Purple Patch Podcast

Latest Episodes:

72 Effective Communication in Coaching and Leadership Jun 19, 2019

Show notes

Effective communication is not just about getting your message across or making your point. It also isn't just about being a keyboard assassin and sitting at your computer or firing off emails to your athletes or employees.

Effective communication empowers the athlete or employee to execute as intended, to believe in the path forward, and have clarity in actions needed for success.

What are these key principles of communication that enable a real coaching relationship to flourish? How can you adapt your communication style to establish trust and confidence? Matt investigates in this week's episode.

Matt:

Defines effective communication across all spectrums
Explores the central principles for coaching success
Dissects a real-life example of how coaching and communication can and should evolve
Outlines his Top 10 components of effective coaching communication

The goal? Set you on a path to evolve your leadership style and ultimately become a more effective communicator.

To submit a question to the podcast, visit https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/podcast and fill out the podcast question form.

Follow Purple Patch Fitness and learn more about our Coaching Services, Training Camps, Promotions and Matt's Latest Book, Fast Track Triathlete:

Thanks for taking a listen and, if you like what you hear, please subscribe, share, rate and review. Your feedback is appreciated.

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71 Going Pro - Adopting Components of Elite Behavior Jun 12, 2019

Show notes

No doubt, you listen to this podcast because you are a high-performer in all areas of your life. Some of you may even be seeking the highest level of performance as a triathlete…You want to go pro.

Remember, there is a critical divergence between performance at a high-level and going pro. As a time-starved athlete, your mission is to integrate sport into your big life and around the important non-negotiables of work and family commitments.

A professional athlete, however, must be selfish and unapologetic around their quest for performance. To put it another way, they integrate life around their sport.

The journey of a pro is hard…very hard, but there are key takeaways for all of us here. You don't have to be a pro athlete to embrace pro habits and characteristics into your daily life. The heart of this episode is built upon personal growth and development.

By adopting the characteristics and behaviors of a pro into your life, you set yourself up for long-term progression, improvement, and resilience. You become willing to receive feedback and adapt to an ever-changing landscape, and you embrace habits and traits around a value system that ultimately makes you indispensable.

What could be more PRO than that?

In this episode, you'll learn:

Key components of elite behavior
What it means to be a pro in both sport and life
Quick tips to become a professional triathlete
How you can develop from a good coach to a great coach
How can you become a pro team member

To submit a question to the podcast, visit https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/podcast and fill out the podcast question form.

Follow Purple Patch Fitness and learn more about our Coaching Services, Training Camps, Promotions and Matt's Latest Book, Fast Track Triathlete:

Thanks for taking a listen and, if you like what you hear, please subscribe, share, rate and review. Your feedback is appreciated.

Subscribe to the Purple Patch Podcast:

70 Pills, Thrills and Bellyaches Jun 05, 2019

Show notes

Where do supplements, pills, powders and the like fit in the spectrum of your performance evolution? Are they a key catalyst to performance, or a bunch of voodoo and empty promises designed only to drain your wallet?

Today, Matt dives into the nooks and crannies of performance trickery and supplementation - the big promises of maximizing performance gains through supplements, treatments, and interventions.

There is a veritable gray zone between medicine and coaching, and this episode bridges that murky gap to provide an information filter and appropriate lens when it comes to supplementation. He details:

Factors to consider when taking supplements
How and when to supplement
Which supplements may actually be useful and beneficial in your daily life

The mission of this episode is to simplify and help you focus on what is important. At most, the supplements you take should be a shelf in your cabinet and not the whole cabinet.

If you want performance, health, longevity, sex drive and all of the other promised results from charlatans — it is not coming in a pill. The bedrock of success sits in the fundamentals and, as always, nailing the basics.

Referenced Podcast in Question of the Week: Purple Patch Podcast Episode 47: Child's Play - FUNdamental Lessons from Youth Development in Sport

To submit a question to the podcast, visit https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/podcast and fill out the podcast question form.

Follow Purple Patch Fitness and learn more about our Coaching Services, Training Camps, Promotions and Matt's Latest Book, Fast Track Triathlete:

Thanks for taking a listen and, if you like what you hear, please subscribe, share, rate and review. Your feedback is appreciated.

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69 Rethink Your Training Recipe - A Purple Patch Performance Intervention May 29, 2019

Show notes

To submit a question to the podcast, visit https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/podcast and fill out the podcast question form.

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Do you need a training intervention?

While people seem to be more aware of the cumulative effects of training stress and the need to integrate training into their lives with a pragmatic approach, it still seems that confusion reigns among those who are simply checking the boxes.

This week, by request, Matt presents two important case studies for the time-starved athlete. He digs in on the training landscape of these two individuals and, while they may be training for the same race distance, have employed two very different approaches.

Within the discussion, Matt dissects:

Classic mistakes many time-starved athletes face
How to adapt your training to fit into your time-starved life
The need for recovery and how to integrate it within training
How to optimize the training hours that you do have
Types of workouts that may be beneficial for time-starved athletes

This mission of this episode? Clear up the confusion and give you the courage to to simplify and make bold decisions to create a runway to success.

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Sami Inkinen Website

Follow Purple Patch Fitness and learn more about our Coaching Services, Training Camps, Promotions and Matt's Latest Book, Fast Track Triathlete:

Thanks for taking a listen and, if you like what you hear, please subscribe, share, rate and review. Your feedback is appreciated.

Subscribe to the Purple Patch Podcast:

68 Successful Management of Travel and Training May 21, 2019

Show notes

To submit a question to the podcast, visit https://www.purplepatchfitness.com/podcast and fill out the podcast question form.

Matt Dixon and Purple Patch were recently featured on CNN with an in-depth piece on Managing Travel. View that story HERE and look for it at airports across the country.

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Travel can be a corrosive experience, carrying an emotional, physical and hormonal toll that has a great impact on your training ability, as well as the ability to recover.

The biggest mistake many of us make is to disregard the negative stressors of travel, and simply cram in, or make up missed sessions, without any focus on the management of the schedule to synchronize with the unavoidable effect of travel plans.

The goal of managing travel, therefore, isn't about making performance gains as much as it is about retaining consistency and maintaining your current level of fitness. Quite simply? You have to develop an athletic mindset in order to manage travel.

Whether you are traveling for work, leisure or an event, Matt offers useful tips to help you manage the stress of travel in four key areas:

Before Travel - Set Yourself Up for Success
During Travel - How to Minimize Stress
Arrival at Your Destination
Training Management - What Should Your Approach Be?

Integrate these little tricks with travel, and you will be sure to limit potential damage and allow for consistency in your training.

Follow Purple Patch Fitness and learn more about our Coaching Services, Training Camps, Promotions and Matt's Latest Book, Fast Track Triathlete:

Thanks for taking a listen and, if you like what you hear, please subscribe, share, rate and review. Your feedback is appreciated.

Subscribe to the Purple Patch Podcast:

67 Are You Change-able? May 14, 2019

Show notes

Change is hard.

Most people are not naturally adaptable at thriving in a changing environment and they will lean into familiarity even if that familiarity isn't positive.

Think about it. Most of us like to sink into a familiar couch or slip on a pair of comfortable shoes, even if we are allured by the concept of change.

There is nothing wrong with this except that it isn't the world we live in. It also isn't realistic if we are stretching the bounds of our own performance.

Remember our Purple Patch saying: Evolve or die.

By definition, this is change. I believe it is critical to grow and improve, but you must become equipped and familiar to adjust, adapt and, yes, change.

In this episode, Matt defines the characteristics of becoming change-able from the lens of both the coach (or leader) and the athlete (or employee).

How do you enact positive change and get buy-in from your athlete or employee?
How do you both adapt the best mindset and practices when inevitable change happens?
How can you become resilient and equipped to thrive within change?

Sameness is staleness. Rather than allowing fear and lack of understanding dominate your mindset, view change as a chance for growth and new potential.

Becoming change-able is ultimately a way to shine.

Thanks for taking a listen and, if you like what you hear, please subscribe, share, rate and review. Your feedback is appreciated.

Subscribe to the Purple Patch Podcast:

66 Best of - Global Performance in Sport, Work, and Life May 07, 2019

Show notes

Matt looks back to give perspective on some of the best episodes this year related to global performance in sport, work, and life. He reviews the pivotal roles of a coach, how managers and coaches can create a culture to thrive, tips on integrating recovery into your multisport life, and presents an inspiring review of how elite performers STRIVE to succeed during his conversation with Dr. Steve Ingham.

65 Managing Failure - A Part of the Journey to the Best Version of Yourself Apr 23, 2019

Show notes

It is inevitable. You cannot escape failure. Ups and downs are a part of the journey in work, sport, family, and life.

When things don't go well, you're no less of a high performer and, guess what? You're still the same person as you were before. Failure doesn't define you as an athlete or a human being. In fact, it's part of your complex tapestry.

What happens when things don't go well? How do you bounce back? Most importantly, how do you set your mindset up ahead of time to give you resilience and the framework to come out of these inevitable failures?

Matt dives into these lessons, recommendations, and opportunities for growth in failure or poor performance.

Failure and losses provide answers to the success puzzle and, if you remain objective and if you retain a thirst for learning, these performances can offer insight on where you might have gone wrong or what you need to work on to thrive.

You may have failed in your goal, but you're not a failure. In fact, managing disappointment is the most crucial part of the journey to becoming the best version of yourself.

64 You are Not a Swiss Watch - Redefining Specificity Apr 18, 2019

Show notes

You are not a Swiss watch and your coach is not a watchmaker.

In this episode, Matt redefines specificity to unshackle you from the pretense of precision. In fact, a focus on precision in every session is a slippery slope that leads to obsession, paralysis of analysis, erosion of confidence, and an overreliance on metrics.

You can, however, gain specificity without being precise and if it is done right, it means you don't have to obsess over every detail to get wonderful and lasting results in sport and life.

Stop searching for daily performance treasures. Don't become so analytical in every session, look for trends of great behavior, and realize that it's normal to have a bunch of ordinary and maybe even a few catastrophic days, but hopefully a sprinkle of some pretty darn good ones.

Give yourself permission to realize that precision doesn't make performance. It's a healthy dose of consistency, specific training progressed over time…and a whole lot of patience.

63 A Coach's Lens on Muscle Tissue Health - Keeping You on the Playing Field Apr 09, 2019

Show notes

It's no secret that our muscular-skeletal health - our FRAME - takes a pounding in endurance training. In fact, there are whole companies and industries built on muscle health - bodywork, compression, foam rolling, cryotherapy, etc.

Athletes and practitioners take a lot of action in this area to promote adaptations and avoid injury, and yet, we still mess it up.

How is it possible that so many well-meaning and highly motivated endurance athletes end up hurting themselves in the pursuit of rehab and performance?

Just like our training indicates, sometimes we try too hard.

Today, Matt dives into the murky and confusing world of muscle and tissue health.

He explores key habits and objectives that promote muscle tissue health and, through another Purple Patch case study, provides a coach's lens on things to do and even what NOT to do when you feel those niggles start to occur.

Enjoy!

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Matt also teases our upcoming program called the Purple Patch Squad. To learn more or hop on the list to be the first to receive details, email us at squad@purplepatchfitness.com

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