do it, because they’re trying to integrate all the information you said before they do it, levels of irritation that are obvious defensiveness and then defeat or silence. So talking about when the person just stops responding altogether, though that’s not necessarily the mature response to say, Hey, this is too much information. Sometimes it’s a coping mechanism to kind of just like shut down because there’s so much stimulus, and that’s something that in communication we often call flooding. Right when you’ve just been you’ve been flooded, whether emotionally or just you know information. So I think those are really good signs to look out for, either in your athlete or, hopefully not your coach. And then I think there are ways to prevent this, obviously, beyond just course correcting, but understanding is this the right timing? So I’d love to add a previous episode. We had a conversation, and Grant had talked about, is this information that I have to share? Is this a person ready to be a vessel for that information? Is this going to land if they’re in a pissed off state, or they’re, you know, all these different things, are they actually going to be able to receive this information. So understanding the timing, understanding is this redundant. So if I have to keep repeating the same thing, that kind of badgering concept, then I’m clearly not communicating it effectively. And I have to completely pull away from that line of communication and try something else, try something different.
Grant Holicky 41:57
And that doesn’t mean pull away from the subject. That means pull away from the
Griffin McMath 42:01
style, from the approach, exactly. And then I think the last thing to think about is, what’s the value of this information that I’m trying to communicate? Is this person going to be glad that they had this information? Can they utilize it? And what is the worst thing that could happen if I don’t communicate this, I think, as another way of looking at it. There’s this great article on I think it’s like Fast Company as a checklist of what to do to make sure that you’re not over communicating and and that was one of the last ones on there that I really appreciated, was value. And so really looking at, is this going to do something, or do I feel like I just have to say this? Because I can’t not say this one thing, because then it’s more for you, and at the end of the day, you may have a laundry list of feedback that you want to give to someone, but knowing that someone can only digest one to three points at a time with a chance of actually implementing it, I think it’s that person’s job as a coach or an authority figure to hold as a vessel all the feedback they need To give and then know when’s the right time to dole out each different one. And it has to happen over a period of time. Well,
Grant Holicky 43:07
I think they have to build on each other too. I think those are really good points. And timing is important. Delivery is important. And as Rob was saying, every person is so different. It’s so individualized. It always drives me crazy when I hear coaching companies talk about like their levels, and for this level, you get this much communication, and for this level you get this much because for me, that’s not coaching. Coaching is meeting the athlete where they are and what do they need, and it all. It all balances out. You have athletes that don’t ever want to talk, and that’s okay, and and you just take advantage of the moments where you do talk, right? I have
Rob Pickels 43:49
athletes that only want to talk, yeah, I have an athlete I don’t write training pays me coaching every month so that I’m like on retainer to have these conversations. Yep. And that is the value to him, right? And so with him, we talk a lot, all the time in depth, that’s my part of the relation, or I shouldn’t say, my part that is our that’s
Grant Holicky 44:09
your relationship. And I think those things become very, very important. And then the last piece, man, we as coaches, think we have the answers, right? Right? We have a lot of experience. We’ve done this a lot of times. We do have a lot of answers. We have to make sure we’re not speaking just to hear ourselves
Rob Pickels 44:32
speak. And I just love that you point that out, and it’s funny that we’re on a podcast listening. Yeah, no,
Grant Holicky 44:37
I think it is ironic, people. It matters, right is how much value does this stuff have that we’re saying, and are we saying it for us, or are we saying it for them?
Trevor Connor 44:50
So the thing I was going to bring up, because Griffin, that was a fantastic list that you just gave, what I have to say, ties about that and what you’re just saying now. Grant you. Which is, yeah, we’re always focusing on what we want to say and the message we want to convey. I did do my first Masters in Communication. One of the things I remember is, and it’s quite depressing, how little the message actually gets received. Yeah, generally, where they show communication, where somebody says something and then somebody receives it. It’s only like 20% of the time that it’s received the way it’s intended. Yeah, so 80% of the time they’re hearing a different message, or they’re taking it a different way. So that’s part of the reason I’m very big on pick one message and convey that, because if you only convey it once, chances are they’re not hearing you’re giving yourself a pattern back going. I gave great advice. And you know, for example, you might have communicated. I want you to pace yourself in these intervals. And for some reason the athlete heard, go kill yourself, right,
Grant Holicky 45:51
right, right? And I think that’s why it’s so important to say, how did that feel? What
Trevor Connor 45:55
are you hearing me say?
Grant Holicky 45:56
What are we going to go do today?
Trevor Connor 45:58
That’s exactly it. You need to put in the work to understand if the athlete actually heard it, which means you’re probably gonna have to repeat the message a few times, and you’re gonna have to turn around and as you said, listen to them. Did you hear what I was actually trying to say? Even ask them to repeat
Grant Holicky 46:14
I think, I think every coach should have little kids.
Trevor Connor 46:17
Yep.
Grant Holicky 46:18
And because you’ll say something and they hear none of it, absolutely zero. Here’s the list for this morning.
Rob Pickels 46:26
This is why, though, too, it’s important for me. Basically all of my athletes are remote that we have, you know, video calls so that we can see each other, because there’s so much more nuance. There’s so much more communication that occurs beyond just typing a few words into training peaks, which is, don’t get me wrong, it’s a great way to convey some information, but Trevor as you’re talking about getting the full message, actually seeing somebody as a way to communicate a heck of a lot more than just what those words are saying or
Grant Holicky 46:54
and reading between the lines of what those words actually say.
Griffin McMath 46:58
I like establishing a culture where it’s normal to first clarify and then confirm, so to upon, I don’t want to say at a nauseating degree, but kind of anytime you’re given out some feedback or directions. And maybe this is because I grew up with a vet father who, you know, you’d say something, and you’d have to say, Okay, this is what I heard. And there’d be, like, a kind of copy over type of communication. But that served me so well, because you receive something, if there’s this cultural norm to clarify, make sure that anything that you need to process is solidified, and then after it’s done, you know, you confirm to some extent. So I think in coaching, it’s a little bit different, but I do think clarify and confirm can also be a really great thing to instill in that relationship, both ways.
Trevor Connor 47:45
The other one of my favorite Simpsons moments, and for some reason, I love moments in Simpsons that nobody else ever remembers. But there’s this great episode where Marge once sparked to remember something at lunch. I can’t remember what it was, so over breakfast, she repeats it to him three times, and he goes, Mom, you’re being annoying. And then they fast forward to him at lunchtime, and he repeats to himself exactly what she said. And he goes, Damn, that actually works.
Griffin McMath 48:12
So the last thing then there is, how do you course correct? Let’s say you notice that your athlete or the person you’re communicating with is confused, they’re irritated, they’re defensive, or they’ve kind of shut down. How do you as a coach, then course correct, not only acutely in that moment, but their relationship overall
Trevor Connor 48:31
timing? My answer to that is, if it’s going the wrong way and they’re getting frustrated trying to course correct, then and get on the same page might not be the right decision. Okay, so she’s going to hear this right now. I’ll give you a great example from last night. Kelly, our audio engineer, she was having a really bad day yesterday.
Rob Pickels 48:52
What did you do? Trevor,
Grant Holicky 48:53
I did it worse.
Trevor Connor 48:57
We had a rush episode that goes up tomorrow. And I’ll admit, instead of doing what I normally do, of making tough decisions and just making it as easy as possible for her to edit it quickly, I threw a whole bunch of stuff at her and said, you can put this here. You can put that there. She was having a bad day. This was a rush episode. She was pretty annoyed with me. Now she had split something up that wasn’t supposed to be split up. So I was in the middle of texting her, saying, Hey, you shouldn’t have split this up, when she starts texting me, and it’s really clear that she is annoyed with me about all the feedback with the episode and the extra work this was throwing onto her with all of her other clients. And I just looked at the message I was typing and went, not tonight, not tonight. And I think sometimes that’s where there are moments where you just have to go, I failed in the communication. Don’t keep hammering it. You’re just gonna annoy him. Come back when you’re both in a better mind. Yeah, I’d
Grant Holicky 49:54
take a break. Yeah, that’s what jumps out to me all the time. Let’s take a break. We’ll come back to this tomorrow. Okay, or, in acutely, take a breath, slow yourself down and go Wait, where am I right now? What’s going on? Because I’m thinking about me, I gotta start thinking about them. And I think that’s a big piece to coaching is, is again, we get really good at this. Is the point I’m trying to hammer home. Wait a second, they’re not hearing it. Why aren’t they hearing it? And that empathy piece of going there and saying, why aren’t they hearing it, and then taking a breath? And I gotta try something different, and for me, that break, whether it’s in the moment for a breath or it’s bigger picture of we need to let this settle, and we’ll come back and we’ll talk about this later.
Griffin McMath 50:43
I think even first acknowledging putting words to the situation at the moment of I feel like I’m communicating something that’s not being received, or I see that there’s confusion, or I see that maybe you’re overwhelmed. Can we maybe take a second here that acknowledgement sometimes de escalates or provides this. Okay, they get it, you know, and not just like, because sometimes, if you just take a timeout, you walk away, then the person can be left wondering, do they just not care? Like, did they get it? No,
Grant Holicky 51:10
no, you’re right. You have to say, we need a little bit of a moment here. I think, as a coach, it’s re or superior. It’s really dangerous to put it on them. Oh, fully No. But in any way, you’re not hearing what I’m saying, or you’re having a hard time, I think the first thing out of your mouth has to be, okay, I’m not doing a very good job here. I need a moment to come at this a little bit differently, or I’m overwhelmed, so I’m going to take a break. They’ll mirror that emotion. They’ll feel that. But the second we say, I don’t know that you’re hearing me or you’re overwhelmed downhill in a hurry,
Griffin McMath 51:47
I speech the I speak right and
Grant Holicky 51:50
put it on you right? And this is true in any relationship, okay? We instead of you is a really, really valuable word. We instead of you. We’re getting a little heated here, not you’re getting a little heated, or we or I, why you grinning over there? Mediocre. Rob, so
Trevor Connor 52:07
we need to start wrapping this up. So Griffin, I’m gonna give you my answer to your question, which is, in terms of over communication. I think there’s very much such a thing as over communication when you are trying to communicate too many messages, because they will get lost. I think when you are trying to convey a message, it is surprisingly hard for both people to end up at the right place and to get the message. So in that sense, in some ways, I don’t think it’s possible to over communicate a particular message, and to say it different ways, until you’ve made sure that it’s been received the way you want it to be received, and in a positive way. And I’ll finish up with I will give you an example. With my partner, she loads the dishwasher wrong. I continue to communicate to her how to load the dishwasher, and I know one of these days she’s gonna load it right, right? Married guys, no, she’s
Grant Holicky 53:02
not. That’s not how it works.
Rob Pickels 53:06
Dude, don’t even say anything. Just rearrange it so it’s right at the end of the night. Call it good,
Grant Holicky 53:11
and if you’re really good, wake up and rearrange it back while they’re
Rob Pickels 53:17
clean. Oh, funny, funny, funny. Well, thanks
Griffin McMath 53:19
for the answers, fellas. It was a great chat that it, that
Rob Pickels 53:23
is it. You done. So we good. Sorry, dude. Who wants to do the outro? You do?
Trevor Connor 53:29
I do. Actually, I really do. That was another episode of fast talk. That’s it. Well, Grant’s on his phone. I was waiting for something. He’s communicating, I am.
Griffin McMath 53:37
He’s very clearly communicating a message to us, thoughts
Trevor Connor 53:42
and opinions Express and fast talk are those of the individual.
Rob Pickels 53:45
He raised his phone up to physically block us out of His view. Yes, he
Trevor Connor 53:48
did subscribe to fast talk. Wherever prefer to find your favorite podcasts, be sure to leave us a rating and a review. As always, we love your feedback. Tweet us at at fast talk labs, what your grants doing right now, you can tweeting your Join the conversation at forums dot fast talk labs.com or learn from our experts at fast talk labs.com for Brandt. Hollice, thank you. Griffin McMath, who now has her phone up. Rob pickles, who’s just laughing at everybody. I’m Trevor Connor, thanks for listening. You.
