September 7, 2024 • 42 mins
Coach Jason Koop sits down with Stephanie Howe PhD, Nicole Rasmussen and Sarah Scozzaro to discuss the development and launch of our High Performance Coaching service for elite ultra runners.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Trail and Ultra Runners.
What is going on?
Welcome to another episode ofthe CoopCast.
As always, I am your humblehost, coach Jason Coop, and I am
ridiculously excited and firedup about this podcast, and that
is because this podcast marksthe launch of a service that
(00:28):
I've been working on for thelast year and that is our high
performance coaching product forelite ultra runners.
You longtime listeners willremember that I have mentioned
this service several times overthe course of last year on this
podcast.
I've also written about it forour own blog, on the TrainWrite
website, as well as in UltraRunning Magazine, and now it is
(00:52):
ready to debut is live on thewebsite, as of me recording this
intro, which I'm recording thisafter I recorded the main part
of it, and I couldn't be morefired up because I think it is
time.
It is time for this space tohave a service like this in the
marketplace, and I think that wehave put together a good one.
(01:13):
So on the podcast today, youwill hear from three of the
people that are involved in thishigh performance product and
Sarah Scazzaro and NicoleRasmussen, who help out on the
strength training side, as wellas Stephanie Howe, who is one of
our crack nutritionists thatworks with elite athletes as
well as being a heck of anathlete herself.
(01:34):
I brought these three togetherduring UTMB week, just after all
of the races have concluded,while we were a little bit tired
and sleep deprived and haggardand high and low from what had
transpired over the entirety ofthe week, to discuss a little
bit about how practically weactually work with these
athletes, how we take an eliteathlete, we wrap a team around
(01:56):
them and we work as individualscollectively to help them better
their performance.
This is a little bit of awindow into how it works.
It's not the only window intohow it works, because we could
go on for forever and ever howeach of us do our individual
jobs, but I hope, by peelingback the curtain a little bit,
(02:16):
it offers some perspective onwhat we are trying to do in the
space to have athletes performat their best.
And mark my words, this is justthe beginning.
So sit back, take a listen tothis podcast.
I will give some moreperspective on it during the
outro of this podcast in termsof how it works, how people can
(02:37):
sign up and what the exact stepsthat we take are to form the
perfect team around theseathletes.
But for now I am going to getright out of the way.
Here's my conversation withcoaches Sarah Scazzaro, nicole
Rasmussen and Stephanie Howe,all about our high performance
product and what it means forelite ultra runners.
(02:57):
I don't have official intros ofthis.
Thanks you guys for doing thiskind of last minute just to set
the stage for everybody.
We literally just came from theprize giving ceremony at the
2024 edition of UTMB, just kindof the conclusion of everything.
So we decided to gather ourcoaches in a little bit of an ad
hoc fashion to talk about oneof the next steps that we're
(03:21):
going to bring into the ultrarunning coaching market and
that's the development of thesehigh performance teams.
So no better place or time to doit, since it's all wrapped up
and all the results are in, andinevitably what happens at this
time of year is there's kind ofa grand reshuffling of
everything across all the eliteathletes and the brands, and
(03:42):
people renew their contracts andthey change coaches and they
decide what went good and whatdidn't so good, and what they're
going to do different and howthey're going to get better
ultimately.
But before we get into that, Ihave three amazing individuals
at the same table as I'm sittingat right now in our chalet and
chamonix, who I've known for along time, I've gotten to work
alongside with a long time andhave been involved with coaching
(04:07):
our athletes in kind of likevarious capacities, which I
think is kind of cool.
So I think before we like kickthis off proper so everybody
gets to know each other's voices, I'd like for each of you to
describe who you are, whatathletes you're working with,
kind of in this UTMB and highperformance capacity context,
and then I think that's it.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Who you are and who you work with in this context.
Here We've been up for like 48hours straight, so this is what
you're getting right now, nicole.
You start and I'll stop talking.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
We have been up, haven't we Sleeping on aid
station floors.
There we go.
I am Nicole Rasmussen, CTS,ultra running coach and also
strength and conditioningspecialist.
That's kind of the category Ibring to the table when we talk
about.
The high performance model isthe strength side, and I work
with John Ray and LucyBartholomew.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Scazzaro, you're next .
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Hi, I'm Sarah Scazzaro.
I also do strength andconditioning with the high
performance coaching team and Icoach strength coach for Katie
Scheid and Germain Grangier.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
And I am Stephanie Howe and I do the nutrition part
and I work with John Ray.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
The nutrition part.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
The nutrition part.
Yeah, the nutrition piece.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
You're also one of our athletes.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
Yes, I am and I also coach.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
And you coach as well .
Which is common amongst kind ofeverybody at this table is you
have your own specialties, butyou also coach athletes like
regular athletes, good athletes,everybody kind of in between,
and I think that's kind of aunique aspect of what we're
going to talk about.
So I'm going to talk aboutfirst off the overall strategy
(05:44):
here and then I'm going to go toan origin story of how this all
came about, and then we'regoing to talk about how we
really do this in real time,kind of peel the curtain back
for all the listeners out there.
Fundamentally, what a highperformance team is?
We wrap a whole team ofprofessionals around an athlete.
It's really not any morecomplicated than that, and these
(06:07):
types of teams have existed insport in many different
permutations and setups, anddifferent team sports have a
really good model for this.
The Olympics have a really goodmodel for this.
It's not new, but it isrelatively novel in the sport of
ultra running.
We don't see it a lot.
I'll go back to origin storyfor me.
This is hard to convince peoplejust to get coaching, maybe 10
(06:30):
or 12 years ago and now we seethat quite frequently.
But fundamentally what we'redoing is we're taking a group of
individuals or putting themaround the athlete, and then
that group of individuals iscoordinated on multiple
different levels, whether it'sthe, whether it's the group as a
whole, or the nutritionist withthe coach, with the athlete, or
maybe it's the sports psychwith the coach, with the athlete
(06:51):
, and the group of individualsthat we wrap around are.
They're not innumerable, butthey can.
They they can be 10, 20 typesof 10 or 20 types of individuals
.
When you get into these reallycomplicated ones, fundamentally
what we do is we have a headcoach or a head sport coach,
which would be their run coach,which is the role that I play
predominantly.
We have a strength andconditioning coach, we have a
(07:13):
nutritionist and in most caseswe also have somebody from
sports psychology.
At times we'll bring inphysical therapy or orthopedics
or maybe even a medical doctorif there's an illness that we're
dealing with at that time.
But the core team that, atleast as we know it and is what
we are going to describe it asreally consists of those
(07:34):
individuals.
The background story of thisactually has to do with this
race that we're sitting at theconclusion of right now UTMB.
So last year, from the end ofUTMB to February, I received
north of 20 requests from eliteathletes for me to coach them
individually and I had to say noto every single one of those
(07:57):
and my previous solution to thatwas to offer up another one of
our coaches, who are allfantastic and I all vouch for
with every fiber of my soul.
You guys are fantasticindividuals.
But out of those North of 20athletes, the one single person
that I was able to place withanother singular person the one
(08:19):
person was Joaquin, who finishedthird in this race, who's
coached by my fantasticcolleague, darcy Murphy, who
I've known for a very long time.
I'm not saying that's like somesort of epiphany solution, but
Darcy apparently did a fantasticjob with him.
But what's relevant to thisconversation is the learning
lesson for me that I probablyshould have learned after
(08:41):
iteration 10 or 12 of those isthat that's not a solution that
is appetizing to these eliteathletes.
I can't just simply pass themoff to another coach.
They're asking for me.
I can't do it.
I have an athlete capacity.
I just don't take on everybodykind of like willy nilly.
I'm very particular about thatbecause I want to make sure that
(09:03):
each athlete receives the kindof correct amount of attention
and things like that.
I can't just recommend anothercoach, even though I know that
coach would do a really good job.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
Sarah is taking a picture of this while I'm doing
it to try to distract me.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
It's okay, we like to have fun here.
So my solution to that was toboot up this, what we're going
to talk about, which is highperformance coaching, which is
something that I had experiencedin other venues and formats,
and I'm not going to I'm notkind of kind of get into that,
but I kind of feel that ultrarunning is the is really right
for that.
But this, literally, was thegenesis of it all, and so, to
(09:36):
kick that off, I piloted it witha few of the athletes that I
worked with that I felt thatneeded to take the next step,
and those two athletes wereKatie Scheid and Germain Granger
, and I would also say Abby Hall, who had a team wrapped around
her previous to other componentsthat I was able to add, and
(09:57):
they legitimately took a littlebit of a trust leap.
I don't know what that is.
I was going to say trust fallbut it wasn't a leap of faith
but it wasn't really that, Idon't know.
They just trusted me a lotbecause I said at the end of the
season it's like, how are yougoing to improve?
And this was my solution, thisis how you're going to improve,
we're going to put a team aroundyou.
And so, long story short,without getting into the details
(10:18):
, we piloted out with a fewindividuals for maybe the first
half of this season and thenrealized that we were onto
something and then started tosolidify it, and that is not an
easy task.
I had to go into my digitalRolodex of professionals and
reach out to them hey, do youwant to do this?
Here's the deal, here's howwe're going to make it and make
it work, and hear the logisticsbehind it and what does your
(10:40):
capacity look like?
And I wanted to make sure thatwe had a really solid group of
practitioners available, groupthat we could draw from.
And so, for example, sarahisn't the only strength training
person.
I also have Nicole.
Steph is not the only nutritionperson.
We have other nutrition peoplethat have come into the fold.
(11:01):
And that was really important,because I understood that if we
ever had to scale this up, whichwe're probably going to have to
, aside from the eight or 10people that we have in it right
now.
We need to have availabilitybut also unique teams for each
athlete, because every athletedoesn't want to feel like
they're getting kind of like thesame product.
They want to feel that they'regetting a group and a team
(11:23):
that's really customized to them, that they might not share with
their competitors that aretrying to win the same races as
them.
And so it was very deliberateabout that kind of building this
team of practitioners up, andso we're going to launch this to
the public next week.
This week, if you're listeningto this, when this podcast comes
up, I don't even know what theURL is going to be.
That's like it's like allsitting there and then all Corey
(11:47):
shout out to Corey Bruno, it'sgoing to flick the digital
switch and then it's going to belive.
But so we're going to launchthis week.
After all, the UTMB kind ofcalms down a little bit, and so
what I want to do with thatorigin story out of the way.
What I kind of want to do is goaround the table is like how it
(12:07):
functionally works.
We're going to kind of peel thecurtain back as practitioners
and go over almost from asequential standpoint what we
actually do, and to launch intothat the linchpin and all of
that is training peaks.
So training piece is a piece oftechnology that a lot of people
are familiar with.
It just happens that theirco-founder, dirk Friel, is
staying in this chalet with us.
He's not here right now.
Those ears are probably burning,and the reason that's important
(12:29):
is they have built into theirsoftware the capacity that
multiple people can look at thesame calendar for the athlete
and they have access toeverything.
It's completely transparent.
Everybody knows what's going onand because of that function,
of that interactive calendar, itallows these practitioners to
(12:51):
literally look at what is beingprescribed and how it went.
So, from a sequentialstandpoint, normally not all the
time, but the normal run ofshow is me as the head coach.
I'll prescribe training, passit off with athlete hey, is this
training going good?
And then everybody else looksat it and says this is what I'm
going to do now.
(13:11):
I'm going to do this piece ofthe strength training now.
I'm going to do this piece ofthe nutrition now, and things
like that.
So I'm going to kind of kick itover to one of the people that
started this with me and that'sSarah, because you and I have
the longest working relationshipin these teams.
Why don't you describe thatjust a little bit more in depth,
(13:32):
in terms of just the sequenceof the run of show from your
perspective and prescribing thestrength training side of it?
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Yeah, absolutely I.
So you're right.
It starts with training peaksand you will be prescribing the
run programming and even thoughI have an idea of where I want
the strength to go, I have totouch in with what you're having
the athlete do in terms of faras when I'm scheduling things
and how that works with yourworkouts.
So we usually like to keep ourhard days hard or easy days easy
(13:56):
.
So I'm always observing whatyou're doing as far as the run
programming and making sure thatthe strength programming is
depending on where we are in theseason, especially as we get
closer to races.
It's enhancing that versustaking away from it.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
And one of the things that I think has been
interesting for me to at leastfind out is I'm not checking
your work a lot, no, because ifI do that then I might as well
do it, yeah, or what.
Actually, the other thing thathappens is there's just not
enough time to do it.
So to create a strengthtraining program is just as much
time, if not more time, thanactually creating the run
(14:30):
program.
Yeah, and Stephanie willprobably go into this on the
nutrition side, like just howwe've had a lot of conversations
about, like how long thesethings actually take.
Part of the advantage ofbringing these teams is, first
off, it's impossible for me todo as good of a job on the
strength training side as somepeople who actually do it for a
living and have done it for aliving for a long, for a long
(14:52):
period of time.
Sarah, how long have you beendoing strength training?
Oh gosh almost 20 years.
Yeah, so I can't even me.
I've been a coachingprofessional for 25 years now,
or nearly 25 years now, and Ihave.
I've had the strength trainingcertifications and gone over to
CSCS and learn from that.
I actually created programmingfor CSCS.
I don't know if you knew that.
No, I didn't.
Yeah, I created some of theirnot programming their curriculum
(15:14):
for their endurance modules along time ago.
But even with that experience, Irecognize that there's like a
limitation there, and so it'sbandwidth offload as well, as
you just do it better, and thelatter being much more important
, much more important than theformer side.
But the sequences that Sarahmentioned is important, right,
it's the run training first andthe strength training side
second.
And Nicole is wondering if youcan describe that a little bit
(15:36):
more for some of the things thatyou don't have to get into
specifics of what you've donewith some of the athletes that
we're working with, because it'stheir training.
But if you want to go into thata little bit more, just from
your perspective, I think that'dbe valuable as well.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Sure, I think, even before we talk about the nitty
gritty of like within a weekwhat that looks like, it's kind
of important to recognize thatthat you and I, the run coach
and the strength coach, arecommunicating from the beginning
of the season on what the longrange plan looks like.
Right, so we develop.
We know this athlete is runningWestern States and UTMB and so
(16:14):
even from the start we kind ofhave this blueprint of when,
what we're doing at what time inthe season.
So we know when things aregoing to be really intense with
a lot of intensity, we know whenthings are going to be high
volume, we know when thetraining camps will be.
Some of those things arepenciled in from the start and
so when the run coach takes careof that, the strength coach can
kind of come in and do the samething in terms of developing
that long range strategy thatenhances what we're doing on the
(16:38):
running side.
And so, yeah, I think, andwithin that piece, every
athlete's going to be a littlebit different, and sometimes
there's on my side I'm lookingat some of their strengths and
weaknesses when it comes to theweight room and making sure that
we're addressing some of thosethings on our side and and then,
yeah, like you said, like Sarahsaid, the, the, the run
(17:02):
programming is all on trainingpeaks.
I can see actually, for example,if we're looking at John, I can
see his comments on the runningside too.
He'll leave comments on thestrength workouts.
But really sometimes how Idevelop, how I do things on the
strength side depend on how therunning is going right.
Like, he says a lot in hiscommunication about how he's
feeling, what's going well andwhat's not, and that can kind of
(17:24):
help direct how stressful andhow much he can handle.
So the comments are reallyimportant part of that piece
seeing what Jason is saying tothe athlete and then going from
there.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Yeah, I mean, it's really one.
It's a feedback loop withmultiple inputs.
So the athlete does the workoutand the first piece of the
feedback loop is the data thatcomes through the smartwatch or
whatever they're using toactually log it.
The second piece of theinformation that starts this
feedback loop are their comments.
(17:56):
The third piece of it are thecomments from the practitioner.
And everybody is queuing off ofall of those to do one of two
things keep the training thesame or change it, and what you
change it to has endless kind oflike variations of it.
But that's really what you'redoing.
You're looking at all of thatfeedback and sometimes there's a
little bit of back and forthand then you decide if the plan
(18:19):
that you had had from this is Iplan shorter with the teams than
I do without the teams, andit's because I'm going to cue
off of the feedback a little bitmore and potentially change
(18:42):
things.
I've always I've said for yearsthat as my career has gone on,
I've learned that I forecastless.
So I started out and I thoughtI could build six weeks of
training out and it would all goperfectly.
And then I was like, okay, it'sgoing to be five weeks.
Okay it's going to be fourweeks and okay it's going to be
three weeks or two weeks orwhatever, and it probably kind
of drives my athletes crazy thatI don't plan.
We have a long range plan, butthe specifics of you're going to
(19:03):
do this run on Tuesday, I mightnot get more than two or three
weeks ahead of the game and it'sa shorter.
It's kind of a shorter leashfor the teams as opposed to the
regular athletes because of thisconstant feedback thing.
Every once in a while we'll putanchor points in, like these
are the long run anchor points.
It's important from a nutritionperspective, but it's also
(19:27):
important for, like a strength,the loading perspective and
things like that.
But the specifics like I'vejust learned that this feedback
loop is just so powerful and youcan be so reactive to it that
my planning cycle is much, much,much shorter.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
It's funny you say that, because originally, when
we started doing this, I wouldplan four to six weeks and then
like wait for you to fill in andthen adjust, but like it just
wasn't working.
Yeah, you almost have to seethe comments and the data and
plan two weeks at a time.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
You can only do that if you have the roadmap, because
you can't make everything up,otherwise you end up backing
yourself into corners and peoplemake training mistakes on this
all the time.
You have to create some anchorpoints around the season big,
huge volume blocks that you wantto do a training camp and
things like that and then youkind of aim the training around
(20:11):
there volume blocks that youwant to do a training camp and
things like that and then youkind of aim the training around
there.
But this whole theme of havingI had a individual on the
podcast just a few weeks agothat has actually coined a term
for it.
It's called micro periodizationand basically it's just taking
more of the individual'sindividual data to determine
what's going to happen goingforward or what the plan looks
like.
(20:32):
Then some sort of overarching.
I want to do an 80-20 thing, orI want to do strength to
weaknesses, or I want to do highvolume to low volume, or I want
to have a pyramid.
I want to do base first andthen threshold and then VO2 max,
like all the collegiate runnersdo, and things like that.
So it's becoming more, I think,applicable because we've got
(20:52):
access to it.
So I'm going to turn it over toyou, steph.
So you and I have worked ascoach-athlete for a while and we
brought you into these teams, Ithink, to give you a little bit
of a carrot to work off of.
(21:12):
I want you to describe how mucheffort it takes to get this
right at this level, because Ithink that really goes
underappreciated when we'retrying to develop nutrition
plans for athletes and wedefault to okay, you need to
take in 300 calories an hour.
Some range, whatever it is 300calories an hour.
It's much more than that.
So if you can describe like theenormity of the problem that
you're trying to solve in fiveor three minutes, we'd all be
much appreciated.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
I'll do my best.
Yeah, nutrition is a little bitdifferent than the other
components, because you eat andthink about eating hundreds of
times a day, right?
So it's not just one thing thatwe're trying to plan around.
It's like what does thisathlete need in terms of the
season that they're in, thatfits in with their personal or
ethical considerations, theirbackground just so many
(21:53):
different variables.
And then we're also workingwith their fueling piece, which
is totally different than theirday to day eating, and they're
both equally important.
And so I'm thinking about a lotof different things.
When I work with an athlete, I'mthinking about not only what
are their energy needs, what aretheir macronutrient
distributions, what does thatlook like in terms of food?
Not just numbers, because wecan't just say eat 300 calories,
(22:16):
because it matters what thatcomes from, right.
And then in terms of fueling,that's something that there's
many different products to try.
There's many differentstrategies with fueling and you
really have to be trial anderror with it.
You start with the science, butthen you have to dial it in,
and so for me, I'm doing more ofjust sitting back and reading
(22:38):
Training Peak, so reading thecomments, just kind of reacting
to how the athlete says they'refeeling, and I have most of them
put their feeling that theytake in during their long runs
in Training Peak.
So we have kind of a match ofthe data of how the run went,
how the athlete was, few, anycomments that they put and then
what they actually took in.
So we use that as kind of a wayto like track it over time.
(23:02):
And then I do read the comments,because I'm really good at
picking up on when someone islow energy or they're just not
fueling day to day correctly.
You can tell in some of theircomments, and when they happen a
few days in a row, that for meis a flag of like okay, I need
to check in with this athleteand see are you eating enough?
What's been going on?
And so it's very different thanthe coaching side of things,
(23:24):
because I coach as well and I'vesaid this before on this
podcast.
But nutrition is a scienceapplied as an art.
So it's just like there's somuch.
We could talk about this for anhour, but I'm trying to keep it
.
We'll keep it simple for you,here We'll keep it short.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
One of your comments dovetails into something that I
want to talk about.
That's been a huge advantagethat I didn't fully appreciate
or realize until we all startedworking together with this, and
that is is we have more eyes onthe athlete and through that
collective set of eyes that weall have, we all pick up on
(24:00):
things that I would not havepicked up on if I am just
working on them.
There have been so many timeswhere Sarah's brought something
to my attention through aconversation that you had that I
that was unbeknownst to me,about strength training or
whatever that got relayed I wasgoing to say up the chain, but
it's not like I'm up the chainfrom anybody.
It got relayed to me, right,relay to me, and then I made
(24:22):
some running training programadjustment that I would not have
made, or it's even a psychologything, right, it's some sort of
we kind of we can't, we're kindof downplaying that part of it.
It's actually a critical part.
We've got a number of sportspsychologists that we're now
kind of like drawing from inthese teams.
But there are things that cometo light because you have
(24:43):
several eyes on the same personthrough different lenses and we
are all in constantcommunication, whether it's a
group communication or whetherit's like some sort of like back
channel that we do likeindividually and that all helps
the athlete.
And sometimes they don't evenknow that a conversation that
they had with Stephanie, somepiece of that got relayed up to
(25:04):
me and then I do somethingdifferently, or I reinforce
something from a psychologicalstandpoint, or we get in touch
with their sports psych peopleor whatever.
That's really the power,because sometimes in these like
isolated situations you gettunnel vision.
Like you guys know, I'm lookingat strength training people too
Like sometimes you guys getlike super tunnel vision, like
okay, I got to make sure I getthis programming right and so
(25:26):
like backing out and I think theteam really helps that like
backing out process and makingsure that we're like focused on
all components of the athlete.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
And I think it's such a oh sorry, steph.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
I was going to say for the athlete, it's really
nice when something isn't goinggreat.
They have like multiple peoplechecking in with them and they
feel really supported.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
I was just going to say they were all caring about
them deeply and we're allinvested, and so to have
multiple people checking on themand interpreting kind of what
we're seeing on training peaks,and, like Coop said, we all
maybe are seeing it from adifferent lens and so we're
meeting the needs of ourathletes without even realizing
we're doing it in a differentway, but we're all able to kind
of contribute in that way as wesupport them.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Well, and sometimes with the athletes, what has
happened is the athletes feelmore comfortable communicating
certain things with one person,for whatever reason.
Everybody has differentpersonality and stuff like that,
and I just know I'm not goingto reveal everything, but I know
you guys' personalities aredifferent than mine and the
(26:26):
athletes that I yeah, no shit, Iknow, I do know and I this is
one thing I appreciate with allthese teams is we've let that
flourish, because if there'ssomething that is just easier
not that they wouldn'tcommunicate it, but it's just
easier in the context of it orthe texture of the conversation
is much better because of thatpersonality match or the
(26:49):
difference in personality orwhatever.
To your point, sarah, we justserve our athletes better
because inevitably in theseteams and this is a good and a
bad part, by the way, and we'regoing to talk about the bad
parts in a little bit One of theadvantages of these teams is
you come with practitioners thathave different personalities
and that's good in the sensethat you need to have different
(27:11):
ways to communicate anddifferent ways to gather
feedback, as we were talkingabout earlier.
It can be bad because sometimesthose personalities clash and
we're all kind of like sittingon our high horses right now,
like thinking about how goodthese are, but we should bring
up like how they can go awry.
I've got the king and queen pinof it all, so I'm going to save
that for the end, unlesssomebody else brings it up.
(27:34):
But you now have been involvedin this for a while and anybody
can jump in here.
It is challenging at times,right.
I mean it's not all trainingand sports.
I mean we just witnessed themen's field kind of get
demolished at UTMB.
They don't always go perfectlyin training, for this stuff
doesn't always go perfectly aswell.
So if anybody has any like justa really quick example of why
(27:57):
it goes awry, just so everybodycan kind of learn from it, jump
in before I come in with likethe apex one.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
I think the obvious one is we are all coaches as
well, right?
So we see programming from youwhich we may agree or disagree
with.
I mean, I don't take that asnegative for me I'm, it's a
learning experience but thatgives a certain bias, right, and
I'm like, oh well, I wonder whyhe had him still do that.
Maybe I should ask, I don'tknow.
So that that is one way that itcould go awry.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Always ask, always ask, by the way, always ask
Noted.
I would say I'll say one once.
One, one piece of it is Istarted with you all because I
work with you and I've workedwith you for a long time and I
trust all of you immensely.
I just mentioned I don't checksarah's work, I don't check
stephanie's work, I don't checknicole's work, and that's just
(28:47):
because I trust you.
Sure, I look at it, but I'm notlike checking it for errors,
like a spelling test or an essayor something like that.
Like I trust the work that youguys, I trust the work product
that you put out.
We're going to have to bring onpeople that are that, gradually
, are further and furtheroutside of our network, and
that's already happening.
Because we have athletes thatare in this program, that have a
(29:09):
nutritionist that they'veworked with for years, that they
love Great, keep them.
We'll figure out how to foldthem in, we'll figure out how to
fold them into the mix.
But that, in addition to justbuilding capacity, is it takes a
long time because you need tomake sure it's ultimately my
recommendation that that kind ofcomes down the pipeline and
I'll describe how the whole teamgets set up in the outro.
(29:31):
You guys don't need to be kindof involved in that.
But my point with this, withthat is and Stephanie was
mentioning, as you start to, asyou start to widen that sphere
out Stephanie's sentiment of, oh, I wonder why Coop is doing
this I just trust him comes froma long period of working
together.
When you bring somebody else inthat has that exact same
sentiment, then it's like hey,are you?
(29:53):
They talk to the athlete, hey,are you sure that you should be
doing this?
Or whatever it is.
And that is a really commonpiece of feedback amongst these
high performance teams that haveall these individuals is
everybody thinks they're agenius about everything or they
think that they're smart abouteverything and they start to
like drift out of their lane, soto speak.
I don't drift out of my lanewith nutrition and strength
(30:13):
training because I know I don'tknow shit.
Okay, so the apex one sincey'all are being quiet about this
the apex one is notrelinquishing control, and I've
seen this play out inprofessional sports and the
league sports.
I can't tell you how many timeswhen we come in and we try to
provide like the endurance orthe physiology side of it,
(30:36):
inevitably what happens is thestrength training coach has to
give up a little bit of theircontrol or their coach over here
has to give up a little bit ofcontrol.
And when they can't do that andstart to meddle with what's
going on with the domain experts, it doesn't fall across.
It doesn't fall or doesn't fallinto pieces from a programming
side, because the programmingalways gets done, but it falls
(30:58):
to pieces because the athleteloses confidence in the
prescription.
And this is where it becomesreally tragic, because one of
the biggest advantages of theseteams is, if you do it right,
the athlete has the utmostconfidence in every single thing
that they're doing.
They have the most confidencein their nutrition.
They have the most confidencein their run training.
(31:19):
They have the most confidencein their equipment.
They have the most confidencein whatever expert you're
bringing in.
If they're able to silo off andgive their best professional
opinion, they don't have tosecond guess it.
They can just go out and dotheir work as an athlete or
whatever.
But when they're getting thekind of the stinky eye from the
other practitioners or whatever,it actually has the opposite
(31:40):
effect and that is not easy toavoid.
Like that is a really extremelycommon problem, because to
coach at this level in anycapacity, whether it's the
single sport, or whether it'sthe nutrition capacity or
strength training capacity, isexceedingly rare because you
have to be good enough to do it,and that is not everybody.
(32:03):
We can't go.
I mean, you guys have been ingyms all the time.
We always have theseconversations about these gym
knuckleheads that have no idea.
You can't get any gymknucklehead to coach a
professional athlete.
You can't get any nutritionistto work with a professional
athlete.
They get't get any nutritionistto work with a professional
athlete.
They get in those positionsvery deliberately and because of
that strong, that typicallystrong-willed personality of
(32:24):
those practitioners they tend to.
We don't we haven't yet wedon't drift into other people's
lanes and that can be kind ofthe demise of everything is my
only point.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
Well, to that point, coop, I think when you're a
professional in your area, yourealize, like, how small your
scope is.
The more you learn, the less,and I think all of us being
professionals in our respectiveareas, I know how to strength
train.
I would not program strengthtraining Like I have the utmost
respect for these two and likesame with coaching I coach, but
(32:56):
like the athlete best.
And I think when you have ateam, like finding the right
professional who theirpersonalities match right, and
then also that they are really aprofessional in their field,
because there are lots of peoplewho do nutrition but they're
not going to maybe do it thesame as me, and some of that is
fine.
There's differences, but youwant someone who is really good
(33:21):
at their craft.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
They're good at that craft and I'll go back to the
original piece of it they havethe time and the bandwidth to
actually do it.
So this is like a totallyfictitious example.
So I've been very transparentabout this through my entire
coaching career and I think thatthis is a.
I do think that this is animportant point with any service
provider.
I work with 40 athletes at anyone point in time.
(33:43):
Maybe it's 38, maybe it's 41,but it's certainly not 20 and
it's not 200 or even 50.
It's right around 40.
And the reason for that is Ican deliver the coaching, the
run, training and that amount oftime for that amount of people.
Once I start to drift into thenutrition thing and the strength
stuff and even the sports psychthing, it starts to chew away.
(34:05):
At the time that it starts tochew away at the time that's
actually available for all ofthat.
So it's a double win.
Not only do you get a morespecific provider for it, you
also have the time and thecapacity to like actually care
for it, because you're sometimesStephanie, your job takes
longer than mine does.
(34:26):
Probably all of the time Likeseriously like for me to program
stuff and give feedback andanalyze the files and things
like that.
I know what that takes.
Your stuff takes like much,much more time.
So I guess my point is like notonly can you not do it all
technically right from anexpertise standpoint, you can't
do it all from a bandwidthstandpoint, like it's just like
not or at least me for mypractice.
(34:48):
And even if I brought myselfdown to 10 athletes, I still
wouldn't be able to do it asgood as y'all do be able to do
it as good as y'all do.
All right, we're going to wrapit up there.
So on the outro of this, unlessNicole has something smart ass
to say, which you always do, youwon't.
Okay, no smart ass comments.
So on the outro of this, whatI'm going to describe is how an
athlete comes into the system.
I'm going to kind of peel backthe curtain on the whole thing,
(35:16):
how we build these teams andstuff like that.
I didn't go through that wholedeal.
Everybody kind of know what itis.
But before I sign off and dothat cause, we're all going to
go have dinner and maybe a fewdrinks and sleep.
Sarah's really tired.
I'm going to do one more day.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
We'll sleep when we're dead.
We'll sleep when we're deadChamonix.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Before I'll do this, I just want to say thank you all
From me and the athletes thatyou work with.
This is not the only conclusionof the season, but it's kind of
like a big one and I'll dofantastic jobs with your
athletes.
They don't always wineverything.
That's never going to happen,but I'm really thankful for you
guys as colleagues and for youguys to step into this kind of
(35:56):
not knowing how it's going tolike, how it's going to pan out,
even not only on the athleteside, but also on the contract
side of stuff, as we've beenworking through stuff.
I just really appreciate youguys as professionals.
You're the best and it's anhonor to call you guys
colleagues.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
Thanks, Coop.
It's an honor to be on a teamwith people like this.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Yeah, likewise no-transcript.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
I kept it tight, like I was, just like I want to work
with these people.
I'm going to start here andthen we'll go from there.
It's going to happen the moreyou expand it out.
But I had the expectation thatwould be relatively low friction
not this low friction,relatively low friction.
But anyway, thank you all.
You're going to do an awesomewith your athletes and we're
(37:20):
going to do even more of thisand it's going Woohoo dot com.
Forward slash coaching, forward,slash, high dash, performance
dash program.
A link will be in the shownotes as well, as you can
navigate to it just from ourhome page.
All anybody has to do to signup is to fill out the very
simple questionnaire at thebottom that details a little bit
about what you're looking forand maybe some of the people
(37:42):
that you have behind you already.
That form goes directly to me.
I look at it, I then interviewthe candidate and I determine
what the best solution for themis.
A couple of things to note.
First off, one of theprinciples from the onset of
developing this program is Iwanted to make sure that we had
the capacity to build uniqueteams around each individual.
(38:06):
What that means is whensomebody comes in, they are
going to get a team that is notonly customized to them in terms
of what they're training for,what their personality is and
how they match up with differentmembers of our teams, but also
a team that they can kind ofcall their own.
And the reason that I wanted todo this is I realized that a
(38:26):
lot of the people signing up forthis program are going to be
competing against each other andthey want some sort of
advantage, some sort of alpha,and they might not want to share
the exact same members of allof the other people that they
are competing against, becausethere's no uniqueness in that.
That's the first principle.
The second principle that Ireally wanted to convey when
(38:49):
we're forming these teams isthat you can come to the table
with existing service providers.
If we have an athlete thatcomes to us that already has a
crack nutritionist that they'reworking with, I am not one to
upset the apple cart, and whatwe would rather do is integrate
that person with the team aslong as they're already working
well together and build morepeople around them.
(39:12):
All of these teams are managedby me personally.
They will be managed by mepersonally.
I'm going to have myfingerprint on them.
They will receive an individualCTS coach and individual
practitioners that are wrappedaround them strength training
coaches, sports psychologistsand things like that, depending
upon what they actually need.
(39:34):
I believe that this is thefuture.
There are already athletes thatare doing this on their own
accord.
We're going to see more andmore athletes do this as the
sport becomes more sophisticatedand more professionalized.
Athletes do this as the sportbecomes more sophisticated and
more professionalized, and whatwe're trying to do is to try to
add a system behind it and alsogive athletes the assurances
(39:55):
that the practitioners that theyhave available to them are of
the highest quality.
And, let's face it, that's hardto actually figure out when,
inevitably, what happens whensomebody is looking for a
strength training coach or anutritionist?
They're asking for arecommendation from a friend of
a friend, and while thatoftentimes works, at the end of
the day, the lens that they arelooking through are just that
(40:17):
singular person's, that person'sindividual experience.
Hopefully, what we can offer asprofessional coaches and
professional service providersis the lens of working with many
athletes over many years andtherefore we know who the best
people are in these individualareas.
We have a list on this websitethat I just mentioned, of the
(40:41):
initial set of service providersthat we are using, and I'm
actively seeking for otherservice providers in these areas
to continually expand the teams, because I do expect that we
have an influx of elite athleteskind of come to us and we're
going to have to build the teamaround that accordingly.
But as of right now, this islive.
I'm stoked about it.
(41:01):
I hope the elite athletecommunity takes note.
I hope the brands take note.
I hope other athletes take notebecause this is live.
I'm stoked about it.
I hope the elite athletecommunity takes note.
I hope the brands take note.
I hope other athletes take notebecause this is something that
I'm quite proud of actuallybuilding.
It's already been in, we'vealready deployed it across
several athletes and it's workedvery well.
I think the results speak forthemselves and the proof is in
(41:21):
the pudding.
But mark my words this is justthe beginning and it's something
that I cannot emphasize enough.
I am quite excited about.
So y'all go and check it out.
I appreciate the love and thesupport you guys and also
appreciate the athletes that wehave already folded into this,
into this program.
While we were working it out,you guys took a little bit of a
(41:42):
leap of faith at building a teamaround you.
I know that's a novel conceptfor a lot of people out there
and it can be a little bitintimidating at first, so we
appreciate the heck out of allthe athletes that have initially
participated in this.
All right, folks, that is itfor today and, as always, we
will see you out on the trails.
Trail and Ultra Runners.
What is going on?
Welcome to another episode ofthe CoopCast.
As always, I am your humblehost, coach Jason Coop, and I am
ridiculously excited and firedup about this podcast, and that
is because this podcast marksthe launch of a service that
(00:28):
I've been working on for thelast year and that is our high
performance coaching product forelite ultra runners.
You longtime listeners willremember that I have mentioned
this service several times overthe course of last year on this
podcast.
I've also written about it forour own blog, on the TrainWrite
website, as well as in UltraRunning Magazine, and now it is
(00:52):
ready to debut is live on thewebsite, as of me recording this
intro, which I'm recording thisafter I recorded the main part
of it, and I couldn't be morefired up because I think it is
time.
It is time for this space tohave a service like this in the
marketplace, and I think that wehave put together a good one.
(01:13):
So on the podcast today, youwill hear from three of the
people that are involved in thishigh performance product and
Sarah Scazzaro and NicoleRasmussen, who help out on the
strength training side, as wellas Stephanie Howe, who is one of
our crack nutritionists thatworks with elite athletes as
well as being a heck of anathlete herself.
(01:34):
I brought these three togetherduring UTMB week, just after all
of the races have concluded,while we were a little bit tired
and sleep deprived and haggardand high and low from what had
transpired over the entirety ofthe week, to discuss a little
bit about how practically weactually work with these
athletes, how we take an eliteathlete, we wrap a team around
(01:56):
them and we work as individualscollectively to help them better
their performance.
This is a little bit of awindow into how it works.
It's not the only window intohow it works, because we could
go on for forever and ever howeach of us do our individual
jobs, but I hope, by peelingback the curtain a little bit,
(02:16):
it offers some perspective onwhat we are trying to do in the
space to have athletes performat their best.
And mark my words, this is justthe beginning.
So sit back, take a listen tothis podcast.
I will give some moreperspective on it during the
outro of this podcast in termsof how it works, how people can
(02:37):
sign up and what the exact stepsthat we take are to form the
perfect team around theseathletes.
But for now I am going to getright out of the way.
Here's my conversation withcoaches Sarah Scazzaro, nicole
Rasmussen and Stephanie Howe,all about our high performance
product and what it means forelite ultra runners.
(02:57):
I don't have official intros ofthis.
Thanks you guys for doing thiskind of last minute just to set
the stage for everybody.
We literally just came from theprize giving ceremony at the
2024 edition of UTMB, just kindof the conclusion of everything.
So we decided to gather ourcoaches in a little bit of an ad
hoc fashion to talk about oneof the next steps that we're
(03:21):
going to bring into the ultrarunning coaching market and
that's the development of thesehigh performance teams.
So no better place or time to doit, since it's all wrapped up
and all the results are in, andinevitably what happens at this
time of year is there's kind ofa grand reshuffling of
everything across all the eliteathletes and the brands, and
(03:42):
people renew their contracts andthey change coaches and they
decide what went good and whatdidn't so good, and what they're
going to do different and howthey're going to get better
ultimately.
But before we get into that, Ihave three amazing individuals
at the same table as I'm sittingat right now in our chalet and
chamonix, who I've known for along time, I've gotten to work
alongside with a long time andhave been involved with coaching
(04:07):
our athletes in kind of likevarious capacities, which I
think is kind of cool.
So I think before we like kickthis off proper so everybody
gets to know each other's voices, I'd like for each of you to
describe who you are, whatathletes you're working with,
kind of in this UTMB and highperformance capacity context,
and then I think that's it.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Who you are and who you work with in this context.
Here We've been up for like 48hours straight, so this is what
you're getting right now, nicole.
You start and I'll stop talking.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
We have been up, haven't we Sleeping on aid
station floors.
There we go.
I am Nicole Rasmussen, CTS,ultra running coach and also
strength and conditioningspecialist.
That's kind of the category Ibring to the table when we talk
about.
The high performance model isthe strength side, and I work
with John Ray and LucyBartholomew.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Scazzaro, you're next .
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Hi, I'm Sarah Scazzaro.
I also do strength andconditioning with the high
performance coaching team and Icoach strength coach for Katie
Scheid and Germain Grangier.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
And I am Stephanie Howe and I do the nutrition part
and I work with John Ray.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
The nutrition part.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
The nutrition part.
Yeah, the nutrition piece.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
You're also one of our athletes.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
Yes, I am and I also coach.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
And you coach as well .
Which is common amongst kind ofeverybody at this table is you
have your own specialties, butyou also coach athletes like
regular athletes, good athletes,everybody kind of in between,
and I think that's kind of aunique aspect of what we're
going to talk about.
So I'm going to talk aboutfirst off the overall strategy
(05:44):
here and then I'm going to go toan origin story of how this all
came about, and then we'regoing to talk about how we
really do this in real time,kind of peel the curtain back
for all the listeners out there.
Fundamentally, what a highperformance team is?
We wrap a whole team ofprofessionals around an athlete.
It's really not any morecomplicated than that, and these
(06:07):
types of teams have existed insport in many different
permutations and setups, anddifferent team sports have a
really good model for this.
The Olympics have a really goodmodel for this.
It's not new, but it isrelatively novel in the sport of
ultra running.
We don't see it a lot.
I'll go back to origin storyfor me.
This is hard to convince peoplejust to get coaching, maybe 10
(06:30):
or 12 years ago and now we seethat quite frequently.
But fundamentally what we'redoing is we're taking a group of
individuals or putting themaround the athlete, and then
that group of individuals iscoordinated on multiple
different levels, whether it'sthe, whether it's the group as a
whole, or the nutritionist withthe coach, with the athlete, or
maybe it's the sports psychwith the coach, with the athlete
(06:51):
, and the group of individualsthat we wrap around are.
They're not innumerable, butthey can.
They they can be 10, 20 typesof 10 or 20 types of individuals
.
When you get into these reallycomplicated ones, fundamentally
what we do is we have a headcoach or a head sport coach,
which would be their run coach,which is the role that I play
predominantly.
We have a strength andconditioning coach, we have a
(07:13):
nutritionist and in most caseswe also have somebody from
sports psychology.
At times we'll bring inphysical therapy or orthopedics
or maybe even a medical doctorif there's an illness that we're
dealing with at that time.
But the core team that, atleast as we know it and is what
we are going to describe it asreally consists of those
(07:34):
individuals.
The background story of thisactually has to do with this
race that we're sitting at theconclusion of right now UTMB.
So last year, from the end ofUTMB to February, I received
north of 20 requests from eliteathletes for me to coach them
individually and I had to say noto every single one of those
(07:57):
and my previous solution to thatwas to offer up another one of
our coaches, who are allfantastic and I all vouch for
with every fiber of my soul.
You guys are fantasticindividuals.
But out of those North of 20athletes, the one single person
that I was able to place withanother singular person the one
(08:19):
person was Joaquin, who finishedthird in this race, who's
coached by my fantasticcolleague, darcy Murphy, who
I've known for a very long time.
I'm not saying that's like somesort of epiphany solution, but
Darcy apparently did a fantasticjob with him.
But what's relevant to thisconversation is the learning
lesson for me that I probablyshould have learned after
(08:41):
iteration 10 or 12 of those isthat that's not a solution that
is appetizing to these eliteathletes.
I can't just simply pass themoff to another coach.
They're asking for me.
I can't do it.
I have an athlete capacity.
I just don't take on everybodykind of like willy nilly.
I'm very particular about thatbecause I want to make sure that
(09:03):
each athlete receives the kindof correct amount of attention
and things like that.
I can't just recommend anothercoach, even though I know that
coach would do a really good job.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
Sarah is taking a picture of this while I'm doing
it to try to distract me.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
It's okay, we like to have fun here.
So my solution to that was toboot up this, what we're going
to talk about, which is highperformance coaching, which is
something that I had experiencedin other venues and formats,
and I'm not going to I'm notkind of kind of get into that,
but I kind of feel that ultrarunning is the is really right
for that.
But this, literally, was thegenesis of it all, and so, to
(09:36):
kick that off, I piloted it witha few of the athletes that I
worked with that I felt thatneeded to take the next step,
and those two athletes wereKatie Scheid and Germain Granger
, and I would also say Abby Hall, who had a team wrapped around
her previous to other componentsthat I was able to add, and
(09:57):
they legitimately took a littlebit of a trust leap.
I don't know what that is.
I was going to say trust fallbut it wasn't a leap of faith
but it wasn't really that, Idon't know.
They just trusted me a lotbecause I said at the end of the
season it's like, how are yougoing to improve?
And this was my solution, thisis how you're going to improve,
we're going to put a team aroundyou.
And so, long story short,without getting into the details
(10:18):
, we piloted out with a fewindividuals for maybe the first
half of this season and thenrealized that we were onto
something and then started tosolidify it, and that is not an
easy task.
I had to go into my digitalRolodex of professionals and
reach out to them hey, do youwant to do this?
Here's the deal, here's howwe're going to make it and make
it work, and hear the logisticsbehind it and what does your
(10:40):
capacity look like?
And I wanted to make sure thatwe had a really solid group of
practitioners available, groupthat we could draw from.
And so, for example, sarahisn't the only strength training
person.
I also have Nicole.
Steph is not the only nutritionperson.
We have other nutrition peoplethat have come into the fold.
(11:01):
And that was really important,because I understood that if we
ever had to scale this up, whichwe're probably going to have to
, aside from the eight or 10people that we have in it right
now.
We need to have availabilitybut also unique teams for each
athlete, because every athletedoesn't want to feel like
they're getting kind of like thesame product.
They want to feel that they'regetting a group and a team
(11:23):
that's really customized to them, that they might not share with
their competitors that aretrying to win the same races as
them.
And so it was very deliberateabout that kind of building this
team of practitioners up, andso we're going to launch this to
the public next week.
This week, if you're listeningto this, when this podcast comes
up, I don't even know what theURL is going to be.
That's like it's like allsitting there and then all Corey
(11:47):
shout out to Corey Bruno, it'sgoing to flick the digital
switch and then it's going to belive.
But so we're going to launchthis week.
After all, the UTMB kind ofcalms down a little bit, and so
what I want to do with thatorigin story out of the way.
What I kind of want to do is goaround the table is like how it
(12:07):
functionally works.
We're going to kind of peel thecurtain back as practitioners
and go over almost from asequential standpoint what we
actually do, and to launch intothat the linchpin and all of
that is training peaks.
So training piece is a piece oftechnology that a lot of people
are familiar with.
It just happens that theirco-founder, dirk Friel, is
staying in this chalet with us.
He's not here right now.
Those ears are probably burning,and the reason that's important
(12:29):
is they have built into theirsoftware the capacity that
multiple people can look at thesame calendar for the athlete
and they have access toeverything.
It's completely transparent.
Everybody knows what's going onand because of that function,
of that interactive calendar, itallows these practitioners to
(12:51):
literally look at what is beingprescribed and how it went.
So, from a sequentialstandpoint, normally not all the
time, but the normal run ofshow is me as the head coach.
I'll prescribe training, passit off with athlete hey, is this
training going good?
And then everybody else looksat it and says this is what I'm
going to do now.
(13:11):
I'm going to do this piece ofthe strength training now.
I'm going to do this piece ofthe nutrition now, and things
like that.
So I'm going to kind of kick itover to one of the people that
started this with me and that'sSarah, because you and I have
the longest working relationshipin these teams.
Why don't you describe thatjust a little bit more in depth,
(13:32):
in terms of just the sequenceof the run of show from your
perspective and prescribing thestrength training side of it?
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Yeah, absolutely I.
So you're right.
It starts with training peaksand you will be prescribing the
run programming and even thoughI have an idea of where I want
the strength to go, I have totouch in with what you're having
the athlete do in terms of faras when I'm scheduling things
and how that works with yourworkouts.
So we usually like to keep ourhard days hard or easy days easy
(13:56):
.
So I'm always observing whatyou're doing as far as the run
programming and making sure thatthe strength programming is
depending on where we are in theseason, especially as we get
closer to races.
It's enhancing that versustaking away from it.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
And one of the things that I think has been
interesting for me to at leastfind out is I'm not checking
your work a lot, no, because ifI do that then I might as well
do it, yeah, or what.
Actually, the other thing thathappens is there's just not
enough time to do it.
So to create a strengthtraining program is just as much
time, if not more time, thanactually creating the run
(14:30):
program.
Yeah, and Stephanie willprobably go into this on the
nutrition side, like just howwe've had a lot of conversations
about, like how long thesethings actually take.
Part of the advantage ofbringing these teams is, first
off, it's impossible for me todo as good of a job on the
strength training side as somepeople who actually do it for a
living and have done it for aliving for a long, for a long
(14:52):
period of time.
Sarah, how long have you beendoing strength training?
Oh gosh almost 20 years.
Yeah, so I can't even me.
I've been a coachingprofessional for 25 years now,
or nearly 25 years now, and Ihave.
I've had the strength trainingcertifications and gone over to
CSCS and learn from that.
I actually created programmingfor CSCS.
I don't know if you knew that.
No, I didn't.
Yeah, I created some of theirnot programming their curriculum
(15:14):
for their endurance modules along time ago.
But even with that experience, Irecognize that there's like a
limitation there, and so it'sbandwidth offload as well, as
you just do it better, and thelatter being much more important
, much more important than theformer side.
But the sequences that Sarahmentioned is important, right,
it's the run training first andthe strength training side
second.
And Nicole is wondering if youcan describe that a little bit
(15:36):
more for some of the things thatyou don't have to get into
specifics of what you've donewith some of the athletes that
we're working with, because it'stheir training.
But if you want to go into thata little bit more, just from
your perspective, I think that'dbe valuable as well.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Sure, I think, even before we talk about the nitty
gritty of like within a weekwhat that looks like, it's kind
of important to recognize thatthat you and I, the run coach
and the strength coach, arecommunicating from the beginning
of the season on what the longrange plan looks like.
Right, so we develop.
We know this athlete is runningWestern States and UTMB and so
(16:14):
even from the start we kind ofhave this blueprint of when,
what we're doing at what time inthe season.
So we know when things aregoing to be really intense with
a lot of intensity, we know whenthings are going to be high
volume, we know when thetraining camps will be.
Some of those things arepenciled in from the start and
so when the run coach takes careof that, the strength coach can
kind of come in and do the samething in terms of developing
that long range strategy thatenhances what we're doing on the
(16:38):
running side.
And so, yeah, I think, andwithin that piece, every
athlete's going to be a littlebit different, and sometimes
there's on my side I'm lookingat some of their strengths and
weaknesses when it comes to theweight room and making sure that
we're addressing some of thosethings on our side and and then,
yeah, like you said, like Sarahsaid, the, the, the run
(17:02):
programming is all on trainingpeaks.
I can see actually, for example,if we're looking at John, I can
see his comments on the runningside too.
He'll leave comments on thestrength workouts.
But really sometimes how Idevelop, how I do things on the
strength side depend on how therunning is going right.
Like, he says a lot in hiscommunication about how he's
feeling, what's going well andwhat's not, and that can kind of
(17:24):
help direct how stressful andhow much he can handle.
So the comments are reallyimportant part of that piece
seeing what Jason is saying tothe athlete and then going from
there.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Yeah, I mean, it's really one.
It's a feedback loop withmultiple inputs.
So the athlete does the workoutand the first piece of the
feedback loop is the data thatcomes through the smartwatch or
whatever they're using toactually log it.
The second piece of theinformation that starts this
feedback loop are their comments.
(17:56):
The third piece of it are thecomments from the practitioner.
And everybody is queuing off ofall of those to do one of two
things keep the training thesame or change it, and what you
change it to has endless kind oflike variations of it.
But that's really what you'redoing.
You're looking at all of thatfeedback and sometimes there's a
little bit of back and forthand then you decide if the plan
(18:19):
that you had had from this is Iplan shorter with the teams than
I do without the teams, andit's because I'm going to cue
off of the feedback a little bitmore and potentially change
(18:42):
things.
I've always I've said for yearsthat as my career has gone on,
I've learned that I forecastless.
So I started out and I thoughtI could build six weeks of
training out and it would all goperfectly.
And then I was like, okay, it'sgoing to be five weeks.
Okay it's going to be fourweeks and okay it's going to be
three weeks or two weeks orwhatever, and it probably kind
of drives my athletes crazy thatI don't plan.
We have a long range plan, butthe specifics of you're going to
(19:03):
do this run on Tuesday, I mightnot get more than two or three
weeks ahead of the game and it'sa shorter.
It's kind of a shorter leashfor the teams as opposed to the
regular athletes because of thisconstant feedback thing.
Every once in a while we'll putanchor points in, like these
are the long run anchor points.
It's important from a nutritionperspective, but it's also
(19:27):
important for, like a strength,the loading perspective and
things like that.
But the specifics like I'vejust learned that this feedback
loop is just so powerful and youcan be so reactive to it that
my planning cycle is much, much,much shorter.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
It's funny you say that, because originally, when
we started doing this, I wouldplan four to six weeks and then
like wait for you to fill in andthen adjust, but like it just
wasn't working.
Yeah, you almost have to seethe comments and the data and
plan two weeks at a time.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
You can only do that if you have the roadmap, because
you can't make everything up,otherwise you end up backing
yourself into corners and peoplemake training mistakes on this
all the time.
You have to create some anchorpoints around the season big,
huge volume blocks that you wantto do a training camp and
things like that and then youkind of aim the training around
(20:11):
there volume blocks that youwant to do a training camp and
things like that and then youkind of aim the training around
there.
But this whole theme of havingI had a individual on the
podcast just a few weeks agothat has actually coined a term
for it.
It's called micro periodizationand basically it's just taking
more of the individual'sindividual data to determine
what's going to happen goingforward or what the plan looks
like.
(20:32):
Then some sort of overarching.
I want to do an 80-20 thing, orI want to do strength to
weaknesses, or I want to do highvolume to low volume, or I want
to have a pyramid.
I want to do base first andthen threshold and then VO2 max,
like all the collegiate runnersdo, and things like that.
So it's becoming more, I think,applicable because we've got
(20:52):
access to it.
So I'm going to turn it over toyou, steph.
So you and I have worked ascoach-athlete for a while and we
brought you into these teams, Ithink, to give you a little bit
of a carrot to work off of.
(21:12):
I want you to describe how mucheffort it takes to get this
right at this level, because Ithink that really goes
underappreciated when we'retrying to develop nutrition
plans for athletes and wedefault to okay, you need to
take in 300 calories an hour.
Some range, whatever it is 300calories an hour.
It's much more than that.
So if you can describe like theenormity of the problem that
you're trying to solve in fiveor three minutes, we'd all be
much appreciated.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
I'll do my best.
Yeah, nutrition is a little bitdifferent than the other
components, because you eat andthink about eating hundreds of
times a day, right?
So it's not just one thing thatwe're trying to plan around.
It's like what does thisathlete need in terms of the
season that they're in, thatfits in with their personal or
ethical considerations, theirbackground just so many
(21:53):
different variables.
And then we're also workingwith their fueling piece, which
is totally different than theirday to day eating, and they're
both equally important.
And so I'm thinking about a lotof different things.
When I work with an athlete, I'mthinking about not only what
are their energy needs, what aretheir macronutrient
distributions, what does thatlook like in terms of food?
Not just numbers, because wecan't just say eat 300 calories,
(22:16):
because it matters what thatcomes from, right.
And then in terms of fueling,that's something that there's
many different products to try.
There's many differentstrategies with fueling and you
really have to be trial anderror with it.
You start with the science, butthen you have to dial it in,
and so for me, I'm doing more ofjust sitting back and reading
(22:38):
Training Peak, so reading thecomments, just kind of reacting
to how the athlete says they'refeeling, and I have most of them
put their feeling that theytake in during their long runs
in Training Peak.
So we have kind of a match ofthe data of how the run went,
how the athlete was, few, anycomments that they put and then
what they actually took in.
So we use that as kind of a wayto like track it over time.
(23:02):
And then I do read the comments,because I'm really good at
picking up on when someone islow energy or they're just not
fueling day to day correctly.
You can tell in some of theircomments, and when they happen a
few days in a row, that for meis a flag of like okay, I need
to check in with this athleteand see are you eating enough?
What's been going on?
And so it's very different thanthe coaching side of things,
(23:24):
because I coach as well and I'vesaid this before on this
podcast.
But nutrition is a scienceapplied as an art.
So it's just like there's somuch.
We could talk about this for anhour, but I'm trying to keep it
.
We'll keep it simple for you,here We'll keep it short.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
One of your comments dovetails into something that I
want to talk about.
That's been a huge advantagethat I didn't fully appreciate
or realize until we all startedworking together with this, and
that is is we have more eyes onthe athlete and through that
collective set of eyes that weall have, we all pick up on
(24:00):
things that I would not havepicked up on if I am just
working on them.
There have been so many timeswhere Sarah's brought something
to my attention through aconversation that you had that I
that was unbeknownst to me,about strength training or
whatever that got relayed I wasgoing to say up the chain, but
it's not like I'm up the chainfrom anybody.
It got relayed to me, right,relay to me, and then I made
(24:22):
some running training programadjustment that I would not have
made, or it's even a psychologything, right, it's some sort of
we kind of we can't, we're kindof downplaying that part of it.
It's actually a critical part.
We've got a number of sportspsychologists that we're now
kind of like drawing from inthese teams.
But there are things that cometo light because you have
(24:43):
several eyes on the same personthrough different lenses and we
are all in constantcommunication, whether it's a
group communication or whetherit's like some sort of like back
channel that we do likeindividually and that all helps
the athlete.
And sometimes they don't evenknow that a conversation that
they had with Stephanie, somepiece of that got relayed up to
(25:04):
me and then I do somethingdifferently, or I reinforce
something from a psychologicalstandpoint, or we get in touch
with their sports psych peopleor whatever.
That's really the power,because sometimes in these like
isolated situations you gettunnel vision.
Like you guys know, I'm lookingat strength training people too
Like sometimes you guys getlike super tunnel vision, like
okay, I got to make sure I getthis programming right and so
(25:26):
like backing out and I think theteam really helps that like
backing out process and makingsure that we're like focused on
all components of the athlete.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
And I think it's such a oh sorry, steph.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
I was going to say for the athlete, it's really
nice when something isn't goinggreat.
They have like multiple peoplechecking in with them and they
feel really supported.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
I was just going to say they were all caring about
them deeply and we're allinvested, and so to have
multiple people checking on themand interpreting kind of what
we're seeing on training peaks,and, like Coop said, we all
maybe are seeing it from adifferent lens and so we're
meeting the needs of ourathletes without even realizing
we're doing it in a differentway, but we're all able to kind
of contribute in that way as wesupport them.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Well, and sometimes with the athletes, what has
happened is the athletes feelmore comfortable communicating
certain things with one person,for whatever reason.
Everybody has differentpersonality and stuff like that,
and I just know I'm not goingto reveal everything, but I know
you guys' personalities aredifferent than mine and the
(26:26):
athletes that I yeah, no shit, Iknow, I do know and I this is
one thing I appreciate with allthese teams is we've let that
flourish, because if there'ssomething that is just easier
not that they wouldn'tcommunicate it, but it's just
easier in the context of it orthe texture of the conversation
is much better because of thatpersonality match or the
(26:49):
difference in personality orwhatever.
To your point, sarah, we justserve our athletes better
because inevitably in theseteams and this is a good and a
bad part, by the way, and we'regoing to talk about the bad
parts in a little bit One of theadvantages of these teams is
you come with practitioners thathave different personalities
and that's good in the sensethat you need to have different
(27:11):
ways to communicate anddifferent ways to gather
feedback, as we were talkingabout earlier.
It can be bad because sometimesthose personalities clash and
we're all kind of like sittingon our high horses right now,
like thinking about how goodthese are, but we should bring
up like how they can go awry.
I've got the king and queen pinof it all, so I'm going to save
that for the end, unlesssomebody else brings it up.
(27:34):
But you now have been involvedin this for a while and anybody
can jump in here.
It is challenging at times,right.
I mean it's not all trainingand sports.
I mean we just witnessed themen's field kind of get
demolished at UTMB.
They don't always go perfectlyin training, for this stuff
doesn't always go perfectly aswell.
So if anybody has any like justa really quick example of why
(27:57):
it goes awry, just so everybodycan kind of learn from it, jump
in before I come in with likethe apex one.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
I think the obvious one is we are all coaches as
well, right?
So we see programming from youwhich we may agree or disagree
with.
I mean, I don't take that asnegative for me I'm, it's a
learning experience but thatgives a certain bias, right, and
I'm like, oh well, I wonder whyhe had him still do that.
Maybe I should ask, I don'tknow.
So that that is one way that itcould go awry.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Always ask, always ask, by the way, always ask
Noted.
I would say I'll say one once.
One, one piece of it is Istarted with you all because I
work with you and I've workedwith you for a long time and I
trust all of you immensely.
I just mentioned I don't checksarah's work, I don't check
stephanie's work, I don't checknicole's work, and that's just
(28:47):
because I trust you.
Sure, I look at it, but I'm notlike checking it for errors,
like a spelling test or an essayor something like that.
Like I trust the work that youguys, I trust the work product
that you put out.
We're going to have to bring onpeople that are that, gradually
, are further and furtheroutside of our network, and
that's already happening.
Because we have athletes thatare in this program, that have a
(29:09):
nutritionist that they'veworked with for years, that they
love Great, keep them.
We'll figure out how to foldthem in, we'll figure out how to
fold them into the mix.
But that, in addition to justbuilding capacity, is it takes a
long time because you need tomake sure it's ultimately my
recommendation that that kind ofcomes down the pipeline and
I'll describe how the whole teamgets set up in the outro.
(29:31):
You guys don't need to be kindof involved in that.
But my point with this, withthat is and Stephanie was
mentioning, as you start to, asyou start to widen that sphere
out Stephanie's sentiment of, oh, I wonder why Coop is doing
this I just trust him comes froma long period of working
together.
When you bring somebody else inthat has that exact same
sentiment, then it's like hey,are you?
(29:53):
They talk to the athlete, hey,are you sure that you should be
doing this?
Or whatever it is.
And that is a really commonpiece of feedback amongst these
high performance teams that haveall these individuals is
everybody thinks they're agenius about everything or they
think that they're smart abouteverything and they start to
like drift out of their lane, soto speak.
I don't drift out of my lanewith nutrition and strength
(30:13):
training because I know I don'tknow shit.
Okay, so the apex one sincey'all are being quiet about this
the apex one is notrelinquishing control, and I've
seen this play out inprofessional sports and the
league sports.
I can't tell you how many timeswhen we come in and we try to
provide like the endurance orthe physiology side of it,
(30:36):
inevitably what happens is thestrength training coach has to
give up a little bit of theircontrol or their coach over here
has to give up a little bit ofcontrol.
And when they can't do that andstart to meddle with what's
going on with the domain experts, it doesn't fall across.
It doesn't fall or doesn't fallinto pieces from a programming
side, because the programmingalways gets done, but it falls
(30:58):
to pieces because the athleteloses confidence in the
prescription.
And this is where it becomesreally tragic, because one of
the biggest advantages of theseteams is, if you do it right,
the athlete has the utmostconfidence in every single thing
that they're doing.
They have the most confidencein their nutrition.
They have the most confidencein their run training.
(31:19):
They have the most confidencein their equipment.
They have the most confidencein whatever expert you're
bringing in.
If they're able to silo off andgive their best professional
opinion, they don't have tosecond guess it.
They can just go out and dotheir work as an athlete or
whatever.
But when they're getting thekind of the stinky eye from the
other practitioners or whatever,it actually has the opposite
(31:40):
effect and that is not easy toavoid.
Like that is a really extremelycommon problem, because to
coach at this level in anycapacity, whether it's the
single sport, or whether it'sthe nutrition capacity or
strength training capacity, isexceedingly rare because you
have to be good enough to do it,and that is not everybody.
(32:03):
We can't go.
I mean, you guys have been ingyms all the time.
We always have theseconversations about these gym
knuckleheads that have no idea.
You can't get any gymknucklehead to coach a
professional athlete.
You can't get any nutritionistto work with a professional
athlete.
They get't get any nutritionistto work with a professional
athlete.
They get in those positionsvery deliberately and because of
that strong, that typicallystrong-willed personality of
(32:24):
those practitioners they tend to.
We don't we haven't yet wedon't drift into other people's
lanes and that can be kind ofthe demise of everything is my
only point.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
Well, to that point, coop, I think when you're a
professional in your area, yourealize, like, how small your
scope is.
The more you learn, the less,and I think all of us being
professionals in our respectiveareas, I know how to strength
train.
I would not program strengthtraining Like I have the utmost
respect for these two and likesame with coaching I coach, but
(32:56):
like the athlete best.
And I think when you have ateam, like finding the right
professional who theirpersonalities match right, and
then also that they are really aprofessional in their field,
because there are lots of peoplewho do nutrition but they're
not going to maybe do it thesame as me, and some of that is
fine.
There's differences, but youwant someone who is really good
(33:21):
at their craft.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
They're good at that craft and I'll go back to the
original piece of it they havethe time and the bandwidth to
actually do it.
So this is like a totallyfictitious example.
So I've been very transparentabout this through my entire
coaching career and I think thatthis is a.
I do think that this is animportant point with any service
provider.
I work with 40 athletes at anyone point in time.
(33:43):
Maybe it's 38, maybe it's 41,but it's certainly not 20 and
it's not 200 or even 50.
It's right around 40.
And the reason for that is Ican deliver the coaching, the
run, training and that amount oftime for that amount of people.
Once I start to drift into thenutrition thing and the strength
stuff and even the sports psychthing, it starts to chew away.
(34:05):
At the time that it starts tochew away at the time that's
actually available for all ofthat.
So it's a double win.
Not only do you get a morespecific provider for it, you
also have the time and thecapacity to like actually care
for it, because you're sometimesStephanie, your job takes
longer than mine does.
(34:26):
Probably all of the time Likeseriously like for me to program
stuff and give feedback andanalyze the files and things
like that.
I know what that takes.
Your stuff takes like much,much more time.
So I guess my point is like notonly can you not do it all
technically right from anexpertise standpoint, you can't
do it all from a bandwidthstandpoint, like it's just like
not or at least me for mypractice.
(34:48):
And even if I brought myselfdown to 10 athletes, I still
wouldn't be able to do it asgood as y'all do be able to do
it as good as y'all do.
All right, we're going to wrapit up there.
So on the outro of this, unlessNicole has something smart ass
to say, which you always do, youwon't.
Okay, no smart ass comments.
So on the outro of this, whatI'm going to describe is how an
athlete comes into the system.
I'm going to kind of peel backthe curtain on the whole thing,
(35:16):
how we build these teams andstuff like that.
I didn't go through that wholedeal.
Everybody kind of know what itis.
But before I sign off and dothat cause, we're all going to
go have dinner and maybe a fewdrinks and sleep.
Sarah's really tired.
I'm going to do one more day.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
We'll sleep when we're dead.
We'll sleep when we're deadChamonix.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Before I'll do this, I just want to say thank you all
From me and the athletes thatyou work with.
This is not the only conclusionof the season, but it's kind of
like a big one and I'll dofantastic jobs with your
athletes.
They don't always wineverything.
That's never going to happen,but I'm really thankful for you
guys as colleagues and for youguys to step into this kind of
(35:56):
not knowing how it's going tolike, how it's going to pan out,
even not only on the athleteside, but also on the contract
side of stuff, as we've beenworking through stuff.
I just really appreciate youguys as professionals.
You're the best and it's anhonor to call you guys
colleagues.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
Thanks, Coop.
It's an honor to be on a teamwith people like this.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Yeah, likewise no-transcript.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
I kept it tight, like I was, just like I want to work
with these people.
I'm going to start here andthen we'll go from there.
It's going to happen the moreyou expand it out.
But I had the expectation thatwould be relatively low friction
not this low friction,relatively low friction.
But anyway, thank you all.
You're going to do an awesomewith your athletes and we're
(37:20):
going to do even more of thisand it's going Woohoo dot com.
Forward slash coaching, forward,slash, high dash, performance
dash program.
A link will be in the shownotes as well, as you can
navigate to it just from ourhome page.
All anybody has to do to signup is to fill out the very
simple questionnaire at thebottom that details a little bit
about what you're looking forand maybe some of the people
(37:42):
that you have behind you already.
That form goes directly to me.
I look at it, I then interviewthe candidate and I determine
what the best solution for themis.
A couple of things to note.
First off, one of theprinciples from the onset of
developing this program is Iwanted to make sure that we had
the capacity to build uniqueteams around each individual.
(38:06):
What that means is whensomebody comes in, they are
going to get a team that is notonly customized to them in terms
of what they're training for,what their personality is and
how they match up with differentmembers of our teams, but also
a team that they can kind ofcall their own.
And the reason that I wanted todo this is I realized that a
(38:26):
lot of the people signing up forthis program are going to be
competing against each other andthey want some sort of
advantage, some sort of alpha,and they might not want to share
the exact same members of allof the other people that they
are competing against, becausethere's no uniqueness in that.
That's the first principle.
The second principle that Ireally wanted to convey when
(38:49):
we're forming these teams isthat you can come to the table
with existing service providers.
If we have an athlete thatcomes to us that already has a
crack nutritionist that they'reworking with, I am not one to
upset the apple cart, and whatwe would rather do is integrate
that person with the team aslong as they're already working
well together and build morepeople around them.
(39:12):
All of these teams are managedby me personally.
They will be managed by mepersonally.
I'm going to have myfingerprint on them.
They will receive an individualCTS coach and individual
practitioners that are wrappedaround them strength training
coaches, sports psychologistsand things like that, depending
upon what they actually need.
(39:34):
I believe that this is thefuture.
There are already athletes thatare doing this on their own
accord.
We're going to see more andmore athletes do this as the
sport becomes more sophisticatedand more professionalized.
Athletes do this as the sportbecomes more sophisticated and
more professionalized, and whatwe're trying to do is to try to
add a system behind it and alsogive athletes the assurances
(39:55):
that the practitioners that theyhave available to them are of
the highest quality.
And, let's face it, that's hardto actually figure out when,
inevitably, what happens whensomebody is looking for a
strength training coach or anutritionist?
They're asking for arecommendation from a friend of
a friend, and while thatoftentimes works, at the end of
the day, the lens that they arelooking through are just that
(40:17):
singular person's, that person'sindividual experience.
Hopefully, what we can offer asprofessional coaches and
professional service providersis the lens of working with many
athletes over many years andtherefore we know who the best
people are in these individualareas.
We have a list on this websitethat I just mentioned, of the
(40:41):
initial set of service providersthat we are using, and I'm
actively seeking for otherservice providers in these areas
to continually expand the teams, because I do expect that we
have an influx of elite athleteskind of come to us and we're
going to have to build the teamaround that accordingly.
But as of right now, this islive.
I'm stoked about it.
(41:01):
I hope the elite athletecommunity takes note.
I hope the brands take note.
I hope other athletes take notebecause this is live.
I'm stoked about it.
I hope the elite athletecommunity takes note.
I hope the brands take note.
I hope other athletes take notebecause this is something that
I'm quite proud of actuallybuilding.
It's already been in, we'vealready deployed it across
several athletes and it's workedvery well.
I think the results speak forthemselves and the proof is in
(41:21):
the pudding.
But mark my words this is justthe beginning and it's something
that I cannot emphasize enough.
I am quite excited about.
So y'all go and check it out.
I appreciate the love and thesupport you guys and also
appreciate the athletes that wehave already folded into this,
into this program.
While we were working it out,you guys took a little bit of a
(41:42):
leap of faith at building a teamaround you.
I know that's a novel conceptfor a lot of people out there
and it can be a little bitintimidating at first, so we
appreciate the heck out of allthe athletes that have initially
participated in this.
All right, folks, that is itfor today and, as always, we
will see you out on the trails.
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