Part 3: The Art and Science of Peaking

(upbeat music) - And welcome back, or welcome to another on Coaching Podcast. I'm Steve Magnus, joined us always by John Marcus. John, what's going on with me? - Don't we do for the last 10 years in counting? Just back to give the people what they want. Let's go. - That is true. And we've got part three of our series. - Peaking. - Oh my goodness, Pandora's Box. Let's open it up. - So this is why we're gonna get into the details here because peaking is like art and science. And-- - What the hell is speaking? What the hell? What are we talking about? - What are we talking about, move? - Yeah, it's this, well it's this nebulous kind of thing. And I think a lot of it has to do with like how you kind of approach it. And if we treat it as like this magic that we need to do, this formula that we get, then I think this is often what we see in the research. And why I would argue the research differs often from what real world athletes and coaches do. And the research you often see it as like, okay, this many weeks out, you cut your volume by this much, you increase your intensity by this much, and then you get this magic boost in performance, okay? But if you look out in the real world, often what happens is coaches are like, okay, that might work for some, but this athlete, if I drop that volume by too much, they feel flat. If this athlete, if I increase their intensity, they don't recover. If this athlete over here, if I don't give enough intensity, they feel flat and don't get ready. And to me, like, peaking is this kind of catch all term that we've kind of instituted, where it's like gives us this hope of getting a boost, but the reality is, it's like, to me, it's like we want to maintain fitness, well, getting rid of fatigue and helping people feel good on race day. And if we do that, will they get some boost? Maybe, but more often than not, we're clearing the way for them to have the potential to run up to their fitness level in this moment. - I love that definition. Mine is kind of echoing what you said. Peaking is essentially eradication of fatigue. That's it. Whatever fitness you have, so when I was younger, it was presented to me, I think a lot of us, it's like this apex, you're the most fitness you've ever been, blah, blah, blah, and it was like this mountain you had to ascend. And you had to be at this, you know, this, this, as Joviel said in his book, running to the top of the mountain. I mean, that was the title of the book, right? So it was always presented as that. And that's why it's called a peak, because it was presented in this kind of, ascending the mountain analogy. And what I came to realize, right, after failing to peak myself as an athlete multiple times, failing to peak other athletes multiple times early on in my career, is like, no, all it is, we are just doing everything in our power from a training and stimulus and workout and readiness perspective to eradicate all the fatigue from this athlete for a very consolidated and brief period of time. And depending on the athlete, depending on their readiness, depending on their training history, depending on a lot of different factors, then kind of predicate how much time or build up of basically fatigue mitigation or eradication you need before the main event. - Yeah, I mean, that's, it's like simple, but helps us kind of understand the complexity underneath here. And I think this is the problem is like, to me as a coach and an athlete, it starts off with what are you seeing as peak? Do you see this? John and I just describe it, clearing out the fatigue, letting the fitness express itself, or as this mountain where it's like, okay, this is gonna be magical. - You know what I mean? - Right, yeah, where it's like, like as sometimes, as you're right, there's like this concept where it's like, you put in some type of cheat code and all of a sudden, you level up five levels on race day, and you should have like this magical ascent from if you're at level 10 to level 15, and then there's huge letdown when it doesn't happen. - Yeah, exactly. It's like the expectation effect. If you set that expectation too high, then anything that sends the signal of like, oh man, this might not be the perfect race or the perfect feeling, like your brand goes like, ah, this isn't the perfect day, like check out. And this is often why you see athletes. Often I'm sure you encounter this and our listeners have too, is like, that last workout before our quote unquote P-Crace, maybe on a Tuesday or Wednesday or what have you before the race, is too often athletes will come to you and be like, coach, that felt way harder than it should be. You know, like I'm running 200s and they feel hard, or I'm running 400s, or I'm doing some cruise miles, or whatever it is, and that feels hard. And what I wanna say is like, well, that's because the expectation is wrong. You came in and said like, okay, it's the week of, it's my peak week, I'm starting to feel great, I should start to feel better, this should be an easy workout, this should feel fluid and easy, in no matter how fit you are, whatever doing some mile repeats at five minute pace, there's some 400s at 65, whatever it is, it's still kind of hard, it still takes effort. It's not going out for a seven minute mile jog or whatever pace it is for you, in that misalignment of the expectations, often puts us in a bad spot for like performing because like we say, this feels harder than it should. I'm not gonna get this magic, doom and gloom, spiral, and we're done for. - Yeah, it's so much, it's just as much psychological as it is physiological, this kind of peaking effect, right? And I think a lot of people hear about these accounts where athletes are like, oh, it just felt so easy, it felt so fluid, it wasn't hard at all, or they'll watch someone at a championship race, maybe at a professional level and go, gosh, you're not even breathing hard, they don't even look like they're trying, right? And so then we take what these hyper elite performers express in their peak race and try to extrapolate it to us mere mortals, where people who might not have as long and reach a training history behind them and try to create expectation that is aligned with that. And I think that's off. I think really the way I think about peaking is, it's kinda like the Razer's Edge for most people, right? It's what in the beginning of the season was really hard to do is now easy to do, but you're still trying to do and perform and compete on the Razer's Edge at the end of your fitness capability. And instead of this idea of it being easy, it's you are now because of training and peaking capable, right, you're capable of doing this. It's not gonna be easy, not gonna be walking the park, but in the beginning of the season, or maybe two years ago, depending on what kind of peaking time horizon we're talking about, you weren't even capable of doing X, Y, Z, and now you're capable. And I think if we change the language from easy to capable, all of a sudden we have a psychological shift that then gives the athlete a better expectation of reality that they're gonna meet and the conference going in to be able to interpret signals of discomfort, distress, or difficulty as, yeah, I expected this, but then reminding themself from a psychological or affirmation narrative. I expected this, my coach expected this, but you know what, I know I'm capable. - I love that. And I think that's why I step on what we're covering here is like for you as a coach is to set the appropriate expectations. 'Cause if you set those expectations as, oh, we're gonna back off the training, you're gonna feel great blah, blah, blah, blah. And they don't, then you've just, their brain is sounding the alarm, right? It's like danger, danger, danger. We don't feel great, we're not gonna run well, blah, blah, blah. I remember one time when I was coaching at Houston, I had an athlete, which is doing a simple pre-race workout and they just didn't feel that great. And it was, and they came up to me after and she was like, said something, she's like, coach, that was like the worst workout to give me confidence before this race. And in my head, I'm like, oh dear God, like what have we done here? I didn't set the appropriate expectations. And guess what? It was a conference meet, her first race was miserable. But then her second race, she like knocked it out of the park and did it way better. So it's not that the like the fitness wasn't there. It's that we spiraled in that first race and let that pre-workout, pre-race workout, the dingo well effect us. And then that kind of freed her up and we redirected and say, hey, you got one more shot like though everything out the window, Like. just let's go for it. You're free to do it. No one expects anything other. And she expressed the fitness. So it was a perfect installation of showing or a perfect example of showing like fitness-wise she was ready, right? She got like third at conference best performance of her life. But then but the day before she bombed not because the fitness wasn't there but because I hadn't done the right things and setting the appropriate expectations on like you're not going to feel great probably. You're preparing for a 10k on a track. A 10k on the track is never fun. It's like it is never going to feel easy even if you are in shape, right? I didn't do a good job of preparing both in the pre-race and in the race itself of the expectations. And so step one, we often think of the workouts and the volume and the intensities and we'll get to that. But I think step one is like how are you framing this? How are you shaping this? So that this person yes has the confidence going into it but that realistic confidence or realistic optimism of yes I am prepared, yes I am capable but this is still going to be freaking hard because it's always freaking hard. Right. And that's the thing this idea of I'm capable and ready to express my fitness. And I think and the other part of this is we can't you know I'm not a big fan of what they call woo-woo or magic or just make believe right. Like there are certain physiological constraints that we are going to be subject to depending on our training. And if you haven't done the requisite amount of speed work, if you haven't done the requisite amount of threshold work, if you just haven't put in the work, you know you can't materialize a sensational kick in the last 150, 800 when Acidosis is you know at all time highs. No matter how much you are willing and desiring right. But provided that that kind of you know runaway of work has been done prior to the peak, then you can have these conversations about whether or not you know what the sensations the athlete is going to feel. Because I think the biggest thing for an athlete is when we go into a peaking season or peaking season or peak race is beforehand making sure that they're really well aligned with the realities that they're going to face and feel so that they're narrative and self-talk in the moment is going to be positive and not spiral. Yeah, I mean that's what it is. It's like you're shaping their inner voice and inner structure to make sure that it doesn't like spiral towards you know the catastrophe or rumination that we have all experienced both in running and in life. And in this day and age it's really hard to do that because you have all these accounts on social media of all these people being like oh it was so easy to run my PR or win this race. Oh it just felt easy it felt easy and it's like BS. I call BS like I you know the very few people get that luxury of winning or running a race or setting a big PR and having it be easy the whole way. It might be easy after the fact in hindsight because you're so excited and you have all the boosters of dopamine and serotonin because you're like elated. But during the thing it's definitely hard. Well that no that's that's it and this is why I love to go to the old school guys who didn't have social media to you know kind of impress. That's actually more fun to be deluded and I love reading that people like you know Roger Bannister's account before he ran the sub four mile on how he was like on the train being like I don't want to do this like it's the trend yeah the geno like it's not and his coach Fran Stample essentially has to be like you know I'm paraphrasing obviously but like look buddy you're going to regret not starting so let's let's at least give it a go or herbellia right sin is wonderful biography how he woke up the day when he set the Olympic in world record in the Olympic 1500 final one of the great 1500s of all time and he's like I was imagining myself sick so much so that I went to the doctor to see if I was actually sick you know and it's like you get these pure understanding of like these people are saying I felt horrible going into it and and Elliot had this brilliant line where he's describing this race again one of the greatest 1500s of all time solowed essentially Olympic in world record in the in the 1960 Olympics and he said I got to the end of lap one and I was convinced that it was lap two because it felt so hard you know it's just like that's reality sometimes and he still ran amazing and I I often share these experiences with people because he contrasts with our current expectations of like I'm going to be in flow it's kind of feel great like everything will feel like a million bucks no you've got to be ready look if it does we've all had those few those few races like this if it does click write it but chances are it's not going to feel wonderful and it's not going to click and you just got to figure out how do I stay in this thing right how do I give myself a shot and that to me is like that the setting the appropriate expectations and this they look to you as the coach as the guide or to like you know help do that and if you don't do that well we get that spiral yeah it's you know I think a what you highlighted there were like you know the old school guys is like just this tried into reality of psychology which is we always create a sense of dread about anything that is novel unpredictable and that also has high stakes associated with it right I remember so many races myself in high school you know in college where I was competing to win competing to do this right competing set a record and I would like to like hoping in the middle of the cross country oh I hope I step in a pothole and twist my ankle so I have a reason to stop suffering you know I mean but I think the thing is is understanding is like that's a really natural reaction is when we are facing a you know something that's unknown something that's difficult where there's high stakes we're going to have this kind of more of a flight response to it very few people and lately have kind of that lean in or fight response right that's what made the legend of pre-fantane so amazing is this guy like ran really ran towards you know the unknown he ran towards you know breaking these records he ran towards pain he ran towards suffering not a normal human being at all who would who's like oh this is my idea of a good time I'm gonna do I'm gonna lean really heavy into this like blood and guts running right that that kind of mantra and narrative that was in the 70s and early 80s that's in this day and age especially you know as we are in the eight you know the heightened state of comfort and tranquility that we we try to live in it's a very difficult narrative to embrace so with that in mind as the coach when we start to shape workouts when we start to kind of eradicate the fatigue we need to keep you know concurrently these ideas in our head where it's like the athlete is capable to do hard things but as they do these peaking workouts they need to do just the right amount of difficult things but have it feel kind of easy enough so where they build the confidence so on race day when they encounter the difficult moments when they encounter the tough spaces that they have the confidence to take the risk and lean in yeah exactly I mean that's that's what I think it is I mean that's what it is it's like it's this this is why at the beginning we said it's it's both the science and the art is like for every athlete that mixture and that approach is gonna be a little bit different right yes and like you've got to first know your athlete um to get them in the right space so we've we've kind of on on about the step one which is like set the appropriate expectations like get them in the right mindset for this let's dive into the stuff that people generally see as step one but it's probably step two really the real the true step two yes that's true step two the like what do we look at from a workout from a training standpoint how do you view this john rule my here are my rules rule one workouts peaking workouts do not prove fitness they illuminate fitness what does that even mean right so rule one I have three rules we'll go over rule one rule one we are illuminating fitness where it's kind of like fitness discovery for the athlete right and when I mean by that is instead of going in and saying here is the rep length and the time we're gonna run we're gonna go in and say here is the rep length and here is the per se percent effort I want you to do this at you know and typically it I like to have it be pretty high percent effort, like kind of 90% and above. And then couple that with a lot of recovery. Because what we're doing is in that type of construction of a workout, we're saying, all right, you're gonna run a quarter at 90%, and maybe you give like, you know, gradient increases of a bill of percent effort. First, 200, I want you to run at 80%, last 300, I want you to run at 90%, last 100, I want to just see what you got, right? And just go for it. And let's just, let's have it be more exploratory. What you then use that as as a coach is two things, right? You use as a benchmark for them to give feedback based on times like, holy crap, you just ran this quarter at blah, blah, blah, blah, and the last 100 at blah, blah, blah, the last 200, right? With this excitement and enthusiasm, you've never been able to do that, right? It's a really positive affirmation. Also though, on the flip side, if they blow up, (laughs) and it's really difficult, then you can have the conversation about, hey, how are you doing today? How are you feeling? You know, okay, let's then pivot and do a workout, you know, to work, that's a little bit, if you're not feeling well, it's pivoting to some work, that's a little bit more, you know, kind of bread and butter, not that difficult, right? And you don't really, you can't just shrug it off. I think too often, we look at peaking workouts as proving fitness workouts, and it's like, all right, it's a big workout. We're gonna do this, you know, like, breakdowns, 1600, 1200, 400, you know, 800, 400, 200, and you know, you gotta hit this, and you gotta just prove, and we've, Steve and I have both in settings, where we've seen professionals and professional coaches and athletes do this, and it rarely works out well, because you're either, you know, you either hit the times in approving fitness workout, but then you're really fatigued afterwards, and you just don't recover, and it, it quote unquote, "drange your legs" for not just a couple days, sometimes a week or two, or you don't, and then you're confident that athletes confidence is, boom, right in the gutter, a week or two before the big race. - Yeah, I think that's the thing is, when we frame things as what matters most, expectations in eliminating fatigue, doing the big, like, proving fitness workout is high risk in both of those, because like it's, it's like you've got, like, not quite, but maybe a 50/50 shot, because you never know on the day, do they knock it out of the park, or does it go kinda okay? Well, that shifts your expectations completely, and on the fatigue standpoint, what you're doing is often digging a big hole, and then hoping you get out of it. But more so what I like to do is similar to you, is like, I call it the Scott Rasko method, which is, you take it one rapper, one set at a time. And this gives you the flexibility, as you said, to kinda like pivot and shift, and have multiple workouts in mind. And if for some reason it feels like they're having a great day, and you wanna say, "Hey, we're gonna give this person confidence, and I think they can recover it." You give them that last rep, that last 400 and 800, and say, like you said, "Well, let's go for it. What do you got?" But you've built it up in a way, where you know that they can handle it essentially, right? Where it's a good day where they're gonna run fast, walk away, say, "Hey, I ran really fast that first last 400, it built up to the last 400, so it's not like a huge hole, and you get that confidence boost." But if it doesn't look like it's gonna be that great day, because you're going rep by rep or set by set, you're able to pivot, and you're able to say, "Hey, we've been doing some miles or 12 or caves at this pace, and like, yeah, you looked okay, but like you're not crushing it." So what I'm gonna do is say, "Hey, let's end with a couple 150s, where we're just turning over." And you've now shifted the workout, where it's like something they can handle often, and like feel good without having to be bound by the time. And you're like, "They walk away, sin." Okay, I felt pretty good. Like it wasn't a crazy workout, but like, man, my legs felt pretty good coming out off of that. You're able to like shift and pivot, instead of what often happens is you lock in and say, "Hey, we're gonna do these mile repeats, or this mile breakdown, or what have you, or these 400s, and like, this is the workout, it's a proving workout, and you've essentially set up an athlete for either walking away with a lot of confidence, or walking away being like, "Oh God, can I do this or not?" Because that didn't go well. - Exactly. And that's really a peaking workout. You nailed it. You set it right there at the end. Like that is the goal of peaking workouts is to build up the confidence. Right? So the way I view it is, is like, confidence should be escalating and going up, and fatigue should be de-escalating, and eradicating and going down. And every workout for about roughly 10 days, add a minimum, 20 days at a maximum, out before the big one, depending on the length of the race in front of you. Obviously, if you're a marathoner, it's gonna be like 20 days. 10K here, probably is gonna be more like two weeks, five K here, two weeks to 10 days. Milder, 800 meter, about 10 days, right? So from that time out, that's all, every time they hit the track, every time they hit a workout, every time they hit a session, it's all about raising and elevating confidence, and eradicating and diminishing fatigue. The other type of workout that I've also found a value, depending on if it's the right person, is some people don't like the explore workout, right? They're just a little too hesitant, they're more conservative. So instead of an exploratory workout to build confidence, what I do is a benchmark workout to do confidence, right? And so the benchmark workout can be something that, you know, try it and true, you do every week, or every two weeks or three weeks or whatever, it's just a workout construction, someone's very familiar with, right? Could be for the 800 meter runners, it was, it's like six times 200, right? And you can structure that however you want, we'll just use that as an example. So you can use it as escalating in paces, so start off at this and then escalate the paces while keeping the recovery at a certain bandwidth. You can have it just be just run fast and take as much recovery as you need. That's another way to do it. You can have it be kind of a complex, right? A little bit of both where, all right, you're gonna incrementally increase your recovery, incrementally increase the paste demand or the pace ask, right? Or the effort ask. But the whole goal of utilizing a benchmark workout is to build the confidence so that when they do it, they're like, oh, this is a lot easier, I'm running a lot faster, it feels a lot easier than we did in the beginning of the season, or even like right before the big invite, or what are the middle of the training block, right? And so you're giving them this kind of benchmark and this anchor point to see in real time, the progress they've made because they're running faster or running faster with less recovery, or running the same pace with less recovery, but it feels a lot easier. So in some way, shape before you want create a construction of something familiar that demonstrates in reality truthfully that see your fitness is higher and now you're more capable because this workout we've been doing on a regular basis, you're handling with ease or you're able to produce times that you weren't able to produce a couple months ago. - Exactly, I mean, I think that it's like, this comes back to like know your athlete and what sets them up well. I think too often when it comes to peaking, what we do is they say, okay, I need physiologically, I need this type of stimulus. - Right. And I think like within the last 10 days, two weeks, what I would tell you is like, a physiologically what you're doing probably doesn't matter too much. You're not the haze in the barn. - The haze is literally in the barn. - You're not eakin' out much adaptation here. All you're doing is like maintaining the fitness, shifting the confidence a little bit, sharpening up a little bit, but you're not getting some huge boost here. All you're doing is keeping the momentum going well, making sure that you can recover off of it and bounce back and clear out that fatigue. And I think this is where I go to, one of my go-to's for workouts, especially the week of is thinking back and even talking to athletes and being like, what do you enjoy? What kind of workouts make you feel good? What kind of workouts do you enjoy doing? If I have someone who hates threshold runs, why in the world would their last workout before a race be a threshold run? Right? You know, like if someone hates whatever, 200s or 400s or what have you, why would I do that? I have to like manipulate the workout in the right way to make them be like, hey, this is going to be kind of fun, right? A little challenging, but kind of fun to do. And if you do that correctly, then again, you walk away with an athlete who says, hey, that was hard but good. And like, I'm excited and ready to go. If you give them something that they're dreading, even if it's correct physiologically, all you've done is like set them up for being like, this sucks. Essentially. Yeah, and that's and that's the momentum you you know you want the art and science of peaking and how it plays into your coaching philosophy is you know you have to figure out for the athlete you're working with What are they gonna be the drivers to build that confidence some athletes right very much are Dad inclined they like the numbers. They like the physiology. They you know they like that confidence they get from the cold hard You know facts so to speak others tend to be you know a little bit more You know sensation and feeling based and they drive a lot of Confidence from how they're feeling how they're doing you know and then not they don't worry so much about the numbers and It's our job as a coach to understand the human that we're working with and understand where they fall in that spectrum and Be able to give them the appropriate workouts and the appropriate Training plan that's going to just incrementally kind of create a cascade of confidence every single time they put on their Writing shoes and it hit a training session and that's where again It's why record keeping is important why you know training logs are important is because it's that reference point Between where we are now where we started the journey and how we're feeling now sometimes what happens a lot from my experience is People and you know can just be when it comes to fitness expectations or peaking expectations un reasonably greedy Un reasonably greedy like I should feel a lot better. I should be a lot fitter. I should I should and it's like the This I didn't know you know initially how to respond to that as a young coach until I finally figured out you know like Way to make it a little bit more relatable and being like We can't I mean in Steve knows this with two two little kids like we can't rush a Child's development and child's timeline to hitting puberty. You're gonna hit puberty when they hit puberty You know, so it's unrealistic that's a seven year old to hit puberty, right? And some people you know Maybe they hit puberty maybe people hit puberty at 12 maybe hit it at 16 like we don't know that somewhere around there It's kind of this gray area where we have an idea. We have a general like you know zip code about it, but we cannot give you the exact Street location of this of peaking a fitness of the amount of fitness you're gonna Be able to express because there's a lot of factors in play and it's very very Complex, you know, which is different than complicated right complicated. There's law factors that you know Comingle and we understand the factors and we understand the connections. There's a lot complexes There's factors we know and there's factors we don't know that commingle and influence so we cannot make an accurate, you know, definitive You know ballpark or guesstimation or Conclusion because we don't know all the factors involved and the the greedy fitness people sometimes don't like to hear that reality But we have to keep them planted with two feet in reality Yeah, I like I like how you how you put that and I think that's out absolutely the case here the other part of it You know, we've talked around about workouts and how you know choosing it and and stuff the other thing that I like to say here when it comes to Peaking as people ask well how much volume how much blah blah blah is I think one of the big Things from a training standpoint is like keeping the rhythms What I mean by that is like When you're running you get used to a certain kind of rhythm or cadence of life right if you're Running seven days a week or six days a week or doubling two days a week or what have you and like Mondays or this and two Days or that and blah blah, huh your body kind of adapts to it and it says hey Every morning I get up and I go on my run at 7 30 in the morning or whatever it is If we all the sudden change that the week or two before big race often our body and brain kind of like Overcompensate It says like oh, I'm not running every day. It must be break time right or it must be like recovery or must be the offseason And you kind of get in this mode where it's like oh, it's recovery mode is shut down mode because you've changed that like Keaton's a little bit. It just doesn't mean you need to do you know 10 miles every Monday if you're or Tuesday or whatever If that's what it is, but it means you probably should like get out there and do the run roughly at the same same like Frequency cadence of it you might decrease the volume a little bit to clear things out But if you're used to doing that and showing up I want to keep that kind of rhythm of life and training going I think that's one of the key things that I see people mess up is they say oh, it's taper week like I'm gonna take some some days off or do this and like no, no Like if you're used to running every day then even if that means like you know on a recovery day You go out and you run 30 minutes then go out and run 30 minutes But like keep your body used to getting out the door and this is why I often think the day before a race Why do people get out and shake out and do strides and stuff like that? It because it generally makes us feel better than taking the day off because your body goes like okay We're still in the swing of things like we're still training a little bit like let's keep keep keep the system ravaged a little Mm-hmm exactly like it's this is a really interesting phenomena It's the phenomena of novelty right and novelty we know is very important some call it you know Variety is the spice of life and when we think about novelty as a coach You how we use novelty and when we use novelty? It has an impact on you know the athletes development their fatigue rates their Recovery ability you name it so in the beginning of training in the first two thirds like because really that's what we're talking about when we sit down And we write if we zoom out and we you know take a big kind of 35,000 foot view of training The first two thirds of a trade you know the training blocks are essentially divided into thirds right you have the peaking third Or the performance third you have kind of the consolidation third and you have you know beginning the you know Introductory or novelty third so the first third of training is essentially creating and introducing the athlete to Progress of novelty and that can be training frequency training density types of workouts types of activities and then the middle third is the consolidation period Okay, where you kind of double down on the novelty you doubled it you make the density a lot heart, you know Closer together you increase the volume whatever right like you're doing something in the middle to kind of elevate or consolidate The training stimulus or novelty that you're subjecting the athlete to the final third and this is like where peaking goes wrong is There's no new novelty. There's nothing. There's no novelty at all zero zip zip all it is is just affirmation confidence building performance expression Capabilities etc. I think what happens sometimes is we get this idea of we see these are people doing all these Crazy peaking workouts or you know, they'll do a workout and say oh ready to go for the big one and it's like whoa That was a crazy workout to you maybe to them It wasn't that big a deal or if it was that big a deal in a really novel crazy workout Nine times out 10 they're gonna ball. I mean, it's just where we are dealing with Humans and humans have a degree of predictability about them They also have a degree of unpredictability about them But in that last third of the training cycle or the preparation season There's no novelty and we keep that heuristic top of mind it peaking them becomes really simple It also comes kind of boring, but the body thrives on predictability our brains right are always making micro calculations about predictability Addiction habit formation. That's about creating predictability at certain points You know, we have to coaches we have to become really good at understanding what is novel to an athlete and how and when to use novelty But also to showing restraint and not using that novelty at the end And this is why we have preparatory races right where in track you're gonna race like your 15 hundred a couple times the 3k a couple times before Districts or Sections or state or whatever because again, you're trying to eliminate all that novelty by Having that athlete exposed to that race distance exposed to those physiological realities exposed to Okay, here's when I start my kick or my long drive home You know or in the 1500 case right running different types of 1500s So you have the in the time trial ones the sitting kick ones that go out too fast so in the middle pick it back up ones right so they become Educated on the different types of races that they might be subject to when they get to that peak race or that that peak season Yeah, it reminds me of something that the great swimmer Michael Phelps once talked about is like Who's like for races? I'm prepared for everything I mean meaning he's like, you know fast slow Whatever have you it's different and swimming, but the example he he used once is I for I during one of his Olympics his goggles kind of came off and like he swam the whatever the last 20 meters or whatever without goggles so it couldn't see and afterwards they're like well what happened he's like oh it's like I prepared for this like in practice coach once made me swim like without my goggles or whatever to simulate this and I thought it was just a brilliant explanation of like he's ready for basically whatever is thrown at him he's either simulated in practice or thought about it or been in that situation and what that does is for most of us if our goggles came off mid-rays we'd freak out and panic it's novelty it's new what are we gonna do about this situation like I didn't expect this my goggles are supposed to be on but for him it's like yeah this kind of sucks but you know this is something I've I've at least kind of prepared for an experience and I think this is what what happens with again coming back to going all the way full circle and coming back to expectations it's not just expectations on how hard the race is it's have you been have we prepared you to be in these situations where if it goes fast whatever I'm ready for it if it goes slow whatever I know how to out of the handle this if it's something in between if it's some craziness whatever we've been in spots before in these races and I think this is why it comes down to like getting ready for peak races not just that last couple weeks of the race it's how have you prepared the athlete to handle like the multiple different scenarios that could happen both in racing in racing you know being not just time trial city all the time and also in practice of having things thrown at you and saying you know what we've done this or I've I've handled this or I've been in a similar spot before where I can not freak out because of that that novel T2 exactly I think the way I would summarize what you you talk we're talking about there is in peaking we have this bias in the literature and in the zeitgeist of peaking has to be perfect and the reality is perfect is the enemy in this case it really is because this idea of I've done all this work and now I have to get the perfect amount of food perfect amount of sleep perfect everything is this concept that's you know out there that alludes to this magical air about peaking which isn't the case at all it just if you listen to Stephen I have long enough you know we are subscribers to the good enough rule as long as it's good enough it's good enough and that's really what life is that's really what training is that's really what racing is that's really what any attempt at doing anything is is just good enough and if you are able to communicate that to the athlete because a lot of times when we face something with high challenge a high challenge environment with high sticks we want everything to be perfect and it's where good storytelling good narratives can help eradicate that tendency because there's always examples right there's we can talk about you know marathon champions who got whose flights got delayed and had to sleep in an airport couldn't train gets on the plane had a run a step for three days and wins like a world major marathon right that happens that happens with enough frequency that it demonstrates perfect is not the thing that predicts success when it comes to peaking good enough is and so when we think about sleep when we think about nutrition when we think about hydration when we think about all those things it's just communicating with this attitude like it has to be good enough I remember you know one of my coaches was younger and a little bit more ambitious when I was in college early on and they were a big proponent of like getting the perfect mouth sleep perck amount of food perfect amount of like protein the carbs you know blah blah blah when it came to peaking because they had a college teammate who did that and was really anal about it and you know they they went on to national they won you know conference and went on to nationals or something and so that person kind of set the demonstration to this young coach about how you have to act outside of training to peak and then I had a teammate who you know just was a normal college dude I mean just normal college dude like it he still he was like yep I'm gonna go out this weekend but instead of having an insebbing drunk I'm just gonna have one or two beers and but still and go and go to bed a couple of hours earlier right so like he just kind of reeled it in his is normal college lifestyle he didn't like totally eradicate it peaking and he won did he won conference and went to nationals like I mean what do you want so it's in that when we talk about peaking a lot times we have to understand like what are the derivatives that we're battling what are the expectations we're battling as coaches and we have to level set from this idea of perfection this idea of manicured this idea of you know perform performative presentation that you see on social media to benchmark it in reality as long as it's good enough you'll be fine right and I learned this early on you know coaching women because you you cannot time the menstrual cycle for championship races and so I'd have you know women whose menstrual cycles would impact them very adversely and it'd be very difficult they have a cramps they have this and that or I have women who's impact a menstrual cycle at that time would give them booses and all of a sudden they're just like on fire and like they had these hormones you know coursing through their body that just made them unstoppable right but either way what I learned you know working with that athlete population was this affirmation of hey good enough you're capable don't worry about being feeling easy or perfect you've done the work and that's really the narrative that we have to come back to time and time again is you've done the work to be a be capable of doing XYZ I love it I think that's that's kind of what it's all about I mean we've kind of come full circle here gone through expectations to workouts to frequency to back to like it's a human problem like that's what peaking is and it's like but all the books and all the literature's on physiology like that's the hardest part about it like I mean we've read how many things on peaking I mean Lord your book peak performance right it's like there's a there's a physiological component there but there's a bigger psychological components in that I think that's that's what it comes down to is like the physiology is important it's great you're trying to eliminate fatigue but like it really is knowing the person across from you and like figuring out how to set them up best and the only way you do that is like spend time understanding them and like seeing how they respond to workouts and how they respond to things and and then like shaping that it's old it's old school coaching at its best it's Fran Stample on the train you know when banister saying like the wind and weather sucks I don't want to do this and knowing exactly what to say to him to get him to shift his mindset into okay I get it I'm still gonna take a shot right and how did he do that I mean again paraphrasing here but he said essentially I think you're capable of 356 and then he finished with you know you might you know you won't regret taking the shot even if you fall short essentially what is that tell banister it says like hey even if it's windy like you're still capable you're not capable of 359.99 in perfect conditions you're capable of more so you know essentially screw the wind and like you're gonna feel bad if you don't take a shot and then someone else gets it so at least you know you gave it your all that's coaching that's that's what it is it's like how do you help shape the person ahead of you or that you're dealing with to get them to take the freaking shot I'm so glad you're freeing but that way because in you know I've witnessed this countless times in working with athletes as we build up to a peak race or peak season and there is a lot of fear in you know in sealed because again fear of the unknown high challenge high stakes environment high pressure and by reframing it in that way like hey yes there might be fear but the regret of not trying is going to far outway the fear of not starting or the fear of failing excuse me it is key so like give it a go give it a start give it let's see what happens because that regret of not even getting to the starting line and not giving it the shot is going to far that be a negative emotion that's going to far outway the fear of failure or if you actually fail at least if you fail we have some data we have some input and we can go back and get better because again failure isn't fatal and I think we have to remind ourselves in this day and age more than anything it's not fatal even though we live in this you know crazy cancel culture where any kind of imperfect presentation is scrutinized heavily but we have to kind of get back to that reality in coaching and in sport where we it's okay to fail provided that we use as a learning and data point to help us you know get better and help us prepare bear because that's the fun that's the fun right is figuring out where the gaps are where where we need to improve and using that as a fuel to fire someone fire up somewhere. and get them motivated to continue the journey. And that, I think, is also a really key part of the coaching, peaking, equation, and philosophy is being able to reframe and contextualize either the success or the failure in a positive way that keeps that person fueled and motivated. And this is why you see a lot of Olympic champions go into hyper-depression mode after they win the medal, because they spent their whole life dedicated towards this culminating task, and they did it. And now there's nothing left, like they reached it. They did it. They got to the top of the mountain peak, and they're still the same person with the same faults, with the same relational problems, and what have you. The world did it change in any significant way, even though that was a promise. And so now it's like, how do I cope? How do I get motivated to go do something difficult that to dedicate my entire life to again? Yeah, I mean, I kind of set it better. That's what it's all about. So there you go. Hey, a rant on peaking. And don't just fall for the physiology. It's also psychology and relationships and everything in between. That's what makes art of coaching so powerful and difficult. I think that's the challenge there. Thank you again for listening to the podcast. We hope you enjoy it. Like, subscribe, send it, share it with people. All that good stuff. Program, if you haven't, it's still only a heavy, what, 35, 99 a month after all the inflation and gas prices have nearly doubled in the last two months. Our price hasn't doubled or gone up in the last two years. So no change. No change. No change. And I'm just going to say it. You know, the coach of the sub two hour marathoner has been a scholar scholar. Look at that. For a long time. So that's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying. That's all Steve is saying, friends. Want to run sub two? Maybe. Maybe it's in the card. 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