Revisiting the Power-Stamina Paradox

TriDot Podcast Episode 70

Revisiting the Power-Stamina Paradox

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.

Andrew Harley: Hey folks. Welcome to a new episode of the TriDot Podcast. I'm Andrew, the average triathlete, voice of the people and captain of the middle of the pack. I'm joined today by Coach John Mayfield. John is a USAT Level 2 and IRONMAN U Certified coach who leads TriDot's athlete services, ambassador and coaching programs. He has coached hundreds of athletes ranging from first timers to Kona qualifiers and professional triathletes. John has been using TriDot since 2010 and coaching with TriDot since 2012. So, John, it's just you and me today as we take some time to revisit one of our most popular podcast episodes to date. Are you ready to rock and roll?

John Mayfield: I'm always ready to rock and roll. Unless it's early or unless it's late. Then maybe not so much. But yeah, I am now.

Andrew Harley: So Gen X 80s kid spirit right there. I love it. So we're doing something a little new today that I, for one, am incredibly excited about. This is episode 70 of the podcast, which means we have had 69 total, unique and totally original episodes. And looking back over those episodes that we've aired so far, there are just a few that we feel are just so important and so foundational to a triathlete's success that we want to just kind of take a moment and revisit them. From the time we started as a show, our audience has certainly grown. We've had hundreds of thousands of downloads with listeners in over 100 countries. So if you're new to the podcast or catching up, we want to make sure that these essential episodes don't get lost in the shuffle. Of all the other episodes available for you to listen to, and for those of you who have heard every single episode, some of them multiple times, you're an og. You've been with us from day one. Today will serve as a solid refresher of some crucial material. Plus, coach John Mayfield will be giving his insight into this topic at the end of the show. So we, of course, have a long, long list of quality new topics to get to this year. But first, we wanted to take this week and revisit an important crowd favorite, Escaping the Power Stamina Paradox. John and I will start with a warm up question. Then we will all kind of listen together to the original main set where TriDot founder Jeff Booher and coach Jeff Raines talk about the power to stamina Paradox. Then as our cooldown, John and I will reflect on what was shared and John will share his thoughts on what makes the information in this episode so essential. Lots to do. Let's get to it.

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

Andrew Harley: The warm up question back on episode 11 was a real good one. So John, you and I can revisit the warm up question as well today because one, you weren't on that episode so I'd love to hear your answer. And two, episode 11 was back before we were throwing these warm up questions out to the audience on social media. So I want to do that with this question as well to get answers from the people here. It is any race worth doing hands out nice shiny medals at the finish line and growing your hardware collection over the years of racing and is part of the fun. Today's warm up question is what metal in your finisher metal collection is your favorite? Now the last time we had this question I gave a shout out to my Trikey west finisher medal. It's just a really fun one. It's got some nice colors on it. It doubles as a bottle opener. And so I talked about that one. So today John, I'm going to add Challenge Daytona. Now challenge Daytona is the only race I got in in 2020 I wasn't expecting to race and so the fact that we were able to travel to Florida safely and get that race done, it actually meant more to me than than I thought it would. I, you know, John and I, we both PR that day. So you know to to PR by almost an entire hour and see the tried out training come to fruition on the race course at the end of 2020 was just really exciting to me. So you know I've got my metal hanging rack up in my pain cave and when I added that metal to the end of it and just to know that I walked away from 2020 with one medal, I think every other year I've raced as a triathlete I've done at least three, four races. So, so to see that one medal on the collection and okay, there's my couple from 2014, there's my couple from 2015, 2016, 2017 and to know that 2020 was represented with a race medal is really exciting for me. And plus it's a really cool metal it's got kind of the imagery of Daytona International Speedway Challenge Family did a really nice job with it. So enough talking from me, John, I'll kick it over to you. What is your absolute favorite finisher medal?

John Mayfield: So that was a great one. Good start. I would say that one for me is probably, probably, definitely, arguably a top five. Not only did we both pr, but we crossed the finish line together, which was just super amazing. I did the whole marathon in my first IRONMAN back in 2011 with. With my good friend. So that was a special moment. That's another top five medal. I may have more than five in my top five, actually. But we just. We won't.

Andrew Harley: We won't keep count.

John Mayfield: But I'm gonna. I'm gonna name two here specifically. One is a 2020, and kind of for those same reasons in that it was so different that we didn't get to do what we normally do. But I did get to race a couple times this year, actually race three times. I did two halves in a sprint. I had to drive all the way from Houston to Arkansas to get in a sprint race that was like less than an hour. So this race that we did was on Alaska. We talked about it before, and we had a lot of trout out athletes out there. Coach Reigns came out. Coach Joanna was there along with several of our athletes. And it was just a miserable day. It was super hot. The race was kind of the middle of nowhere. It was from a KOA campground. So kind of different, definitely different scene than challenge Daytona, which is in the middle of. Of the Daytona racetrack. It just. It was. It was a miserable day. It was hot. The race was. What it was with. With all the COVID precautions, it just. It was not. The race itself was not a fun. Ton of fun, but, man, it was a great experience. And you actually made a comment to me when we were in Daytona that you noticed, for me, it's not so much about the race or even the competition. It's more so about the experience and the people that you do it with. And there was just a fantastic group of people at that race. And. And that's what I remember from that day. I remember just agonizing and. And it was a death march because it was pushing 100 degrees and full humidity. It rained, and then, like, the road was just covered in steam and it just. It sucked. But, you know, now that. Now that I'm back indoors in the air conditioning and taking a shower, nothing but fond memories from that day. And then my other one that I'm.

Andrew Harley: Funny how that works out, huh?

John Mayfield: Yeah. Is a very similar situation back in. I think it was 2014 when I did the Buffalo Springs half when I was still in the original course. Just another miserably hot day. That race is known for triple digit temperatures. I think it was closer to 110 that day, which is insane. The run course has since changed, but it used to have a section called the Texas Energy Lab where it was a three mile stretch through just nothing. The only shade were telephone poles. The only thing higher than about a foot high. It was just through a field that was harvested. So there was absolutely nothing but sun and west Texas wind. Just another miserable day. But I got to do that with, with my good friend Luca. We drove from Houston to Lubbock, which is about an eight hour drive. That's one thing people don't get. You can drive 600 miles in Texas and never cross the border. So that's what we did, was drive 600 miles from Houston to Lubbock. And just again, kind of like we were talking about before, it was just a great opportunity for us to spend some time. Both of our wives came and it was just, it was a great trip and the race itself was awful and it sucked. We. We ended up in the med tent together getting IVs. But you know, in retrospect, you know, those are the things it was. It was like, I don't know, two or three hours longer than my pr. But it was a great race, great event and great memories.

Andrew Harley: Hey guys, we're going to throw this out on social media. You know, in the Trot podcast family, there's so many races that have been completed from sprints to Olympics to IRONMAN. And we want to hear from you. We want to hear what is your favorite medal? You know, go join our Facebook group if you're not already a part of it. I am. Try. On Facebook. This question will be there and I can't wait, John. I can't wait to see pictures on this one. I want to see pictures of people's favorite metals. You know, show off that. That swag. You know that. This podcast is releasing on a Monday. Make it a metal Monday and post that medal to the I am tried out channel.

Announcer: On to the main set going in 3, 2, 1.

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Andrew Harley: When we think of an athlete who has power, the first people that come to mind are the weightlifter, the NFL linebacker, the heavyweight boxer, the home run hitter, or even the track sprinter. When we think of stamina, we think of the marathon runner, the mountain climber, the Tudor France champion, or maybe on a team sport, the soccer midfielder. What we forget is that in most instances, an athlete needs both to succeed. Now, as triathletes, we often hear and read about fitness terms like force, power, strength, speed, stamina and endurance. Now, can you guys kind of walk me through some of these terms and why our focus today is on power and stamina?

Jeff Raines: Jeff, I think a lot of these terms can reiterate aspects of other of these terms. A lot of these fall into subcategories, I should say. And I think a lot of these terms are misconceptionalized. You know, I would narrow all these down into two kind of an anaerobic focused and an aerobic focused, so to speak. But you know, in almost all sports we need healthy aspects of both of these. And so power versus stamina are kind of the two. You know, what we're focusing on. And we're focusing on those because I would even say that endurance is a subcategory of stamina. Power, strength, force, all kind of falls into that power category. Yeah. And I think some of these aspects that people misconceptionalize is differentiating endurance versus stamina, strength versus power.

Andrew Harley: Because as an athlete we hear some of those words and I mean, to me on the surface, endurance and stamina are seem like the same thing. You know, power and force seem like very similar concepts. Yeah. And strength. And so it's, it's, you know, why is power and stamina the ones that, you know, in our training plan we're really focused on those two words.

Jeff Raines: Yeah, I mean, you know, first of all, essentially everyone has endurance. We can go walk for prolonged periods of time in our neighborhood, and that is endurance. So we're able to resist fatigue at a given effort. And what that effort entails is your sport specific goal. Are you racing or are you just going on a long walk? And so sustaining prolonged efforts at certain percentages of that endurance is stamina. So stamina has a duration in mind, it has a goal, it, it has a specific outcome.

Andrew Harley: So endurance is kind of a vague version of stamina.

Jeff Raines: Exactly. It's a more precise, definite goal specific aspect. And there's a toleration aspect, a grit factor involved and kind of understanding pacing and all sorts of aspects. But a good way to kind of illustrate this is, let's just say a four minute mile. Four laps on a track, one minute mile per lap. The four minute.

Andrew Harley: That sounds painful.

Jeff Raines: The four minute mile barrier. Right. Roger Bannister broke that back in the 50s.

Andrew Harley: Jeff, what's your best mile time?

Jeff Raines: Oh, gosh, 4:16. But let's talk about Roger. So Roger Bannister was the first to break the four minute mile. And you know, he ran essentially 60 seconds per lap to do that. Well, someone could argue, well, I can run one lap in 60 seconds. Great. I can do one hard effort in 60 seconds, but can I repeat that four times in a row without stopping and maintaining that? And so that's what's hard. And that's where that stamina aspect really differentiates between endurance. So that's just kind of an example of what we're going to dive into.

Andrew Harley: Being able to build stamina for a specific goal in mind.

Jeff Raines: Exactly. And so we're triathletes, we're racing, we have time limits, cutoffs, and so just simply focusing on an endurance aspect. Aspect is not enough. And so we can hone in much deeper and focus on the stamina aspect of that. And then there's kind of the same avenues as far as that anaerobic and power and strength aspect, which we're going to dive into.

Jeff Booher: Yeah, I think it's, it's. I saw an article come out a couple weeks ago about the LSU top ranked football team. And the Wall Street Journal had a rough.

Andrew Harley: Jeff, they're good.

Jeff Booher: Jeff, they are pretty darn good.

Andrew Harley: Yeah.

Jeff Booher: Yes.

Andrew Harley: By the time this comes out, they might even be national champions.

Jeff Booher: That's correct. And they beat my Aggies, so that was tough. But we beat them last year in seven overtimes.

Andrew Harley: That was then.

Jeff Booher: Jeff, this is now, yeah, but, you know, it is even in a sport like that, that's highly explosive. The article was about some equipment where they were not only measuring how much strength, you know, how much weight the guys were lifting in the weight room, how powerful they were, but how quickly they moved it. So it's that. That forceful, explosive strength.

Andrew Harley: So it wasn't just, you know, are they benching £200? It was how.

Jeff Booher: 400 quick.

Andrew Harley: How quickly, how quickly are they putting up those £4?

Jeff Booher: So it's that explosive. So there are different purposes for those different things. So it's a combination of the actual work being done, the force being produced, but over what time period is being produced. And so in triathlon, you know, ours is specific as well. When we have these different strengths or all strength, to go run a marathon, you have to be strong. So how is that not strength? I mean, that is strength, too.

Andrew Harley: Yeah.

Jeff Booher: You know, and you sustain something. Everything's relative. For a sprinter, running a mile is endurance, you know, for us, that's that, you know, a 5K, 3 miles is a sprint triathlon, you know, so it's all relative. So, so focusing in on, you know, these specific words we use for triathlons and triathlon specific, you know, we're talking about power, which is, right, your anaerobic fluor threshold, your ventilatory threshold. So functional threshold. So this is one number, and it's specific to a time period, a duration, and at the same thing, your stamina that needs to be specific to the athlete and a specific duration based on that athlete. For us as triathletes.

Andrew Harley: So as triathletes talking about that duration, since the duration is so important when we're talking about these terms, what would you say is the standard duration used for. For kind of distinguishing between power and stamina? And can you kind of give us a context for them as triathletes?

Jeff Booher: Sure. So this is Jeff for our listeners. Jeff Buhar, there's some standards out there. A lot of people will use some generic standards for time periods, especially with functional threshold FTP power. And we're going to use a lot of bike analogies because you have a power meter is very clear. It's a little easier and more straightforward than a pace in the pool or a pace on a run. But the same principle applies for all of this in the, you know, the power stamina paradox. But you have a threshold, and that's a measure of kind of where is that anaerobic threshold, your ventilatory threshold, your lactate threshold, you know, all of Those things happen about the same spot, they're different measures of getting to about the same area. And then based on what your measure is, all of your training is a percent of that or relative to that. So that's kind of your long temple, your, your, your basis. Um, so for one that's typically like cyclists, they'll say what is your all out one hour time trial? So if you're going to as hard as you can go one hour, that's your time trial. So it's a little different for the swim. You're not going to swim for an hour and determine your threshold and you're not going to run for an hour. So those are modified times. And so we modify that standard used everywhere for our athletes. So there's a, a difference by discipline for what those time periods are to determine what test and what amount of power you, you hold, what intensity you hold for that time period.

Andrew Harley: So your point for the swim and run, if you're swimming for an hour or running for an hour, that's no longer a threshold activity like it is in the bike, that is now an endurance activity.

Jeff Booher: Correct is difference. And then, and so there's the difference by swim, bike and run. And so we use different time periods to measure your FTP based on the discipline, but also your fitness level. So even on the bike, if someone's very new to the bike, they may not be able to go ride for an hour.

Andrew Harley: I couldn't when I first started.

Jeff Booher: You know, it becomes an endurance. Even from, from scratch. You know, the first day, even first few weeks, that's an endurance effort. Or some people can't run a 5k. So no matter if their best 5k is still an endurance, it's not their threshold, it's not from a physiological standpoint, it's not their threshold. And so we're able to look at those and use a modified version of that to determine what their functional threshold is. And, and then they ease into some of those standard durations for that evaluation of their FTP. And for stamina, this is, it's different in what you train for. So there's, you know, overall endurance, there's, you can measure volume and you know, a bunch of different ways to measure someone's, you know, air quotes. Endurance, that vague term, but we choose to use the word stamina to be very specific for the race distance that you're training for. So if you're training for an IRONMAN, your stamina is the distance, the duration that you're going to hold a particular intensity level is Very different than someone training for a half or you training for a half. Yeah, so you're going to train for a different level. Stamina, a different duration is going to be your key variable when you're training for a different race. And that's based on your ability, your body composition, your age, you know, a whole bunch of different things.

Andrew Harley: So I think triathlon typically is thought of as an endurance sport. Right? I mean, and that goes back to IRONMAN was almost popularized by back in the day when all of a sudden, you know, worldwide of sports throws it up as this, this wacky, crazy look, look at all these crazy people doing this long thing on the island of Hawaii and, and people see it on TV and it becomes like this big phenomenon. But even then it was, it was pitched as, look at this crazy endurance sport. Look at this crazy endurance challenge. And that's what made it marketable as a television program. And so to this day, people have this notion that triathlon is an endurance sport. So as such, do we need to be training for power or mainly just for that stamina, like you said, to be able to hold a certain amount of our ability for the duration we're looking at?

Jeff Booher: That's where the paradox kind of gets started, is understanding the relationship between. So some of the big mistake of a lot of beginners is that they think, okay, you know, and I had that first impression, you know, remembering as a kid the wide world of sports and Julie Mas, all those this is epic endurance thing. So they think I'm going to have to, you know, ride 112 miles. So I need to go out there and start riding as long as I can and get that ability to do the distance and then keep doing it harder and harder, you know, and get that time down. So I need to go ride 112 miles and then ride it over and over, or maybe not the whole, but, you know, a long ways. I need to have these long rides and keep pushing myself to do that long ride faster and faster and faster.

Jeff Raines: And they're just getting more efficient at being inefficient speed, right?

Jeff Booher: And they're not improving, they're plateauing. You know, the intermediates and faster people do the same thing.

Jeff Raines: Yeah, I've seen that a lot. A lot of athletes will come to me and they'll say, you know, hey, I want to break five hours and a half IRONMAN, can you coach me to that? Or what I also see is a lot of elites, even, you know, upper age groups, they have a specific goal in mind. They want to Break five hours or six hours on that IRONMAN bike.

Andrew Harley: Split.

Jeff Raines: And so they train all year at goal paces. But, you know, maybe the race is nine months away in their training at efforts that they would have to hold in nine months from now to have a given specific goal time split finish. I mean, so knowing that's the goal.

Andrew Harley: Knowing it's that far away, there's different things you can do now to get yourself ready for that goal.

Jeff Raines: Yeah, well, maybe they're over training now because they're training at, you know, maybe.

Andrew Harley: For a pace they're not ready for.

Jeff Raines: Yeah, either they're not ready for, maybe it's unrealistic, or maybe it is realistic, but not until six, eight, nine months from now. And so training at goal efforts, I just see that a lot.

Jeff Booher: Yeah, pushing the distance or pushing the power over and over and over, trying to get better is not the best way to do it. It's very ineffective. And so a lot of them will plateau and over train. It's just very, very inefficient. So the first thing to realize is the relationship between that functional threshold power. We'll just keep calling it power, but it's at your FTP, and stamina. So for your body doesn't know how far you're going, so the distance is irrelevant. It's the time that you're going to.

Andrew Harley: Hold that effort for which longtime listeners of the podcast will remember. John Mayfield has taught us that before, that the body doesn't know how far it's gone, it just knows how long.

Jeff Booher: It's worked, tell me how hard to work and how long I need to sustain it. And that's your target power.

Jeff Raines: Yeah.

Jeff Booher: So when you're working stamina, that's what we determine. We determine, okay, how far does this athlete need to go? How fast will they be able to do it? So what power do they need or what pace do they need to sustain to be able to accomplish that goal? We train them to that standard or to that stamina value. So stamina is always a percent of your FTP. So your functional threshold power, that's your anaerobic threshold. That's what you can sustain aerobically over a long period of time or for an hour, whatever that that threshold value is. And so your stamina will always be a percent of that. And so there's some, you know, power curves and where you can, you can look like, you know, from 67%.

Andrew Harley: Yeah.

Jeff Booher: For longer races, maybe, you know, a particular IRONMAN event or half IRONMAN, like IRONMAN, you might be 73, 75% depending on how long that bike split is.

Andrew Harley: So that, that bike split's going to be, you know, six and a half hours. For Jeff Reigns, a bike split is going to be five and a half hours. And so we've got.

Jeff Booher: Yeah, but when you're, when you're working and when you're training, if you're only training the stamina and there's only a narrow window that that can be. Let's say your power, your FTP is 300 and say your goal target pace is 2 10, 70%. So you have this 2, 10 goal. And maybe there's a, there is a narrow range of what that can be. You can't ever train above that certain level. There's a certain cap there because it's a percent of your FTP. So like if you're 300, you can never do six hours at 300.

Andrew Harley: Yeah.

Jeff Booher: You know, there's this diminishing that, that value goes down and it can't be higher. And that long tent pole is your FTP. So as long as you're training long and trying to go 2:10, if you go out there and keep doing it, then that's very ineffective because you train your body differently.

Andrew Harley: All your body is learning how to do is to ride at that pace. Right.

Jeff Booher: And you're pushing it. And the training that it takes. Think about how a 800 meter runner or a short distance runner, a miler, how they train. They train very different than a marathon runner.

Andrew Harley: Yeah.

Jeff Booher: So there's these abilities. One that's going to push that long tent pole higher. As the long tent pole goes higher, now 70% of that becomes more. And so you have two strategies. You can either increase that, you know, in 70. Let's see, you're an anomaly. You train really, really well. Get super efficient. You're 72%.

Andrew Harley: Well, great.

Jeff Booher: That's 216.

Andrew Harley: Yeah.

Jeff Booher: You've increased six watts. Would it be better to train your threshold and get that threshold to 330 and now do 70% of that? It's a much bigger increase, you know, and so that's proportional. So you have two ways. You can either try to increase this limited small range of 70% or 75% or wherever you are based on your distance, or you can increase your FTP itself, which not only increase your FTP, but then all of those proportional possible power targets that are for longer durations. And so when you train for both of those, the longer distance stamina work it takes, you have to train long to do that. You got to train long, to develop that stamina. But to train the power side, you train much, much shorter, much more, more forcefully. But your body can only absorb so much training. And so there's this trade off. The more you do have the long distance riding these long rides, higher volume, the harder it is to increase your threshold. And it's likewise the more you don't do those things, then the more you can achieve the threshold. And so you need to focus on what you're, you're training and you need to focus during your season. And you know, as you plan your training to get the most ROI out of.

Andrew Harley: It's almost like for, for the athlete, if you're working on, you know, just your stamina and you're, and you're saying, oh, like the mistake you talked about, you know, okay, I've got this iron man coming up. I have this half IRONMAN coming up. I need to be able to ride that long, run that long. And you work towards that duration, then you haven't increased your speed, you haven't increased what you're capable of.

Jeff Booher: That's a finite.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, yeah. But if you work on your power and build your power as well in conjunction with that stamina, now you can go faster for that long.

Jeff Raines: Exactly. I mean, it's as simple as knowing that that stamina aspect is always limited. Right. You can only hold certain percentages of that for a certain given duration. It's limited. And I find that so many athletes spend so much time trying to develop that. Can I hold one more percent? And they train all year at that. When maybe if you spent a little bit more time focusing on that power threshold, that's unlimited.

Jeff Booher: And he's being polite. There's no maybe.

Andrew Harley: Yeah.

Jeff Raines: I mean, that is unlimited. Unlimited potential for increasing the threshold.

Jeff Booher: Yeah. So there's huge trade offs between trying to, to train long. When you're training long, the closer your race gets. When your race gets closer, you have to train long because you have to finish that distance. So you don't have an option other than to be training up toward that, that duration. 5, 6, 7 hour, whatever your, your bike split or your run split is, you have to do it when it gets close to the race, but other times you don't have to do it necessarily. And so how do you optimize that time? So that trade off is very significant. Unless you're a sprint or an Olympic distance athlete, it's not as much for them.

Andrew Harley: So what, like, what's the difference for people training for a sprint in Olympic compared to training for half and a full.

Jeff Booher: Well for sure. For a sprint, an Olympic, it might depend on the particular athlete's ability, but it's about the duration. Your body doesn't know how long. So when you're training for sprint Olympic races, the stamina you're training for is under an hour. And so you're. The same work that you're taking to increase your functional threshold is the same target intensity as your threshold at that point.

Andrew Harley: At that point the power and stamina training are one in the same.

Jeff Booher: They're aligned.

Andrew Harley: Correct.

Jeff Booher: So you're not giving up one to go five hours. You don't have to go five hours. You know, your long rides are an hour, 30 or two hours maybe. And so that's. Well, both race distance and your threshold are under that same cap. And so you're not having to give up one to get the other. So they're very aligned there. So especially for age groupers, it affects age groupers a lot more.

Andrew Harley: So it affects age groupers more than it affects pros. Is there a difference at that point?

Jeff Booher: Yeah, it does because again it's the duration, the distance. So a lot. If you think of pro athletes, they're able to train longer, more of the season for a number of reasons. They're younger, they almost always have better body composition, they're going to recover better and then, and then think back to that distance. So a pro training for a 70.3 is probably doing that can do the same durations for their long bikes and long runs as an age grouper training for an Olympic see, so they're doing those times so much shorter. So and even, and it depends where in the spectrum you are as an age grouper. But a pros training for fools can be shorter training than some age groupers training for halves because they're going to.

Andrew Harley: Go eight hours at a full and a lot of age groupers will go eight hours at a half.

Jeff Booher: It's 6:36. I mean so it's up there and, and the impact. So the, the old, the, the pro, this training for a eight, nine hour race is younger, recovering faster, doing all, you know, all the things that makes them easy, much easier suited to do that, the race. And they're training the same long sessions as an age grouper who's much older may not have the same background in running, worse body composition, so it's more wear and tear on the joint, but they're doing that that same time period. So a pro is much more able to continue to be able to improve their, their functional Threshold while they are doing some of that longer racing. But it's still a focus there.

Jeff Raines: Yeah, I was just going to say, I mean I, I think we've established that, that so many people focus too much on the stamina aspect. Whether it's too early in the season or they just started training and they think they need to cover this long distance.

Andrew Harley: I mean I see it all the time where athletes on tryouts forums or even on tryout to coaches, they'll ask like, hey, do I sign up for an IRONMAN? I noticed that my training program doesn't have me running 26.2 miles. Am I how am I going to be ready on race day to run that marathon if I haven't run that marathon in training?

Jeff Raines: Yeah, and I get it that you're anxious, you're excited, it's a new distance.

Andrew Harley: You want to know that you can do that.

Jeff Raines: I've done some half IRONMANs, but now I want to do my full and I want to get out there and I want to do a 90 mile ride. I want an 80, 80 mile ride. But you know, I think we've established that people focus maybe too much on stamina, maybe too early in their season. But I think it's good to point out and understand that increasing stamina, stamina does not super effectively increase power in a direct relationship. Right. Or that power potential, there's a ceiling. But increasing power first and being a little bit patient on the stamina can increase stamina. And it does, it increases that potential. And so there's a patient aspect, there's a timing of the season aspect that we all have to take note of and have a plan for.

Jeff Booher: And the first thing is that understanding of there's a difference, there's trade offs. If you're training to be a marathoner, you can't be also training to be a sprinter .If you're training for a sprint, you can't also be training for long. There are different energy systems even within the same athlete. You're still developing two skills, two abilities within your body. One that's to produce higher FTP, the other is to take a percent of that FTP and go along with it. So even though you're training for a full IRONMAN or a 70.3, whatever that is, you're still training two diverse abilities at the same time. So how do you do that? Do you do them at the same time? Do you stagger them? Do you, how do you sequence them? That becomes the question.

Andrew Harley: That was literally like my next follow up was like, okay, so for the athletes. Okay, cool, I get this. That makes sense. Like how do I effectively train both of those?

Jeff Raines: Like, or do I maintain one and.

Jeff Booher: Try to build the other?

Jeff Raines: Like. Yeah, how does it work? It's confusing.

Jeff Booher: Yeah. So that, that is essentially is the paradox. And when, when. Cause. Cause, okay, an athlete, you're the athlete. I need to cover 112 miles on the bike in a marathon and I.

Andrew Harley: Want to cover it as quickly as I can.

Jeff Booher: As quickly as I can. So that's truth. Absolutely. So I need to increase my stamina to do that. Right. But when I get out there and I start training these long sessions, I hit a ceiling and I can't increase my. The ceiling is created by my FTP. Cause I'm only going to be able to do, you know, depending on your duration, 72% of that. Yeah, I can only do 72% because I'm going six and a half hours, you know, so maybe I get 73, but that's not meaningful increase. So how do I get faster? Because when I'm going long, I can't be increasing my FTP as much because now I'm. Yeah, I'm dead. And I'm recovering. All that I can possibly do to absorb this training is spent on these long sessions and I'm taking three days to recover. So I can't also go out, you know, and turn these very highly intense workouts at the same time. So now I can't create the ft, increase my FTP. So then now the percent doesn't change, so I can't get any faster. And then you overtrain plateau. So that's the paradox right there.

Jeff Raines: Yeah. And I think that we touched on this. But I just want to say one quick thing here is so many people focus on, like Jeff said, being able to hold 73 instead of 72%. And maybe that'll give you five extra minutes of, let's say, banked time off your. Off your IRONMAN bike split. So now you're going to go 555 instead of six hours on the bike. But if you increase that tent pole first. Right. So now we increase the threshold 5 watts, 10 watts. Now can we hold 69%, but it gives us 15 minutes improvement through the stamina aspect of that. And so there's a cat and mouse game you play, but there's even a better way to establish all of that.

Andrew Harley: So in that cat and mouse game, you know, getting at kind of, kind of trying to escape this paradox and figure out the best way to train both of These to do what you said, to raise that tentpole, to raise what we're capable of holding with power and stamina, obviously having both having importance to the triathlete. How do we consider both in our season planning and, and how do we balance training both of these throughout the season to make sure we can go long as fast as possible?

Jeff Booher: So again, this is Jeff. I like to hit this from a couple different angles. I think first, that's like the quintessential example of using technology and in our software it's multi objective optimization. So you have multiple objectives, you want to do two. So where does one, the pros and cons when you evaluate the net effect of those? Where does it make sense to shift focus from one thing to another thing? How long do you do one?

Andrew Harley: Yeah. So what happens as an athlete? Is it day to day? Is it, I do a long session one day and I focus power the next day? Is it week to week, is it.

Jeff Booher: Month to month doing it DIY training? That's what you do.

Andrew Harley: That's absolutely what you do.

Jeff Booher: So you take a block I'm gonna.

Andrew Harley: Do for a long run on the weekend and then you maybe do a faster, shorter interval stuff in the middle of the week and you're just kind.

Jeff Booher: Of guessing and people doing that and how far ahead should you start doing your long rides? When should you start ramping those up? When, when is that trade off of, you know, how long can you stay in that FTP building period where you're increasing that and you're not really worried about going long? You have an hour and a half long bike hour 10 maybe long run. When do you need to start ramping up? How quickly can you ramp up the long run and, and what emphasis and how much left do you have over from that long stamina building increase can you do to continue to build or maintain your threshold? So that's, there's a lot that goes into it. Your DNA goes into that, your performance level, your body composition, how long you've been doing the sport?

Andrew Harley: This is why we're calling it a paradox. It's giving me a headache already.

Jeff Booher: So all of this stuff. So we've left without the technology. It's hard to know. And people just go out and do template or this, you know, kind of what they hear everybody do and, or.

Jeff Raines: They say, oh I'm 10 weeks out, I'm supposed to have ridden 80 miles at this point in my ride.

Jeff Booher: Yeah. Supposed to. Says who?

Andrew Harley: You know, that's where according to.

Jeff Booher: Yeah, yeah. And so, and then the the, the default is always not to train less, is to train more. If your friends are saying they're training more than you, then there's this pressure. I need to train more. I don't want to be unprepared.

Andrew Harley: Yeah.

Jeff Booher: But they end up under preparing because they didn't raise their top, their long temple. They didn't increase that as long as they could have.

Andrew Harley: They might have trained more, but they didn't train smarter.

Jeff Booher: Correct. And for that incremental volume, what they're doing, one is they're gonna have burnout from doing these long sessions that they didn't need to do. They're not gonna have the performance because they could have increased their threshold, but they only kept hitting that ceiling on the stamina and the volume. They're going to have more overuse injuries, training related injuries, because they're doing all this repetitive volume at a much, much sooner period, longer period.

Jeff Raines: Yeah. So how do we implement this?

Andrew Harley: So how do we do it? How do we do it, Jeff? How do we train both of these systems to the most effective way possible?

Jeff Raines: That's the million dollar question.

Andrew Harley: What's the balance?

Jeff Raines: Luckily for me, my try dot tells me when all of this stuff happens, which is really cool. But I think we've all kind of heard the anecdotal saying, you know, fast before far, maybe strong before long.

Andrew Harley: We need a tread out T shirt line. And that needs to be one of the T shirts. Yes, that. And you said earlier you keep referencing grit factor every time you're on we need a grit factor T shirt with Jeff Raines face on it.

Jeff Raines: Yeah. And you can quote Jeff on that.

Jeff Booher: Yep.

Jeff Raines: Sorry. So this fast before far scenario, so it is key early in the season to establish this developmental power. We call it the developmental phase. But we're developing our thresholds. We're raising our thresholds. We're doing a little bit more intensity, quality sessions earlier in the season because we want to raise our thresholds, our power, because remember, it's untapped potential. There's no ceiling. So we want to establish those thresholds and build upon that early the first half, even maybe longer of the season, again depending on sport, specific goals and all of that good stuff. But we want to establish that fast before far, that strong before long. So what is our strong? How strong are we? Let's develop that, get that as high and as efficient as possible so later on that we can add safe stamina behind that. And then when we add volume, we're not adding junk miles because a lot of people rush to Stamina phase, they don't have the strength to support those long sessions. And so later on, you know, it's promoting injury, it's promoting burnout, it's, it's promoting.

Andrew Harley: So really what you're saying is the approach isn't even so much of trying to build them both at the same time. The approach is trying to build the strength first, trying to raise that big tent pole and then later on, closer to race day, that's when you start working in the stamina. Is that right?

Jeff Raines: Exactly. And you know, you could even look at it this way. If your, a race is nine months away, who wants to sit down and do three four hour workouts? And so it's, it's almost great timing in the season. You may not see more than an hour, hour, 15 minute workout ever in that developmental preseason, whatever phase you want to call it, because we're focusing on those higher intensities and so we're doing shorter sessions with more intensity. So later on, as we get closer to the race, that's when you'll see those longer sessions.

Jeff Booher: To that point when you're, when you are racing long, as your race gets closer, you have to race long. And so you don't have the opportunity. So you need to really focus on your functional threshold. And so you really need to capitalize on that time when you're not racing and it's months and months out, that's when you can spend that time increasing your, your threshold. So it's a lot of times we talk, you know, that's a key focus in the preseason for sure, because you're not racing at that time. Um, and it even impacts, you know, some people do marathons during that time and that's detrimental to your overall race development.

Andrew Harley: Oh, wow.

Jeff Booher: Because they're running long and they're not able to increase their pace and their mechanics get worse there, you know, a whole bunch of different reasons we can get into.

Andrew Harley: So when you start going long, it really, really starts affecting your ability to.

Jeff Booher: Absolutely. Part of our, this may be a little tangent, but it's, it's kind of fun. We did, we do analysis, our preseason project. We run every year. We've been doing it for eight years and, and we'll look at the different things and see how different people, you know, that come in and start training and as the race gets closer, how do they fall off? And we noticed that, um, for those that don't use TriDot, when they get closer to their race and they're racing for a full, their, their, their run Actually gets slower as that race gets slower. So their threshold comes down, gets slow. They're able, but they don't perceive it because they're running longer and they're not. Don't have that focus.

Andrew Harley: They're not measuring natural for it to do that.

Jeff Booher: No, they don't recognize it. It's happening. Okay, so they're not, they're not thinking about threshold on the run. They're just thinking about how fast did you do? You know, I ran 13 miles and I ran 16 miles. Now I ran 18 miles, now ran 20 miles.

Andrew Harley: They're checking off the clearly, I'm clearly.

Jeff Booher: Running 21 miles and I wasn't two months ago, so I'm faster, you know. But that percent, when we're comparing the two numbers, that percent is actually coming down. If they'd have been able to sustain that threshold pace on the run, their threshold pace and maintain, you know, whatever percent of that 72, as they go longer, they're seeing this ability to go longer. But that percent is going back from, you know, 70. It's not the percent that's dropping. 70, 69, 68, 67, 66 is their threshold that's dropping and they're still able to hold that 70, but that whole number is going down. And so that's, there's a lot of things that we do that built into the training. So some of them is in your long runs. You're doing threshold efforts like 90 minutes into your long run or marathon repeats in that baked into that session. So you're able to maintain that workload and maintain that skill of, of running faster during that time. So during the periods of the preseason and when you're not racing, you're not doing these long sessions, you have the capacity to focus more and develop more substantially. Your threshold, you're doing it, but you're also, when you are going longer, your distances aren't quite as long, but you're baking in that higher threshold effort. Another thing is within the that there's not these arbitrary time periods when people use templates or you know, non tried out things. They're periodizing. A lot of people will be familiar with and we're make the distinction here. We're not just talking about strictly reverse periodization where you have the intensity and then you go long later. So there was a classical where it went high volume and then volume comes down and then you increase the intensity later as you race. That was a classical. We've been doing it for a lot.

Andrew Harley: Of people seen that. A lot of people have heard of that.

Jeff Booher: And then, and so, I mean, for 15 years we've been doing reverse periodization, but it's much more than that in the last five or six has really become in vogue for people to start doing that more, but to not treat that periodization in a, you know, unified, I guess, way with all the disciplines. So it should be discipline independent when you start your build up for one, discipline is not the same time you start it for another. And it's not the same. It depends on your ability.

Andrew Harley: So between the swim, the bike and the run, you don't have to start. Correct. You don't all the same.

Jeff Booher: This older, heavier, slower. They may start way earlier on the run because there's more risk of injury than someone else who's faster. And they may have a very long day on the run. A pro might have 2 hours, 45 minutes.

Jeff Raines: And keeping that individual in mind, if they were to go out and do a three hour long run, that individual is going to see those diminishing returns that we were talking about. And so instead of doing a three hour run, they might do an hour 50 or 210 with some quality sets inside of that, keeping them safe, but still building that for the race.

Jeff Booher: Yes, absolutely. And then to see those, those things done and then there's strategic staggering within and so that you're hitting these high points intermittently. So when you're hitting your peak run volume shouldn't be at the same time you're hitting your peak bike volume. You know, sometimes it can't be avoided, but you're optimizing when you're doing those, when do you lower the volume so that you're not hitting all the peak things at once and so you're able to absorb as much of that as possible.

Jeff Raines: I think a lot of people, they say, okay, I'm 12 weeks out. And they start trying to do what Jeff was just saying for all three disciplines at the same time.

Andrew Harley: They want to see themselves, they're 12 weeks out, they're nervous. They want to see themselves do the distance at all three disciplines.

Jeff Raines: It's time to ramp up. Let's go. I'm three months out.

Andrew Harley: Miles, miles, miles.

Jeff Raines: Let's go swim 4K in open water. Let's go do a century ride and let's do an 18 mile long run.

Jeff Booher: Yeah, they hurt the themselves. So they're not absorbing the training. They're beating themselves down and not letting themselves build back up through the recovery. They're doing it all at once. They're not staggering on it. They feel like they're doing more because they've done more than they've longer distances. So I was able to do this, you know, this week, and I hadn't been able to do it. Look how good my training's going. Because they don't have the metrics to watch what's actually going on.

Andrew Harley: Yeah.

Jeff Booher: And they don't have a benchmark. They don't. It's not like you're on, you know, these, you know, virtual trainers on the bike where you have this pacer. Here's what your potential is. They're ahead of you.

Andrew Harley: Some of them get to race day with little injuries and wonder why.

Jeff Booher: Right. And they don't know what their performance is. They don't know what their potential is. So there's just a whole lot of things that we can do. And then there's some practical things, of course, that the athlete can do with, you know, the understanding and making choices that allow this, the technology to do what we're talking about here with the optimization.

Andrew Harley: So let's talk about some of those athlete choices, because when we're planning our season and we're starting to put races on the calendar we've talked about, okay, the distance that you're racing matters. You know, it affects the durations that you need to train for. So talk me through Jeff Raines. I keep just saying Jeff, and you guys look at me like, who supposed to. So, Jeff Raines, talk me through whether we're choosing a sprint race or Olympic race or whether we're preparing for an IRONMAN event. How does the race we're preparing for affect our ability to balance these two in training?

Jeff Raines: The biggest thing that TriDot does. I say the biggest because which one is the biggest? That's an understatement. But TriDot knows the individual, and TriDot trains you at percentages of the time that you're gonna spend on race day in each discipline. There's not a, you know, a given exact mileage perspective there, but TriDot. We've talked about the normalization that TriDot does in other podcasts. But, you know, TriDot normalizes your assessments, knows the weather and conditions at which you did the assessments. So it gives you much more established incorrect zones to train in. But at the same time, TriDot knows the exact race you're training for, the projected historic weather on race day, the elevation gains and profiles of the bike and run. And so knowing a projected time that you're going to spend on your exact race day, we can then prescribe distances or durations, I should say times based off of percentages of what you're going to spend on race day. And so this, this optimized plan, knowing you and you only, is very, very cool. Now, what TriDot also does is it knows your thresholds, it knows your FTP and there's some cool sport age and just some really cool other metrics that are going on. But, but, but how does Try Dot optimize this plan? I mean, it. It knows who you are, where you're at in your season, and, and it tries to, if you're a better cyclist than you are runner. Let's say TriDot will kind of, let's say, secretly try to make you a better runner inside of the plan while still following the season.

Jeff Booher: Yeah. And it knows your physiological abilities with your DNA, your body composition, your age. It knows where do you have the biggest potential. So it's not a matter. And I know on a different podcast we can cover the TriDot and that scale and why that matters, but just because you perceive one being higher than the other, a bike or a run, based on your weight, you know, on one you're load bearing and you might be carrying your body weight, the other one, you're not. And so even though your, your bike may be better, you may still have more potential to improve on the bike.

Andrew Harley: Wow.

Jeff Booher: Than the run.

Andrew Harley: Not even realizing.

Jeff Booher: So it's a counterintuitive thing. And, and by how much and by Dan and what, what do you need? You know, what lever do you need to pull? And we can cover this in.

Andrew Harley: You only have so much time, right.

Jeff Booher: So you throw an extra volume at it, extra frequency, longer sessions, more intensity. More intensity over, you know, workload over a week or in a particular session. And optimizing that. And so knowing what your potential is to increase in those helps to dictate how much emphasis you put on where and when do you start ramping up.

Jeff Raines: And short course versus long course. And then, you know, try it out, focuses on stamina when you have to.

Andrew Harley: All right.

Jeff Raines: And, and, and it knows what race distance and what race you're doing. And so. So try not to.

Andrew Harley: So the reason for that I just want to clarify because it's. This is some really heady stuff. So I'm trying to, as Andrew, the average triathlete, pull out the nuggets I'm getting. And so the reason TriDot doesn't dive into stamina until it has to is because once you dive into stamina, that really prohibits your ability to build power. And building power is the key to getting faster. And so if I'm getting ready for a sprint or Olympic and I don't really have to dive into stamina work to get ready for that sprint or Olympic because it's already below my threshold try. It's not going to take me into those crazy long sessions right there.

Jeff Booher: And there is, I want to make sure we're not saying you only do high intensity stuff, threshold stuff. There is a balance. And so throughout, even when you're strictly focused on increasing your FTP, there is a lot of zone to work in there, a lot of active recovery. I mean that there is that natural balance.

Andrew Harley: All throughout my week. Yeah, absolutely. All the time.

Jeff Booher: So, so. But it's. How much of that other intensity can you take that's, you know, zone four, five and six, how much of that can you do? And as soon as you start dialing up those long sessions, those are so stressful that you have to start backing off on other things. And again, it's differently based on age and health and performance level and all of those things. But yeah, there's that, that trade off that occurs and knowing precisely where it is.

Andrew Harley: I remember just personally when I was adding IRONMAN Texas to my race plan, I was kind of, I was thinking about doing a fall half IRONMAN and I was looking at okay, if I plug in, you know, this November fall half IRONMAN versus this December fall half IRONMAN. I was seeing that it was TR was delaying the start of my race preparation phase by a month and I was kind of worried about that. I was like, oh no, I wanted to start my race preparation phase as early as possible. But you're saying really that almost, it's almost a good thing if TR can give you an extra month of developing to your power before it starts that phase, that, that's a good thing.

Jeff Booher: And you're knowing when you, that's another, you know, aspect is we know what's on your schedule, software knows what's on your schedule and it's going to work the most effective, effective plan, efficient plan from now until that race day. So if there's no races between now and your IRONMAN Texas then that's going to be the most optimal way to train for that race. Every other racer that you put in there can potentially hinder your, your performance as you're building toward that or, or help it or be a non factor. If you did a sprint race, it's going to have negligible impact on your training for an IRONMAN.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, as long.

Jeff Booher: Well, I say that if you make that, that sprint an a race and you taper and. Yeah, well that's going to be for.

Andrew Harley: People who race all season long and make every race in a race that's.

Jeff Booher: Going to wreck it because you're, you're saying this is my priority over this. So you're making some value judgments and that's not performance based valuation.

Jeff Raines: Yeah, I think people tend to stay in that race, build stamina phase too many months out of the year. I just, I see it, you know, what's the difference in a B and a C race? I think everyone or a lot of people tend to just throw them all into the B race category. And so, you know, find your sport specific goal. Are you just trying to complete these distances and you want to race four or five times throughout the year? Do you want to do really well in one and mediocre and all the others? And so that's what you have to take into account. Priority. And then how much time are you going to spend developing that power before the stamina?

Jeff Booher: So the benefit of using or putting a C race is you think, I'm not going to taper as much. I'm not going to have as much recovery afterwards when you're doing these different races. But if you continue your training for your primary race, then those races are going to have nest neck less negative impact overall. So imagine training a whole season and if you know every third week you're going to have an extra taper and recovery and a taper and a recovery and a taper and recovery.

Andrew Harley: When are you building your power over the.

Jeff Booher: Yeah. And over the long haul that's going to have impact on you getting to that, you know, that destination at the end. So it'd be much, much better to deemphasize those first ones. And while you may not be as tapered or as ready for that one race, you're going to have more improvement. So, so when you get to be, you know, that third, fourth, that fifth race in the season, you're going to be performing better even when you're not tapered because you've increased your fitness. So you're 95% of your best fitness untapered is way better than it was because you haven't had five interruptions leading up to that one.

Andrew Harley: So given that, given, you know, the kind of what we were just talking about, tell me how much of a benefit is there in correctly developing power and stamina in our season? What are some of the ways, the really tangible ways athletes can apply this. Knowledge to getting faster?

Jeff Booher: To me, it starts with that first awareness of understanding what's going on. Because some people come in and they expect something. They expect I should be going really long. Like my IRONMAN is 12 weeks out and I'm, you know, I'm not racing over four, you know, I'm not riding over four hours. I'm not running two hours. And some of that misconception because they're just used to following the templates.

Andrew Harley: They think those. Yeah, they think that's the implications.

Jeff Booher: They're not based on that. And so, um, and we've had questions and they'll, they'll come and train and they have a race for four weeks out or four months out and they'll ask a question. You know, when does my IRONMAN training start? Like, it's already started. You're, you're, you're racing right now so that, that you're preparing for your race right now. So if you're in that, that phase of the season to where you don't have to increase your, your stamina yet, you're not building up, you're able to increase your, your threshold during that time and you need to stay there and don't cheat. It's not cheating. It's, it's, it's cannibalizing your training. Don't cannibalize your training for going longer than you're supposed to go. Focus on that threshold. Get as fast as you can. So think about those two things that you're doing at different times of the season. So when you get in kind of that more race prep phase, we, we just distinguish the two phases. You're always prepping for a race and you're always developing. So don't let the development phase or race prep phase throw you. You're always being developed and you're always preparing for a race no matter what it is. It's just a little bit different focus and it's not pure because we're handling different disciplines different. So you could be already building up work and stamina toward the end of a development phase. Absolutely. Um, and even one race prep phase can be preparing you for the following race also if that race is longer, more substantial distances. So if you think about your race prep phase, as you get closer to your race, you're increasing the percent of that FTP that you're able to hold. So you're Ben, you're a bill. You're increasing your ability time relative to the FTP. Okay, so that's the ceiling. So if you have enough TP, you're going to increase. If you're at maybe 75. You're going to try to work from 73, 74, 75 to cover that entire distance. So I need to hold that 75% for this three hour half and you're working up to that three hours or at 3:30 or whatever your time is. So that's what's happening as your race gets closer. But think about what's happening during your development phase when that stamina build is not going on. You're increasing your threshold. When you increase your threshold, you're shortening your race.

Andrew Harley: That ceiling, that ceiling is going up.

Jeff Booher: Yeah. So no, think about just the time your ceiling is going up so you're able to hold a higher power.

Andrew Harley: So but the time you're going to spend on course.

Jeff Booher: So you can, you can either choose I want to get to the 75% and to cover this race distance for three and a half hours or you can say I don't want it. I'm, I'm prioritizing increasing my FTP so that percent goes higher. So I'm going to spend this time increasing my FTP. So now my, my race isn't three and a half hours anymore, it's 3:10.

Andrew Harley: So the amount of stamina you need to develop goes down.

Jeff Booher: So the amount. Right. So you can stay in that zone developing the FTP longer because now you don't have to develop it for three hours, you only have to develop it for 3:10. So it takes you a week less.

Andrew Harley: Mind blowing, you know, or two weeks.

Jeff Booher: Less or whatever it is.

Jeff Raines: Yeah. So, so how do you get faster? Right. You, you, we've established that. Right. You, you build your power threshold first and then stamina later on. But I would take it a step further and just say that be smart when you plan your season. You know, we've touched a little bit on that as well. But a big example that I just want to throw out real quick and that I see a lot is okay, I'm training for an IRONMAN. I got to do a half IRONMAN in there somewhere. Right. So four weeks out, six weeks, eight weeks out of my full. Do I do a half, I mean week before. Oh gosh, good luck with that, Andrew. So what I would say and what I would recommend is that you know, we established a priority. There's a, B, even C race priority. We know that we want to be a little bit precise in how we prescribe those and then what priority we give those. But you also got to think that hey will, a five hour bike ride with a 40 minute runoff be much more beneficial for me, for my IRONMAN than doing a standalone half IRONMAN, you know, in six hours or whatever. And so yes, I understand that it's good that you want to shake off the cobwebs, you want to practice transitions, do a couple swims in that wetsuit. I get it. But throwing in a lot of just sprint Olympics and even a half in there is not required. It's not necessarily necessary either. So just really get with a coach and plan that out, Plan that season out. Smart.

Jeff Booher: Yep, I'd say for sure. A lot of athletes, you know, want to do a half on the way to a full and you need to do it way out in advance. And the best way to do that is find when your long sessions are going to be about the same distance as the half when you, if you're working from a, you know, your current two hour long ride to a six hour long ride and your half is going to be a two and a half or 2:45, find about the week where it's about 2:45 or three hours. Well, that's what's supposed to be anyway. But if you're going to do that half race when you're supposed to be riding five hours, then you're not going to get the stamina work that you need to. And it's not only you're going to miss that workout, you're going to have a little bit of a taper before it and then you're going to have a recovery after it.

Andrew Harley: So it's really a detriment at that point.

Jeff Booher: It could be wiping two weeks.

Jeff Raines: And I even will encourage some of my athletes to do a relay. They're itching to race. They've been training all year. They want to do something fun and they want to do a half IRONMAN. Go do a relay and, and do the bike portion.

Andrew Harley: Let's say Jeff Raines is trying to talk me into doing a Galveston relay.

Jeff Booher: And then jump off and keep riding and get your volume for the day.

Jeff Raines: There you go.

Jeff Booher: So there's. And then if you want to just knock the, cut the cobwebs off and do a race, then go do a shorter race and don't taper at all for it. Just go do it and then get off and you know, get your volume, don't taper, don't you, you'll be fine. If you're training and you have the volume to do a full or a half, you can do a sprinter Olympic.

Andrew Harley: Make it that session for the day.

Jeff Booher: So I'd Say one other example. So we've talked about a lot of beginners, intermediates and kind of a lot of the examples. Honestly they're not beginner examples. The things that we're seeing people when does my IRONMAN rain? They're used to seeing it elsewhere. They're used to asking their friends that are veterans. They're not first timers. They're in it several years. I'll throw out just an example of the benefit here.

Andrew Harley: Yeah.

Jeff Booher: Using professional triathlete that I coached for a number of years, Nick Waininger, he had never run a marathon, never run more than three hours for a long run, ever was doing 70.3s and we made a conscious decision to keep him doing 70.3s and for him he's smoking fast. All right. So he's you know, you know four hour time range for the halfs.

Andrew Harley: Smoking fast is accurate. Yep, that works.

Jeff Booher: So we're doing that kind of work and consciously not racing long even at that level, even though he could and pros do and they continue getting faster like the reasons that we talked about before. But for a couple of years just got his threshold way up there on in all disciplines. And then he went and did his first full IRONMAN race.

Jeff Raines: Having never done a marathon.

Jeff Booher: Having never done a marathon, never run more than three hours, never done a full at all ever. And we decided to do it actually because he started coaching with us. It was a number of years ago. And so we come and get this. You know, a lot of people will come and say I want to train for an IRONMAN. And they'll look at the coaches and well, have you done an IRONMAN? If you haven't done an IRONMAN then you don't know how to coach me, you know. And. Which is a completely false.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, totally. Totally a fallacy.

Jeff Booher: But it's perception. And so it says hey, you know we're going to do it, let's just do it to check it off. Just so it's a non issue. Next year you start coaching, blah blah, blah. And so I think we made the decision to do that in. It was IRONMAN Arizona that he did and we made the decision in late September. So he had about two and a half months to build stamina and he went his first.

Andrew Harley: Most people, they hear that and you're, they're like what?

Jeff Booher: Right.

Andrew Harley: Only two and a half months.

Jeff Booher: Right. And so he's long for the halves. He was going 3, 3 hours, 310 through 15 where his long bikes, you know. And he's running an hour 30 hour, 45 maybe.

Jeff Raines: He's so developed though.

Jeff Booher: So we, we got that threshold down. We shortened his race. He the first, his debut IRONMAN, he did an 8:30.

Andrew Harley: So.

Jeff Booher: Yeah. And in his full hours half he got down to 3:50. So focusing on that even at that level. So it's, it's immensely more important and more significant for age groupers to adhere this advice and to do this to optimize their training when it comes to this power. You know, escaping the power stamina paradox, it's, it's counterintuitive when you understand it makes sense. And light bulbs go off and you go, okay, I'm gonna trust that. But you just gotta do it.

Andrew Harley: Working on that power so far in advance for so many years had him on course for less time.

Jeff Booher: Yeah. And this is 2013, maybe 13, 14.

Andrew Harley: Going around eight hours is the norm for a pro. Correct.

Jeff Booher: And that I, I could be wrong. I think that race was the first time someone went under eight hours.

Andrew Harley: Okay.

Jeff Booher: I'm not, I think so.

Andrew Harley: So if he started building his stamina, you know, way long six months out, he would not have had the power that he had to correct.

Jeff Booher: And it's not just the six months, it was the years before. It's that volume that consistently pushing that, that, that threshold up. So at every level, four age groupers, it's even more significant because their, their long sessions are even longer. Everything is exaggerated for the age grouper. For age groupers at every level, older is so much more important.

Andrew Harley: Well guys, we covered a lot today and I want to, I want to, you know, be, be timely for our listeners. So just with this episode being so jam PA full of just heady, heady stuff. Let's do this. Tell me very, very quickly on our way toward the cooldown, what are the key takeaways about the power stamina paradox and how does it impact the athletes listening right now?

Jeff Booher: So I'll just kind of hit through Jeff. You can bring us in reiterate if.

Andrew Harley: Jeff's going to kick it off and Jeff's going to knock it down.

Jeff Booher: So, so kind of logically going through this. So first, power and stamina are both important and they're unique to the individual athlete. They're unique based on the, the actual power, the effort level and the duration. What time duration that's measured for, it's specific to you. So you have to have those fundamental definitions clarified scoped for that particular athlete. And then also it's in next. It's impossible to meaningfully improve both of them at the Same time when they're misaligned. If they're both sprint Olympic for a fast person, great, they're aligned. But if they're not aligned, long and threshold or very big time differences, you can't improve them both.

Andrew Harley: And you gotta build that power first. Correct?

Jeff Booher: Yeah, that's the second. So increasing the power does not. Or it does increase your, it does increase your stamina potential and then you can come back and develop the stamina. So the increases in the stamina though, they don't increase your power potential or your power. So your power can actually decline while you're producing stamina. So then try it out. Optimizes the how and when athletes focus on power versus stamina in that development to maximize your performance on race day. So athletes first need to understand the power stamina paradox, paradox itself and understand how it's different than what you may have seen elsewhere. What people not using optimized training templates. It's, it's different. You go and then when you understand it. So you have to understand it first so that you, you can buy into what you're doing and commit to your training and not see a lot of people, you know, cannibalize their training. They do all this extra thinking that they need to and not wanting to come up short on race day and they undermine their own training. And then they need to make smart training choices based on that. On race selection, on race timing, prioritization of those races during.

Andrew Harley: Not letting the tapers for some races impact your more important races. Correct.

Jeff Booher: Exactly. And so that brings it full circle, kind of, you know, the realities of physiology, how it impacts the objectives, the paradox itself, optimization. Use the technology and then make decisions that don't undermine the very system that you're using to optimize your training.

Jeff Raines: Yeah, I mean, and kind of to bring us home. We know there's a paradox because the industry has changed, it always changes. But five plus years ago, arguably all this stuff is kind of now flip flopping in an essence. And so now we understand there's a paradox, but now we also understand how to implement that. So we understand it, we've escaped it. And so making those smart decisions, applying all of this, which again TriDot does all this for you. So just follow the plan and it's doing for you, but that is how you get faster.

Andrew Harley: I feel like mentally I've just come out of one of those escape room challenges.

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

Andrew Harley: Lots of information packed into this episode. We chose this as our very first essential episode to Revisit because this premise of building power and stamina in different parts of the training cycle, working on the power and speed first, and then building stamina as we lead up to race day, it's just foundational to try out training and it's foundational for any athlete to truly peak and have an optimized race day. So John, as we've sat here and listened to this episode together, I'm intrigued to hear your input as an experienced coach and with your role kind of shepherding tried out athletes through their day to day tried out experience. You know, you firsthand have seen it all. When it comes to athletes training for events, what do you typically see from try from kind of the triathlon training marketplace in relation to power and stamina.

John Mayfield: So there's a lot of misconception. I think that's one reason why this topic is so pertinent and it warrants a revisiting because it's that important and it's that misunderstood. There's a lot of tradition that kind of challenges this and or really more so this is challenging that tradition. But I think it's just important to know. And what it does is largely the paradox is there's been a focus on the wrong end of it. So traditionally we are endurance sports and triathlon is an endurance sport. So we focus on endurance. And oftentimes athletes race long course eventually or exclusively in their career. At some point in their career they go to long course and then it's like everything becomes about endurance and oftentimes the power side is neglected and how do we balance the two? And that's kind of the issue. The truth is they're not mutually exclusive. Though there is a proper way to go about developing both. They do work together to produce your finishing times. Your, especially your long course times are a combination. They're the sum of your stamina and your power. How much of that power can you sustain through that time? So it's just a critical component to know and understand and train properly. And it's really the key to fast racing is mastering the power stamina paradox.

Andrew Harley: Yeah. And I think back when you talk about how it's an easy thing for athletes to have that misconception. I think back to when I was just training myself before I discovered TriDot and knew any better. You know, most of my pool sessions, when I would go to the pool, you know, I, I was commonly okay, well on race day, if it's a sprint, I'm swimming 500 meters. If it's a Olympic, I'm training for 1500 meters. And those are the events I was training for. And so I would do very oftenly, you know, five, hundreds and thousands. And every now and then, you know, every other week I'd probably go to the pool and just swim a straight 1500 just to say, see how I could, how I could do. And, you know, I was never really building my power, right. I was just so focused on finishing the distance that I knew I had to do on race day. And it wasn't until I had tried out guiding me into a better way that I knew better. So, you know, I personally relate to some of what you just said there.

John Mayfield: So that's a great example of athletes not being intentional in their training. Oftentimes what athletes will do is train with the thought that more is better so they want to get in as much as they can. So like you mentioned, going to the pool and just logging 1500 straight without any thought to it and without any intentionality, without any true purpose other than just to log as many, as many yards as you can. So we know that random training produces random results. So what we want to do is make our training intentional and have that focus on every session, know what we're looking to achieve within the session, execute the session accordingly, and know that that's what's going to produce your best results on race days. That very intentional training with predictable outcomes as opposed to just going out and logging as many hours or miles or yards or whatever the case may be.

Andrew Harley: So, John, listening to the episode, I kept thinking back to, because when we, when we first recorded this over a year ago, you know, I was just going through the process of getting certified as a coach. I wasn't officially a triathlon coach yet. You know, now that we're revisiting it, I'm a level one certified coach. I'm working with athletes. Almost every single coaching consult call that I've done with an athlete and I have to kind of talk them through that, that, you know, we take the approach of, you know, fast, before far, strong, before long, building the power, you know, first so that, that you're raising your, how fast you are before you hit the endurance stuff. And because so much the industry just, just thinks, thinks backwards on that and has an outdated approach on that. And so many athletes don't know it. And you know, almost every single time I give them homework, like, hey, go listen to episode 11 about the power stamina paradox. Because so many athletes come into that call and just, just don't have an understanding of what we're talking about here.

John Mayfield: Yeah, and that's, that's what it is. It's that misconception that I referred to earlier, and it's a misunderstanding where oftentimes the focus is all about how much, how much can I accrue, how much, how much stamina can I build? And that power is almost an afterthought. But what I, what I always tell athletes is it's not, it's not those last couple months headed into your half IRONMAN, your IRONMAN, that's going to determine your finishing time. Your finishing time is determined in the preseason. So how high can you build your functional threshold? How fast can you get on the swim? How much power can you generate on the bike? How fast can you run? And it's building that power that determines your finishing time. The stamina that you add in, in those last weeks and months as you approach that long course race, that is what gets you to the finish line. But the power that you are building in the preseason in those development phases prior to that, those, the last phase where you're, where you're incrementally increasing your volume, building the stamina, your finishing time is determined. Then just the, your finishing ability is, is really kind of built in those last couple months. But it's almost a foregone conclusion whether what your finishing time is, you're not going to get significantly faster in those last couple months. You're going to be able to go further, you're going to be able to complete the distance, but your finishing time is largely set. And that's not to say that there's a better way of doing it where you can get faster in those. It's, it's. What we see is, is most athletes actually do slow down. The more of this endurance focus that they have, their threshold erodes. This was talked about in the podcast, where they may be able to, to go longer and they will be able to go longer, but inevitably they're, they're going slower. So their training is actually counterproductive. Um, so yeah, it's, it's. You mentioned that there are other approaches and it's not, uh, it's not necessarily our approach. Everything we do in TR is based on data. So we're doing, is looking at the results of thousands and thousands of athletes. And, and what does the data say? And the data says that this produces better race results. And we, we prove that through thousands of athletes to show that this is not a theory, this is not a philosophy. This is not what, what I think is best or you think is best or, or any of our coaches or anyone thinks is best. This is what the data has shown. So I've always said if the data shows wearing pink socks make you faster, then that's what Trident is going to prescribe, is pink socks. So what we're looking for are conclusions and everything based on data. So that's where this comes from. It's not just made up, it's not a good idea. It makes sense to me. If you listen to the podcast, I think it'll make more sense, but really, it's critical to build the power and then just to rest assured that Trident is never going to prescribe a phase that is too short or sessions that are inadequate to build the necessary stamina that is in there. But we're going to build as much power. And you mentioned in the podcast as well, delaying the start of those incrementally longer sessions so we can continue to build power as long as possible, to get as fast as possible before going far, going long.

Andrew Harley: So, John, before we kind of wrap this up, call it a day, and declare the power stamina paradox just officially revisited, do you have any other moments or tidbits from this episode that you want to mercilessly just pound into our heads?

John Mayfield: Yeah. Towards the end of the podcast, you actually summed it up quite nicely. You mentioned that Trilot doesn't dive into stamina until it has to. And that's kind of what I just spoke of. And then stamina prohibits building power. So if you're focusing on building endurance, building stamina, going long, logging hours and miles, it's very difficult to increase your functional threshold at the same time. Jeff Brewer mentioned you can't train for a marathon and 100 meter race at the same time. Those are mutually exclusive. You can't build the power for the 100 meters while building the stamina for the marathon. You just can't do both well at the same time. You can do them both, but you're not going to be, you're never going to reach your potential at both. You're going to have to focus on one or the other. It's the 100 meters or the marathon. You can't be great at both at the same time. That's why Usain Bolt doesn't run marathons, and that's why Kachogi doesn't run the 100 meters. You know, they do what they do and they do it well. And we need to be largely the same. So we need to set the times where focusing on our power. And then once that is done, we switch over to stamina. And then power really is the key to getting faster. So if you're hunting a pr, if you're hunting a tonal qualification or anything like that, your focus needs to be on increasing your functional threshold, increasing your power, getting as fast as you can, getting as strong as you can, and then go long.

Andrew Harley: Well, that's it for today, folks. A big thanks to coach John Mayfield for revisiting the power stamina paradox with us today. Many, many, many, many new topics coming up on the show soon, but thankful for a week to look back on this crucial topic. If you have a question or topic you want to hear us talk about, head to try.com and click on Submit Feedback to let us know what you're thinking. If you have a question or a topic you would like to hear us talk about, head to try.com podcast and click on Submit Feedback to let us know what you're thinking. We'll do it all again soon. Until then, happy training.

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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