Is HYROX a Healthy Way to Train? – Dr. Dan Plews (#8)

Today I'm talking high rocks with Dr. Dan Pluse. Now, Dan is both a phenomenal coach as well as an incredible athlete. On the coaching side, he's coached over 30 athletes to world and Olympic titles in rowing, kayaking and triathlon. Dan has also published over 70 peer-reviewed papers in the field of applied sports science. He also has a number of legendary accomplishments as an athlete. He set the Iron Man World Championships Amateur World Record in Kona in Hawaii. Last year, he made his debut into high rocks. Most recently, he ran a one hour and one minute high rocks pro in the 40 to 44 age group category. Dan has an absolute wealth of knowledge in the field of endurance. And today, we're talking about some of the lessons he's been learning as he's been transitioning into high rocks. Now, let's get into the conversation with Dan Pluse. Dan, welcome to the show. Thanks for being on, John. Pleasure to be here. Okay, so let's start with your transition towards high rocks. What do you think it is that is captivated you about the sport of high rocks? Why have you decided to start spending so much time training for the sport? Yeah, it's a good question. Like, I mean, I've done sport for my entire life. Obviously, pretty much always triathlons. I've done triathlons since I was nine years old. At the age of 42, I did my last amateur race, I guess, and you know, I went under eight hours from the Iron Man, and I've always felt like, you know, to get older, you kind of want different to do different things, and you have different priorities. And I knew I wanted to get a bit stronger. So when I stopped doing Iron Man, I kind of got more into the strength space, and I wasn't really doing much cardio at all. But as a result, I didn't really, I realized I actually enjoyed doing cardio and running and cycling, and keeping that side of my fitness quite high. But I also wanted to be stronger. My brother did a high rocks, and he was like, "I used to try this, you know, you'll probably really enjoy it." And for me, in terms of my health, well-being, longevity goals, he kind of ticked all the boxes because, you know, I wanted to make sure I had a high beard to max. I wanted to make sure that I was, you know, my mitochondria was functional. I wanted to make sure that my endurance was strong, but I also wanted to be just genuinely stronger and hold a little bit more muscle mass. So a high rock seemed like the perfect fit for someone like me who, I'm just a bit of a competitor, so I feel like I always need something to kind of keep me out of trouble, so to speak. Okay, so a lot of it is the fact that it's balancing a lot of different disciplines. You have to be strong enough. You'll have to have this amazing cardio base. Sounds like you also really enjoy the competition. So overall, do you feel like high rocks is a healthy form of training? So if somebody is just training for pure health, is high rocks a good activity in general for them to be pursuing? I will, I mean, I think, as always, the poisonous in the dose, right? So I think you can do too much of anything, of course. But I think what high rocks offers is it does offer a very good mix of both endurance and strength. And I also think it's a little bit more way towards the endurance and the cardiovascular side, which I personally would be waiting my, if I'm thinking of things from a pure health perspective, I'll be waiting myself more that way generally over the strength side of things. So I do think it's it's such a great, it's such a great mix. And you know, I'm not saying like things like travel on a bad for you, but they, they come, they don't, you know, you can't hold that much muscle mass because it's going to be slower for you. So, you know, I spent a lot of my effort career as an, as an Iron Man athlete, purposely trying to lose weight all the time and get a bit lighter and, you know, kind of almost under eat a lot of the time. And I think, you know, with high rocks, that's not, not, not something that we have to be as concerned about, because I think, and I think that's in the long run. Typically, as you get a bit older, you know, I'm 42 now, I think it's, I think it's a good, really good. Okay. And, and of course, high rocks is in this roughly 55 minutes to roughly 90 minutes time domain for most individuals, whereas something like an Iron Man is going to be a lot longer than that. It's going to be eight to 12 plus hours. Do you feel like there's anything lost in terms of a health perspective by moving to this much shorter event? No, I think there's only to be gained, to be honest. And the, the duration of duration of Iron Man, it's quite a catabolic event, right? Just going for that, that length of time. And also the training that's involved a lot more, a little bit because it's just so, it's just so long. So I think, I don't think there's anything lost. I think there's only really gay. Okay. Amazing. Amazing. Okay. So Dan, as you've moved into training for high rocks, what is surprised you about what has been required in order to build up fitness for the race? I think one thing that I've learned, I think one of the main things that I've learned since taking up high rocks is that no one really knows how to train properly yet. I think it's quite interesting is that everyone talks about principles. But like, you know, I'm going to look at some of the sports that I've been involved in in my time. You know, I was working in rowing news in the for a long time. I worked it kayak for a long time. I worked in a variety of sports and they come with a lot of history of training. And people kind of have the foundations of proper training and this, of course, there's small variations and small deviations away from that. It's kind of, you know, that I would say the nuts and bolts and the base of it are all very similar and they're well entwined, they're well established in training. But I think with high rocks, no one is in that space at the moment. And everyone's kind of trying to find the best way. And there's a lot of testing, a lot of guest work. And I think that's, and I'm not saying that as a negative thing. I think it's quite an exciting space to be in because we've got the opportunities to develop training systems that are the completely untouched by history. And that's quite quite cool. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, it's super exciting to see, to see in real time how these strategies are being developed. So, so let's go into more detail about some of the progression that you've gone through and some of the lessons that you've been learning. So in your first year of high rocks, you've been working with Pelleu Mendez. Pelleu is an elite 15 athlete and he's been helping you with some of your programming. So what are some of the things that you've learnt from Pelleu? Yeah, I guess with Pelleu, it's been a real match made in heaven because, you know, what I can provide in the sport science side, I don't have the experience and he's provided a lot of the experience. And I had to see how to call Pelleu in this morning. And I think like when you look to people to give you advice, you have to look towards your stereotype, or you have to look to your backgrounds. You know, like I think as a player comes from an age group triathlon background, very similar to me. So he's a primary person who can give great advice to someone like me because that's exactly the area that I've come from. So, you know, I obviously had a lot to learn from him. You know, like I don't think if I went to a CrossFit guy who's come into high rocks, I don't think I would have had the same experience or had the same advice. And it probably wouldn't have been good advice because they don't have that kind of background. So Pelleu seemed like the most logical choice for me. And he was, and he's been also in guiding me in this last year. Well, yeah, I mean, I think some of the things that Pelleu taught me a lot, especially some of the things that he brought in was like compromise run sessions on the track. I think like body weight stuff, which is being I thought was really massively helpful. So he tears this like one of the other things is like a high rocks endurance session, which is basically two hours of high rock circuits, like kind of like that VT1, LT1 heart rate. So not too intense, but quite extensive in terms of in terms of the duration. Yeah, but it's been it's been great because we've kind of built the program together. And it's been obviously he's been taking most of the charge, but it's it's been it's been really good. And it's something that I think we both enjoyed. Okay. Yeah. And obviously you've had phenomenal results with this. So you've gone down to, what is it, 58 minutes in the open and one hour and one minute in the pro division? Yeah, that that was yeah, I mean, it's good, but I still feel I still feel I haven't really executed a proper a properly a race that I'm really happy with. Yeah, I mean, I race to Sydney at the weekend and I did one hour two and four minutes. So a bit slower than Brisbane. But but I've still got so much to work on. Because for me, I'm still very much I feel like I'm still very much a runner doing stations, but I'm not really a high rock. So I mean, the weekend, obviously, I had the around three nubs was my average pace. I think I had the third fastest run in the in the pro division, but my stations were just nowhere near where they need to be. And my more balls alone should be two minutes quicker. So it's yeah, it's been it's been great, but like it's it's really cool because when you do I'm and when you do triathlon for such a long time, you you see you do a racing, you see small little bits, you think I can improve that just a tiny bit, but I look at my pyross and I'm like, wow, there's two minutes there and it's 30 seconds there and there's huge, huge chunks of time, I can say, which is, which makes it more exciting. I just wish I'd found it when I was a little bit younger. Yeah, no, 100, 100%. Yeah, it's incredibly motivating to see those gaps and to see that there is an opportunity to improve quite a bit more. And I did ask Palayo for his feedback about working with you and he agrees he says that he doesn't think that Dan has proved his potential in the sport yet. So even though that you're racing phenomenal times, you still clearly have a lot more to offer. But let me let me ask the question this way, has your performance in high rocks been better or worse than expected? So going into these races, have you achieved about the results you're expecting or has it been better or worse? I would say, that's a mix, I would say. Auckland, Auckland Open was probably a little bit worse, a little bit worse than expected, but I think I got pretty badly judged on the wall balls on that day. Chicago was a 100% thousand times worse, but I think I would honor the people who had the slightly issues and then Sydney was worse as well. Yeah, so okay, but I think I think I believe that my Brisbane pro was probably kind of a good, it was kind of kind of mean what I'd quite happen with that race because it was my first time doing the pro's almost expected, but it's, I've found it to be such a huge jump from opening to pro like that. I don't think like, I don't think people realise what that jump actually is, but it's absolutely massive. It's a massive jump. And for someone like me, I find it's almost a double whammy in that I have to really curb my running to allow me to do the stations and then the stations are making me a lot more tired. So I have to, I can't run as fast as I want to, so I'm really having to hold back on the run quite a bit from what I think I could run compared to an open where I'm just running pretty much as hard as I can all the time, but whereas the pro I just can't do that, so I'm really having to hold back on the running and then the the the workouts are also taking a lot more round of me, so it's yeah, it's a big jump, but that's what I wanted. I wanted to get into high rocks because I wanted to be stronger and the pro division is forcing me to get stronger ways. I think with open you can really escape by just being a good runner. You know, you don't actually have to be that strong, and I think that's where I think the pro division is pretty, there's something, even though I'm probably not as good at it, it's what I want to get better at because it's kind of achieving my goals as a as a person. Yeah, yeah, it's helping you to achieve that well-rounded. Exactly. Performance that you're looking for. Okay, so another thing that Palo said, he says that Dan is very methodical when it comes to training. He also said that you had the best recovery capacity that he had ever seen in an athlete, no matter how much volume or intensity you do, you always seem to perform. So I'm curious in your perspective, what explains this recovery capacity? Yeah, recovery ability. I think the main thing would be years of training, you know, I've been doing this for a very long time, so I'm obviously I'm highly aerobic, so there's been research that's been shown in this is that if you look at like basically more like the more anaerobic versus the more aerobic profile athletes, the recovery ability of the more aerobic athlete, which is someone like me who's very very aerobic, obviously because of my own background, tends to recover better from overload training. There's there's just the profiling of me as an athlete is a major thing. And also, you know, I'm doing like, you know, 15 hours of training a week, whereas I would be doing much more than I was doing an Iron Man stuff. So I can recover, it's nothing that's so much. But I also, I think I take care of the three most important principles of recoveries. You know, I mean blire or very clever in the way, even though, even though, obviously I can recover quick, we periodize the training accordingly to make sure that we're not doing too much back-to-back part sessions. And then, you know, sleep and nutrition, obviously on top of that, I'm prioritised protein as a main macro nutrient always. And I always prioritise, you know, try and get my sleep as as best as I possibly can for consistency and, you know, seven to eight hours. So I think those are the important things over the main ones. But I think the main thing is training history is the, it's the main thing. My training age is the thing that allows me to recover so fast. Yeah, absolutely. You have, yeah, over a decade of experience in triathlon, you're well used to those 20 to 30 hour weeks. And, you know, coming into high rocks with 15 hours is a lot less volume than typical harvest 1%. And just to finish on that, I also think that, you know, I do believe that mindset plays a lot in recovery. For me, I'm such a, and it's not like the, lots of the athletes I coach, there's a big relationship between how you recover and your mindset towards training. Like for me, I love the love training. I am excited about training and it's very, very seldom where I wake up in the morning, I'm not feeling like training. So I think when you actually genuinely enjoy doing the training, you're more up for it every time, right? So it kind of looks like you're more recovered, but really it's just your mindset that's more people to be training. So if you're not looking forward to doing a training session and it's kind of a chore for you, it appears like if not recovered because you can't, basically, you can't be asked, right? So I think there's a bit, there's a bit of that in recovery as well. Yeah, yeah, there's a motivation side and a disposition towards your training overall. So help us to understand the 15 hours that you're doing, what is the constraint that has made you stop at 15 hours? Is this, are you looking at it from a recoverability standpoint? Is this, there's just no more time to train standpoint? Or how have you ended up on this 15 hour mark for your training? I think it's more like a constraint, a time constraint. Thanks for me. I think I can get, I think I can get all the, and I've kind of come to the cold version that I can get most of the key work done in around 15 hours. It's just by default, you do a lot less than you would if you're doing triathlon because you're not doing those lot of rides. I mean, if you do two long rides a week, that's already seven hours of training. I mean, if you do a four hour ride on the weekend and a three hour ride in the middle of the week, that's already seven hours just in two sessions. And there, and they're kind of gone. But I do vary, I mean, I can go, I haven't gone up to 18, but yeah, the main reason is just, it depends on what I feel like doing sometimes. I'd be closer to 18 because I decided to do a three hour ride in that training week. So it, but it's more, it's more like work family, what works within that schedule than anything. Yeah, it's all the other constraints as well. Okay, so let's, let's break down that 15 hours then. Oh, how is that roughly split behind different activities training for high rocks? I imagine there's, there's a running component. I imagine you're also spending a lot of time in the gym. How would you think about the main categories of training that you're doing for high rocks within that 15 hours? Yeah, so, I mean, I guess I'm broke down. I mean, obviously, mainly endurance. I mean, as you still do a lot of endurance components, but my general weekly breakdown is I'll do strength on a Monday. So, and that, what, how that strength, well, there's strength will vary in the time of year, whether it's like, you know, low reps, high, you know, high strength or higher reps, lower strength, whatever that might be. And then, and I'll also, I'll generally always do two sessions a day. So on that Thursday, I'll also do an aerobic kind of run cycle or something like that. And then, Tuesdays, I would do kind of a hard day where I do, I would typically do a double threshold. So, I'd do like a threshold running in the morning and then a threshold ski in the afternoon. Then Wednesdays, I was doing a long bike ride. I was doing like a gravel ride and that would be like three hours, just level two. I mean, I still wouldn't hang around. I was still average, like 260 watts for three hours. So, but yeah, this is kind of a long aerobic day. And then Thursday, I'll almost repeat, I do another kind of harder double threshold then. Then Friday, Friday would be like a strength, Wednesday, Saturday would be compromised run, sort of session. And then, Sunday would be a lot higher ups endurance type session where it's kind of spread based, but kind of more circuit-based work. So, I'd also often do some type of e-mong or m-rap at the end of the strap sessions on a Monday and Friday. So, yeah. Okay, okay. There's a lot of quality in there and a lot of intensity, and I wouldn't recommend it for everyone. I think most people wouldn't be able to do that amount of quality all the time. Yeah, and again, you've earned the right to do that kind of quality because you've built up that tremendous base over all of these years. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay. Let's break down some of these components a bit further then. So, in terms of the double threshold training, are you talking purely in terms of running when you say double threshold, or would that involve some work on the oaks as well? Yeah. So, it's always work on the oaks. So, it's generally running in the morning, and then again, the afternoon, like this. But they, I mean, and it just very like, so in the lead-ups and Chicago, I wasn't doing threshold, I was doing VO2 max work in the morning, and then then that would be the first session. The second session would be another session like a ski or a row or something. Yeah. And it would depend on how tight I was from the morning session, whether I'd make that second session. Quality? Or sometimes I would just do level two endurance. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, the threshold work, okay. So, that's obviously one set of the quality that you're doing each week. Let's look at the strength side as well. So, you mentioned that after the pure strength sessions, you're quite often doing an AMRAP. So, maybe walk us through an example AMRAP. What are you looking for for those kinds of workouts? And I think you said, so you're doing that Monday, Friday? So, this would be a twice a week thing? Roughly. Yeah. And I wouldn't always do the AMRAP, but sometimes, sometimes I would. But often, we're saying more often than not, but it was only like 20, 20, 25 minutes after strength that I would kind of include it. And that might, you know, it would be some kind, it would also have some kind of base. It would include no running. I wouldn't do any running in there, but the base would be the cycling, rowing or or ski. And then it might, you know, and it would be, it would be very more station focused. So, I might do like, you know, a row into a pusher or a pole and then some more balls or, you know, a row into into maybe some devil press and then a pusher, something like that. There's just some sort of kind of circuit or even or something that would go for like 20, 25 minutes. And what kind of intensity are you trying to hit on those workouts? I would say anywhere between not, not crazy hard. So anywhere between VT1 and VT2, I wouldn't say it's threshold. So, because those days are kind of, because I'm doing threshold that it's quite intense and it's there purposely, I'm trying to keep those days a little bit more aerobic, a little bit easier. So, you know, I'll do like an aerobic run, maybe 50 minutes, like level two in the morning. And they'll also try and keep that AMRAP at a low intensity as well. Okay. Okay. So we've got the regular AMRAP's that are a little bit low intensity. We have these double threshold days as well. So, walk us also through that long, grainy, Lyrox session that you said that you're doing over the weekend. How would that look and what kind of intensity are you looking at for that session? Yeah. So that's a little bit lower. I'd say it's closer to your first aerobic threshold. I guess some more would give you giving that like, you know, out of 20 like at the RPE scale. It would be, you know, I would say it's kind of like 13 other 20. So somewhat hard. You know, it's not like, it's not, it's not easy, but, you know, you're putting in a little bit of effort. And it might consist of like two by 45 minute circuits, for example. I do 45 minute circuit continuously. Take a five minute break and then do another 45 minute circuit, something like that for an hour and a half. And then we've all up and cooled down. It's about two hours in total. Yeah. Okay. And that would consist of a lot of the stations as well. Like stations and variations of stations and stuff like that. You know, I think there's two things that are that are going to surprise people. I think, I think the lack of really high intensity is going to surprise people. I think when most people think of high rocks or the think of CrossFit, they think all out efforts. And what I'm hearing from you then is you're definitely not going all out in these sessions. So I think that's the first thing that's going to surprise people. And the second thing is just the volume. The fact that you are hitting these quality sessions, it seems like three or four times a week. So do you feel like the intensity is something that most people get wrong when it comes to high rocks? Definitely. And I think it's the main mistake of nearly everyone doing high rocks, really. And especially, especially what those coming from more of a CrossFit background, because just the name of certain sessions on their own, they scream high intensity like just the name Amrap. There's many rounds as possible. Well, you need to get your head out of you. Everything needs to be engaged by intensity. So like, you know, if you've not got some kind of RP or some target heart rate zone, you'd probably end up doing it too hard. And if you, and as I always tell the athletes that I coach, what is the main thing that is not going to allow athletes to perform at their best? And it is always training consistency. So to back off the intensity allows for more consistency between sessions. It allows more consistently between weeks. It allows more consistency between months. And that's the main thing that every athlete should always strive for in when they're planning the training. And I always like to think of everything should be what I terms as a farmer's effort is that, you know, a farmer has to work the next day. So they go out on the fields and they just work and do everything they can on one day. And they have no energy for the next day. It's not going to work. So you should always finish every session with the ability to do two or three more reps. And and like even with the threshold sessions, I'm actually more doing them sub thresholds. So just slightly below my BT2 actual pace. So when I, when I measure my lactate, it's more between three to 3.5. It's not in the fours. It's not in the fives. It's just a little bit lower. And that allows more consistency and back up between different sessions. Okay. Okay. Now another area I want to go into is how you've come to understand which specific workouts are most valuable. So one thing about high rocks, there's a million ways to do a high rocks workout. You've talked about am wraps. You've talked about e-moms. There's volumes slash distance based workouts. There's time based workouts. You also have eight different stations. So there's all kinds of different combinations. So how have you thought about filtering through all of these different options and choices and ultimately identifying the most beneficial workouts to get better? Yeah. Well, I guess that's still evolving for me for sure. You know, I don't think I have the, I mean, I don't think I have the answers yet to that. But I mean, number one, it's totally individual, very individualistic because, you know, that idea that you have to work on what you need to work on. Right. So for me, I need to work on my pole, my pole, my lenses, my wall balls would be the three main ones. And then after that, it would be the burpees. You know, there, the man was like, my eggs are totally fine, my ring is totally fine. But, uh, and that, you know, that's 60% of the race already. Right. So I've just got, you know, so I think you have to work on those specific things. But also, you know, I do, I think, as I said at the start, with high rocks, people are still learning a lot about the training, but the, the rule that I always fall back to with training and it's undeniable is as principle as specificity. The more specific you can make your training to the event, the better that training will be. Of course, you know, but you obviously, that doesn't mean you can do, you can't do like just a high rock every day because you'll just, at the right intensity, you'll just burn out and die. But the way you need to periodize your training to make sure that you're doing training as specifically towards the event as you possibly can, that's really important. And, um, and the other thing that I really am now starting to understand is, you know, there's a lot of talk about compromise running. Right. And people, and often athletes will be, you don't need to compromise running. But I think that's total nonsense. Of course, you need to compromise running. Like, if, um, if we didn't need to do compromise running, we'd see a direct relationship between the best runners doing the best run times. And that is definitely not the case. If you, if you drew up drew a line of the fastest runners in high rocks compared to the fastest five k times, there's, there's a relationship, but it's not a direct relationship. It's not one for one. So I think you do need to include that compromised, um, running. But I also think that you have to believe, you have to think about your background. So an endurance athlete for my running is probably not the thing that's going to make you faster. But compromise stations is an issue, right. Whereas, if you're from a high rock, if you're from a cross-strip background, or you're from one that strip background, compromise running is probably the thing that's going to be the most of the thing that you probably need to work on. So it's always very individual. So what I mean by that, the difference would be is that I might do like, um, I might go very hard to run into wobbles, for example, for a compromised wobble or very hard to get to wobbles. Two minutes rest, do it again. Very hard to run wobble, two minutes rest, whereas the other side is that you go, you go basically, you, you have to make sure there's no rest between the stations that they run. So you're compromising and running, you're not compromising the station, you know what I mean? So I think, I think, I think that's also what, um, like the background is important and where you need the most important. Yeah. And, and is the basic model? So are you, are you thinking about your previous races and where you've run into issues and then you're trying to design around those problems? Or so in other words, are you trying to replicate the difficult feeling that you're having during the race? Yes. What exactly are you trying to feel? I think you have to do a bit, I think there's, there's definitely a bit of that. And there's also just a specificity of the event. And I think, but I think, you know, you're obviously, you learn, you learn the most from when you race because that's when you, it's very hard. I found it personally very hard to replicate the feeling that I get in wobbles, you know, whereas basically, I can't, I'm finally really hard to train, but just in Sydney at the weekend, you know, I look to my data and my heart rate, actually, was going down during the wobbles, but I literally could not do them because my arms were so fatigued. As a result of that, I'm thinking, well, that's obviously, it's a, it's a strength endurance issue. And I'm starting to think about, I'm including very, very high rep overhead work, you know, getting getting away from just the stress of, but like we're talking hundreds of push press and hundreds of, you know, that, that sort of thing to kind of try to replicate that sort of feeling of fatigue, arm fatigue. I think racing always provides a window into your training, right? Yeah, 100%. Yeah, you, you very quickly learn your weaknesses. And I, I think, I think racing a high rocks does surprise a lot of people. I think a lot of people are surprised at just how hard it is and just how quickly they find limitations. And, yeah, yeah. And of course, it's that the pacing makes the big difference, right? It's so easy to, it's so easy to overpass. But, I mean, obviously, you can overpace anything, but I think there's something about the start. Being amongst all those people, the skier comes at a particular time when you're a little bit fresh. And it's a, it is a particular station that is very, very easy to overdo the intensity on. It's, it's kind of built in a way that makes it, makes you ready for, um, ready for overpassing. And once you go past that red line, there's obviously there's very little turning back. Yeah, yeah. But, but then you have done phenomenally well on, on the O's. I think your skier, again, you're row or some of the, some of the best times out there. So what do you think has, what do you think has enabled you to be performing so well on the O's? Yeah, I think, um, I think it's again, it's my background of, we've tried a fluna. I mean, expect on the skier, really, I'm holding back a lot on the skier to try and, to try and not compromise anything. But yeah, I think so with the ski, it came quite quickly. I was, I was almost immediately okay. It's being very, very quickly. And I think it's just sort of swimming a lot, you know, it's kind of swimming. Here's a mainly lap dominant sport. It's a very similar movement. So there's that. I think that was, it's kind of quite seamless for me. And then rowing, there's a big crossover between rowing and cycling. I've said, I've done a lot of cycling in my time. But I also worked for the New Zealand rowing team for nearly eight years. So I've seen some of the very best rows in the world and try and group some of what I've not trade with. But, you know, I've been around rowing and proper rowing for a long time. So obviously I know technique. I know how to row properly. And I know how to do rowing coaching. I mean, I've actually trained a lot of world records on the Earth myself from when I was with the, when I was with the team. So like, I've had, I think I coached the guy to win the our world record, the 5k female world record, the pop out and world record on the earth. So I've been quite a bit in that space. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I think it's very understandable why you're, why you're so good at the oaks with that background. So I just want to circle a little bit back to, to the workout variability. So it does seem like you're exploring a lot about what specific workouts work best for you. How much are you repeating workouts at this point? Like, have you found certain workouts that you're enjoying and you're almost using them from testing standpoint? Or do you feel like you're really changing things up almost on a week to week basis in terms of those stations specific workouts? I mean, I guess the stimulus is the same, but there's so many ways to skin a count, right? I mean, whether it's four by eight minutes or eight by four minutes, you know, it's still, it's still, theoretically, the same workout of the intensity is the same. So I wouldn't say that I wouldn't say things are changing. I think like those, that the components of a session are changing, but the overall outcome stays the same. So, you know, if it is, if any, if it's festival or Tuesdays, I will continue to do that same kind of routine. Okay. And how do you, how do you track progress over time? So I feel like with running, it's very easy. You're just looking at the pace, you know, with cycling, you might be looking at some combination of heart rate and power, but again, there's so many different variables with the high rocks. So what are you personally tracking during these workouts? Yeah, well, I mean, I will track just times over different, I mean, obviously, I think I'll do 80 minutes a bad big project. It was quite regularly. And I'm just like, for the time I'm just timing and, you know, same for the oranges, I'll just time it in the middle of a workout and kind of, you know, it gives you, it gives you a reasonable gauge right there and then, right. So I'll do, I'll do that a little bit. And obviously, I think with the strength side of things, it's, I'll do a lot of five reps stuff as well. Seeing how the number, the five rep number is improving or changing over time would be another one. I mean, there's lots of different, different ways you can do it, but that would be, that would be the main ones. I don't particularly do, I don't often do something like a, you know, a time circuit or anything like that, but I'll just do a product time checks now and again within certain sessions to see how, how I'm progressing. And I think, you know, intuitively, you do, you know, if you do burpee broad jumps, for example, and you kind of put in a half effort, or you kind of intuitively know the effort you're putting in, and you do it in three minutes, it's always a good day to, in your racing in whatever, three, thirty, and you do it, you do it easily in three, then, you know, you know, you're progressing in the right direction. So I think, just for it, product time checks and different stations is good. I mean, the running is obviously easy, as you said. You know, you got heart rate and heart rate and lactate and feeling and all that kind of thing that you can, you can use to gauge. I mean, the more points of physiological intensity, regulation, you can put into, into your monitoring, the better. So often we're running an RPE heart rate lactate speed. You know, and that's kind of a good gauge of what I can see. Yeah, I think it's a, it's a really interesting challenge to think about how you would construct a, almost a, a high rocks performance dashboard. I think, you know, one of the problems is that people are only racing these events, maybe once or twice a year, and it's very rare for people to be doing more than that. And so somewhat, it's somewhat difficult to tell if you're really progressing in the sport. So it's almost, you know, it's interesting to think about what would be on that dashboard. And maybe there's as simple as just having, you know, your, your times for individual stations, and maybe your running paces and your egg paces and really keeping it as simple as that. Yeah, I mean, just get, just get complicated. I think you'd want to, I mean, if you were going to do that dashboard, the way I'm looking at it, I would start, I would think about it in terms of the physiology of of each component rather than the sessions themselves. Obviously, there's, you know, you want to kind of look at your max strength, you probably want to look at your fatigue resistance, or something like 60 percent of your max, how many you can do in 60 seconds, or how many do fit, to fatigue is the other thing I've looked at. I look at my anaerobic capacity, I look at my trash rod and I look at my endurance, you know, basically heart rate at level two, LT1, trash hole pace, or sat, and then also, yeah, and then the anaerobic capacity is, you know, what's your 30 second power, one minute power, like, that's what I would kind of start to build the dashboard, but it gets a bit more complicated, right? And would you be doing that on a station by station basis? So in other words, is it, is it as important to know your, you know, your 30 second max lunges as your 30 second max running? Yeah, I would, I would be doing, I would be doing like 30 seconds of, I would just be looking at it at the capacity general, generally, so I doubt, I would do it on either row or ski. I wouldn't do it really necessarily, because people might not have the capacity, so I'd be looking at that. I know, sir, I don't think you're having a good aerobic capacity is good for high rolls, by the way, so I'll be looking to squash that if it was too high. But, but yeah, and then, and then I'm looking at it from different components, and you might like, you know, lay most of the body. I wouldn't, I wouldn't really go a station by station, because I think it uses, then you just got too many variables, and too much to be looking into at one time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's so many potential things to be looking at. So you might just do your main lifts, like, you know, your double lifts, your squat, your overhead press, your bench, that sort of thing. Okay. Okay. Okay. Dan, so, of course, you've been starting to create your own high rocks training program. You've recently launched Endurox, and so maybe tell us a little bit about the story behind Endurox and part in the pun, but I think your partner with that is Adam's story, but tell us a little bit about the background of Endurox. Tell us a, tell us a story. Yeah. So I guess, you know, I've been involved in a, in a number of sports, like I'm not just in triathlon, so I've done rowing, I've done kayaking, I've done sailing, I've done cycling, I've done swimming, I've done triathlon. I think, um, like, and just having a keen understanding of exercise physiology, um, is key to training, to training, to build the incorporating programs, but all the tires in those sports, you know, whether it's being rowing, or it's being in kayaking, or whatever it might be, there's always being like, you know, this kind of hybrid approach to the coaching, whereas you have experts in endurance, and you have experts in strength, and, and I don't think anyone exists out there who can say that there was proper expert in endurance and a real expert in strength. So, endurance, what's unique about this is that, you know, Adam is a PhD in strength and power, and now the PhD in the endurance side, and, you know, and on top of that, we both had a lot of experience. So like, so for example, Adam's work with Valerie Adams, and he's shot put, you know, multiple Olympic gold medalist. And, so with our own experience of working in these different sports, and our academic, we've kind of, kind of come together to build the ultimate hybrid high-rot program. And I mean, Adam, we worked together at Ember's Team New Zealand, when the Americas kept doing that very same thing. Actually, the Americas kept grinding. He's actually exceptionally hybrid. There's this massive component of strength in the grinders, and there's a massive component of, of endurance, same in kayak. Me and Adam, we worked together in kayak as well, the women's kayak team here in New Zealand. So we've kind of got this philosophy together to build this, this, a juror's program. Yeah, 100%, 100%. And, and as you were exploring the landscape of high-rot coaching, I imagine you did a lot of research into what currently exists. What do you think was really lacking in the programs? Or what do you think it is about your programming that that really stands apart? Yeah, well, I think what I've seen from most high-rot programming is that it's mostly stemming still from CrossFit. And I think it's, I think, it's in a state personally. I think when you're building programs based on CrossFit, it's high-rot. I would say we have a lot, I mean, obviously, some bias, but I think we have a lot more to learn from the triathlon coaches than we do from CrossFit coaches, because it is an endurance-based sport. It's like an hour event. It's, you know, predominantly around your threshold. It's about recoverability. So we built the program is built on endurance and building the aerobic, aerobic engine with, with complimentary strength and not the other way around, where I feel like a lot of other programs are kind of built on strength and complimentary endurance. And I think that's where we differ and I think that's our point of difference. Alongside the fact that it's two of us who are building it together with my own aerosol studies. And is this something that people should be looking at really if they only have a race coming up? So maybe they're eight to 12 weeks out from their race. Is that who it's targeted towards? Or do you feel like this is this is a style of training that's really designed, you know, for like more general fitness? How would you frame that? What do you mean people who aren't even doing a high rock? Well, or yeah, is this a good just way to train overall? How do you think about that? I believe it is just a good way to train overall. If I stopped doing a high rock tomorrow, I'd probably still train that in the same way, because I think it's a great balance of all the whole lot. And we, you know, we have endurance, we have our own app that we built ourselves. It's a very specific endurops app and we've got the explanation videos for exercises. So Adam, Adam also, he was the Olympic weightlifting coach. So his technique and his advice on doing the proper movements is second to normal. I don't think there's anyone, he's probably one of the best in the world to give those explanations. So we've got Adam doing those explanation videos and then, you know, I'll talk through the bit of physiology of the training and different training zones and the skier and why we do tempo training, why we do threshold training. So, but I think, um, like that balance for anyone who is, um, who's looking to just live a lot of active life, whether you're doing a high rock or not, it's fine. And we have, you know, a variety of different programs that are designed for obviously racing, but just general, like, you know, improving 5K type, improving change head type, improving aerobics, whatever that might be. Do you think that if somebody follows a program like this, that they can make adaptations and progress for years and years? Like, like, what do you think is ultimately the time course of maximizing your potential with the program like this? Well, it's, it's years and years, right? I mean, as long as, as long as the program is specific, I mean, it comes back to the principles of training, right? So, as long as you, as you abide by those principles, the training is specific, but most importantly, you have progressive overload. I mean, it's absolutely cute, right? You, as long as you're progressively overloaded in the system, you will always, and you recover appropriately. If those two things are in place, you will continuously improve for years. And I, and we've all these things you need to still take a long term approach to, to your training. And it's really, it's really strange in that, now, you know, I'm in traffic for a very long time and people would often come in and they were like, "Oh, I want to remember three hours from my marathon. Why can't I do it? Why can't I do it?" You know, and I'm just like, "Well, time, you just need time, you know, you take two years to build that kind of endure." I said, "And now, the she was on the other foot because I'm like, why can't I go into the hour for a high-rise?" Well, you know, why can't I break the pro one hour? I mean, it's just time. I just need more time doing the training, getting used to the movement, progressively overloading myself. So, as long as there's those things are in place, the people can achieve much more than they realize. And I think I've said this before and a little on other podcasts, but in my experience, athletes will always overestimate what they can do in the short term and under us made what they can do in the long term. So, the long-term approach is always the best approach when it comes to achieving your goals, but it's very hard to do things in the short term. Okay. Okay. And one way that people might think about this, they might think in order to truly maximize my potential, I need to get very strong and I need to get very good at running. So, maybe people could think, "I'm just going to focus on a running block, I'm going to try and get, you know, sub one hour 30, sub one hour 20 for a half marathon, I'm going to try and get as strong as possible on the power lifts and really going to the strength." And that's going to be the base. That's going to be the thing that I keep on maximizing. Do you feel like that approach is ultimately limiting because it is missing out on the high-rocks specificity? Do you feel like people really need to be having those specific workouts year round and really adapting to those as well? Not necessarily. No, I don't think you need that. I think, again, it comes back to the individuality, right? And where you need specific helps. I mean, I think like, there's a certain amount of strength that you definitely require, right? And if you don't have that strength, you need to get that strength. And there's a certain amount of endurance ability that you require. And if you don't have that, you need to work towards it. But the problem with all hybrid training and the high-rocks training is that we have this, if you heard of the concurrent training effect. So I have, like, go ahead and explain. So the concurrent training effect is basically, it's very hard to both build endurance and strength at the same time. And that's where the high-rocks training becomes very, very complicated. If you want to really build your strength and you want to build endurance, it's not going to happen. It's very, very hard to do. So you actually do want to have periods of time where you're focusing on just endurance and doing a little bit of strength, and vice versa, where you're focusing on more strength and less endurance. But it depends on what, on what you need to do, right? So for someone who might be more of a crossfit, they might almost need to not do any weights for a period of time. I just do a range of endurance for four weeks. You know, just do very minimal maintenance strength. Whereas on the other side, someone like me, I do very, very little strength endurance and just really focus on my strength. I think one of the greatest things that I did when I finished, and it was completely bad luck and not, I didn't design it this way at all, is that when I finished doing Iron Man, for a period of about six months before it took for Pyrox, I just did almost bodybuilding. I just went to the gym, and six times a week, 90 minutes, very little cardio. And I put on a lot of weight, and I got a lot stronger. And that was actually very beneficial for then. When I went back to my endurance, I obviously my endurance, because I've lived for so long, it took me like two weeks to get my running and cycling, you know, just very quick. It came back, but I had built that endurance up. I think giving your background, you know, if you want to improve your strength a lot and you're from an endurance background, you will have to spend the time when you actually really focus on that, your endurance will have to take it back to the end of vice versa, because of the concurrent training effect that's so apparent. But when it comes to racing, going back to the principle of specificity, that will always be the most important thing. So that's the time when you need to start doing reps closer to the range that you're doing in a race, more targeted stuff at your race pace and more station work. That makes a lot of sense. Okay, let's touch on a couple of other areas. One thing I also want to talk to you about Dan is nutrition. So you've ridden and talked a lot about this. What do you see as some of the key nutritional principles for really succeeding at the race of high rocks? How do you think people should be fueling before and during the race? So I think, I mean, generally macro level, I think protein's key to recovery. I think you need to prioritize protein within your daily living, and most people are full sure of that. And there's a big range, depending on where your body composition needs us. At least 1.8 grams per kilogram of body weight per day would be standard for an athlete, but that can go even higher. So if an athlete is trying to increase a bit of lean mass, they might be at 2.5. They could even be closer to 3 if they're trying to increase a bit of lean mass. So I think that's the main thing. And I always liken it to, I mean, probably everyone's seen that analogy where you've got those big rocks and you have the sound, right? And then the person puts the sound in the glass and then they try and put the rocks on top and they just fit in and then they put the rocks in first and they put all the sound on top and it all goes into the glass. I like to think of the protein as the big rocks and then the fats in the carbohydrates are just the sound and how that whether and that fat versus carbs is very individual, depending on what you feel best doing. And I mean, I'm well known. I don't think carbs are important for high rocks. Of course, you need them, but they're probably not as important as you think that. Protein is more important, whereas I feel we prioritize carbohydrates over everything, which is not essential macronutrients, it's pretty not really correct. I think prioritizing proteins is the key. But then yeah, but then making sure that obviously before racing, you're, you know, you do have fully, you know, you've taken some, you don't think you need to cover a lower person, but making sure that you're watching fully stored. Whether, whether taking carbs during is having any effect, I'm so probably not. And if it is, it's to the brain, it's having like a brain effect, you know, just from the receptiveness of the mouth and maybe the might be something going on there, but I mean, I've not taken anything in any of the high rocks events that I've taken. I know that some people do, but I don't, I think it's yet to be proven that it has a huge effect. But yeah, there have been the main things that I've focused on. And then how about hydration during the race? How important do you think that is? I think pre-hydration is more important. And that's been shown in all the research is that you're, ensuring that you're well hydrated before the race, especially over events like an hour, turn out in a half, is much more important than hydration during because your body has the ability to lose much more weight than you'd realize through through through the plasma changes and the intracellular hostility fluid shifts. So you can lose a lot of weight to maintain your blood plasma and maintain performance. In fact, so if you look at the marathon research, generally it's the people who lose their most weight during marathons are the ones who perform the best at the end. So it's not really something that you have to worry about during so much. Obviously, sometimes you get a dry mouth, it's kind of good to take a sweep. And likewise, you know, even taking a red ball just before you jump into the wall balls, you know, just the sugar on the mouth and the caffeine in the mouth will have some, you know, the, it's been shown that mouth rinsing has effects on performance. So there could be something in that kind of thing. But the main thing you need to focus on is making sure that you're starting well hydrated. So, you know, making sure you're drinking in the days and the lead up to the event and making sure that's in adequate amounts. So in a lot of ways, it's really what you're doing prior to the race, which is potentially more beneficial than what you're taking during the race. Yeah, 100, for higher ups, 100%. Ironman 50/50. You know, it's an eight hour event. So, you know, you're talking, it starts what you're taking during and becomes very important. But for something like higher ups, what you're taking during is, is having very, very little implications on what's happened for until you are all alone. But what you do before in terms of how you fuel, how you recover, how it builds into your consistency of training, which we've already talked about. It's really, really important, right? And starting the event, hydrating and well fueled is key. And now, obviously a little bit like caffeine and some of the real simple, obvious things like caffeine is a definite urge in a K. So, you know, you would definitely want to do a caffeine boost before you take, before you start, before you might want to do a high-rost test it before in training, of course. But those things make a difference too. Okay, Dan, let me ask you one more question from Playo. Playo asked if you had to pick a world-class athlete from another sport to coach for high-rocks and become world champion in three years, which sport would it be and which athlete? Jenny, that's a good question. Who would have choose? I mean, obviously I choose someone from Triathlon because I'm biased thinking Hayden Wilde's the first person to spring some mind, but he might be a little, he won't ever be strong enough. Yeah. I just go with that. But yeah, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not really sure what to be honest. Yeah. Of course, I'm an easy-ealing athlete. Yeah. And do you believe that it will be possible to go sub 50 for a men's high-rocks pro? So at some point, yeah, I believe most likely. It's tricky. I mean, I think I do think the new sleds have changed the game. The new turf, sorry, has made things a little bit harder. I do, even when I compare my first spin to Sydney time, I think the new turf is, I mean, it's not like Chicago turf, but it is, if you look at all the sled poll times, particularly in the pro men, there are a little bit slot. So I think it is having, it has become a little bit more, more tricky, but by three minutes, it's still a long way. It's a big gap, you know? So the record is what? The one record is 53 still, isn't it? 53? Yeah. I think it's 53.20. It's right around there. But who now is I mean, I remember, when I look back at Ironman Triathlon, you know, people, there was a time when people were like, "Oh, I don't think anyone will be able to break 8 hours." And of course, like, if you break 8 hours, you'll be in the pro bench, you might be 25th. So, I think we'll see, I mean, we'll see, we'll see times go down, but I think things are just going to get a lot tighter as well. I think even now, even at Brisbane, in my phone race, I think if I was like about 30 seconds quicker, I would have been in the top 10. It's so close racing. So it's just going to get, like, seconds are going to count more and more. Yeah, seconds are going to count. Yeah. Yeah. And where do you think we are in terms of the hierarchy of growth curve? Do you feel like this sport is still very early in terms of adoption, or do you feel like we're somewhere in a bubble at this point? Where do you see the sport overall at this point? Yeah, that's another, I mean, the sport ever makes it to the Olympics. I think that's going to be another big growth. And I think that is a point where we're very, very likely to start seeing people getting close to the 15 minutes because the attraction will be huge. And then you'll get all sorts of people going from different sports to try. But in terms of the growth, I think I would I would hazard a guess that we've seen the biggest growth that we've been seeing in the last year, for the last two years. And of course, it's going to be more growth. But I don't think it will be as severe or as large as it has been in the last two years because it's just being huge. It can't possibly grow, which is as it has in the last few years. Yeah, okay. Okay. So, so imagine your your your with a young promising athlete, maybe somebody in their early teen years. At this point, could you would you encourage them to go into high rocks? Or is it still too risky to pursue a sport like high rocks? I think what they want to do is they want to they want to they want to go to the Olympics, for example, that's a dream. Then I probably wouldn't encourage them for us, but I don't know whether I don't know if the sport will get that out. Maybe it will. I think it's a bit of a risk love. But in terms of the health and the well-being benefits is definitely a sport I would encourage emphasis to do. And if I was doing if I wasn't encouraging like a youngster, I would, you know, obviously only let them do open and I would not focus on I wouldn't focus too much on strength, I would just do mostly endurance and a lot of technique, like the technique work in in terms of getting the movements of the stations absolutely perfect. You'll think that's the technique side of things is to develop those core techniques when you're young is really important. It's the same with running, same with anything right, you need to get those core techniques down to because that's somewhat important moving forward because once it's there it's there and it's easy, it's easy to ingrain perfect technique when you're a bit younger. You see all the time in triathlon, but if athletes come from a trip to triathlon, who perform biking and running backgrounds and have never done swimming, they're really struggling with swimming because they cannot get in the technique down and that's the same approach. Yeah, super interesting. Okay, Dan, uh, final question, what are you most curious about right now in terms of your training or in terms of the sport of high rocks or in terms of some of your research? What is on the edge of your curiosity at this point? In terms of research, at the moment, I'm writing I'm very curious about ultra high-car consumption, so I'm writing a bit in that space just because it's really taken off like people doing crazy amounts of carbs. I mean, this is from the endurance, you know, cycling and triathlon. You know, athletes doing super high-car consumption during racing and training, like 120 to even 200 pounds an hour. So I'm interested in why because there's little scientific evidence to support it, but they don't tie, but yet we can't prove it in the lab at all. So I'm interested to kind of write in a bit of a piece at the level to look at the, you know, what might be happening physiologically outside of oxidation and endogenous carbohydrate preservation because that's clearly not happening. So I'm looking at other things which I'm trying to just write like a bit of a current opinion piece at the moment. So that would be in the academic side. I've got, um, yeah, I've got PhD student at the moment who's finishing up who's looking at readiness to train. So I'm looking at like a wearable that can predict how ready you are to train and that's quite interesting as well. But on the on the higher up side, I'm kind of very interested in moving and looking at kind of the high rep range work, you know, hundreds of hundreds of reps, like that sort of thing, that the strength endurance stuff to have a look at the effect of that, particularly in myself for the wall balls, for example, where I'm really struggling with the upper body strength endurance. So, um, so I'm kind of excited about incorporating a little bit of that more into my into my training in different ways and seeing how that's going to, how that's going to help because the comes back to the principle of specificity, right? You end up you're doing a hundred reps of the wall balls, you're doing probably close to a hundred reps on a lunge, right? It's not, they're not small, you know, so I think that side of things is quite interesting, like that strength capacity at 60% rather than your max strength is probably something that's more important for high rolls and max strength. And, um, and I'm currently working on a piece and I'll probably put it on YouTube as to why I believe that being too strong will be worse for your high rocks. So, um, that's the end of a piece I'll be working on soon. Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating. Well, I'm very much looking forward to following your explorations both as an athlete as well as your explorations with these training methodologies. I think it's a super exciting time for high rocks and super glad to have you in the space then. And I feel I feel like no one's really doing it at the moment, so it's kind of kind of cool to be, you know, I don't think anyone's really jumping into the science of Iowa so much at the moment, so it's, um, it's good and hopefully we'll, and I mean, Adam, we both work for AOT University, so we're both senior research fellows there, and we are definitely talking, you know, we try to get into our requirements about doing some high rocks research because even, even something as simple as the terminus of success in a high rocks event isn't even known. It's like, this is really simple stuff like, you know, and what I mean by that is what is the most important? So, the best harnesses in the world, what traits do they have? Is it a high VT2 running? Is it a high 1RM? Is it a high 60% 60% of your 1RM to fatigue? Is it your VT1? Is it your, you know, your plyometric strength or your counter movement jump? We know, we don't know those things, so I think that's, that's really cool. You know, in rowing, for example, we know those answers, we know, like, okay, what car like is best the 2K running performance? We can tell you your life, you know, to your max and power of 4 million, all and stuff like that, but we just don't know how, so we're hoping to get some of those answers or two because that sort of information will guide and it can guide all of training because if you know the terminus of success in a high rocks event, that can guide every single training principle that you want to, that you follow up, because if you know that VT2 running is the thing that is guiding most of success in a high rocks, that's the thing you're going to prioritize, right? So, that's bad, you've got to work on it, so it's kind of cool. I think one of the most interesting things is just how diverse the athlete pool seems to be. You have people who can bench press 130 KGs, you have people who can bench press 70 KGs and they come out with an equal time in the high rocks, so it does seem like it's just such a complex optimization problem. Yeah, I'll be, I'll be one of those 70 KG athletes, which is pretty very affected. So, well, thank you Dan for being part of the show. No, thanks for having me on.