Swim, Bike, Run, REST! Getting Rest Days Right

TriDot Podcast Episode 289

Swim, Bike, Run, REST! Getting Rest Days Right

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Announcer: This is the TriDot Podcast. TriDot uses your training data and genetic profile combined with predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to optimize your training, giving you better results in less time with fewer injuries. Our podcast is here to educate, inspire and entertain. We'll talk all things triathlon with expert coaches and special guests. Join the conversation and let's improve together. Together.

Andrew Harley: Hey everyone. Welcome to the TriDot Podcast. Today we have two coaches joining us to talk about rest days, specifically how to get our rest days right. How often should we be taking these things? How much rest should we take on rest days? How can we balance our rest between all three sports? All of that and more with coach Matt Sommer and Jason Verbracken. Coach Matt Sommer is one of our esteemed TriDot coaches who has a specialty in strength training. And coach Jason Verbracken is one of our TriDot coaches who has a specialty in ultra distance racing. So really excited to pick these guys' brains on all things rest days. Matt, Jason, how you guys doing today?

Matt Sommer: Hey Andrew, thanks for having me back on the podcast. It's always a pleasure to be here. I always love talking shop and just sharing a little bit of knowledge with the TriDot family. So really looking forward to this topic today. It definitely a topic that comes up with my athletes all the time and you know, it's an interesting topic just because there are so many variables that play into rest and recovery. So really looking forward to unpacking this one with you and Jason.

Jason Verbracken: Thanks for having me back, Andrew. Appreciate it. Love being back in the hot seat. And I am a huge lover of rest days and rest in general. Who doesn't like the rest? Oh, I love when I saw the April Fools thing come out that said RaceX was coming out with a NapX. I didn't want it to be fake. Every time they prescribed a nap, I was all for it.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, if you're not following TriDot Triathlon Training on Instagram, our social team did a quality post with some different suggestions of apps that we could come out with as a company and features we could add. And NapX was one of them. And Verbie, I guess you wouldn't think that the ultra triathlon guy would be such a fan of rest, but I guess going long and resting hard go hand in hand, don't they?

Jason Verbracken: It's like peanut butter and jelly. Go long, take a long. They're meant to be together. They're a perfect marriage.

Andrew Harley: All right, well, I am Andrew, the average triathlete voice of the people and captain of the middle of the pack. Excited to get into this topic. We're going to start as always with our warm up question, settle into our rest day main set conversation and then wind things down with our coach cool down tip of the week. Let's get started, let's get to it.

Announcer: Time to warm up. Let's get moving.

Warm Up

Andrew Harley: For our warm up question today, I want to hear from our audience and I want to hear from our coaches. What is the worst weather you have ever been caught in while swimming, biking, running or just overall adventuring outdoors? Obviously, as multi sport athletes, we are training outside a lot, adventuring outside a lot. And that presents some opportunities to get caught out in some gnarly weather. Coach Matt, what's this answer for you?

Matt Sommer: You know, I laughed when I saw this question, Andrew, because it was an easy answer for me. Let me preface this with I am a fair weather training person. If it's raining, that's why we have treadmills, okay? If it's raining, that's why we have smart trainers. I'm definitely going to balance some common sense when it comes to that. But on race day, you can't pick the conditions. And if anybody was there, the 2018 Boston Marathon was ridiculous. Wind chill of 29 degrees, wind gusts of up to 25 miles per hour, torrential rain, the entire thing. It was epic. It was one of those days that would I have ran outside? Heck no. But when you're with 30,000 best friends, that day, you guys get out there, you do it. And it was one of the most amazing experiences to this day. If I see somebody I know that was there, you kind of look at each other and give them that nod like, yeah, I was there and it was just an amazing experience. But would I have gone out there? No way. I never would have ran in that on my own. But 26.2 miles later, that Samuel Adams beer afterwards never tasted better.

Andrew Harley: So this is interesting. Matt, just as a coach, do you think that going out in the elements and training from time to time helps you be more prepared when you're in the elements on race day? Or you just think, whatever race day comes, you got to get through it anyway, doesn't make much of a difference.

Matt Sommer: You know, Andrew, that could be a podcast of its own. But I'm a firm believer of every session serves a purpose. And if you can't accomplish the purpose of the training session because of the elements and we got to think about, really make you think about where you're going to execute it if it's raining, if it's snowing, are you. And you're supposed to have speed work or some other type of intervals. It's like, can you do that? Can you execute it in those elements safely and efficiently? That's where I would go with there. But yeah, I mean you do have to be able to race in all elements. But I think pouring down rain, 35 mile per hour winds. No, that stay inside on that day.

Andrew Harley: Same question over to coach Verbie.

Jason Verbracken: Even though I do extreme races in the mountains, it's crazy, it's rainy. I am a fair weather trainer. If it's below 60 degrees, I might as well stay inside. You know, I'm sunny San Diego. I like it. I like the weather perfect. And with me racing, I was at Ultraman Arizona and they knew there was a storm coming in before the swim. So, you know, it's a 10k swim. Obviously we're going to be out there for quite a while. They, it was an out and back and they 5k out, 5k back. They shortened it up into a triangle, just doing five loops instead. Well, it was glass and they sent us out and this storm came through the desert and next thing I knew, I kept feeling something hitting me on the back of the head. Well, it was the waves. And soon as I turned the corner on part of the triangle to go the other way, next thing, it felt like 10 foot waves hit me in the face. It was crazy. They actually ended up pulling all of us out of the swim. There were swimmers being blown over to. There was an island like 500 yards away. There were swimmers over there that couldn't get back. The rescue boats were being blown all over the place. They yanked us out of there for safety and the swim ended up obviously getting canceled. And literally an hour and a half after that, that storm was gone. It was sunny, wind stopped. It was one of those desert storms that just literally came, went, bumped rain and got the heck out of there.

Andrew Harley: I would not have guessed of all the coaches that come through the podcast seat so regularly, I would not have guessed that you 2 would be 2 that are such fans of fair weather training and so averse to going out in the elements. I don't mind it. I'm not poking fun at all whatsoever, don't get me wrong. But very, very interesting and very, very good stories from both of your race days. This one for me is pretty easy when it comes to training. There was one time I was out for a run in the wintertime in Dallas, Texas and it was kind of a moody day. But no signs of any inclement weather rolling in and I'm halfway through probably a 10 to 12 mile run and it just starts hailing, just starts hailing, you know a couple miles from the house. No shelter to be seen, you know running up a pathway near the lake and yeah, I just had to get hailed on for a minute and after a couple minutes it calmed down. Thankfully not like major big golf ball, baseball, softball, rock boulder size hail. It was like little kidney bean pea size hail. Almost the point that it was like is it snowing? No, this is ice, this is hail. So that's this answer for me. We're going to throw this out to our audience. I'm curious to hear from your racing experiences, your training experiences, your just overall adventures, family vacations, where you go hiking, whatever. What was the time you got caught in the gnarliest weather in your adventure and can't wait to see what you our audience has to say.

Announcer: On to the main set going in three, two, one.

Main Set

Andrew Harley: All right, happy to move on to our main set conversation where coach Matt and coach Verbie are going to talk to us about rest days, how to do our rest days right, when to take them, how often to take them, all that stuff. And guys, this first question I'm going to ask, it's going to be a curveball, it's not actually on our run sheet in front of us right now but I'm curious to know as you're in conversation throughout the season with your coached athletes, how on a scale of let's say one to ten where one is your athletes are very open to a rest day and 10 is your athletes are very hard headed, they don't want to take rest days. How open in general do you think your athletes are to the concept of taking a rest day when coach tells them to? Coach Jason?

Jason Verbracken: I would say probably a seven. You know most of us are very type A and they feel like they are missing something out if they don't get that day in, you know that training day in and sometimes having them take that rest day is a struggle. They're, they fight it or they're like oh you sure I shouldn't just do something. And you know you can tell sometimes when stress from work stress, you know, a lot of times it's not really needing that day off from working out. It's because they got so much other stress going on that giving them that extra time, not having to stress about one more thing than taking that day off of working out is what's going to benefit them the best.

Andrew Harley: Coach Matt, same question to you. So Verbie's athletes are a little stubborn. Seven out of ten on the scale. What about you?

Matt Sommer: Yeah, 100% agree. I would say probably a seven or an eight as well. And I mean to Jason's point, he nailed it on the head. You know, I always try to explain to my athletes we want to be good at racing, not training. A lot of people get so caught up in the training component that they forget about what the goal and the outcome we're looking to do is prepare you for the optimal race day. And I always to the things I always talk to my athletes about when I'm like, hey listen, maybe we should take a day off, you know, is what it's not that I'm betting against you. I would never bet against my athletes. I tell them that all the time. Like they can go do a 30 minute run, they can go do a 30 minute bike or whatever the session is. But do they need to what is the benefit or the risk reward of not taking the session? Does that better allow them to hit a target session the next day? Will that put them in a better position for what's coming up later in the week? So sometimes it's just a matter of listening to the body and you know, as a coach I try to make sure they understand why we're doing it. Not just you need it, you know, what's the benefit or what's the return on it.

Andrew Harley: So yeah, Matt, as you're talking, I was thinking back to college Andrew, and in my days in university and there were some times I just, I was a double major so I had two degrees I was working towards at the same time. And some semesters were a little heavier than others and there'd be days where I had so much to do and so many products to work on and so much class stress going on that the first thing I would do is take a nap. I would just take a nap. I had so many things to accomplish that I just went and would take a 60 minute nap and then wake up. But in the long run it was like it wasn't being an irresponsible college student. It was calculated. It was, hey, I'm tired, I am worn thin, I've been burning it at both ends. As a double major college kid, I've got a lot to do the next 48 hours and I'm going to be a lot more productive on doing those things if I go sleep 60 minutes first. Right. And it's kind of taking that concept and applying it to triathlon training. And that's what we're here to talk about today in our rest days. And a very interesting thing, guys, I see this all the time. Athletes will come on board with TriDot and they start doing their training and whatever they were doing for their training before, they were used to being given a rest day in their programming. And typically it depends on the athlete, depends on the stress your body can absorb. But typically TriDot doesn't really prescribe you a lot of true rest days with no activity. Right. And a lot of athletes come over and they're surprised by that. So Matt, do we actually need rest days and, and kind of hand in hand with this? Why does TriDot not really give them very often?

Matt Sommer: Well, it's funny that you say that, because when I get people that come over from other platforms, they were doing the wrong training. TriDot's all about doing the right training.

Andrew Harley: Right.

Matt Sommer: And you know, the biggest thing that I make sure that my athletes understand is, and again, it goes back to purpose and education is getting them to understand that the TriDot algorithms prescribe the amount, the correct amount of exercise for each discipline with appropriate intensities. So we don't have to take a rest day. It's not physically necessary. It's called undulated periodization. That's a big word. But basically what we're doing is we're taking each discipline and because we're not going all out on each discipline daily, it allows us to train daily. We can do a hard swim followed by an easy bike and a moderate run and follow them with the same discipline the next day. But because it's of a different intensity, the body can absorb the training, digest that, develop fitness and we can still continue to move on and work out daily. The important part is that we educate the athlete and that everybody understands is don't overcook the session you're doing. The NTS is there and if you stick to the prescribed session at the prescribed zones, that's the key. That is 100% the key to minimizing those rest days is sticking to the allocated intensity for the allocated duration. No more, no less. Do what's expected, not what's not. More than that. That's key.

Andrew Harley: Yeah. So physiologically we don't have to have a rest day. We don't need a rest day especially if we're doing the right training, right. And really following what TriDot is giving us and the way it's managing our stress. So coach Verbie, within that, as a coach, do you find yourself giving your athletes rest days from time to time?

Jason Verbracken: Oh, definitely. I mean as a coach and as for me as an athlete too, again, TriDot gives you all the best workouts like Matt just talked about. We don't need to rest day. But what the AI system doesn't see is what's going on with my life and maybe I'm working 14 hours. I just had a baby recently. Not me, my wife had it. You know, the AI system, it's not taking effect where all these things add up and then you're trying to get the workout on top of it and you're pulling your hair out going how can I get this in? How can I get this in? And you just need that day of going like you said before, before all that work with your double major, I need a nap or you know, hey, I need to rest tonight. Getting that rest can actually be better off for you to be crushing that next workout instead of going into it stressed out on a late deadline or from work and then you're tired and you're not being able to put in 100%. Maybe you're getting injured because you are overly tired. And you know, there's so many things like sometimes that rest day pays off huge dividends that you weren't even expecting.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, all great points. And I'll tell you guys this, you know, having been a TriDot athlete myself now for 7ish years, there are two reasons that I personally will opt for a rest day even when TriDot has training on my calendar. And one, sometimes just mentally, not physically, like my body could go out and do the session, but mentally I just need a day to unplug and not do any triathlon training and just then just have a normal day with no triathlon training. I don't need that very often, maybe a handful of times a year, but those handful times a year. Yeah, it's good to unplug every so often, right? Number two, I am an oft injured athlete, particularly in running. If I run too much, too often, too hard and sometimes and TriDot knows that because it has my physiogenomics, has my genome file. It knows I'm an easily injured athlete. And so there's certain things that TriDot does in my training already to help mitigate that injury risk. But even still, I'm a nervous nilly if I start feeling anything kind of pinging for a couple runs in a row, okay, I'm going to take a day where I either just go all zone two and don't do my intensity or where I shorten my run or take a full rest day. And it's just out of an abundance of caution trying not to get injured because I know that I can very easily if I push the runs too much. So those are the two times I do it myself throughout the cycle. And it's just kind of, I kind of do it when and where it makes sense to do it. It's not super often, but Matt, I'm curious to hear from you with your athletes as you're working with them. How often do you think you try to work a rest day into their calendar or is it really just athlete to athlete, case by case?

Matt Sommer: It's definitely athlete to athlete, case by case. I try to meet them where they are. I meet with all my athletes weekly. We do a 30 minute FaceTime call once a week and we always start the call with, hey, how's the week feeling? What were your learning experiences last week? How do you feel about the workouts? And very quickly, a lot of times I can just pick up on if something's going on in their life. Not just training specific, but things we need to take into account. I will tell you now, my athletes will vouch for this. When we plan for the week ahead with our training. I flat out tell them I will be more angry with you than anything if I find out you're skipping one of your kids soccer events, a dance event, if you're skipping date night with your wife, if you're not going to social activities because of training. We train for fun, all right? We need to work around all those extracurricular activities. So there are some instances where we might say, you know what, your daughter has a soccer tournament all day Saturday. That's your rest day. We're going to shift things around and we're going to reallocate the workouts and get in the key sessions. We might have to let an easy run go or maybe an easy bike go because that's the day we're shifting that quality session to. But under no circumstances are you going to prioritize training over going to watch your kid for the day. I mean, that's just how I personally approach this. But you know, when we talk with my athletes week to week, you know, I always ask them, is anything whispering? You've heard me say this. You got to listen when it whispers so it doesn't yell. And I always want to know, how is the body feeling? Are you having any aches and pains? And again, the question I ask them is, first thing in the morning, when you first wake up and you're laying in bed, is anything hurt? When you step out of bed and you make your way to the bathroom, is anything hurting? Ankles, knees, hips, back? Because if they're hurting, coming out of your most relaxed state, that's your body telling you something. Okay. And if we are having those whispers, we need to listen to them. And it might just be dropping back the intensity. That might be the first thing we do, is maybe dial back the intensity on some of the sessions. But if it's really whispering loud, we might just have to say, you know what? Let's take a pause today. Let's pump the brakes. Let's go ahead, take a day off. Maybe we'll prioritize cleaning the bike. Maybe we'll do some rehab ability, you know, prehabilitation work, working on some corrective exercise, some mobility work, something different. Maybe you'll go take your daughter out to ice cream. It's something different. But we're going to get away from the training so that you can kind of let the body heal or maybe feel better psychologically so we can attack the rest of the week.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, and this is kind of dipping into a question I have further down our run sheet. But Matt, you're kind of already talking about it now, so I'm going to kick this same question over to Verbie. Since we've already identified triathletes are so type A. We don't like to miss training. You guys said 7 out of 10, 8 out of 10, your athletes are stubborn. They don't want to take a day off, even if they would benefit from it. So when you actually get your athletes to take a day off, when you get our listeners here to unplug because of some of the stuff we're talking about today, just for a day. What are other ways we can be productive with that time? Because just like you said, I think triathletes can probably justify the rest day if they know I'm still doing something to move my triathlon hobby forwards. Matt, you just identified a few things there, right? Between cleaning your bike, doing some PT work, hanging out with your family. Right. You know, supporting your kids, supporting your loved ones in their own endeavors. Coach Verbie, is there anything else that you see your athletes do to fill the time on their rest day to kind of scratch that triathlon itch even when they're not training?

Jason Verbracken: Yeah, this is when you open Nap X and look at how long getting that extra sleep, maybe sleeping in, maybe you can get to bed a little bit earlier, you know.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, great point.

Jason Verbracken: And then you can work on the little things again, like Matt kind of honed in on maybe, you know, the bike hasn't been cleaned. You know, there's mobility. You can always work on your mobility. You can do some meal prepping, look at your nutrition, kind of go grocery shop and get that plan ahead. So you know that, hey, this is kind of my rest day. I got busy days coming up with work and life and well, let me prep some meals and get this right. This is going to save me time come Thursday, Friday, Saturday. I already have my meals made. You know, there's again, you said spending time with your family. You know, there's so much we can do. Work on our mental training. You know, just read a good book, just kick your feet up, watch a show.

Andrew Harley: Let's listen to a podcast.

Jason Verbracken: Listen to the podcast. Exactly. Yeah. But you know, to be productive in it again, the mental training you get in, the extra sleep, you can again, meal prep, dial in your nutrition, get a good, you know, hop on YouTube, get a yoga stretch in just some easy stuff. And it's still paying off huge for your training.

Andrew Harley: I don't want to speak for everybody, so I'll speak for just myself. And I'll admit this, right, it's not a huge admission, but I don't practice my triathlon race skills nearly as often as I should or could. Right? Things like going through the motions of T1, T2. Things like getting a wetsuit on and off as quickly and efficiently as possible. Things like grabbing bottles and gear and food at an aid station, things like drinking and eating on the run and if you know, okay, I'm not going to train today, but I still want to use that 30 minutes, 45 minutes, whatever it is, to further my triathloning. Go find a parking lot with your bike and work on some tight corners, you know, set some cones out, you know, go to a grass field and work on your mounting and dismounting whether you're doing a flying mount or not. You know, get really, whatever mount style you have, get really efficient at that mount style. Set up a fake aid station and have one of your kids or your loved one or your spouse or a training buddy hand your water bottles and stuff as you go by. And man, like, those are the things we don't think about in our training week because it's not on Strava, right? We can't post those workouts to Strava. But when that race comes around and you've really mastered those skills, it's man, it's going to give you a lot more confidence in those moments on race day. So I'll just throw that one out there for everybody, including myself. Now I want to hear about this one. Both of you guys as well as myself, you know, we are endurance athletes as a lifestyle, right? Like, we don't pick a race, train for the race and then go away from endurance sports for a little while. We train all year long because we love this stuff. We live it, we love it. And so I'm curious, you know, I know with a race, there's tapering for a race, there's recovering after a race. But just races aside, are there any reasons throughout the year that an athlete might see more rest or be prompted to take more rest days in a certain time of year as opposed to others or Coach Matt?

Matt Sommer: You know, that's a personal question right there. Like you said, the lifestyle, I mean, TriDot puts you into the development phase when we don't have a race on the schedule. And again, that's strong before long. I mean, you're going to see shorter workouts usually. I mean, your bike workout might not be longer than 90 minutes. Your runs are usually capped at an hour. Your swims are an hour. But they're full of intensity. I mean, they are full of high intensity workouts, but they're shorter. Generally speaking, that quote, unquote, I like to refer to it as the preseason. A lot of people call it the off season. I think this is when champions are made personally. But that's when we can, yeah, that's when we put the work in. But that's a time of year where, okay, if you're going to need a day. If you're going to want to take a day, that's not always a bad time, too. We don't have a race on the schedule. It's a little bit more forgiving. We are doing those higher intensity workouts. So I always like to say if we're going to take a day, it's one of the easy workouts, the easy run, the easy bike, which also all too often we'll see on our schedule. Those are the workouts that I'm going to let drop first. Technically, when I'm working with an athlete, you know, sometimes they. I have athletes during the winter that are like, you know what? I'm just not going to the pool. It's cold, I don't want to do it. And you know, and it's like, that's fine, you know. So a lot of times that off season is when I have athletes that I'm okay with them missing some workouts a little bit more frequently. But I will remind them, like, hey, listen, you're 18 weeks out now. Like that early spring race in April or May, it's right around the corner. I mean, yeah, I know it's Thanksgiving and you're just thinking about turkey and Santa Claus, but you know, it's closer than you think. So let's not get too complacent and too comfortable and really kind of keep that training mindset. Other than that, I mean, I really think it's important after a really, after a full distance IRONMAN, to me, a full carries a little bit more or an ultra, as in Jason's case, or even potentially a standalone marathon. We really have to be mindful of our recovery afterwards. I think coming and recovering out of those higher, intense, those longer sessions, the body can sometimes need a little bit more recovery than other times. And that's where, yeah, we have training on the schedule, but we got to be. We got to listen to our body. We got to kind of meet ourselves where we are and just be willing to say, you know what? Not yet. It's too early. And let the body digest and let the body absorb all the stress and the fatigue that we just put on it. And nobody ever regrets skipping a workout after they've raced hard. They only ever regret coming back too soon. I've had so many athletes that have said, God, I shouldn't have done that run. That's what I. I tweaked something. Whereas had they just not done the run, it's like they tried to get back too soon. You know, muscles are very vascular. So they re-heal very quickly, a lot of blood flow to them. So our muscles will feel better within 24, 36 hours. It's our ligaments and tendons that usually take a little bit longer and muscles feel good. We're like, oh, yeah, I can go for a run two days after an IRONMAN. Well, maybe the ligaments and tendons aren't ready for that just yet. And then next thing you know, you tweak an ankle or a hamstring tendon or an Achilles and now you're set back three weeks. Had you just taken that one week and let those connective tissues, those ligament tendons heal up, we could have avoided all this. So rest is important.

Andrew Harley: Yeah. Matt, very well said. And I do want to point out, because it goes so well with what you're saying, what you will see on TriDot when you do a race the week after the race, TriDot will have workouts there. Like Matt said, they will largely be zone two. I think they'll be almost all zone two. Particularly if it's an A race, if it's a B race and a C race, you're still going to have training. But if you have a true A race on the calendar, you will have Zone 2 training the following week. And that's there because TriDot knows like, hey, this is a very subjective period. This is a period where you know how your body feels after that event. You know how you felt going into the event. And yes, there's training on the calendar for the athletes that want to go ahead and start moving again. Okay, sure, start moving again, but just keep it Zone two. But you do not have to do those workouts. You can absolutely, like Matt said, listen to your body and just kind of feel it out, see what you think. And missing those, in TriDot's eyes is totally fine. Like the training that's there is there for the folks who still feel good and want to keep that active recovery going. So just wanted to speak to that Coach Verbie. Can you just kind of talk to the other side of the coin? When an athlete has an A race on the calendar and they're building towards it, you know, obviously TriDot's going to taper them for the race so that we're fresh for race day. What are we going to see during that taper? Are we going to see any days of all rest? Are we going to see a lot of zone two stuff? You know, how does our body arrive on the line at race day, feeling rested and ready to go.

Jason Verbracken: You know, depending how long your race is. IRONMAN half, I mean the sessions aren't as long. The intensity is less but it's not completely going. You're not doing anything or here's, you know, you're still putting in some work, you're still bringing the intensity up, making sure those muscles are still firing. So, you know, TriDot has looked at millions of athletes data by now, millions upon millions and you know, knows the best way to come into the race. So you're still going to see, you know, that week out before a full IRONMAN. You're still going to have a couple hour bike ride on Saturday, you're still going to have runs, you know, swimming, you're still going to have some good strong swimming sessions. You're not chilling out watching Netflix for the next two weeks leading into a race. It's still keeping you going, still keeping you firing, kind of keeping that, you know, keeping the brain even, still going. Hey, we got this, we got, you know, and you still, you start, start getting more, you got more time to recover. So you're like, oh, I am feeling good. Which a lot of times you got to say make sure, whoa, pull back. You don't, you know, you're running maybe at a slower pace than usual and you're like, man, I could, I could up this. I'm feeling good. And no, no, no, TriDot knows what it's talking about. Keep it what's prescribed. We'll let those horses out when the race happens. But you know, just, you stick to that. They know, they know what they're doing. And you're going to arrive on race date. You know that gun's gonna go off and you're gonna be ready to go.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, no, very well put. And it's like the workouts are there, they're not there for you to build any more fitness, but they're also, there's still workouts there because you don't, you shouldn't just take your foot off the gas and go full rest. The workouts that are there have just enough intervals to prime your body for race day. And that's what Verbie's talking about. It's going to arrive you the race day rested but primed to get after it.

Matt Sommer: Yeah, I mean, Verbie hit a nail on the head. It's like those workouts are to keep you sharp leading into race week. It's all about sharpening. I like to use the analogy. It's like, okay, you're going to the sat, your pencil tip is sharp. Don't dull it during the week by doing something silly or stupid. Jason had a great point that week. If taper's working, guess what? You should feel good. You're going to go into those efforts. Your heart rate's not going to be quite as high. You're going to get a little excited like he said, and all of a sudden you might have that urge to overwork.

Andrew Harley: Absolutely resist it.

Matt Sommer: Now is not the time to work harder. It was the 15 weeks before that that you should have brought that a game. But listen to your body. And Andrew, you made a great point there. The week leading into those, those workouts have ranges typically of how many efforts to do. All too often the psychology of us is if we see three to five, we don't see the three two, we see five. Okay. I'm a firm believer is less is best on taper week. I play with that with my athletes. And honestly one of the things and the benefits I guess of working with a coach is you do have that one on one connection. On race rehearsal week, we do modified tapers. I do play. I kind of put a taper into place for them to see how do they absorb the training and what puts them in the best position for race rehearsal. We then do a modified recovery afterwards. How did their body absorb the training, the stress. And that way I can better personalize their taper week and personalize their recovery week. There's certain things that we can learn about ourselves and you don't need a coach to do this. You yourself as an athlete on TriDot, you can look at the workouts and again the, what they're giving you is the maximum of what you should be doing. Think about it that way. Look at through it through that lens of that's the maximum. You're not going to regret doing a little less sometimes. But don't exceed that speed limit for the week leading into the race.

Andrew Harley: Yeah. And Matt, you are in your professional career, right? You coach triathlon as a passion project on the side your professional career. You're a strength and conditioning specialist. And so you're perfectly positioned to answer this question that I have. What are signs our body needs a rest day even if TriDot has training on the schedule? I think we've suggested plenty of times now in this episode that yes, you can have training on the schedule. TriDot's got it there for a reason, but you still, for a myriad of reasons, might need a day where you just don't do it. What are the things we're on the lookout for that can prompt us to not do the session?

Matt Sommer: Yeah, I mean there's several. First would be any type of pain or discomfort that's persistent, that's been lingering and that doesn't dissipate within about 5 to 10 seconds. I mean if you're having any type of joint, ligament, tendon pain, you need to listen to your body and it might be a chance just to pause. Maybe it's just on the run. Maybe we are okay to get in the pool, maybe you're okay to be on the bike. But the run is where we have to pulse. Maybe we substitute those runs for an elliptical session because it's non weight bearing. So there are ways to do that. But joint pain, discomfort, that's a big one. Another one is other variables. We look at resting heart rate. If you have an elevated resting heart rate, which is higher than normal, that's a sign that your body's not recovered. Another great metric that people are really starting to pay attention to, not everybody is knowledgeable about is heart rate variability. A lot of wearable devices now provide us with that and are getting more accurate and whether it's a Garmin device, WHOOP has a big one, the Oura ring. It's important to look at those trends and whenever you see an outlier, you know, if you have a day in, day out, you see what your regular resting heart rate is or HRV. But when you have an outlier and all of a sudden it is like night and day, drastic change. I don't like to be controlled by my wearables, but sometimes I don't look at them immediately. So I'll kind of do a self inventory laying in bed. Like if I wake up and I'm tired and I don't feel good, I won't look at my wearable right away. I'll kind of sit there and think about it and be like, boy, do I have a sore throat, do I feel warm, do I have a temperature? Like man, I'm just not feeling good. But then I'll confirm sometimes with my wearable. But if I look at my wearable first, but I feel great sometimes that can influence and play with you psychologically, you know. But a big one is resting heart rate. If you have a temperature of any sort, that's to me, that's a red flag. Take a rest day, because exercise is only going to further increase that core temperature. And usually if you have a temperature, you're fighting some type of infection. So that, to me is no question, you're shutting it down for the day. But the joint pain and discomfort, to me is the one where most athletes don't listen and they push it and they only regret it down the path. And it's a tough one because sometimes I've been there. I'm sure Jason has. You're like, oh, it'll work itself out. And then you start running, and all of a sudden it doesn't. And now you're behind the eight ball, you know, so it's a tough one. Joint pain, discomfort.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, that's a super helpful list right there. And I'm going to kick this next Verbie. Go ahead.

Jason Verbracken: Yeah, and one thing, too. I, you know, those are all, I would say day. What's going on daily. One thing I wanted to kind of touch on earlier, too, is, you know, how we were talking after a big race or maybe you had a big season. You know, that mental part is huge. And sometimes we get caught up in, oh, my gosh, people are going to see our Strava. But you're mentally gone. And you may need. And, you know, don't be afraid of it. You may need more than one day, you may need a week, you may need a month, because that motivation is not there, and you're just not feeling it because you, you know, you did three IRONMANs, you threw in a marathon, and anything you do, you're like, oh, I want to get back into training. But you're just, man, your heart's not in it. You're not, you know, you're kind of just going through the motions, you know, I can speak personally. My last two years have been big, and I've had some big years. And again, this last year was big. And I got done training. And Matt can vouch for me. I work with Matt, so he knows. After I got done with my race in the fall, I was just like. He's like, all right, what are we going to do for training? I'm like, I don't want to do anything.

Andrew Harley: Nothing.

Jason Verbracken: I don't want. Let's get some. Nothing. Intensity. I don't. I just kind of. I need to recharge. And that went on then. That didn't go on for a week. Two weeks. That went on for a couple months. I mean, I was getting some workouts in and going out and having a few sessions with some friends and having fun, but I needed that mental break to just be like, all right, I've gone so hard for weeks and months and months and stress about this that I needed that break. And I want to make sure the athletes are knowing that, hey, that's okay. We need that. It may be more than a day or two or a month, you know, but, you know, don't be ashamed of it. It's okay to be there. And I've been there and now I'm back on the road again. I needed that break and I, you know, got to a place where I'm like, all right, I'm feeling good, I'm ready to train. And started bumping up more. Hey, I'm feeling better. Let's. All right, let's amp it up. We got some races on the calendar. Let's. It's time to go. It's go time.

Matt Sommer: And I'm going to add to that, that real quick to jump into that as a coach. And I mean, you know, even working with Jason, it's like your athlete will tell you when they're ready to start back. They really will. It was like, you know, I remember having the conversations with Jason and with other athletes, and it's kind of like, I don't shame them, I don't make them feel bad about taking days. And it's kind of like, okay, good, let's go with it. Like, they don't need to hear negative things. And I think it's always reassuring when somebody's saying, yeah, that's good. You know, it doesn't have to be ultra distance. You know, you got to remember Jason was training for big, big stuff.

Jason Verbracken: Long.

Matt Sommer: He was going out on six hour bike rides, four hour runs. I mean, these are long days. It doesn't matter if it's ultra. It doesn't matter if it's a sprint triathlon. It's all relative to what you do and how your life is. So don't just think because he's this ultra monster, that is why it's relative to you and where you are, whether it's a 70.3, a 140.6, a marathon, or 5K. You know, everybody absorbs stress differently and everybody has different stresses in their lives. And, you know, it's important to be honest with yourself because to his point, the psychological aspect of racing, when you've come to the end of the event, you cross that finish line and you've been so disciplined about hitting everything for 20 weeks leading up to it. I always say it's like Christmas Day. The last presents open. Now what? You're sitting there and looking at each other like, what do we do now? You know, and some people, it's like being a lost puppy dog the next day. And it's really challenging psychologically because you go from so much structure to what's next. And, you know, the recovery aspect, you know, we talked about it a little. One of the things I like to encourage my athletes is when you feel ready, commit to 20 minutes, commit to 20 minutes. And if after 20 minutes, psychologically and physically you're checked out, that's okay, be done with it. But don't exceed the recommended workout on there either. And I see athletes all the time that don't have the race experience that they were hoping for, that they want to get back to training the next day because they feel like they can fix it or kind of like counter that poor experience. That sometimes is where I'll challenge them to say, hey, let's just let. We need to psychologically heal here. We need to absorb all this kind of decompress, debrief and see what went wrong. Maybe we didn't rest enough leading into the race, and that's why we have the negative experience. Okay. Maybe we did too much, too high intensity leading in, and we need to focus on maybe racing more smart, racing smarter, rather than training harder.

Andrew Harley: You know, this is a beautiful tangent, and this is Verbie. I'm so glad you brought this up. This is something I did not have on our notes to talk about today that I just. I didn't think of it. I didn't think to talk, to think about times you might need a longer absence than a rest day. Right? And I've needed this twice in my triathlon career. One time was when I finished Iron Man Waco, my very first IRONMAN. Longtime listeners of the podcast will know my IRONMAN debut kept getting canceled because of COVID cancellation. And so I was training for that first IRONMAN for like two years, just in a race prep phase. Race prep phase. Long workouts, Long workouts. Finally got through my first IRONMAN. I needed a break. I needed a little bit time away from the bike, away from the pool, away from the run. And then I got back into it, and the other one was sprints and Olympics. There was one season back before I was going long course where I had four or five sprints and Olympics on my calendar. And then I would have a buddy sign up for something. Oh, hey, I just signed up for this one. Do you want to do this one with me? Okay, fine. And then before you know it, I did like nine or 10 local sprints and Olympics in the same year. And some people love that. Some people thrive on that. They're probably extroverts. I'm an introvert. Like, I was gassed. That was too much going to the races for me, right? And so like, after that season, like, I needed a season where I just like, did some training, but like, just race twice, right? And so everybody's needs are different, right? I did that one IRONMAN, I needed to check out for a little bit. Some people do three or four IRONMAN a year, and they're fine with that. They can sustain it. And so I love that you guys brought this up, because it's gonna help athletes recognize within their seasons when they might need a week off, two weeks off, a month off, just based on what's going on. And I'll tell you this, the athletes that take those breaks stay in this sport longer than the athletes that refuse to take those breaks, and they burn themselves out. And within a couple years, they're out of the sport entirely. Right? We've all seen it. And that's okay if that's somebody's intention with our triathlon journey. But if you want to be in this for the long haul, don't be afraid to take some downtime longer than a singular rest day. And Coach Matt, I'll kick this question to you because for a lot of people listening to this, okay, that's all well and good. I understand it in theory, if someone's going to take a week off, two weeks off, a month off, they get through a particularly wild part of a season, they need more than one single rest day. How long does it take for us to actually start losing fitness that we've worked hard to gain the last couple months and years?

Matt Sommer: Oh, geez, you guys probably won't like the answer to this question. Now, physiologically, we do decondition fairly quickly. Okay. However, the gains do come back also fairly quickly. That's the beauty of it all. I mean, if you take a solid two weeks off straight, you are definitely going to notice a difference when you come back, your heart rate's going to be a little bit higher. Elevated heart rate, respiratory rate is going to increase. It's going to feel a little bit more lethargic. But once you get everything firing again, you will see that come back pretty quickly. You know, that's one area with TriDot where it can be a little frustrating for athletes sometimes is that they do take two weeks off, three weeks off, or coming back from an injury, their zones are still there and they see map shuttles and it's like, oh my God, like I just took two weeks off and I see Mav shuttles on here. Okay, well, let's use some common sense. Maybe we need to kind of bridge ourselves back into training. Maybe we need to dial those back. Maybe we execute Mav shuttles as indicated. However, one thing I'll do with athletes is that's fine, we'll do Mavs. We'll respect the integrity of the workout. However, instead of going all out, we're just going to make them zone threes. You're going to do a zone three sprint or a zone four sprint, or instead of three by nine zone four threshold work, we're going to go low zone three, you know, and same thing on the bike. So it's kind of like, let's just graduate back into this psychologically get stronger knowing that I can, you know, build self efficacy. I can do this workout. It's not defeating. And then gradually just kind of, you know, it's like walking into the deep end versus a cannonball. Let's like ease into it versus just jumping in. But yeah, I mean, fitness does start to deteriorate pretty quickly. But the beauty of it is with the right work and the right training that TriDot provides, you can earn it back. And I use that word intentionally, earn it back pretty quickly.

Andrew Harley: Yeah. I found this to be so true in my experience whenever I have some off time. It's been said in the podcast a couple times by John Mayfield, Jeff Rains, Elizabeth James and some others. Stamina, going long, you know, working hard for a long time. Stamina gains pretty quickly. You know, we can gain stamina pretty quickly, which is why people sign up for an IRONMAN and they don't have bike rides that are very long until like two months out. And they're like, why don't I have a. Anyway, so stamina, you gain stamina quickly and you lose stamina very quickly when you stop using it. Power is harder to build. It takes longer to build, but then it also takes longer to then lose. And so just like you're talking about, you know, you might do run a marathon and then take two weeks off and then all of a sudden, you know, a five mile run feels like forever. I just did a marathon two weeks ago. Yeah, that stamina goes very quickly, but your 5k time probably hasn't dropped off all that much, if anything. Right. So that's something that I've heard on this podcast several times that I found to be very true. Right. You go do a long race, you take some time off, you come back and all of a sudden a three mile run is like an eternity. Well, I just did an IRONMAN last month, but my 5k time is still pretty stable. So anyway, I've always found that to be very, very true. Coach Verbie, I'm going to throw this question to you because some people might be wondering about this. I think we can start bargaining with ourselves even if we buy into the fact that, okay, I need an easy day, I need a rest day. Does that mean we have to go full rest or if we just still go out, do a workout but keep it zone two, does that count as a rest day or do we actually need it to be full rest for it to be a rest day? What are your thoughts on keeping it easy versus actually kicking off your feet and not doing anything at all?

Jason Verbracken: Right. And that's going to depend like we've been talking kind of on the athlete and where they are, their situation. But even though you still Zone two, it's low stress, but it still is stress, right. You're still putting some stress on the body. You know, a true rest day. Physiologically you're not doing anything, you know, you're fully full recovery. So again, it's just, it's going to depend on just everything we've been talking about, the situation where the athlete is like we've been saying, TriDot adapts you. It has all the data, you know, it's productive, it's going to give you productive stress slash recovery. So those easy stress, low stress days are more your recovery time, but you still are getting some stress in.

Andrew Harley: Yep, they're very well said. And actually to go back to what I said earlier in the episode on the two reasons why I usually take a rest day, right. Reason number one is, well, I feel like I might have an injury coming on or some unusual pain coming on. If that's what I'm experiencing, I might take a day where I just go out at zone two, even though there's intervals on the schedule and just to see how my body feels and if it feels fine. Okay, let me resume training if it's still something's bothering me. Okay, well now we start thinking about actual full on rest scenario number two, where, okay, I need to unplug from the sport for a day. That's full rest. That's I'm not thinking about triathlon at all on those days. But that's just for me personally to take it back off of Jason. Coach Matt, what do you want to add?

Matt Sommer: Yeah, definitely. I mean, Jason nailed it right there. And two things is I always tell my athletes, embrace recovery with as much zeal and excitement as you do the intervals. I challenge them. I'm like, listen, you get so excited about seeing fart licks on your schedule. You love 30 90s. You love it when you have intervals. Get that excited about the rest day I put on there, Come on, get over the top excited about it. Let it keep you up at night. It probably does. Now, one strategy, and I'm going to own this for one. I have imposed some rest days on myself and I struggle with it. I vocalize it to my friends, I vocalize it to training partners. I will vocalize that I'm taking a rest day for accountability. That way if people see me and they're like, see me maybe prepping to go work out, it's like, oh, I thought today was a rest day. So it holds me to where I need to be because I can be a very stubborn type a person. The other thing that I will do, and again, I'm going to own it. I will intentionally leave my heart rate monitor at home. I will intentionally not pack my running shoes. I will intentionally not bring the workout clothes because I'm a creature of habit with me to work. And then I can't do it. I don't have the means to do it because if I don't have the shoes, don't have the heart rate monitor, don't have, you know, if the equipment's not with me, I'll leave my goggles at home, my swimsuit at home. I can't go to the pool, I can't go run, I can't go bike because I don't have the equipment. And that holds me accountable. I know that's kind of childish and silly, but it's a strategy that I use because it keeps me, it keeps me from, oh, maybe I'll just go do 20 minutes. You know, it's a rest day for a reason. My body needs it psychologically or physically. There's a reason we're thinking about it. Respect it. Respect your body enough to take the rest day because it's going to pay off in the long run. Because tomorrow when you have that 2 by 18 zone fours and you absolutely crush it, you can thank yourself.

Andrew Harley: What I picture there, Matt, as you're talking about like telling friends, telling peers that you have a rest day coming up. I don't know. Did either of you guys watch the show the Office when it was popular? Yeah, for me it was a like, I liked that show. I didn't love it. My brother loved it. So we watched it. But Matt, I think to the scene where Michael Scott declares he's bankrupt. He declares bankruptcy, right. And he didn't legally file for bankruptcy. He just walks out into the office and screams, I declare bankruptcy. I just picture you walking into the gym like, I declare it's a rest day. And then not letting anybody, not having everybody keep you from working out the rest of the day. Anyway, super niche joke for any Office fans out there. I'll make those kind of jokes 53 minutes into a podcast recording. I won't make those earlier show. So if you're still with us, you're here for these kind of jokes. One last question I'm going to ask guys. We're going to move into our Coach Cooldown tip of the week, which will be coming to us from Coach Verbie. I want to talk about food for just a second, right? We take a rest day. We're unplugging from training. That is 30 minutes to 60 minutes to 90 minutes of calorie burning. We are no longer doing that we're used to doing. Do we need to do anything where we back off on the snacking, the eating, how many calories are in our meals, certain macros. Should we keep that relatively consistent? Because we are triathletes, we trained yesterday, we're probably going to train tomorrow. Talk to me about how to handle our food intake on a day where we are unplugging and not working out. And let's go to Coach VerbIe first on this one.

Jason Verbracken: Yes, we can, you know, we can concentrate on it, but we don't want to overcompensate by drastically cutting your calories. Going, we're not working out. We better cut them in, you know, by 75%. You know, our body, our body's resting. It needs the nutrition in it to recover. That's when we tore down the muscles by doing all our workouts. And, you know, so now we need to be putting those in. So we still need the protein, we still need some carbs. We, this is the time our body's going to turn those nutrients and it's going to help heal those muscles for us to be back the next day. You know, we still want to make sure we're hydrating. That's going to help support the recovery. So, yes, you don't need, you know, if you're used to going, I had full, I got four hours a day before and I had to take in 5,000 calories because I burnt all this. Yeah, we definitely don't need to have another 5,000 calorie day, but maybe we do need that. But, you know, we don't need to say, well, we're not working on at all. Let's only take in a thousand calories. You know, we want to be smart about it, you know, maybe eat a little bit less, but you still need the main proteins and carbs because that's what our body needs for us to repair our muscles.

Andrew Harley: Coach Matt, anything to add there?

Matt Sommer: No, I definitely agree. You don't want to be restrictive. I mean, if you're restrictive on your rest day, you're not fueling your work the next day. And you got to remember that. I mean, it's a cycle that we're working through again. I'm going to go back to our wearables. I mean, if you think about it, workouts are not a cookie cutter thing every single day. I can tell you now If I ran 22 miles last weekend in prep for Boston Marathon, I expended a lot of energy based on my Garmin and I had a caloric, I needed a lot of calories, let's just put it that way. On Monday, though, I had a rest day. I did not have anything. It was not even close. There was probably a 3,000 calorie differential between what I did Saturday and then what my caloric expenditure was on Monday. Did I eat like I did on Saturday? On Monday, no way. Absolutely not. But I do pay attention to my Garmin for my caloric expenditure. I don't track calories, I just ballpark it. But I don't try to be restrictive and I'm not trying to come in under budget, if that makes sense that day. Definitely don't want to be over budget. But also firm believer in 80, 20. I'm not saying on a rest day, go crazy, go cheat, but if it's one of those things where, you know, you're pretty disciplined and you have a hamburger, you have French fries, you have pizza, you have some ice cream, it's okay. I mean, we're using that wood. We're putting that wood on the fire for a reason. Don't be restrictive in your diet. I'm a firm believer in moderation, not deprivation when it comes to nutrition, you know, but you just got to be smart in your approach to it. But, you know, Jason made the point. You do not want to be overly restrictive on a rest day because you're putting yourself, you know, at a deficit. Then when it comes back to training, the next day, you're going to come in, you're not going to have the muscle glycogen storage, you're going to feel a little bit of weak, you're going to worry about how your legs feel, and you're just not going to have the oomph that you would if you put the calories in you.

Announcer: Great set, everyone. Let's cool down out.

Cool Down

Andrew Harley: All right. Wrapping up the show like we always do with our coach Cool Down Tip of the week, where one of the coaches on our show gives us just one final triathlon training, racing or lifestyle tip. And this week I'm going to have Coach Verbie give us our cool down tip. So, Coach Verbie, one more nugget of triathlon wisdom. What do you got for us?

Jason Verbracken: This kind of goes hand in hand with what we were talking about. And I got to say, I've heard Coach Matt talk about this many, many times. So I kind of want to tip the hat to him on this one. It is don't chase perfection, chase consistency. The best athletes aren't the ones who never miss a workout. They're the ones who never miss the big picture. Getting your rest day in, you know, that is part of the big picture. Come race day, we want you firing on all pistons ready to go. Getting those rest days are important, just as important as getting those workouts.

Announcer: Thanks for joining us. Make sure to subscribe and share the TriDot podcast with your triathlon crew. For more great tri content and community, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. Ready to optimize your training? Head to TriDot.com and start your free trial today. TriDot, the obvious and automatic choice for triathlon training.

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