Monitoring for Overtraining Syndrome with Sophie Herzog, PhD | KoopCast #242

Sophie Herzog is the Owner and Co-founder and primary performance analyst at the MRYA
center for athlete development.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Trail and Ultra Runners.
What is going on?
Welcome to another episode ofthe CoopCast.
As always, I am your host,coach Jason Coop, and this
episode of the podcast is abouta phenomenon that tends to pop
up in the headlines every fewyears, and that is overtraining
syndrome, underperformancesyndrome and the whole host of
other descriptive words that weuse to describe when athletes

(00:32):
start underperforming forwhatever reason or reasons.
So on the podcast today, pleasewelcome Sophie Herzog, who is
the owner, co-founder andprimary performance analyst at
the Mira Center for AthleteDevelopment.
At the Mira Center for AthleteDevelopment, at the Mira Center
for Athlete Development, she isresponsible for deploying a host

(00:52):
of specialists to help monitorand counsel athletes that are at
risk or in the throes of underperformance syndrome.
Also on the podcast today, webring on CTS coach Ryan Anderson
to provide his professionalinput on how he helps manage
this process with his athletes.
All right, folks, with thatintro I am getting right out of
the way.
Here's my interview with SophieHerzog all about

(01:15):
underperformance syndrome andhow we can help manage it as
athletes and coaches.
All right, sophie.
Well, welcome to the podcast.
I appreciate you coming on.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
I was thinking about this recording earlier today and
it brought me back to one ofthe very first recordings that I
did with one of my colleaguesand friends, corinne Malcolm, on
overtraining syndrome, and atthe time it was a and this is
still the case.
It was an extremely hot topic inthe ultra marathon world and
you know how the media cyclekind of plays out with these,

(01:52):
with the various buzzwordsovertraining syndrome,
underperformance syndrome,whatever we want to call it, and
we're going to get into some ofthe vocabulary got its foothold
within the community and all ofa sudden everybody has
self-diagnosed or diagnosedothers from afar with

(02:13):
overtraining syndrome.
We're going to talk a littlebit about that.
But I just thought it wasinteresting.
This is like coming almost backfull circle, you know, three
years ago, when I very firststarted the podcast.
We're now kind of talking aboutthe same topic but I think
we're going to put a different,a little bit of a different lens
on it.
But before we get into that, sothe listeners can know you just
a little bit better, why don'tyou give everybody just a
background of who you are andhow you got into sport?

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, yeah, it's really interesting what you're
saying in terms of the topicscoming back.
Oh, yeah, we'll touch on thatlater.
I guess from myself.
So my background is not anendurance sport, so I come from
a football or soccer for theAmerican listeners background.
I played football and here inSwitzerland for Basel football

(02:56):
club with the guys from earlyage and super into it like, yeah
, cooking in the academy and wasthe first girl there and I
think quite ambitious, quite puta lot of pressure on myself and
, yeah, developed an eatingdisorder when I was like 14 and,

(03:17):
yeah, shot myself in the footwith that and sort of.
That was the first rather largeexperience with
underperformance, I would say.
But and it carried on for along time.
I think I was probably atdifferent forms of eating
disorders and disordered eatingfor a period of about 10 years

(03:38):
before I before, whilst I wasactually then stopping to play
football and starting withtriathlon which, unfortunately,
I must admit, also had to dowith work, it was definitely my
thoughts that this is a sportwhere you expend lots of energy,
which, yeah, so it was notsolely the decision oh yeah,

(03:58):
this is fun, so let's try that.
I was basically thinking this issomething I can be good at and
I can also expend lots of energy.
So, yeah, with that I was alsodoing a master's and then a PhD
at ETH Zurich in biophysics,also not directly related to to
sports science, and, as you canimagine, like doing a PhD and

(04:21):
trying to do or trying to train20 plus hours a week is not
directly or necessarily a recipefor disaster, but there's
definitely some time and energyconstraints involved.
So you know that again tiesback to other experiences or
renewed experiences with on theperformance, and that's, yeah,

(04:43):
why this topic has such a big,had such a big impact in my life
.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
I would say yeah, speaking of the PhD and athlete
management, I've now have hadthree elite ultra runners who
I've been coaching throughouttheir elite career and have gone
through this being a PhDstudent while being an elite
athlete to finishing their PhDand being a lead athlete, and I
can tell you firsthand there's amarket difference and there

(05:12):
definitely tends to be an apexright around when that thesis is
going to be defended, where thestressors is otherwise
specified.
The non-training stressors thatwe'll get into a little bit
tend to have a very abrupt peak,and it's not one that happens
on one single day.
There's usually a timeframethat's associated with it, and I

(05:33):
have both.
I will say that both I've doneit pretty well and I've also
kind of screwed it up a littlebit in terms of trying to load,
manage everything that's goingon with those two different
roles that those athletes play.
So what I'm trying to say isyour plight is something that
coaches feel as well.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, and it's also like, even if you're on the
other side, as an athlete or asa student I think it's not
always easy to put or to analyzewhere you actually at.
You know sometimes you copebetter than you know.
Naturally, like, if you look ateverything objectively, you
think like you should be reallystruggling but for some reason,

(06:09):
like you're thriving, which youknow.
Maybe that's already a warningsign, Because then, yeah, you
know like you might be strivingstill, but there is a big fall
coming.
Or you know you should bestriving as you should be really
flying, because basically youhave less loads than before,
like, for example, after you youfinish your phd, but sometimes

(06:32):
that you know that loss andpressure is a bit like after a
big race.
You know like you feel empty orlike that something that has
been a target for so long is notthere anymore.
It's also not super easy tohandle.
So it's a very complex thing,as is on the performance, as
we'll probably speak about, oras is performance as well.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
Right, and we're going to spend the majority of
the time talking aboutovertraining and
underperformance syndrome, butthere's one kind of like last
piece of table set that I wantto make sure gets communicated
to the listeners, and that's thework that you've done with Mira
.
So can you explain to theaudience first off what it is
and then specifically how youfunction within that
organization?

Speaker 2 (07:12):
Yeah, so thanks for letting me do that in the first
place and actually maybechronologically, it's easy to
just explain a little bit.
So I did finish my PhD, alittle bit like so I did finish
my PhD and then I ought to havea break and just focus a little
bit on my sports.

(07:32):
And then I actually got theopportunity to work with Olaf
Alexander Buu and the Norwegiantriathletes Christian Blomfeld
and Gustav Ili and also AngieNiener.
So I jumped straight intoanother high performance
environment opportunity and,yeah, like it was maybe even
more fast paced environment thanI had before, like in my own

(07:55):
sort of rhythm, and did that fora few months and then, only
after I stopped working withthem, I had this complete break,
or shutdown, as I said before,and I experienced severe
underperforming and unexplainedas we'll talk about later.
So I didn't know why am I notperforming, because I thought

(08:17):
it's a great opportunity.
Now I just focus on sports fora bit before I orient myself and
find something to work on.
But the body didn't cooperate.
So there, that's where, like,this topic of an experience that
I've had several times in mylife materialized like very
obviously, and that's where Istarted having conversation with

(08:39):
David Stombach, which I thinkyou also had on the podcast
before and, and he was at thetime a professor at the NTNU in
Trondheim but did a sabbaticalin Switzerland, which is where I
live, as he has a Swiss wife,and we had several conversations
about this topic, and he was atthe time leading several

(09:04):
research projects where IrinaTalsnes was involved, doing a
really interesting case studyabout a world-class
cross-country skier, which isone of the scientific frameworks
that we are using now with MIRA, and MIRA was sort of yeah,
that was the original thoughtthat we had.

(09:27):
We want to make the sports worlda better place in terms of we
want to help athletes that don'thave the support network, such
as a B-Trick turn set or theathletes that are at the very
top, but not just in theirunderperforming state, but also
in terms of how can you actuallyprevent it.

(09:50):
What kind of education goesinto preventing situations like
that, not just for the athleteitself, but also maybe for
coaches or development programssuch as sports high schools or
universities, but even forparents.
So just basically providing asupport environment and a sort

(10:11):
of a holistic athlete managementsystem that helps athletes in
their development program.
What athletes would be eligible?

Speaker 1 (10:22):
for this?
Can any athlete out there,recreational athlete, elite
athlete from the US, in theirdevelopment program?
What athletes would be eligiblefor this?
Can any athlete out there,recreational athlete, elite
athlete from the US, from anyother country?
Can they reach out to you forthese resources?

Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yeah, definitely, and actually I think and maybe
we'll come to that later but Ithink not even only athletes are
eligible for it.
I think if you, if you lookinto the corporate world, into
the any kind of high performanceenvironment, the issues or the
constraints that we're havingand the problems that we're

(10:54):
dealing with are very much thesame.
You know it's very much alwaysa question of load management
and kind of that, two oppositeforces.
You know the load and therecovery and in the end you want
to adapt and optimize forperformance instead of breaking

(11:14):
down, and I think that'sdifficult to to get right so
we're going to talk aboutovertraining and or
underperformance in the wholealphabet soup of acronyms that
we've now conjured up todescribe all these different
phenomenons.

Speaker 1 (11:28):
This is going to be a timely podcast release because
it's going to come out in lateApril, early May.
A lot of athletes are staringtheir main events in the face.
It's they're coming up in thenext eight to 12 weeks and
they're going to want to ramptheir training up.
And kind of alongside that,whenever you ramp your training
up, there has to be some sort ofload management component in

(11:50):
the background, because youcan't just add stress if you
don't take it away fromsomewhere else.
And many of the athletes outthere that are listening to this
are going to have a personalreference point with either
doing too much training or doingtoo much too quickly or not
recovering from the trainingthat they applied that they
thought that they could actuallyhandle.
So I use that to.

(12:12):
I use that to kind of likelevel set everybody that you're
going to go through this,because ultra marathon is a
challenging sport just like anyother endurance sport.
We kind of want to maximize thestress that we put on our body,
but we still need to do it in areally safe way.
So, before we start, there'sthis whole range of things that
have been described over theyears in terms of how to.

(12:33):
How do we actually want todescribe either doing too much
or not allowing the proper timeand or effectiveness for the
recovery process to actuallytake place?
I'm going to let you describethe different like flavors of
this and what most people wouldjust call overtraining or
overtraining syndrome.
So you're the expert here.
Describe the different flavorsof this, and why do we need

(12:55):
different flavors of it, or doesit actually matter how we
describe them?

Speaker 2 (12:59):
Yeah, it's like you say it's very confusing and I
think you know science is kindof.
It's like you say it's veryconfusing and I think you know
science is kind of known forhaving multiple terms to
describe the same thing or sortof the same thing.
And I think the termunderperformance or unexplained
underperformance syndrome isbasically it's not a new term,

(13:21):
it's not like a new kid on theblock, I think it's more just a
bit of an umbrella term, whereasother terms are maybe used to
describe prolongedunderperformance, depending on
either the severity, theduration or the cause of the
issues.
You know, like over trainingsort of implies very much that
the causative factor is thetraining itself, whereas I think

(13:45):
in the in it's very rare thattraining alone is the causative
factor, and I think that's alittle bit why I, me personally,
prefer the term on theperformance syndrome and the
addition of the word syndrome, Ithink, kind of explains that
there or it kind of isemphasizes this multifactorial,

(14:09):
these multifactorial causespossibly.
But yeah, in a nutshell, I thinkwhat these terms all have in
common is that they occur andthat that's what makes it so
complicated and difficult toreally put a finger on.
It is that they occur on acontinuum right.
If you, for example, you do arace, then you feel extremely

(14:34):
fatigued at the end.
Hopefully, so that is acutefatigue and that's not
necessarily a bad thing.
However, if you then carry thisfatigue into something chronic,
then the further you moveacross to the right on that
fatigue spectrum towardsfunctional overreaching, which

(14:57):
is something that you can stillrecover relatively quickly from,
with potential beneficialadaptations, you know, for
example, in a hard trainingblock.
But then the sort of the how doyou say like the transition
from this functionaloverreaching to non-functional
overreaching, where you possiblydon't have beneficial

(15:21):
adaptation anymore, to thensomething called overtraining at
least in research definitionsit's.
You know it's a continuum, butthese transitions are very
vaguely defined or not definedat all, and we also don't really
have a proper way of diagnosingsomeone.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
To say like you're now non-sanctually overreached
or you're now over trained isvery hard to do and I think a
lot of the plight with thevocabulary has to do with that
last point.
We're trying to use thevocabulary either over training
and I'm using I'm emphasizingthe word over, intentionally,
the training being too much,versus under recovery, the

(16:07):
recovery not being enough.
We're trying to use thosepieces of vocabulary to help
give us guidelines for how tofix the ailment, because if the
training is truly over and thenyou remove the training, you
should actually get better.
And raising my hand here, thefirst experience I had in this
arena managing this withathletes the dominant vocabulary

(16:31):
that we used was overtrainingsyndrome.
This is back in the early 2000sis starting to, you know, kind
of a kind of a merger, where youstarted to describe it and in
my you know kind of naive, maybenon you know non analytical
brain, I'm what I would think is.
Well, if I had an athlete thatwas truly overtraining and I
started managing that athlete,let's just train less, right,

(16:52):
the training is over and youtrain less than.
While there's a magic fix to itTurns out it's a little bit more
complicated than that, andtrying to figure out what is
over and what is under and howto actually make the course
correction isn't as black andwhite, but you see athletes and
you consult with athletes thatare actually dealing with this.
Despite all the poor vocabularyand these vague transition

(17:13):
points as you describe them, isthere a common theme that runs
between the athletes that you'reworking with, meaning they're
all coming in and these are thethings that they?
These are the things that theyare describing, and here's how
we can get a better fix on howto move forward.
Can you just generally describethat, that process, as you're

(17:34):
managing athletes that are kindof coming in the door seeking
your counsel?

Speaker 2 (17:37):
that's a very good summary that you made there and
I think, yeah, there is a commondenominator and that's like
athletes are not performing.
So that's again like why, Ithink, on the performance is
maybe better suitable or atleast they're not consistently
performing.
I think what is quite common isthat you have quite a stark

(17:59):
variability in performance.
So one day you might feel greatand then the other day you feel
pretty rubbish again, andthat's kind of like a little bit
of an up and down constantly.
Stagnation is another one whichis also not strictly on the
performance, but like you'rejust you're feeling like you're
putting a lot of effort in anddon't see the rewards.

(18:19):
And I think these three thingsso on the performance,
performance variability andperformance stagnation what they
usually cause in athletes isthat athletes do not reduce the
load.
When they see this or experiencethis, they have a tendency to
push harder.
They oftentimes also have atendency to maybe be a bit more

(18:43):
extreme in terms of you knowwhether that's intensity, volume
or actually you, or actuallymanipulating their diets, for
instance, like thinking, okay,maybe I need to lose a few
pounds here, and I think that'softentimes what pushes them
actually in the oppositedirection of that overtraining
or fatigue continuum and withthat.

(19:06):
So now we're talking aboutphysical symptoms and with that.
So now we're talking aboutphysical symptoms.
Obviously there's alsooftentimes and I guess we'll
talk about that later but if youare actually monitoring
subjective factors such asmotivation to train or mood
swings or mood in general orother like completely

(19:29):
non-training related factors,such as stuff like sleep quality
or libido, things like thatthen, which you could say is
psychological or health related,then you see changes there as
well.
But these are more variable.
I would say like the.
If we're speaking aboutathletes, then the performance

(19:52):
related, like on the performance, stagnation and variability are
the most common ones, and theseoften also go in line with, you
know, changes, for instance inin subjective exertion.
So how hard is a certain effort?
If the rate of perceivedexertion all of a sudden feels a

(20:13):
lot higher, then that that'skind of a warning sign as well
okay.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
So if the common denominator is performance
decline and or performancevariability those two components
one of the things athletes aregoing to struggle with is those
are lagging indicators.
You don't know if you're over,over-trained or under-recovered
or whatever vocabulary weultimately ascribe to this.

(20:39):
You don't know that until afterthe fact, right After you've
already made the mistake oryou're starting to make the
mistake.
Right, you've kind of teeteredover the edge, or you're
teetering across the blurredline, right, instead of hard
edges I think that's a betteranalogy Athletes will want to
know, like what can they do tostay out of it?
Stay out of that blurred linein the first place?
Right?
Are there early warning signsto you might be getting closer

(21:02):
to this blurry edge that theycan then kind of step back from
or at least take assessmentsfrom?
And I'll preview the answer, orI'll kind of like preview a
little bit of the dialogue isthere's all sorts of monitoring
that we can put on our athletes.
I have a Garmin Fenix 7, whichisn't even the latest Garmin on
my watch right now.
Every morning it gives me acard and it tells me how awesome

(21:22):
or not awesome I'm going to beevery single day.
And there's an infinite numberof variations of that, whether
they're rooted in a wristwatchor a ring, or subjective
monitoring or performancemonitoring or all of the above.
How can athletes take anassessment of that?
Athletes and coaches taking anassessment of that?
To stay further away from thisblurry line that ultimately the

(21:45):
athletes kind of end up in yourcare after they've stepped over
it, what can they do in advanceto prevent it from happening in
the first place?
Okay, I wanted to sit down withCoach Ryan Anderson to see how
we monitor athletes for earlysigns of underperformance.

Speaker 3 (22:03):
So I think this all comes down to honest and
consistent communication, andthat's texting with the athlete,
regular phone calls and good,consistent feedback via training
peaks and the post activitycomments.
And for some athletes they aresuccinct it's two to three

(22:25):
sentences, and over time Ilearned how to take so much
information out of those two tothree sentences.
Others it's two to threesentences and over time I
learned how to take so muchinformation out of those two to
three sentences.
Others it's two to threeparagraphs and naturally you get
a lot of information out ofthat.
Either way.
I don't care, as long as it'sconsistent, because if there's
not consistency in thatcommunication then I'm

(22:45):
constantly having to guess orfollow up and like okay, can you
tell me a little more aboutthis?
Because for some athletes theymay get in a habit of only
reading feedback when things aregoing well or vice versa, when
things are going bad.
And of course in both of thoseexamples it's only half the
puzzle and when you have thefull picture then you learn
their mood.
You can discern through theirfeedback either way and how

(23:08):
things have been flow.
You can discern through theirfeedback either way and how
things have been flow.
But really consistent, honestcommunication is the foundation
with this, and data comes intoplay as well, whether that's
tracking their performance oninterval workouts, endurance
runs, looking at their heartrate data and using HRV for
training as well.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
HRV for training as well.
Yeah, that's again a veryinteresting one, and I think
that's something that I learned,or where I learned a lot from
the Norwegian culture and Ithink or maybe you could say,
the Scandinavian culture,because I think what is slightly
different there, especiallywhen I compare it to my past as
a football player, where I wasused to just come to practice
and the coach would say this iswhat we do today, and you just

(23:58):
go there and execute and thereis zero ownership or
responsibility of or, yeah, likethe whole program that I'm good
, like what I'm actually doing,whether I should actually push
through today or not.
And obviously I was notinvolved in the training
planning or in the trainingprocess with my football coach,

(24:21):
because the training was notindividualized for me.
But then, even as an enduranceathlete, I came to triathlon and
I thought I would just need tofind the perfect plan and then
execute that plan and everythingwas going to be fine.
And I think what the bestathletes have in common is that

(24:42):
they're very intelligent interms of when do I have to push
through and when do I have toadapt and maybe do less today in
terms of doing more, like inthe long term.
So having that long-termthinking over short term, or
that long-term gains overshort-term gains and obviously

(25:04):
there's a lot that goes intothat.
You know, there's a lot oflearning about yourself and also
I had to learn that you cannotdevelop that in just one year or
in in half a year.
It takes a while to really getin tune with your body and be
honest with yourself, and Ithink that's obviously where a
coach can be extremely helpful,like a coach that checks in

(25:27):
regularly, even obviouslybeneficially, sees you and can
actually see whether you know,if you say yeah, I'm fine,
whether that coincides with yourbody language, with your facial
expression.
You know small indicators thatcould potentially tell something
about the state of the athlete.

(25:47):
And then, like you said, ofcourse there's nowadays we can
track all sorts of differentthings.
I mean, monitoring is becomingeverything, but I think it's
very much about finding thatbalance between those things
that are packed, you know andeven there you have to be
careful, you know, is anovernight heart rate or an

(26:10):
overnight hrv?
Is that actually telling thefull story?
What is the difference between,maybe, overnight measures and a
morning measure?
I think marco altini does agood job in terms of educating
when to do, when to use what andwhat are the nuances that are
provided by those metrics.
And I think the athlete has tohave an interest and an

(26:32):
education, so to speak, in termsof learning how to interpret
those signals.
And sometimes you have tooverturn signals, that's for
sure.
You know in a race you're notgoing to stop just because it
feels hard, but you have tolearn when you know, for example
, example, a pain is not goodanymore.
So this, these monitoring things, I think they include a variety

(26:57):
of different factors and that'salso something that we at
muller we have a sort of aholistic assessment that we do,
which is actually available forfree on our website.
So this includes just it's aquestionnaire about a variety of
different things.
So we have five categories.
It's questions about training,health, recovery, environment

(27:19):
and nutrition, and that'ssomething that you can repeat on
a regular basis, let's sayevery.
It depends a bit on your state,like if you're in an
underperforming state and you doit more frequently, let's say
every three to four weeks, buteven if you are in a good state,
then we generally recommendthat you do a submaximal test,

(27:43):
whether that's on a, like astandard loop, or on a treadmill
with an incline, or astationary bike or whatever.
It just has to be relativelystandardized.
You do that every four to sixweeks, and then you could also
fill that questionnaire, andthat usually provides you with
quite quite a good insurancesystem.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
So to speak, so I'm hearing kind of two two.
Two themes emerged to thisquestion of how do we help keep
athletes outside of this blurryrange of stepping into over
training or under performance.
The first component that youmentioned is actually quite
interesting.
It's this aspect ofindividualization go, it goes

(28:26):
back to coaching 101.
And I can speak from mypersonal experience.
I've probably consulted withmaybe up to 30 athletes that are
in some form of overtrainingand underperformance, whether I
got them there or another coachgot them there, or however they
got there.
They come from many kind ofdifferent angles, but one of the

(28:47):
common undercurrents amongstall those athletes that I can
rack my memory right now andremember right off of the bat is
that they had a trainingprogram that was not tailored to
them specifically.
It was either a static trainingprogram, it was either a program
that was copy pasted fromanother athlete, it was a

(29:11):
program that hadn't beenindividualized to the feedback
that they were actually givingthe coach.
There's a whole different waysthat you can unindividualize or
not individualize a trainingprogram.
It's not necessarily volume,right, which is kind of the
fallacy that we run into a lot.
You just train a lot and thenyou're automatically going to be
overtrained.
The theme, one of the themesthat are one of the more common
undercurrents that I think thatyou're trying to allude to here,

(29:32):
is just to have a programthat's individualized to you,
individualized to your strengthsand weaknesses, how much volume
you've done in the past, howsuccessful that volume has been,
the frequency of the trainingthat you're doing, the frequency
of the intensity that you'redoing.
Are you doing two workouts perweek, three workouts per week?

(29:57):
All of those you know that mayloo of workout care
characteristics that has beensuccessful in the past can be a
really great blueprint,blueprint for future.
And then the second thing thatyou're mentioning is this
monitoring component, and I'mgoing to leave a link in the
show notes to I've had Marcosince you mentioned him by name,
I've had him on my podcasttwice to discuss this, very,
this very aspect.
And you're absolutely correct.
He does a brilliant job ofexplaining all the different
nuances and applicability of notonly a heart rate variability,

(30:21):
which is kind of his bread andbutter, but a lot of the other
monitors and wearables out there, but some component of
monitoring that, when Iinternalize it it helps
reinforce the individualizationpiece.
None of those things are perfectand they can't stand alone.
We're not going to get perfectred, yellow, green stoplight
systems, like we all kind ofwant to tell us if athletes are

(30:43):
ready to train or not ready totrain, or whether they should go
hard or go easy.
But we can do things that canhelp us, that can help the
subjective side of things,either confirm or deny or give
us a better direction on whereto actually take an athlete.
Those are the two things thatI'm kind of like hearing from
you that if athletes are rampingup their training, be mindful

(31:05):
of what's worked for you and howmuch you've done in the past.
Not that you shouldn't exceedit, but just be mindful of it,
like kind of like look at yourprevious training and has it
been successful or not.
And the second thing is justhave some sort of feedback loop
whether that's a wearable thatyou use or a constellation of
wearables, or subjectivefeedback or, hopefully, all of
the above have something inplace that serves as a little

(31:26):
bit of a check and balance tomake sure that the pathway that
you're actually taking is goingto be one that is continually
sustainable for you yeah, I canagree more.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
I think the word sustainability is also one that
actually we emphasize a lot.
I think again, that long-termthinking, in terms of what you
can actually just like, italways depends, like if you have
six weeks and you know aftersix weeks you're never gonna,
you're never gonna put a foot ina running shoe anymore, then
maybe it's a different story,even though probably you still

(31:58):
don't want to risk all your bone, your bones and your joints and
all that.
But it's a different story.
But if you want to optimize fora very long time frame, I think
sustainability has to be anaspect to consider and I think
it should also be a talkingpoint in whoever you're working
with.
If you work with a coach, thensustainability, especially

(32:20):
within your context of living,like whether you're working or
whether you're studying orwhether you're a professional
athlete is definitely somethingthat has to be considered into
creating a plan, and we are verymuch of the opinion that the
athlete has a prominent role inthat planning.
You know, maybe not in thespecific session prescription,

(32:43):
but definitely in the, you know,the adaptation of the plan or
the adjustment of the plan,because he can be the best coach
in the world, but not even hisor her training plan will be
perfect, because he has to adaptit based on what's happening
around.
And yeah, that's where I thinkcommunication is really key and

(33:07):
that doesn't come natural toevery athlete.
And I think that's maybe alsofrom a coaching perspective,
where sometimes you have tofigure out a little bit.
You know, how can you bringyour athlete to communicate with
you, or maybe it's just not.
You know, chemistry is notthere, and then maybe it's also
better if the athlete works withsomeone else, or maybe works in

(33:30):
a group where the coach seesthe athlete every day.
I think, for me at least,communication is definitely
something that is crucial foreverything know himself or

(33:51):
herself better in terms ofcommunication, or communicating
to the coach, or to the partneror to the whoever whoever is
involved in in this athleteenvironment.

Speaker 1 (34:00):
Okay, I wanted to check in with coach Ryan again
to discuss further this balancebetween objective feedback and
subjective feedback and how wecan use the interplay between
both of those to help monitorathletes.
Ryan, what do you have to sayabout this topic?

Speaker 3 (34:14):
So I hit on earlier about the importance of a
consistent, honest communication.
That's the foundation of all ofthis.
But we also have data trainingpeaks, interval workouts, hours,
their normalized grade pacetrending throughout a block.
And HRV is another onespecifically using the HRV for
training, because it's beentalked about on this podcast

(34:37):
quite a bit that it's the mostvalid measure as opposed to the
Garmin reading overnight or theCoros or whatever.
But there's always caveats withdata and I'll give two examples
here.
So last year I wanted toleverage HRV data more.
I got the HRV for trainingcoach account.
I was encouraging my athletesto get the app do the

(34:58):
measurements in the morning,making sure they had the correct
information on how to do thosemeasurements correctly.
And specifically I wanted touse it with my high volume
athletes because naturally theycan be closer to the edge of
being cooked a little too much.
It's important to monitor whenthey need the recovery and I
wanted it for the historicaldata so I could look back and

(35:20):
find the patterns of hey, theyresponded really well to this
load of training.
This was a period of too manyinterval workouts that the
numbers weren't looking greatwith their HRV.
So athlete, a high volumeathlete loves to exercise,
enthusiastic about all things,he's checking his HRV.
Everything's like green Greenscore is good and consistent for

(35:41):
a while.
And four, six weeks later,after we start this, I come to
learn he's been rechecking hisHRV until he gets the green
score, so he gets the scoreevery morning.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
It's gamifying the monitoring process.

Speaker 3 (35:58):
Exactly, exactly.
I have to hit the green so Ican do those 20-hour weeks.
Coaches put on the trainingplan Because if I get a yellow
he's going to text me, he'sgoing to take something away,
and we can't have that.
So naturally that throws allthat out of the window.
And then another athlete theywere getting anxious upon their
measurements in the morningbecause, same thing, they didn't

(36:19):
want to get a yellow or a red.
That would then kind of triggerthe stoplight system that we
had of.
If you get a yellow, text me andlet's just see how everything's
going, okay, you're doing abunch of interval workouts not
surprising.
You had to stay up late lastnight with the kids not
surprising.
Okay, we're getting two yellows.

(36:40):
Let's investigate further andlikely alter training.
If we get a red, full stop.
Likely there are some recoverydays in there.
Whatever, this athlete alsoloves exercising, has big goals.
They don't want to see theirtraining changed.
And they were getting veryanxious upon the measurements in
the morning.
Of course that's going to throwoff the readings.

(37:02):
And so, with these two examplesit just reminded me of what is
the core of my coachingphilosophy that communication is
so, so important.
I wasn't throwing that out withthese athletes.
I was just thinking it would beanother fail safe.

Speaker 1 (37:18):
And back to that point earlier of hey, this is
more historical data to see howthey're best responding and not
responding to training, but withthese two athletes it was also
a good reminder of don't justlike implement these things as
specifically, like measuring thedata and forget the
communication piece, or likehaving oversight if, like,

(37:41):
you're getting good, reliabledata or not yeah, our coaches
will say our coach, our coachinggroup at cts will say that
we're not only coaching athleteswith the physical prescription
that we're actually giving themgo out and go run two hours on
wednesday and do a five hourlong run on saturday or whatever

(38:02):
that physical prescription isbut we're also coaching them on
how to be coached, andespecially for newer athletes,
who this is and this is the casewith a lot of athletes that we
see come in the doors is theirfirst foray into coaching.
They kind of don't know whatthey don't know right.
They don't know how valuablethe feedback is.
They don't know how valuablethe data is.
They don't know how valuablejust saying, man, I was really

(38:25):
clumsy in the first twokilometers of the run, or
something like that.
They don't know how valuableeverything felt Great, those
three words, right, everythingfelt great, or today was a good
day, those simple pieces offeedback.
They don't realize, like, howvaluable that is when it's
stacked up over periods of timeand that feedback becomes kind

(38:45):
of kind of becomes consistent.
But all of this I still comeback to and view it through the
lens of a.
It is a way to individualizethe training for a specific
purpose.
We have these general conceptsof we can only increase volume
to so much and by such a degreeor whatever.

(39:06):
However, whatever philosophyyou actually want to use, the
overriding theme across all ofthat is looking at a individual,
sophie Coop, whoever you know,whoever we're actually working
with what do they actually need?
How do they need to be, how dothey need to communicate on a
two-way street, what volumewe're applying, where intensity
we're applying, and things likethat, and that's not easy.

(39:28):
I want to, kind of, I want toget back to sub.
I want to get back to thesustainability piece and flip
that on its head a little bit,since this podcast is timely.
We're getting into the meat andpotatoes of the training season.
One of the things that athletesare going to want to do is
undertake a training camp, whichis inherently an unsustainable
component of training.
They're going to go out,they're going to do some sort of

(39:50):
race recon.
Some elite athletes will go doan altitude camp or a team camp
or something like that andintensify their training in some
way.
They either intensify it bydoing more volume over a
concentrated period of time.
They either intensify it bydoing a higher frequency of
workouts, harder workouts.
There's a number of differentways that you can slice and dice

(40:11):
it.
The whole point of it is thesetraining camps kind of offer
like an isolated environment, soto speak.
Remove them from theirday-to-day environment and they
can increase what they wouldnormally be able to do, and the
hope is the hope is that willreap a superior adaptation as
compared to the sustainabletraining that they do.
You know that they do week toweek and I'm wondering what your
perspective on that particularcomponent is, because many times

(40:34):
, once again, if we talk aboutan overreaching or overtraining
or underperforming athlete,you're seeing that you're part
of that mixture of training thatthey're doing is how are these
training camps constructed?
So do you have any guidepostsor guidelines for athletes that
are undertaking these potentialtraining camp opportunities in
terms of what's tight, howshould they actually go about

(40:56):
designing them?
What things should they takeinto consideration when doing so
?

Speaker 2 (41:00):
yeah, I think it's a.
It's an interesting and acomplex question because I think
it depends very much on theathletes.
It depends whether you're anelite athlete, you know where
maybe a training camp isn't thatmuch of a jump in terms of
volume, compared to when an agegroup or an amateur athlete goes
for a weekend away even, or aweek away, where the jump in

(41:24):
training might be significantlymore.
And also the trainingenvironment, you know.
For an amateur, maybe theydon't have to work, maybe they
don't have their family around,whereas for an elite athlete,
maybe you know, their trainingenvironment is sort of optimized
to a degree where even whenthey stay at home it's
relatively the same, whereasthey can focus on their training

(41:48):
entirely.
So I think that obviously thecontext is important.
And then I think training campslike or, yeah, like with
training in general, I think Ithink steven styler said that
research we put it recently thattraining is a an optimization
challenge and not a maximizationchallenge.

(42:09):
I think that goes for trainingcamps as well.
So it's not about trying tocram in as much training as
possible in those whatever daysyou have available, but actually
trying to optimize something interms of an ultra context.
Maybe you want to simulate yourrace over a three-day period or

(42:39):
for an Ironman athlete, maybeyou want to do the Ironman
distance over a two-day or athree-day period, which is very
specific.
So you're trying to optimizesomething, but you're not
necessarily trying to maximizefor something, and I think that
obviously speaks to specificity.
It doesn't necessarily speaksto speak to how we're going to

(43:01):
adapt to that then as well,which is the other important
piece for you know, optimizingversus maximizing, because the
end goal obviously is adaptation, and I think that's where sort
of the holy grail.
We still don't have it.
You know we don't have thetraining metric that we have to
follow in terms of having aguarantee that we're going to

(43:23):
perfectly adapt to the trainingthat we're doing, and therefore
it's also very difficult tosometimes fear the load or
manage the load effectively foroptimizing whatever goal we're
setting.
So I think, from a practicalperspective, what I think is
always a good advice is that youshouldn't be needing another

(43:46):
holiday after you're finishingyour training camp.
But it's fine if you're tired,you know, it's fine to need a, a
few days easy.
I think getting out of yourcomfort zone is a good thing.
It's even better if you cancombine a training camp with
actually having fun and having agood time around people.

(44:08):
But yeah, there's this, there'sa few, and I'm sure I'm not the
first one that says that youknow, certain things in training
camps are obviously notbeneficial, which is, you know,
trying to lose weight at thesame time, or trying to, you
know, go hard every single day,or combine it with excessive

(44:29):
alcohol consumption in theevening or going partying every
single day.
I don't think that's that's athing within your community.
So I don't think I have tonecessarily emphasize that here.

Speaker 1 (44:40):
So the way that I frame it up and athletes always
want to do this because theywant to, in their mind, to use
your vocabulary they want tomaximize something and what
they're trying to maximize istheir time out on feet but the
way that I'm internalizing it isjust the way that I think that
you want other athletes andother coaches to internalize it,
as we're trying to optimize andwe might be trying to optimize

(45:02):
for the audit, the endadaptation that we're trying to,
that we're trying to achieve I.
The framework that I like touse when setting these this up
is, if you're going to increaseyour work output by X, let's
just say that's two hours a day,right, and that would be a
double for a lot of athletes.

(45:22):
Most athletes aren't trainingtwo hours, or most normal
athletes aren't training twohours a day.
Well, let's say we wanted todecrease it by two hours a day.
You also need two hours a dayto not train, an additional two
hours a day to not train.
So not only are you allocatingan extra two hours a day for the
actual training componentyou're at, you're allocating an
additional time of one X on topof that to just not do anything.

(45:43):
So be prepared to doublewhatever the increase in
training actually is throughoutthe day in order to get the
benefits from it, because youalso have to rest more, and
that's where this all kind oflike comes down to it.
I can always ask an athlete to,instead of waking up at five in
the morning, wake up at threein the morning to get an extra
two hours, but that's not goingto benefit them nearly as much

(46:07):
as having the extra two hours oftime availability to go and
train and then have another twohours of availability on top of
that to not do anything and justrest and absorb and absorb the
training.
So I think like the first thingwhen we start to design these
training camps for athletes isstart to think about the whole

(46:28):
picture of time and where all ofthat time is getting allocated.
Am I traveling?
Am I having to do a transportfrom A to B in order to do like
a point to point or recon orsomething like that?
The training activity is goingto take X, and then I'm also
allocating some amount of timefor nothing like block it off in

(46:49):
your calendar few work thingsas possible, if any of those
decompress as much as possible.
I do think that, like when wetalk about, in terms of reducing
the risk for a training camp,to be part of the over or under
negative part of the equation,baking in the recovery side of

(47:09):
it, is an intentional part of it, is a big part of it all
because a lot of times we canfind the time availability, but
what we fail to do is to findthe time availability on the
recovery side.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
Yeah, a hundred percent.
I think that's also somethingthat maybe people do not always
appreciate that actually eliteathletes spend a lot of time
more, a lot of their time thatthey have available more on the
recovery.
You know they take naps everysingle day, which I think is a
huge performance enhancer.
And also, you know, oftentimestheir logistics are optimized.

(47:43):
You know oftentimes they livein a place where they don't have
to travel that many minutes orhours to a pool, for instance,
or to a place where they canactually do their hill reps or
their long runs on the trailsand all that kind of stuff.
But for some, obviously andthat's also like if you take
triathletes that's why they goto resorts where they have the

(48:05):
pool and the gym and the trackin one place, and that can
sometimes be extremelybeneficial simply because you
spend or you save that timegoing from one infrastructure to
the other or from one place tothe other.
Another factor I think that Ihaven't mentioned before is
obviously nutrition.

(48:25):
I think if you do increase thetraining load, it's always a
very good idea to be on top ofnutrition, rather taking too
much than too little.
It's a great time and place aswell to experiment with your
rice nutrition, where hopefullyyou'll fuel enough as well, and

(48:46):
also like don't spare theprotein with.
Don't spare with the protein,because I think, in terms of
adaptation, that's where youknow.
Example, having a protein shakebefore going to bed can
sometimes be extremelybeneficial, simply because our
output is so much higher as weneed it for recovery.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
Okay, I wanted to check in with Coach Ryan one
final time to talk about how webuild in extra recovery for high
volume athletes or for athleteswho are increasing their whole
training load.

Speaker 3 (49:18):
Earlier in this podcast, or perhaps after this
little snippet, you or the guestmentions this concept of if I'm
going to add two hours oftraining above their mean, I've
got to.
I would like them to have twohours of nothing.
Air quotes on the other side ofthat and that's just a logical
way of looking at it, of if Iincrease load to absorb that

(49:41):
load, get the most benefit fromit, I've got to have a balance
of recovery on the other side.
So how do we get to this?
To find that right load goesback to that principle of
communication and feedback.
Look through their historicaldata in terms of when they hit
this level of volume.
They kind of crashed and burnedwhen we were doing three

(50:04):
interval workouts in the courseof 10 days.
It was too much.
We're trying to use the datathat way and then couple that
with their subjective feedbackas well.
And how I approach this withathletes if let's call it
moderate stress, in whichthey're not necessarily
time-consuming their work stress, their life stress is not

(50:26):
excessive Typically a four-dayrecovery block will do the trick
.
One rest day, three recoveryruns, 45, 60 minutes.
That's pretty straightforward.
Everybody gets that.
I don't care if we're doing 15hours a week, eight hours a week
, that's standard.
Nine times out of 10 worksreally well.
If I'm going to categorize ahigh-stressed athlete, they're
time crunched.
It's the scenario of like I'vegot to plan my schedule down to

(50:50):
the minute to fit in my run andthen go pick up the kids from
practice and everything Withthose.
They're already so close to theedge.
I just give them a full weekrecovery block.
I throw in two rest days inthere, three recovery runs that
45, 60 minute duration and acouple of endurance runs because
they're already so close to theedge of being overstressed.

(51:13):
Again, going back to thatprinciple of we're going to have
nothing on the other side ofthat.
But yeah, those are two basicways I approach the recovery and
the whole theme of this episodeconsistent, honest
communication.
Whether you're self-coached oryou are coached, I think that's
an important thing to hit on.
The self-coach athlete canstill do this, whether it's

(51:35):
leaving comments that areprivate to themselves and Strava
, you can do that.
If you have a training peaksaccount, you can leave your
feedback in there and, again, ifit's consistent, you can go out
and tease when you're thrivingand when oopsies, I crashed and
burn, I need to like, felt likeI needed two weeks off.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
A hundred percent.
So I want to leave thelisteners with a little bit of a
summary of some of themonitoring that you were talking
about earlier.
I'm going to link up in theshow notes a blog that, that
that you recently wrote withsome of the previous podcast
guests that now I'm looking atthe author list here, so the
previous podcast guests thatI've had on here and it's and

(52:16):
the title of it is an athlete'scareer insurance.
I love that title, by the way.
Implementary implementing ofmonitoring tools to prevent
underperformance in sport andinsurance is the best way to put
it, because you can'tcompletely prevent it, but you
want to put systems in place tomitigate the risk as much as
possible.
And that's what and that's whatan insurance policy you know is

(52:37):
ultimately like set up to do isto try to mitigate, is to try
to like mitigate things that arethat could actually kind of go
awry.
You have this five prongedapproach of monitoring tools and
in order in an order of thechart that's in the, that's in
the blog.
It's training diarypsychological or sorry
physiological tests, restingit's in the blog.

(52:58):
It's training diarypsychological or sorry.
Physiological tests, resting.
Heart rate and heart ratevariability.
Psychological questionnaire andmedical health controls.
We're not going to be able togo through every single one of
those components.
That would take, you know, five, five podcasts.
But I'm wondering if you cankind of leave the listeners with
a workflow, so to speak, of howto actually use that in
practice from a day-to-dayperspective, week-to-week
perspective, and when they wouldsee things that would cause

(53:20):
them to titrate their workoutsup, and then the opposite, when
they should, when they startseeing things that should, that
could cause their workouts totitrate down, and the things
that they should be taking intoconsideration as they're
actually using some of thesemonitoring tools yeah, I, I
think, maybe as a first comment,it depends obviously a bit how
much time you want to invest inall that.

Speaker 2 (53:42):
It might be that if you're not a professional
athlete, you're only trackingyour heart rate, for example,
and then you have one barometerthat you're going to track and
that's fine as well.
Then you have to be reallymindful, for example, to your
heart rate and your rpe, andsometimes actually can be
beneficial to focus on lessparameters more, but in the end

(54:08):
it's you know we are bigproponents of just having a
selected or a handful ofparameters that you track on a
regular basis, and whether thathappens in an Excel sheet or in
training peaks or in a journal,it doesn't really matter.
Obviously it depends a bitwhether you self-coach or you

(54:30):
work with a coach, because ifyou work with a coach, then I
think a digital training diaryis obviously a good way to as a
conversation starter, right,especially if you add comments.
We would always recommend toadd comments.
Like you said before, evensomething very short can be a
good feedback for the coach.

(54:51):
Just everything is fine.
So you know like you, you knowthere's no problem, I think, for
elite athletes or also if anathlete is struggling.
I think very frequent check-insare extremely valuable, you know
, just not just for a recovery,from a recovery perspective, but

(55:11):
just simply if you're not well.
I think it makes you feel goodif I ask how you are every
single day, or maybe not.
How are you?
Just like in a standardized way, but like, how are you today,
you know, is it a little bitbetter than yesterday?
I think it makes a difference.
And so these are thingsdeviating slightly from, let's

(55:32):
say, those five components.
But I think the training diaryis really maybe the most
important tool that you have,and then it depends very much on
how much time do you want toallocate to it.
How many variables are youactually tracking?
I think it is a very good ideato include subjective factors

(55:54):
such as motivation, moods, maybethings that you're not directly
relating to training but canoften tell a lot about where
you're at.
You know, I think maybe yourpartner or your spouse is also a
good reference point for that.
Just, you know someone thatholds up the mirror.

(56:15):
If you're not reflective enoughto judge whether you're in a
good mood or how has have I beenmore irritable?
How have I been sleeping?
All these kind of things,libido and, like I said before,
I think these are things thatactually tell us a lot, even
though there's sometimes notmaybe not so comfortable to to
really dig in.

(56:36):
Resting hard, rent and hrv Ithink are great tools just to
track, let's say passively, andalso for a coach maybe, like if
you see changes there, it'salways a good thing to have it.
You know, if you see somesomething is completely out the
norm for a longer time periods,I think one-off readings are not
normally a reason for concern,but if it's something that is

(57:00):
changing for a longer timeperiod, it's something that
could indicate certain things.
But context is always king,right, I think.
For example, now we haveallergy season, so this could
have an impact on HIV for sure.
If you're a woman, I mean in lluteal phase, usually your
resting heart rate is justhigher, your hrv is lower, your

(57:20):
sleep score is lower.
It's just something that youhave to know and you can add
context and then it's usuallyless of a concern.
Again, like I said, if you're acoach, then having an eye on
that and rather ask once morethan once less is usually
beneficial.
But also from an athleteperspective, giving more

(57:43):
information is usually betterthan giving less information.
Yeah.
And then psychologicalquestionnaires is something that
if you really feel susceptibleto like a lot of changes or in
your mood state, then that'ssomething that you can add.
It's not something that isnecessary, from my perspective,

(58:03):
to do, like for anyone, foreveryone.
Yeah.
And medical checks I thinkthat's just something that is
sensible to do once a year ordepending on, like, when you go
to, before you go to altitude.
I think it's definitelysensible to check your iron
status, for example.
Just make sure that you'rehealthy on a regular basis is

(58:23):
usually a smart idea.

Speaker 1 (58:26):
Out of all of these, though, is it fair to say that
the training log, or thetraining diary, is the hero
component of it, because youstarted out with that and then
kind of breeze through the restof them, but either because it's
a more consistent measure, orwhether it kind of like it can
like alchemize both theperformance side of it as well
as the subjective component ofit.

(58:48):
Do you feel that, if athletesare to focus on anything, is
that where you would steerpeople towards?

Speaker 2 (58:54):
yeah, without a doubt yeah, and that's what I haven't
mentioned, sorry, like Ihaven't mentioned the testing,
like I have mentioned it before.
I think it's something that weusually do on a regular basis,
like every four to six weeks,and I think most athletes have
some sort of standardizedsession in their program where,

(59:16):
like you can see a little bitlike how you're developing.
And again, that's not like a,it's not a competition, you know
, it's not I'm gonna have to winthis session.
It's not a pass fail, it's moreof like a little bit where
you're at.
And if you do that over a longperiod of time especially like
taking cross-country skiersagain as an example like they

(59:39):
have different periods in theyear.
Like you know, summer isusually preparation phase, so
you do a test when you startyour training.
So you know, maybe you have 10years of data where every single
year you test in the beginningof june and you can also see the
long-term development.
And then also, maybe you'repanicking because you feel so

(01:00:01):
unfit, but actually, if you cancompare it to 10 years of data,
you can add a bit of context.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):
Exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
You can see like, look, actually I was even more
unfit three years ago, but thenI had a great season.
So I think it just gives you alittle bit more confidence in
what you're actually doing andobviously it's also very helpful
for planning the trainingprocess and managing the
training process as a coach.

Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head on why the
training diary or the workoutlog can really be the hero is
because you have more datapoints.
You have data points everysingle day and then, if you want
to take just the criticalworkouts, you've got two to
three data points a week.
And if you're consistentlyevaluating those, week after
week, month after month, yearafter year not to say you don't

(01:00:51):
like physiological thephysiological testing loses,
it's, starts to lose its costbenefit analysis the more you
analyze the training, becausethe training just kind of gives
you the best snapshot of whereyou're at, because it's so
consistent.
The physiological test,although you know it gets more
accurate standardized test,whatever it is, it's still a

(01:01:13):
snapshot of one single moment intime during that one particular
day.
And so for the athletes outthere, if you wanted to boil
down this whole you know podcastinto something like really
simple keep track of yourtraining and evaluate your
training on a day to day basis.
You don't have to get assophisticated as looking at all
the artificial intelligence thatcomes out of the data or

(01:01:34):
anything like that Just what didyou do, how much of it and how
did you feel?
It really doesn't get any morecomplicated than that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
Yeah, exactly, couldn't agree more.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
Well, sophie, this has been great.
Will you, before we go, willyou let the athletes know a
little bit more about like,where they can find more about
you, more about mirror, moreabout the work that you guys are
doing?

Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
Yeah, about you, more about mirror, more about the
work that you guys are doing.
Yeah, so our, I think you willadd the website.
So I think usually it's best tojust visit the website.
We have, I think, quite someinteresting articles there.
They're all for youreducational purposes, so they're
for free.
We are also on social mediaplatform Instagram, linkedin and

(01:02:17):
X and yeah, so you can fill theif you're dealing with or if
you don't know what are your ofrisk of underperformance.
So it's a risk assessment, it'snot a diagnosis.
We have an assessment of yourrisk of underperformance on our
website which you can also fillin for free, and if you fill

(01:02:40):
that, then it is up to youwhether you want the
consultation with us.
We also work with organizationsand teams.
So if you're part of anorganization or part of a team
or a federation which isinterested to prevent
underperformance, or even ifyou're part of a team or a
federation which is interestedto prevent underperformance, or
even if you're part of acorporate organization and you

(01:03:02):
think actually you know thingslike we haven't talked about
allostatic loads, but if you'reaffected by burnout or
underperforming employees, youknow just like work-life balance
is geared towards the overloadside, then I think that's also

(01:03:22):
something where we can help withimplementing systems that can
recognize or prevent ideallyprevent that in the first place.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
That's excellent.
I will have links to all thatin the show notes.
So thank you for your time and,more importantly, thank you for
the work that you do withathletes.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
Thank you very much, Jason.

Speaker 1 (01:03:41):
All right, folks, there you have it.
There you go.
Much thanks to Sophie and coachRyan for coming on the podcast
today and helping us try tounderstand this sometimes
mysterious aspect ofunderperformance syndrome,
overtraining syndrome,overtraining, whatever you want
to call it.
It's been known by those names,as well as many more, over the

(01:04:02):
course of my coaching career,and it's something that we are
always constantly keeping tabson as coaches and as athletes,
and, as we discussed during thepodcast, there are a number of
both communication as well astechnological tools that we have
used to try to get a fix onthis problem, and what I have
found throughout the course ofmy coaching career is there is

(01:04:22):
no one silver bullet.
You have to really alchemizeall of those to make correct
decisions on how much trainingload is enough, where you might
be actually stepping over theline, and then course corrective
measures to use when you thinkyou have actually stepped over
that line.
All right, folks, as always,this podcast is brought to you
without any advertisers orsponsors in any way, shape or

(01:04:45):
form.
There's no discount codes oranything like that you'll ever
hear on.
This podcast is something thatI'm very proud of and something
that I have been insistent onever since the inception of this
podcast.
So if you want to help supportthis podcast, all you have to do
is go to my website,jasoncoopcom, and subscribe to
Research Essentials for UltraRunning.

(01:05:07):
We take scientific topics likethe one that we talked about
today and we break them downinto much greater detail.
We've had a lot of coaches andhigh-level athletes be
subscribers of that content andthey all absolutely love it.
I get a lot out of producingthat content each and every
single month with mycontributors and co-authors,
professor Nick Tiller, phd andStephanie Howe, phd, where we

(01:05:31):
break down the latest scienceand research as it relates to
ultra running.
All this starts at the measlyprice of $9.99 a month.
It's pretty darn goodinvestment for high quality
content.
You'll go check that out.
The links to that are in theshow notes.
And that is it for today, folks.
We're going to come back nextweek with another killer episode

(01:05:53):
, but until then, I will see youall out on the trails.