EP. 59: AI and The Future of Training and Coaching w/Dirk Friel

A conversation with Dirk Friel. He is a co-founder and Chief Evangelist of TrainingPeaks, a web-based training and coaching software company. He holds a bachelor’s from Colorado State University and a former professional cyclist. Dirk hosts the TrainingPeaks CoachCast, an endurance sports podcast highlighting the value of excellent coaching and effective training. He and the guests explore topics ranging from advancements in the science of endurance training to inspirational racing moments and successful coach-athlete relationships.  

We talk about Dirk’s origin story in cycling and the also with the launch of TrainingPeaks as well as the vision behind it.  

We talk about artificial intelligence and how it may impact the training and coaching business. Dirk gives his perspective on how TrainingPeaks will keep up with AI and competitor use of AI.  

We discuss optimal training and recovery principles given the increase competitive landscape in triathlon, cycling and marathon training.  

Finally, we discuss the wearable technology evolution and who might emerge victorious from the wearable technology war and why.  

Dirk Friel Instagram https://instagram.com/dirkfriel  

Dirk Friel Bio https://www.trainingpeaks.com/partners/dirk-friel/  

CoachCast https://www.trainingpeaks.com/podcasts/  

TrainingPeaks https://www.trainingpeaks.com/    

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The intersection of endurance, sport, health, fitness, and life, challenging
conventional ideas and empowering people with the science of self
propelled motion. This is the Endurance Experience podcast hosted by
Tony Ridge.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Welcome to the Endurance Experience Podcast. This is Tony Rich.
I am binging all of the Olympic results over the
last few days. There are some amazing stories that have
come out of the Olympics and some controversial ones as well.

(00:43):
I hope to try to over the next week week
and a half try to get someone to come on
to talk about some of the highlights from the Olympics
and just sort of do a post Olympic review. More

(01:04):
to come on that in the coming days. My guest
today on this podcast is Dirk Friel. You might know
that name. He is one of the co founders of
the training and nutrition software training Peaks. It's the software
that many of US coaches utilize to train athletes. Olympic

(01:31):
coaches toward de France coaches and many industry professionals use
it to train and coach athletes. And you might know
him from his famous father, Joe Freele, author of several books,
including The Cyclist, Training Bible and the one that really

(01:54):
set the foundation for me to go into coaching the triathletes.
Training Bible took me into new direction with the science
of self propelled motion. In twenty twenty three, Escape Collective
named Dirk one of the top fifty influential people in

(02:15):
American Cycling. Dirk also hosts the Training Peaks podcast coach Cast,
an excellent endurance sports podcast where he highlights the value
of coaching training as well as exploring topics with guests.
I highly recommend it. I'll put the link in the

(02:37):
show notes. I wanted this podcast to appeal to first
and foremost coaches. So if you're a coach who trains
and coaches athlete and otherwise interested in the technical and
personal approach of coaching, you're going to like this podcast.

(02:58):
But also the athlete that's on the other side of
the coaching process, you'll get something out of this podcast too.
And so we talk about Derek's origin story and his
emergence into the world of cycling, and the origin of

(03:23):
training Peaks and all the work that he and his father,
Joe Friel did to get Training Peaks off of the
ground and launch training Peaks into orbit with all of
the increased awareness of AI today. We spend a healthy

(03:45):
part of the conversation talking about AI, and I get
Dirk's opinion about AI, how training peaks will keep pace
with AI and competitors using AI, given that there's such
a heighten awareness on AI taking jobs. I get Dirk's

(04:08):
perspective on the prospect that AI might take or completely
eliminate the need for a coach. That was an interesting exchange. Additionally,
we go into how the technology has and will continue
to refactor the entire coaching business. We get into the

(04:31):
training part of the discussion and I get Dirk's perspective
on training and key pillars that he adheres to with
training and coaching athletes aerobic versus intensity. We talk a
little about periodization, base, build, peak, tutor, bomb or framework.

(04:54):
We go into some of the common cognitive errors that
athletes often met with their training as well as their
recovery process, and many other topics were related to training.
And then finally we will end and talk about wearable
technology and I get his perspective on who's gonna win

(05:17):
the wearrible wearable technology war and other topics. So, without
further delay, I will give you Dirk Friel. I am
on with Dirk Friel. Thanks for coming on to the podcast.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
Yeah, absolutely, Tony, thanks for inviting me on. It should
be fun.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
Yeah, I've known of Derk for a long time and
of course his dad, the famous Joe Freel, and he
was you know, probably sometime in the late nineties early
two thousands where I found the Triathletes Training Bible, a

(06:08):
famous book by Joe Fril, and that book just took
me into new direction. And so I'm what twenty years
since starting endurance sports. I started coaching in twenty eleven,
and it was your dad's book that really was one
of the things that took me into new direction. It

(06:30):
was pretty incredible. It was like discovery of training science
and what I call the science of self propelled motion. Yeah,
and then and then you and your dad co found
training Peaks, and so there's a lot of things that

(06:51):
I want to talk to you about today for our listeners.
I want to talk about training Peaks in your background
and your origin story, the evolution of training Peaks over
the years. And you know, for someone who doesn't know
what training peaks is, it's the the ultimate of training
and nutrition software. So I want to get your your

(07:14):
understanding of how it evolved over the years. And then
I want to talk about AI. Everyone's talking about AI
and how training peaks is going to.

Speaker 3 (07:26):
Factor in.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
Modalities of AI, uh and you know, maintaining pace with
the competitive landscape and AI. And then I want to
talk some some training uh, get some training questions in there,
and then talk about things things like wearable tech and
where you think wearable tech is going. So let's start

(07:51):
with your origin story. If you can describe to our
listeners your your origin and your background and where that
has it led you today.

Speaker 3 (08:04):
Yeah. Well, it literally goes back to when I was
twelve years old or even before. I mean literally it
was just our family DNA of growing up in northern
Colorado and living around in durance sports. My dad was
a track and field coach. He ended up leaving, you know,
high school teaching and bought a running store. So now

(08:28):
we had a running store selling shoes to runners and marathoners.
We had all kinds of great talented national class athletes
that worked for my father and just debated scientific training
methods within the store. And we're talking nineteen eighties. And
then my dad eventually bought a bike shop and made

(08:50):
it one, and it was ahead of its time and failed,
but it was the first trathlon store, I believe in
the United States and Fort Collins, Colorado. It was called
Foot of the Rockies, and literally, like I just grew
up in that environment. So I was a runner primarily,
I guess you might say in middle school, you know
as much as you are a runner in middle school.

(09:13):
But then this new sport of trathlon was coming along.
I thought I might dabbling that, but once I started training,
I just realized I just love the bike, like it's
all about the bike. And there was a bike race
coming up in the fall in in my town, and
so I, just like full bore, started training for this
criterion and I got last place, but I was in

(09:34):
love from age twelve on till this day. I've bike
done a bike, you know, I raced bikes for all
those decades since, and it never left just my passion
for the sport, primarily cycling. So then along the way,
obviously my father starts writing books, writing for Bella News

(09:56):
and many many other magazines, and he did developed this book,
and at the same time, I literally dropped out of
school when I was nineteen dropped out of college and
I got a one way ticket to Belgium, and I
just wanted to try and make it as a pro
in Europe. So I was in Europe for five years.
I did three years amateur in two years pro. I

(10:19):
came back at the end of the nineteen ninety four
season and finished out my pro cycling career. I retired
in two thousand and two. So the remaining part of
my career is back in the States, still still traveling internationally.
And in ninety seven I started coaching with my father.
He was already pretty well established coach by this time.

(10:42):
He had sold his retail stores and he was coaching
full time, and he was maybe one of three full
time coaches in the United States. If you take out
all the collegiate coaches that you know, coach cross country, running,
track and field, et cetera, you know, a for profit
coaching business just did not exist, you know, for tra

(11:04):
athletes and runners. And yeah, he was one of the first.
So yeah, I started coaching with him in ninety seven
in the family business. And then I quickly realized how
inefficient it was. We were quite literally relying on the
fax machine and email attachments and we would send schedules
out either via paper via a fax machine or email attachment,

(11:29):
you know, the spreadsheet, and then hopefully coming back Sunday
night in the home office is a pile of paper
under the fax machine with all the training journals from
that previous week, and you'd have to siphon through it
or you would get, you know, quite a few emails
every single day with everything from a dot HRM file

(11:53):
for polar to a dot CSV file from a power tap,
to a dot SRM file from an SRM and other
file formats, and you'd have to open up all these
different desktop software applications to open and render and analyze,
and it was so ineffinisient. And here we are now

(12:14):
going into the year in nineteen ninety nine, and I
was like, hey, Dad, there's this thing called the Internet.
This kind of really maybe streamline our family business and
not only make our jobs as coaches easier, more efficient,
but the quality of service that we could deliver to
our athletes would exponentially go up. And it did, like overnight.

(12:37):
Athletes loved it. We loved it as coaches, so we
we spent you know, along came actually, you know, I
got married and best man of my wedding and an
ex teammate was a Gear Fisher, and he had a
day job. He was a web developer, and he's the
only web developer I knew in the entire world. And

(12:57):
so I had this idea, you know, creating what became
Training Peaks. Neither my father and I really knew how
to like wire that up. We weren't the technologists, and
so luckily I had Gear, and I pitched it to
him and we worked late, late nights, you know, starting
in ninety nine, and we went live in two thousand.
So that's really the origin story. And one cool little

(13:21):
story behind that is he was living up near Vale, Colorado,
and Gear's real name is George Fisher. George Arthur Fisher
kind of condensed it into Gear, George Arthur into Gear.
And there's a bar that still exists up in Veil
called the George, and Gear's name is George, and my

(13:41):
father's actual real name is George. So we had a
beer in the George and I pitched him on this
concept and he said yes. So that bar still exists
and still does, and Training Peaks still exists. So that's
our origin story. That's interesting. I never knew gear Fisher
was your best man. Yeah, yeah, and so we started this,

(14:03):
uh I guess dot com in right as the dot
com was busting. But we didn't have a business plan,
we didn't have an investor, we didn't have we didn't
accrue any debt, you know, we call it bootstrapping or
sweat equity, if you will. And that's literally how it

(14:24):
got going.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
Right And then did you have subject matter experts? It
was how did how did people like uh Hunter Allen
and uh Andy Cock and how were they involved?

Speaker 3 (14:38):
Yeah? Well, as the power meters started to penetrate the
market in the cycling market, really US based masters athletes
really took to it. And many of these masters athletes
were you know, had a scientific background, so Andy Cogan,
you know. Hence, but there were these forums and a
lot of great ideas were formulated through these kind of

(15:00):
think tanks, if you will. At the time this is
maybe you know, this is around the year two thousand
and four timeframe when this kind of started getting kicked off.
And it was funny because it was a very opposite
of Europe. You know, many of the European World Tour
Tour front cycling teams, you know, had or had SRMs,

(15:22):
but they really weren't leveraging them. They were just like
status symbols, but really getting to know the numbers, how
to apply them and creating new metrics that really originated
really by and far from US based masters athletes on forums,
and so we were obviously part of those forums, and

(15:44):
we commercialized those ideas and brought them to the masses,
if you will, through Training Peaks. Outside of that, obviously,
our primary customer base are our coaches, and so when
you think about subject matter experts, you know, it's really
the void to the customer, you know, both our coaches
and athletes, but we're really about helping motivated individuals prepare

(16:09):
for events through structured training. We believe in deliberate practice.
You know, you get set a goal, get expert instruction,
have focused practice, and get immediate feedback. And that's both
at a daily immediate basis, but you know, weekly, monthly
MESO cycle, year over year. You know, preparing for the

(16:29):
Olympics is a long process. So that's really at the
heart of Training Peaks is a deliberate practice and helping
people prepare for events that are you know, get on
the calendar in the future, so it's not about who
did you beat today, but who are you going to
beat in the future. How are you going to be?

Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah, and you know, like I mentioned, when I first
discovered it, and then I've discovered the Triathlete Training Bible,
I said, wow, it really focused me. Was like in
the matrix when you know at the end of the matrix,
when Neil realizes he can see in the matrix.

Speaker 3 (17:06):
That's what it was like. It was.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
It was I realized, oh, you know, swimming, cycling, running,
getting faster is really you know, stems from the same
scientific principles or similar scientific principles. And then and then
training peaks just you know, it put a system to it,
and all those files that you have on your computer

(17:32):
and everything like that, those were you know, no longer
necessary or substantially less necessary. It was actually a system
and the calendar and a dashboard that rolled it all up.
So let's talk there about how it evolved over over

(17:52):
the years. I mean, I can remember some of the
earlier iterations which are now foggier in my mind, but yeah,
how did they evolve and how did you get that input?
You talked a little bit about the the crowdsourcing approach.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
How did they evolve? Yeah, well, obviously crowdsourcing is a
main major part of it. You know, getting voice of
customer from the coaches and athletes helps in large part,
you know, define the roadmap going forward, but certainly the
you know, as a founder, you know, it's it's always

(18:32):
frustrating because no matter what, you always see a product
that's three or five years out, you know in your head,
you know, and you can't like develop fast enough. That's
always kind of the joy in it as well, because
it still feels like a startup because there's endless it's
ever evolving, it's never ever ever over. It's technology. Like

(18:55):
you can't say it's an there's an endgame, you know,
just like athletes, there's there can be an endgame. But
yet you evolve as an athlete through your entire life
cycle and hopefully you end up as a master's athlete,
very healthy and having the rich history behind you and
you still have goals ahead of you. And that's the
same thing with us, Like we may be twenty five

(19:17):
years old now, but in no way are we settling
for where we're at. There's so much more to do
and it's really fun and exciting this technology again, like
it feels like it creates more and more opportunities every year.
But that's that's good. It's like, there's so there are
so many opportunities that there's no way that we're going

(19:40):
to pursue them. All right, we have to like know
who we are, and it's you know, you there's hard
lessons along the way. You have to learn when to
say no, and you say no a lot more than
you say yes. In terms of opportunities. We've never taken
an ad dollar in our entire history. You know, we've
been a hey for SaaS service application from day one,

(20:03):
but we've had many people wanting to advertise through us.
But we knew if we took an ad dollar from Adidas,
then if your coaching group is sponsored by Nike, that
would kind of piss you off, right, So we yeah,
So there's some fundamentals along the way that help us
decide when to say yes, but we say no a
lot more than yes and just try and focus in.

(20:24):
There's a lot that's developed on the coach side that
the athlete never sees, and so if it makes the
coach more efficient in the end, it helps the athlete.
So certainly, you know, being able to plan by groups.
I mean you're talking in the last decade, but you know,
being able to If you have a group of twenty
five female triathletes and they meet every Wednesday at five o'clock,

(20:49):
you can plan those group sessions out. You just click
and drag that session onto Wednesday and it'll add it
to all twenty five. Now, the athlete never sees that,
but the coach loves that feature, right. You know, a
lot of notifications. There are many different coaching service models
which can exist within a coaching business that uses training peaks.

(21:14):
You know, some coaches want, you know, large numbers of
athletes that pay a lower amount per month and they're
more group coaching, and they can do that in training peaks.
Some coaches only sell training plans, you know, they actually
don't do hands on coaching. They sell. They do a
great job of selling training plans. And then on the

(21:36):
other end of the spectrum are we have every single
Tour de Front cycling team in this year's race, they
all manage all of the training through training peaks. You know,
the USA trap on. You know, we have thirty five
national governing bodies that are going to the Olympics here
in Paris, so all the way from the gold medalists
and Tour defront's winners, all the way across the board

(21:58):
to beginners and so on that high touch, high you know,
premium level coaching. You know, coaches can leverage training peaks
as well, and it can be a notification system. So
if you're coaching this this athlete that's paying a higher

(22:18):
dollar amount per month, it's worth giving them a high
level of service. So therefore, when they finish their workout,
you might have as a coach post workout notifications turned on.
You immediately get notification that athlete has completed a workout.
The coach can literally stop what they're doing in the
dentist office and look at the workout on their mobile

(22:39):
device and quickly get back to the athlete with post
workout you know feedback, and that's really valuable. And it's
not just for Olympians or tour referants athletes. There's every
age athlete out there should experience this because it's so
empowering to have that person in your corner and you

(23:01):
can only relate to that one person about today's workout.
Oftentimes you can't relate that dealing with your spouse. Your
spouse may not even know anything about your sport, but
you're you're getting that feedback from your coach. You have
a great conversation about today's workout, you learn a thing
or two from it that can get applied to tomorrow's workout.

(23:23):
So yeah, there's a lot of ins and outs in
terms of managing communication that people don't really see or consider.
You know that we've developed, yeah, for the.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
Coach, the the ability, the capability to develop you know,
the landing pages, custom landing pages. And now I think
later on people started coaches started selling creating landing pages
and doing that, and I said, well, welcome to the game.

(23:55):
Training Peaks has been doing this, providing providing us the
ability to create custom landing pages, uh, custom training programs, publishing.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
Unique, unique ur ls unique yeah. Yeah, and the promotional codes.
You can create promotero codes and distribute distribute those. So
it's sort of like the Shopify, if you will, versus
the Amazon. You know, it's it's more about empowering your
coach brand within your own world and trying to become

(24:33):
more and more seamless. You know, we have more business
solutions to come out with to even become better in
that area. Again, that's never going to end. But yeah,
there's definitely more opportunity on the business side of empowering
coaches to be the shopify the coaching world.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
Right, excellent, So let's talk about you know, AI, and
I'm curious to know what you what you think about? Yeah,
and it's getting a great deal of visibility. And you know,
obviously there are people on all sides of the spectrum

(25:10):
that say it will have varying different degrees of impact
on the fitness, training and coaching landscape. So I'm sure
you've been thinking about this. Your team it's been thinking
about this. How is Training Peaks going to keep up

(25:32):
with the march of AI? And of course, you know,
competitors will will come out with their their versions, So
how is Training Peaks going to keep pace?

Speaker 3 (25:48):
Yeah, obviously it's already out there. It's a it's a
strange time. We're certainly not at a tipping point yet. However,
it might sound like there's somewhat of a bubble, if
you will, going on a lot of hype around it,
but from day one until today, we really look at

(26:11):
what are the best doing, how are they doing it?
And how can we probably bring that to the masses,
but in a very sound, methodical, authentic way. So unfortunately,
the AI talk today, unfortunately it's sort of like a

(26:35):
race to the bottom. So it's like promise the world
for fifteen dollars a month and literally like, you know,
this is the best thing going for fifteen dollars a month,
you don't need a coach. And that is not the case.
I think if you look at again all these athletes
that are going to Paris for the Olympics, they're not

(26:56):
relying on AI to tell them what to do tomorrow.
That's just not there. The Tour de front writers are
not relying on AI to decide what to do tomorrow
to prepare for the Tour de fronts. It's not ready,
it's not there. But having said all that, AI is
here to stay and it's only going to get better. Okay,

(27:16):
let's talk let's put aside all the bad negative stuff
about AI. Let's just talk about you know, the positive stuff.
It's actually going to be a game changer and it
is here to stay and it will affect you know,
endurance athletes and eventually, like all endurance athletes that want

(27:37):
to podium will be leveraging some aspect of AI, right,
But I believe in the Training Peaks world, we're, as
always with every single thing we've done, we kind of
start through the coaches view and so what where can
AI help a coach be faster, make a better decision

(27:58):
in the moment, And so that's where it's going to start.
We're investigating that. But it's not like prime time reay
or anything, but that's certainly where we will start. I
believe right now, by giving an open ended chat bought
two athletes is somewhat disingenuous because by definition, the athlete

(28:23):
doesn't even know the proper question to ask. So if
they start asking the wrong question, they go down the
wrong rabbit hole and they become to some conclusion that
really has nothing to do with like what they're looking
to solve. There's a million different ways to solve the
same problem, right, and each individual is unique. So ideally,

(28:50):
if you have, you know, five athletes training for the
same event, they all weigh the same, they're all the
same age, they're all females, you're still going to train
them differently. In the ideal world, they will be trained
differently for that same event because they come to the
table with a unique set of parameters physiology, mental state, nutrition, sleep, activity,

(29:14):
stress at home, stress at work. Like, that's where we start.
So how do we solve for that solution? And AI
will come in and play a part. It's not ready
right now for that, but it's going to help coaches
for sure in terms of analysis and coming to better
conclusions quicker at the individual level. I also don't believe

(29:38):
in one coaching methodology. Even though my father wrote the
Cyclist Training Bible, Travelets Trained Bible, et cetera. He has
his methodology, but that is not the methodology for all
of our coaches. And you might have thirty thousand plus
different coaching methodologies, all practice within training pukes. So how
is one AI solution going to fit into those different methodologies?

(30:01):
You know, one coach believes in a high fat diet,
one coach believes in a high protein diet, and other
believes in a high carb diet and right, et cetera.
There's so many variations not only just in diet, but
in training and how you adapt the training to the athlete.
And then obviously each athlete has a different profile of recovery,

(30:23):
which AI will come and play a part in. But
right now, you can really get a sense of how
well in athletes recovering through post workout comments, through phone calls,
through through having coffee with them, seeing a zoom conversation
with them, and how they how they look, you know,
and just their mood comes through. And the other part

(30:45):
of it is motivation. You know, there's some level of
motivation you can gain from AI. But if you finish
a workout and your human coach says, hey, great job
at that third interval. You went out way too hard.
Let's that's work on that next week. But hey, great
job on today's workout, Like you're going to get this
inner kind of fuzzy feel that's really good and motivating

(31:09):
to help you improve, versus maybe the very same message
from AI. But you just know it's not human on
the other end, and you can't really have that human
interaction in human contact that's very very different in terms
of it might push the athlete farther on race day
knowing there's an actual human on the other end that's

(31:32):
helping them along in that journey, which is so much
more powerful than an AI bought. Yeah, so I don't
believe human coaching will go away, but I believe AI
will help the human coach do a better job of
coaching an individual.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
Yeah, and it may happen by incremental degrees. I mean, yeah,
oh absolutely, I've seen well, when I first started coaching,
I could started coaching in twenty eleven, and then you know,
even I had a lot of things that I had
personally developed templates, whether they be Excel templates or PowerPoint templates,

(32:12):
things that help me, you know, customize information for athletes.
And then as things got better, the wearable tech got better,
training pigs got better, I realized I needed those templates
less and less.

Speaker 3 (32:31):
Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah, It's funny. There's there's no secret workout,
there's no secret training program. The more you get into
the world of coaching, you realize it's there's more and more.
Like if you train, you know, two hours a day,
it's the other twenty two hours in the day that

(32:53):
almost matter more, you know, And how you structure your life,
the stress around it, how you recover. Do you need
strength training, Do you need to make tweaks to your diet,
do you need even a sports psychologists there's a lot
of anxiety within endurance athletes and so like just tapping

(33:15):
into something that may actually be outside of the day's
workout might actually unleash better results than the actual workout
that's prescribed, right, Yeah, and so yeah, the more you know,
now we're seeing that within training peaks where there's more
of a we're seeing more and more of like teams

(33:38):
that surround the athlete. So certainly that's been done at
the Olympic level for you know, over a decade. But
an athlete can be working with a sports dietician, sports psychologists,
a strength coach. Not every coach that's a trathlon coach
is an expert in strength. So if that's what the

(33:59):
athlete really needs, maybe they should work with a strength coach,
but the head coach in the middle can oversee the
entire holistic program. So we're kind of seeing that where
athletes and training peaks can be shared to other coaches
which have their own areas of expertise and they're working
as a team on behalf of that athlete. And again

(34:20):
that's not just at the Olympic movement, but that's many
many Masters athletes you know are able to take advantage
of that as well, and it just helps them with
their quality of life too.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
You know, yeah, and then of course the best coaches
are going to be the one to add the value,
to add that sort of meta oversight.

Speaker 3 (34:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
And the coaches that can't, those are the ones that
will probably be more likely to be replaced by an AI.
Where you wake up in twenty years from now and
you know, an athlete will be able to say, okay,
and let me go into the AI model that's taken
in all my data from various different sources, my health data,

(35:08):
my actual training data, and you spit out a program
for Boston Marathon or sometimes yeah.

Speaker 3 (35:18):
I believe the younger, newer you are too or sport,
the more a training plan or quote AI can be
a benefit. The longer you're in the sport, the better
you get, the higher your goals, you want to get
out of a rut, you hit a plateau, that's where
the human coach can really make them breakthroughs for you.

Speaker 2 (35:39):
And it affects the coaching business too. I talk to
a number of different coaches now training Peace Coastes, USAT
coaches and people are realizing that they have to work
harder to reap the same coaching fees revenue coaching revenue

(36:01):
that they were able to get previously because there are
so many substitutes out there.

Speaker 3 (36:05):
That's that's the same in every single career path. Ever,
the first plumber didn't have to do a whole lot, right,
you know. I mean, the ANTI just gets up, you know,
higher and higher. But yet technology also creates new career
paths and new like narrow nich niches, you know, to

(36:25):
to define a career with them. But with every new generation,
ANTI gets higher and higher and higher. But we all
want that, you know. Again, the profession of endurance coaching
and trough on cycling, running or as a for profit business,
you know, it's less than twenty years old, Like we're
still very new at this, so you should expect like

(36:50):
it to in a way get harder just because the
competition levels up. It's it's harder to podium in your
age group in any endurance sport today right then it
was twenty years ago. That's just how it works, right,
So that can't be a contentious area. It's just like, hey,

(37:13):
you know, this is how it's growing, and it's just
harder to be an endurance athlete if you have lofty goals.
But you you know, you can streamline things and coach
a lot of athletes with a lot of great AI
tools as well.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
Yeah, let's talk about that and dive into some of
the training discussion. Yeah, so you mentioned you mentioned that
how it's getting very difficult for athletes to compete. I
mean people want to qualify for our seventy point three

(37:52):
Worlds iron Man World Championship, Boston Marathon. I have a
lot of Boston Marathon athletes. Now, if you want to
qualify for the Boston Marathon and your mail, you basically,
and you're in your twenties and thirties, yep, you basically
have to train sub three hour marathon twenty and thirties,

(38:14):
and then the women's time, the women's qualifying times are
just thirty minutes north.

Speaker 3 (38:19):
Of the south of that.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
Yeah, So what are your your core ideas of training
that you you cling to. Yeah, there's there's high higher
intensity versus aerobic. You know, there's indoor versus outdoor, and

(38:40):
there's a lot of indoors vertus and training going on.
Volume is king. People swear by volume is king. So
what are you what are your thoughts?

Speaker 3 (38:52):
Yeah, I don't know. I think of it as a
hierarchy of needs and there's a base level of things
that need to just be taken care of before you
can go to the higher level analysis of application or whoever,
whatever it might be. People are talking about altitude training

(39:14):
and heat training, but if you just have horrible sleep,
like forget it, Like, don't worry about heat training, don't
worry about altitude training, focus on getting good sleep. That's
almost like the number one thing at all. After that
is like consistency. You know, how many days? How many
sessions do you do a week? Is it two? Okay,

(39:37):
make a goal of three or four? You know, Okay,
now you're up to a standard level. Let's say, okay,
well do you still have good sleep? You know? It's
sort of like this ebb and flow back and forth.
And this you start with the base layer of the
hierarchy of needs of like what is fundamental obviously, nutrition, sleep, consistency,

(40:02):
those like where you have to start. If you have
a major hole in any of those, it doesn't matter
what you do above that, right, and then above that
I mentioned sometimes it's the things outside of the workout
that are holding you back more than the actual workout

(40:22):
execution itself. So again that might be nutrition, it might
be stress, work, life, balance, you know that those type
of things. Oftentimes you can figure out that thing. It'll
just unleash a whole new you with no change in

(40:44):
training at all. But you can now have more work
capacity because you only have two drinks of alcohol a
week in that one not ten. Or you have much
better quality sleep consistently. Right again, if we can get
all that in order, that kind of holistic view, then

(41:08):
you start to get into okay, are you tracking the data?
Like if you are just training on feel, day to
day feel with no kind of third party guidance, neutral support,
you know, guidance, you might be missing a big piece.

(41:30):
It might be in your pacing strategy. It might be
in that you do too much intensity. As you said,
volume might be better, right, But I see too many
athletes that are doing the virtual Race series two or
three days a week indoors on whatever app right, and

(41:51):
they artificially create this plateau that they can't break through.
Why they do too much intensity? They don't have a
code that's helping them have perspective on their training intensity distribution.
So to even answer that question, you must track your training.

(42:12):
You much, It's so easy, like it's free in training peaks,
you know, hit stop on your garment soon to whatever
it is Apple Watch, it'll shuttle the training peaks for
free and it'll be there. But then if you get
a consultation with a coach or hire a coach on
an ongoing basis, they now have a rich history of

(42:33):
data and they're going to see something in there that's
really going to help you out. And it might just
be timing, like you're doing too much intensity in November,
but your real race is in July, you know. And
it's training is not linear, it's modulated. Like another word
for it is periodized, but think of it more modulated

(42:54):
in terms of the intensities and the volumes, et cetera.
So that takes I take a few cycles, you know.
It's you can't have the expectation and you want to
travel on to go to Kona or Niice. So it
might take a few cycles, a few seasons of collecting
this data and then seeing the trends in the data

(43:15):
to unleash, you know, unlock the secrets. Also, too many
athletes focus on the individual workout as if that's going
to determine everything, but it is really the consistency over
time that wins out and that matters much much more
than did you do four or six intervals today? You know,

(43:37):
in the scheme of things, that doesn't matter at all.
It's just did you get out and do the workout
and are you doing that every single week? And that
consistency over time will build on itself. And this is
a little bit of a downer, But good sound training
is boring. There is no super secret sauce but the

(44:01):
but the but the secret comes into the individualization of
that boring training. So, yes, you have to do this
workout you know many times, or yes, you need to
do three hours of Zone two. And I don't want
you to go over one hundred and forty five heart rate,
but I know the group ride is going to go fast.
Just get dropped like you need to. You can maybe

(44:24):
start with the group ride, or maybe you can't, like
you can't hold yourself back. But today's governor is below
one hundred and forty five heart rate. That's boring, but
it but once you see the effects of that, or
I just randomly said one forty five. But the point is,
you know that aerobic conditioning takes time. There is no quick,

(44:47):
high intensity interval training that's going to fix that.

Speaker 2 (44:50):
Right, right, And so so many things there that just
help my memory as a coach is because there's so
many athletes that I set down with who you know,
they get to the start of the metaphorical hike and
they just want to bound to the summit in one leap.

Speaker 3 (45:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:09):
Yeah, it's talking them down from that. Uh, you go
one landing, then get to the next landing, then get
to the next landing. That takes time to build right
to the bomba you know, base build peak. And too
many athletes they just want to they just want to
buy the next hot new gadget.

Speaker 3 (45:32):
But yeah, it's addicting. You can actually make great progress.
You can make very quick fast progress by doing a
lot of intensity, but it's very short lived. It's not
going to last, or you'll hit that plateau and not
break through. But your actual potential as an athlete is
much higher than what you're allowing yourself to reach.

Speaker 2 (45:50):
Yeah yeah, yeah, And with and with iron man athletes,
one of the you know, chronic conditions is swim neglect.
Swim neglect. Swim neglect is one where you know, I
just want to do one session a week, right, Yeah,

(46:14):
I can't win in the swim, right, that's what we've
been told, but also things like strength. Right, so a
new long course athlete will think, well, I'm swimming, cycling
and running. Don't I need five hours a week in
functional strength. They're thinking about it in terms of a

(46:37):
bifurcated This stuff is cardiovascular and this stuff is strength.
I'm constantly trying to bring them down and go, Okay,
those things strengthen your body too. Swimming, cycling, and running
strengthens your body.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
Yeah. My dad is eighty, you know, and I think
the older you get, the more strength training you do
need in your per round. But he only lifts a
little bit every single day, yeah, you know, and that
can really help maintain muscles. So yeah, it's uh, and

(47:12):
everybody's unique in terms of their injury history or or prehab.
You know, injury prevention is a big part of this.
And it's not just squatting. You know, squat is a
great exercise, but these dynamic movements with some element of
power or speed in them, but then you have to

(47:32):
be very careful because that could cause injury. So it's
like having the right expert to work with and get
that kind of comprehensive analysis, you know, movement patterns prior
to going into a program is pretty uh yeah, pretty powerful.

Speaker 2 (47:47):
So you're thinking, you know, you're trying to build a
house every workout. Don't think about every workout. Every workout
is a brick in the house.

Speaker 3 (47:54):
Oh yeah. My other analysis and analogy is AH is
like a painter. But every single day you get one brushstroke.
So it's like purple today, yellow, tomorrow, red, Okay, back
to purple red, yellow, But you just get one stroke
a day, right, and at the end of the two years,

(48:17):
you know, what have you built? What have you painted?
And what portrait have you what self portrait have you created?
You only got one little swatch today. You know all
of that paint brush And that's what training is. Yeah,
and if you do too much red, it's just going
to be like it might be ugly. I don't know,
it might be pretty. We'll find out. I like that.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
I think I might borrow that. So let's finally talk
about the wearable tech. You know, I've seen over twenty
years the wearable tech evolve significantly. Who do you think
is going to win the wearable tech wars now? Training
Peaks seats just about every wearable tech out there.

Speaker 3 (49:00):
I don't know. I hope there's multiple winners because there's
different types of folks looking for different things. You know.
I read a review today of the new sunto watch,
and why won't I buy it? Because it doesn't have
pay I can't go to my gas station and pay
with it. But you know what my garment you know,
I can. Like I went to Europe without credit cards

(49:20):
and all I had was my garment watch. I didn't
need credit cards. I you just use my garment watch,
but I can't do that with Sunto the point is like, ah,
there's like each person has their thing that they you know,
no one device has everything. You know. Again, the Sounto's
of the world and the garment is the world have
an edge right now on Apple because it's just form factor,

(49:42):
battery life just it's just like an interval settings I
can put I can track Kelo Jeueles, I can track
TSS on my garment I can't. I can't do that
on my Apple Watch. And that those things are really
important to me, you know, And so okay, Apple Watch
may introduce that, yes, says kJ whatever, and then there's

(50:04):
gonna be the next thing. So I feel that there's
room in the marketplace for multiple winners, if you will.
Certainly there's the big dog, Apple and they're doing a great,
great job. Every year they become better and better. For
the endurance athlete that you can now pawer your power meter,
you know, with your Apple Watch. That's a big breakthrough.

(50:26):
You can consume your training pieks workout of the day
on Apple Watch, you know. And that was a big
breakthrough eight months ago or whatever that was. So it's
it's shaping moving very fast. But I do hope there's
absolute room for multiple winners, if you will, because there's

(50:48):
so many different use cases. Even within endurance, there's people
that want to summon Mount Everest and an Apple Watch
is not gonna do, you know, you can't, Like I
can take my sport watch into the song, but my
Apple Watch will give out. That's just you know, like
there's just extreme cases where Apple does not work right.

(51:11):
And but maybe for that athlete that's really important. I
don't want to switch my watch just because I finished
my workout just to put on a trendy looking watch, right,
But for the majority of the marketplace, like Apple's perfect,
like they don't need it to work. Above eighteen thousand
feet when it's negative twenty degrees, you.

Speaker 2 (51:28):
Know, yeah, exactly. So I'm one of those guys that
wear two watches. I have my my garment charging, and
then I had an Apple Watch all yeah, yeah, and yeah,
I mean I mainly out of curiosity. I thought, you know,
see where Apple's going, And you're right, and Apple is
just not there yet for the endurance athlete. The battery

(51:48):
life for one, and you know, some of the other features.
But Apple has really good medtech. Their medical technology is
really good, right the fact that it could detest it'll
detect something like atrio fibrillation or you know.

Speaker 3 (52:05):
One thing that's interesting is that new Apple iOS coming out,
I think it's eighteen, will have satellite messaging. And so
right now I pay garment for in Reach. I pay
them a monthly subscription for my satellite messaging for when

(52:26):
I ski or I go off grid for a huge
mountain bike ride or something.

Speaker 4 (52:31):
Yeah, but if the Apple Phone iOS eighteen or whatever
it is is good enough, then I'm going to cancel
my garment in Reach subscription.

Speaker 3 (52:42):
So but I'm still going to wear maybe a garment
for my workout. But so it's sort of like they
go back and forth on even different. It's not just
about the watch with the cyclometer, you know, the cyclic computer,
and then your phone capabilities and so that it's a
suite of products for surrounding each individual. And some like

(53:03):
Android better than Apple, right, so there's a whole other
set of questions, you know, circumstances around Android. So again
like multiple winners and how do they work with each other?
You know?

Speaker 2 (53:14):
Yeah, yeah, it's the same thinking, the same thing. I
think Garmin should be looking at Apple Watch Apple and going, oh,
they should be shaken in their boots, because yeah, once
someone comes out with a total solution where you don't
need to walk around with two watches, then you know

(53:35):
that that that that uh, that watch will pull away
from the from the rest.

Speaker 3 (53:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
I had the original There was time X used to
make that. You probably remember they made this time x
body link system. It was a watch backpack. I had
them back and then and then I I that that
must have been I don't know, early two thousands, yeah,

(54:05):
and then then Garment came along and just took that
out back and shot it.

Speaker 3 (54:09):
It just killed it. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I
had one of those, and we actually developed the time
Ox software that came in the box. I remember that
it so yeah, yeah, exactly. So we used to we
were beholden to TIMEX for quite a few years. But yeah,
things change a lot. You know, Garman bought ant plus

(54:32):
and kind of opened up the world where I was.
Prior to that, sunte and Polar were very closed, a
closed system and not opened and now they've been forced
to open up. You know, the dot fit files are
so just it's a commodity now, you know. So it

(54:52):
makes it more and more accessible, you know, like I
said earlier, Training Peaks you can get a free version
and upload your garment watch all day long to it, right,
and that's just a commodity now. Awesome.

Speaker 2 (55:04):
Well, so before we finish up, can you give us
a little nugget about anything come in with Training Peaks,
anything new, any new nuggets.

Speaker 3 (55:14):
I'm sure most listeners haven't seen this, but it's it's out,
but it's still under beta tag. But our strength solutions
are new strength solutions. I don't know if you've seen it,
but coaches can now prescribe set rep weight along with video.
So we have a video library of over a thousand
videos from squat to lunge to Romanian whatever you know,

(55:36):
and and coaches can actually upload and create their own
custom video libraries of strength training exercises incredible, So if
you even if you have a warm up routine, you
could shoot a quick video, upload that to your Training
Peaks coach account and then leverage that with your athletes
for like warm up routines, prehab, cool down roller. It

(56:01):
doesn't have to be just gym based. So that is
a really big thing that we're rolling out now. And
it also opens up the capability for strength coaches to
actually get in there and work with the head coach
to plan the strength component. And then the head coach
can see what the strength coach is programming, and the

(56:21):
strength coach can see the overall training program and where
the races are, where the big load phases are, so
they can modulate, you know, the strength training to accommodate.
So working in harmony between head coach and strength coach,
I'd say that's a big one. And then also recently
we've launched quite a few API partnerships, in particular with

(56:44):
nutrition apps, so fuel in Food Coach Hexas. These are
apps that will actually pull data from Training Peak so
you're completed workout data and they can see your future
training or racing like tomorrow's workout data, and then I'll
render back to Training Peaks, you know, nutrition plan if

(57:05):
you have a nutritionist. I believe Hexus can actually have
an inter or an app interface for nutritionists so they
can customize the individual. But that all syncs with Training Peaks.
So a lot of new stuff on the strength side
and the nutrition side. And it's kind of just the beginning,
like that's just the beta launch, kind of seeded versions,

(57:27):
you know. And again in my head, it's five generations
out already, but that'll keep building on one another. So yeah,
that's kind of two big things right now that we
we're going to work on.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
Wow, I'm excited about those more and more.

Speaker 3 (57:42):
Check it out.

Speaker 2 (57:43):
You're taking away all the stuff that I had to
do manually.

Speaker 3 (57:47):
I love it. I love it well. So hopefully better, better,
better quality service for the athlete in the end, and
they can just go to the gym with their phone
and or they're swim, workout or bike or whatever it is.
So yeah, it's all never ending, right right, It's gonna
be awesome. So where can people Where can people find you?
Where can people find coach? Cast the coach cast podcast. Well,

(58:11):
I mean I'm under training on training Peaks as a
resource center that has the podcast kind of linked to
coach cast obviously, just typing coach casts and Spotify or whatever.
Do it monthly, try and bring experts in and you know,
can you learn a thing or two you can apply
to your training tomorrow type thing. And then I'm I

(58:34):
don't know, I don't I don't do Facebook or Twitter,
but I'm I'm on Instagram. So instagram slash Dirk Reel
is uh where I where I post? So yeah, that's easy.

Speaker 2 (58:47):
Right, And you athletes that haven't signed up yet the
account training peaks dot com the ultimate tration software. All right,
thanks Derek Frail, thanks for coming on to the podcast.

Speaker 3 (59:00):
Yes, thank you.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.
The links to Dirk Friel's Instagram are in the show notes,
as well as the links to coach cast and the
links to training Peaks. You can go and get a
free account if you haven't yet gotten a free account

(59:29):
on training Peaks, so go ahead and do that. If
you are training swimming, cycling, running, rowing, doing functional strength,
all of it is available on training Peaks. With a
free account, you can sync your wearable technology whatever you're using, Apple, Watch, Garmin,

(59:52):
Polar all of them. Every single wearable technology can be
sea Training Peaks, including your garment, smart scale or some
of the smart scale that you're using, as well as
some other third party nutrition platforms. And if you're a

(01:00:14):
triathlete or marathon runner and you want to get deep
into the science of self propelled motion, do what I
did some twenty years ago now and pick up the
Triathlete Training Bible. Bye Dirk's father, Joe Friel. I still

(01:00:34):
have my addition here, still highlighted, still dog eared, underlined.
I kept going back to it and basically used it
as a reference more than something that you just sit
down and read from cover to cover. It's more of
a reference, but you'll end up over time going through

(01:01:01):
almost all of it, if not all of it. I'm
a data and science centric coach, and there's one thing
for sure that Training Peaks is the industry leader in
this space and for years to come. It's unlikely that

(01:01:22):
any competitor is going to outrun them in this space,
given the economies of scale that they've built with the platform.
So I expect to see some new features. As Dirk
be alluded to, well it's time for me to go
binge on some more Olympics. It's the second week. Okay,

(01:01:48):
thanks for listening. This is the Endurance Experience podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
Follow Event Horizon and Durant Score on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
The training Programs and Services is to become a member
of our Endurance Institute of a complete archive of podcasts
long onto our website avent Horizon dot tv.