Some athletes come to you having been a high school or college swimmer, and they know exactly how to execute swim sets, and they're fantastic.

Right.

Other athletes come and they literally can't make it across the pool.

I have some real beginners who want to do a 70.3.

So if we're on the pointy end of that, it's a huge benefit, right?

Athletes who come to us with a swim background, we can actually use the swim to build fitness.

So not only do we have run and bike to build fitness, but we can use swim to build fitness, which is great.

Whereas athletes who are just learning how to swim, it's going to be a year before they're using swim to build fitness.

Hello and welcome to the March 21, 2025 edition of the Tridock Podcast.

I'm your host, Jeff Sankoff, an emergency physician, triathlete, ironman finisher, and triathlon coach coming to you as always from beautiful sunny Denver, Colorado.

The voice you heard at the beginning of the show was, of course, that of Juliet Hockman.

Juliet is my colleague, my friend, my partner for the Medical Mailbag segments, but this episode is going to be one where she joins me for the entirety of the program.

That's because a listener of the show, a longtime listener and Patreon supporter Rebecca Adamson, wrote in to ask whether or not Juliet and I would speak to you about our coaching philosophies.

And so we're going to.

And we have a, I think, pretty interesting and helpful conversation that you will hear, and that's going to be coming up on the latter half of the program.

Before we get to that, though, Juliet will be here for the Medical Mailbag segment in which we answer a listener question.

That question came through the interwebs and was a question specifically about a guest heard on a different podcast.

The Extra Mile List is a podcast for runners and ultra runners.

It has a fairly large listenership, and not too long ago, one of the guests on that program was a chiropractor by the name of Dr.

Scott Virzal.

Dr.

Virzal has written a book in which he promotes what is called the Blood Type Diet.

And the listener wrote to me to ask me whether or not there was any merit to this idea.

Well, we take a look at the evidence, and we are going to be weighing in as to whether or not you should be considering Dr.

Virzal's advice or perhaps, and I don't think it'll be coming as too much of a surprise.

Maybe this one's worth skipping before we get to all of that, though, I do want to tell you that this past Wednesday, just a couple of days before this podcast aired, I had the opportunity to give a chalk talk for my colleagues, for athletes at LifeSport, and for many others who decided to just come and join the experience because they knew that I was going to be giving a review of all of the things that we've discussed or that I've discussed many with Juliet over the past couple of years on this show.

And basically the premise of the chalk talk was what really works over the 166 episodes?

What are the kinds of things that I have reviewed?

What are the kinds of things that I have talked about that I can put my seal of approval on and say, you know what, this is something that you should consider potentially incorporating into your own training or recovery regimen, or more often, something you can probably skip.

And what I realized in looking back through all of those episodes and counting what really only amounts to a handful of things that actually have any real demonstrable evidence to support their use is that of all the things that we have talked about, the vast majority that actually provide any kind of benefit are things that you don't necessarily have to take, don't necessarily have to buy, but rather just things that you can do.

So, for example, sleep better, do strength training, taper for your races.

Those were three of the big ones and they actually showed some pretty big benefits compared to a lot of the things that we've talked about.

And then when it came down to supplements, most of the supplement things that we found that actually have worked have been fairly natural products.

Beetroot juice, caffeine, quercetin, recently.

Right.

And again, these are things that are inexpensive, they come from natural sources, they're not chemicals that have been synthesized.

And the research behind them actually bears out a lot of the claims that, that they say that they can do for you.

But and this is kind of the major point, aside from things like sleep and tapering, all of the gains that you're going to get from most of the stuff that I have talked about on the show that actually show some benefits are really, really quite small.

None of the things that I talk about that even the ones that are good for you are going to provide earth shattering results.

The reality is, is that most of these things can really only provide maybe a little bit of help at the margins.

It's back to that kind of concept that we've talked about before.

These marginal gains, these small little incremental improvements over all of the work you're already doing.

And that really is the take home point here.

If you're not doing the work, no supplement, no tech, no gear, no nothing is going to do any kind of magic for you.

It really starts and ends with you and your coach in developing and following through on the kind of plan and the kind of process in order to take what you have as a substrate, as a physiology, as a baseline athlete, and then mold that, shape it, work on it, improve it and become the maximum that you can to your potential.

Then and only then will some of these things maybe add just a little bit more, a little bit of sort of a cherry on top.

So while podcasts like the extramilist are going to grab headlines and grab a lot of people who want fast answers and want to believe that things like the blood type diet is the answer to all that ails them and perhaps is going to open doors for them, the reality, as you know from listening to this program for a while now, is not so much.

In fact, it really begins and ends with you.

If you're prepared to put in the work, you are going to see the rewards.

And all of the supplements, all of the gear, sure some of them are nice to have, some of them make you feel a little bit better, but the reality is if you do the work that's going to be the most satisfying and lead to the best results.

So with that in mind, let's move on to our Medical Mailbag segment and talk about the blood type diet.

Well, we're recording this on Monday, St.

Patty's Day.

So top of the evening to you, Juliet O'Hockman as I feast upon a Guinness here in Tridoc Podcast.

I'll drop the accent, but here, although.

I will tell you that the beer he's drinking is a non alcoholic beer.

He was.

It's a non alcoholic Guinness.

And you know what, it's quite refreshing.

I can't think of anything worse than a non alcoholic Guinness beer.

I think I'd rather drink beer.

It's perfectly appropriate for St.

Patrick's Day.

I, of course am Jeff Osankoff coming to you from Denver.

Juliet is my friend and colleague.

She's joining me from Hood river in Oregon.

That means this must be the medical mailbag.

And we have another interesting listener question.

And it comes by way, it comes by way of the Try Coaching website.

Someone took the time to go there, find the little contact button and fill out the form.

And I really appreciate it.

Juliet, who's asking this question and what is the question there?

If you do have a Question.

It is giving Jeff so much pleasure that this particular individual came through the website rather than the Facebook page or his email.

So just send it through the website.

You're making a guy's day over here.

So.

So this comes to us from Mark Askew, who heard a guest on the Extra Mileist podcast.

And this guest is a guy named Dr.

Rizal, who apparently is a chiropractor in Southern California.

And he is out advocating his.

Basically, it's a blood type diet.

It is arguing that if you have a certain blood type, you should only eat certain foods.

And what you'll hear by the end of the podcast is, what's more, not only should your blood type be dictating your foods, your food choice, but also is an indicator of what type of athletic activities you should be engaged in.

Mark Askew wrote in via the website.

Did I mention that?

And asked Jeff if there was any truth to this claim about this blood type diet.

So what did you and your research team find out, Jeff?

Nina Takeshima, the intern who worked on this, did a yeoman's job on this, once again digging deep into what research there is.

And there you might not be surprised to learn, there's not a whole lot.

And she tried very hard to reach.

Dr.

I'm making air quotes here.

Dr.

Virzal, uh, I, I received a nasty gram recently.

I wrote an article in Triathlete Magazine where I talked about building your healthcare team to have a group of people that you can go to in order to see others.

So that because we know that when you go see your physician with a minor issue, they can sometimes overreact when they see a triathlete.

And I don't excuse that.

I don't think that's the right thing to do.

But I explained that by saying that most physicians are not used to seeing us triathletes, healthy middle aged people with low heart rates and low blood pressures.

And so the advice that they sometimes give us is not really appropriate.

And so it's useful to have other allied health professionals who can help.

And I purposely omitted chiropractors from that article.

And I received a nasty gram from somebody who felt like I was showing my bias.

And I am not afraid to say that, yes, I am biased.

I recognize there are a lot of people who go see chiropractors and get some benefit from it, and that's fine.

But I also recognize that for every chiropractor who maybe does something good for people and helps them with aches and pains, there's a Dr.

Scott Virzal who is just making stuff up and trying to make a lot of bucks off of it.

Dr.

Virzel is the author of a book called the Headache Advantage and went on a podcast called the Extra Milestone, which I will point out yet again has probably one or two orders of magnitude greater listeners than we do here.

And Juliet, you and I have talked about this before.

I think that it just boils down to people really want answers to what bothers them.

They just don't want to hear the unfortunate truth that sometimes the answers aren't all that fulfilling.

And sometimes what we have to say by giving them the unvarnished truth is that, look, some things work, but they don't give you miracles.

And that's not what Dr.

Virzal is promising.

Dr.

Virzal is promising to cure all that ails you if you just subscribe to his theory that your blood type should determine what you eat.

Now, let's go into this a little bit.

Chat?

Yes, please.

Okay, but.

But hold on.

We gotta back up one sec because I don't want you to throw all chiropractors out like a baby with bath water here because I have a chiropractor and she is awesome and has helped me a great deal.

So I think not all chiropractors are like Dr.

Frazal, who is making up.

Stuff, as I said, for.

For everyone who's doing good work.

And look, chiropractors.

I'm not.

We're not going to spend the segment on chiropractors.

You can research what the origin of chiropractic medicine is.

It's somewhat dubious.

My problem with chiropractors is that many of them don't focus on just the musculoskeletal stuff.

They start trying to treat things like diabetes or thyroid problems with manipulations.

They start treating babies, which is absolutely unacceptable.

You shared something with me recently where a chiropractor was treating children with what he said was asmr.

I think he.

I think he was.

Yeah, he was.

This guy was arguing that if kids are born prematurely, then no, if they.

Were born by C section.

A C section.

His argument was 90% of kids born with C section go on to have this ASMR, which is a sensory thing, which is real.

And he was saying that they all need to be treated by chiropractors with this, like, device.

And I was like, I've got three kids born by C section for valid reasons, and none of them have this issue.

So debunks your theory right there.

But again, people aren't Interested in sometimes the truth, which is less convenient for them.

They're looking for things that line up with their worldview.

And chiropractors often are only too willing.

Again, not all.

I recognize that a lot of people.

Let's get back to the blood type diet.

Okay, so what is this based on?

Basically this is based on a gentleman, a naturopath.

His name is D.

Adamo.

This is a guy who came up with this theory some time ago.

And basically he is saying that there are these sugars on the surface of different foods that we eat called lectins.

And there are, there's no question.

And the central theory of this diet has to do with the idea that the wrong type of lectins on certain types of food could cause red blood cells to clump together and increase the risk of disease for certain blood types.

It's theoretical, never been shown to actually happen.

It's not true.

And it goes on to say that the idea is that blood type developed a certain way.

We started as human beings, everybody was O.

And then eventually there was this development of the A and B subgroups.

And then through inter marriage and inter mixing we had, we developed the ab.

And so the idea was, is that oh, all of the people who were originally O were all hunter ga, not hunter gatherers, but they were all subsistence farmers.

And therefore those people have developed the ability to tolerate foods like seeds and grains and vegetarian basically diet.

But later on came the, the A and the B types and they were able to tolerate other types of things.

They're not, it goes.

And I'm not going to go into all the foods that you can or can't eat.

And it's just, it's total hogwash.

Because everybody who's actually done valid research on this to actually look at whether there's any kind of truth to this has found that no, in fact there is not.

It does not matter what blood type you are.

Different foods don't cause anything.

And just to give you a sense of what Virzal is saying, he's saying A blood types, they really need to avoid eating beef because beef will cause mono.

I'm like, mono.

Mono is caused by a virus, Epstein Barr virus.

Mono is not caused by eating beef.

If you have a blood type A tomatoes will affect gallbladder and cause right sided headache and knee pain and higher cholesterol and higher triglycerides.

Now I don't know about you, but last I checked tomatoes are devoid of triglycerides and cholesterol.

So the idea that eating them would somehow increase your triglycerides and cholesterol.

I would love to hear the rationale for that.

Coffee is fine.

So you're good if you're blood type A, and if you're a B type, you gotta avoid chicken because it drops your sugar.

You're gonna be hypoglycemia.

And this is apparently, according to him, 100%.

Yeah, you are making faces because on just at face value, it's completely ridiculous.

But on the Extra Mileus podcast, this was being eaten up and being taken as the gospel truth with no pushback whatsoever and no question as to how it's possible that these things could be, because it's completely ludicrous.

What I think is so funny is that is the food types that they called out again and again as either good or bad were avocados, coffee, and beef.

Out of all the food types, those ones seemed, avocado's good, avocado's bad, coffee's good, coffee's bad, beef.

It's very odd.

Yeah.

Now, the thing that I think so obviously disproves this is, you know, most people don't know what their blood type is.

And most people eat a variety of things.

They're not suffering mono, they're not suffering.

People suffer mono, but they're not suffering it because they had beef.

And they're certainly not getting all of these things.

But what's ending up happening is that there are probably people out there who do have some of these, oh, I get right sided knee pain.

And then they find out about this blood type diet and it fits their kind of narrative and they're, oh, that's the problem.

And then they stop eating these kinds of foods and lo and behold, they don't get their right sided abdominal pain anymore.

And so it must have been that coincidence is often the arbiter of what people choose to believe as the truth, but that is not necessarily the actual facts.

Now, there have been studies by actual researchers who have looked and said, hey, do these diets work?

Do these diets make any sense?

And so they took people from different blood types and they put them into these sections and they said, okay, you eat this and you eat this based on your blood type, and let's see what happens.

And it turns out that there was no benefit necessarily to eating the foods that were within your blood type, but there was a benefit to just eating better foods.

And what they found was across the board, if you just ate better.

And to be fair, all of these different blood type diets, it doesn't matter what they have you eat, they all have you eating more natural foods, like less processed foods, lower fat foods, and across the board, just eating like just a generally kind of Mediterranean type of diet, which we all know is better for you.

So they're basically piggybacking off of this idea that eating whole foods, eating better foods is going to be better for you and you're going to feel better, which is in fact a good thing.

So, honestly, at the end of the day, if you want to subscribe to this and feel better from it, it's probably because you're eating better, not necessarily because you're eating specific foods that are dictated by your blood type.

And hey, if you're feeling better, that's great.

I'm happy for you.

This breaks down in another couple of places.

The other one is, as you alluded at the top, is that the blood type apparently also dictates what kind of exercises you can do, which is patently absurd.

If you're blood type A, you really need to.

You really need to watch out.

You shouldn't be doing anything particularly vigorous.

So you really need to.

Oh, sorry, yeah, sorry.

You need to be focusing on things like yoga and tai chi.

Now, I have never done tai chi.

I have, I tried yoga a few times.

I can't stand.

Turns out I'm blood type A.

How about you, Juliet?

Now, see, I am the golden child because I am type O, which means that I should be doing vigorous aerobic exercises for up to an hour per day.

So that's the only one that really fits the triathlon.

That worked out.

Yeah, worked out for me.

Yep.

If you are type B, you really should not be in triathlon because apparently you need to be focusing on group exercises.

It's unclear to me how your blood type would dictate whether or not you are better.

Maybe they have the life party, they're more social, they work better with teams.

I don't know.

It's also unclear to me how a group exercise is inclusive of tennis or golf because neither of those strike me as group exercises.

Well, you play with other people.

You can't.

You can't really play tennis by yourself.

You can't play golf by yourself.

You can.

I think of group socializes as team things, but.

And then if you're a baby, you've got to mix calming and aerobic exercise.

Listen, this whole thing is just so silly.

It's just once again, another example of anybody with a platform could say whatever they want and sell the stuff that goes with what they're saying and Make a tidy profit.

And I think we're missing the boat here, Julia.

We really.

But the problem is, again, people don't want to know what doesn't work and that's what we would sell.

And.

But so you get a confirmation bias, right, because you think, gosh, wow, I've had, really, I've had GI issues for the last six months.

I wonder what's going on.

You go on to Dr.

Google and it doesn't take more than a few clicks to realize, oh, huh.

Avocados crash my immune system.

Wow.

I've been eating a lot of avocados recently and I've been feeling sick more often.

Forget about the fact that my kid's coming home from daycare and giving getting me sick every two months or your blood type O.

And you're like, wow, I have always gravitated towards aerobic exercises over Tai chi.

I must be right.

It's.

Everybody thinks they have cancer when they go and try to see why they have a sore throat on Google.

So it, it is, as you say, looking for answers that are not corroborated by facts.

Yeah.

There are a few findings in some of these studies that I think are worth highlighting.

There was an article on WebMD that basically kind of the author of that article says, look, this is.

A lot of studies have looked at this.

None have ever shown any clear link between eating according to your blood type and better health.

None.

And that's of course what this is promoting.

Right.

And the, There was another, there was an article by a, a really nice article by a Master's of Public health woman who, her name is, what is her name?

Her name is Kathleen Zellman.

She did a super nice job on this WebMD article, just basically like dissecting the history of this blood type diet.

And she says the blood type diet is somewhat of a gimmicky way to try to get people to eat healthier.

There's absolutely no science to substantiate that your blood type dictates the kind of diet that you should be on.

But elements of the blood type diet work since it's mostly a healthy plant forward diet.

And we know that this kind of diet is going to make people healthier no matter what their blood type is.

So I thought that was a really politically correct way of saying this is garbage.

But you know what, it's still going to be good for you because it's.

Advocating you'll eat healthier food.

So that was good.

Yeah.

Another article, another article from.

What was this journal from?

This was a Journal called ABO Genotype, Blood Type Diet and Cardio Metabolic Risk Factors found that there was again, just no, no association between different blood types and cardio risk factors as you go through history in evolution.

So no suggestion that you need to do anything.

And then one of the other things that I thought was particularly interesting, remember I said that the whole theory that Dia, Dia D'Amo D'Amato came up with for coming up with this, was he looked at the evolution of blood types and he said, oh, blood type started as O and went forward.

Right.

And so the whole blood type diet predicated on that evolutionary theory.

It turns out there's a competing evolutionary theory that says that actually the first blood type in humans was actually ab and that went on to split into A and B.

And much later on came O.

And that hypothesis actually has more evidence to support it than does the O origin.

Because when you look at our direct ancestors, the primates have almost none of them have O.

There's a much higher percentage that have ab, a much higher percentage that have B and A.

So if you look at chimpanzees, for example, 88% of chimpanzees are blood type A, 12% are blood type O.

If you look at gorillas, 88% are B, 12% are A, none of them are.

So it, it suggests that O blood type evolved later the A, B and A, and the more primitive you go back on the evolutionary chain.

So orangutan 23% AB, 45% B, 32% A, 0O.

The AB origin hypothesis actually has more evolutionary evidence to support it, which would blow up this whole blood diet in the first place.

So it just makes one more reason to make the whole thing silly and not really worth listening to.

But again, eat better food, eat healthier, eat more vegetarian.

Not vegetarian, but certainly more plant based.

Forward.

Yeah, I do want to just say now again, I mentioned Nina's dogged pursuit of this subject.

She tried to reach out to Dr.

Virzal many times because he has a clinic in Southern California, a unfortunately very popular clinic.

He is now a lot of people.

No, I think it's unfortunate that people are so desperate for answers that they will go see someone who is selling snake oil plants.

Yeah, food.

So he, he did not respond.

Nina was put off, frequently told that the only way to see Dr.

Fruzol was to actually make a clinical appointment, which she was not willing to do.

And she made it clear that she was interested in getting some doing some research for a segment she was doing for the Show.

He finally actually reached out to her today.

A little late for us to follow up, unfortunately.

I have to say that he wrote to her.

This is a professional.

He wrote to her using Comic Sans as his font in the email which I think has to be mentioned because I know you of all people will appreciate that.

Not Times New Roman or at least.

Not Times New Roman, but a sky comic.

Comic Sans as your.

As your font for emails.

Come on guys, let's come on.

We, we all know that's just not what you do.

Anyways, he wrote that Dr.

Duadamo popularized the blood type diet about 30 years ago.

It is based on the very well known and massively researched lectin cell triggering response.

I will tell you based on what we could find in the evidence in the literature.

Yeah, not so massively researched.

There is research, but to say it's massively researched is maybe over calling things a little bit.

Basically it represents how the immune system recognizes food as self or non self to then trigger an immune or blood sugar response.

This is just silliness.

I see clinical correlations with these food triggers all day, every day in practice and can physically demonstrate the effect of food in real time during the visit that you can are invited to have in my clinic.

And I'm like, the insurance won't cover.

Yeah.

Huh.

It almost sounds like it's skirting on the edge of allergies.

Do you know what I mean?

Well, he mentions at one point on the Extra Milo's podcast, he says something about when I eat avocados, my throat closes up and I'm like, I think you need an EpiPen because that's not something to.

To trifle with.

If you're having airway issues related to food that's not your blood type.

That's called a histamine response.

Yeah.

There's no question foods can cause dramatic physiologic responses.

But to suggest that they're doing so in these ways and to this degree.

Tomatoes affecting your triglycerides and cholesterol.

Look, and if you have evidence to back it up, I'm all for it.

But right now there's nothing.

And this is just made up.

So alas, I want to put, I.

Want to put you and result and Huberman in a room together and see who comes out a lot.

That's not fair.

That's two against one.

I know.

I think you could take them down.

I don't know.

Logic, logic seems to break down against some of these people, but.

Well, another entertaining segment and I'm hopeful That'll be the last.

A little bit crazy one for a while.

Hopefully we can get.

I know we've had a couple now.

Yeah, yeah, we've had a couple in a row.

So actually, while we're talking about this, a reminder to your listeners.

No, this will have happened when they hear it.

Oh, shoot.

Okay.

If you'd like the recording.

Yeah, we can get it to you.

So Jeff is giving a chalk talk open to the public on Wednesday night, the 19th, which is just a couple days from while we're recording.

And he.

It is basically a zoom call on what really works.

So if you want a recording of that, we'll be happy to send it to you.

It is it.

We've done it in the past.

It's very popular and very entertaining.

You can email either me julietteifesportcoaching.com or contact Jeff through any of his many platforms, especially the website, and get that recording from him.

We'd be happy to send it and yeah, it'd be be great to send.

I'd be happy to send it along.

You could take a look at that.

This subject, of course, will not be included in.

No, it will not be.

What works.

With that said, if you have a question about anything you'd like for us to review and include in a future episode, I hope that you will send it to us.

You can, of course, email Juliet, as she just mentioned.

You can email me@triodocloud.com you can drop it into the private Facebook group on that platform.

Just answer the three questions if you're not already a member and I will grant you admittance.

You can join the conversation there, ask your questions and we'd be happy to answer them.

And of course, as Juliet mentioned, you can go to my website, trydockcoaching.com where there is a contact button.

You can fill out the form and ask your question that way.

We would love to hear from you.

It's always a pleasure hearing from listeners and to answer their questions here on the show.

Juliet, you're not going anywhere.

You are coming back as the guest on this particular episode.

I'm excited that we're going to have a chance to talk about coaching philosophy.

Yeah, I think we're co guests.

It's going to be another conversation.

So you're stuck with both of us for one more segment, but I think it's going to be a good one.

I think you'll enjoy it.

So we'll come back to you on the other side of this little break.

All right, Juliet and I are back for Another segment on this episode.

This is a segment the idea for which came from one of our listeners, Rebecca Adamson, who is a friend of mine, who is a Patreon supporter and a longtime listener to the podcast, who reached out and wanted to get a sense of what mine and Juliet's coaching philosophies are.

Specifically, she wanted to hear based on the amount of time that both of us have been doing this and how we approach different athletes and how we approach triathlon coaching in our own way.

And I thought that was a really great idea.

I think that we talk coaching indirectly when we do the Medical Mailbag.

I often will mention things when I'm speaking with different guests about either their own athletic pursuits or potentially in discussing how they're coached.

But we've never had a chance to really talk about our own coaching philosophy here on the program.

And I can't think of anyone that I'd rather have that discussion with than Juliet, who I know brings a wealth of experience to this.

I sort of wrote out a little list of topics, but we'll probably be fluid about it.

Yeah, we'll use that as, I guess, just a diagrammatic flow of where we want to go.

But we may end up meandering as we get there.

But why don't we begin first with just an overarching philosophy?

And I know when I, when we were talking about this, everybody kind of approaches this the same way.

I don't know that we're going to be all that different, but you never know.

I'd love to hear what, when you think about it, when you talk to someone about your coaching philosophy, what does it look like or sound like?

And I should point out for listeners, what we really want is we want you to get the sense of how two different people can approach the same problems and how when you're looking for a coach, doesn't have to be us, but these are the kinds of things you might want to think about when you talk to someone.

I mean, I think it's worthwhile backing up for a minute to, before we start, try to create into a neat little package a definition of coaching philosophy is to just touch on factors that might inform or influence us as coaches.

And I'll speak for myself in that I was an athlete my whole life.

Many of our listeners know I competed in the Olympics in rowing.

I had so many different coaches at so many different levels as a junior high school, college elite, et cetera, and then rediscovered sports as a middle aged, as a middle aged woman.

When I got into triathlon, And I think I counted at one point and I've had over 30 coaches in different, many different sports.

And some of them were life changing.

My college rowing coach had after my parents, the without doubt the most influence on the person that I became more than anybody else ever.

And I've had some really horrible coaches, coaches that absolutely cut my confidence to shreds, put me in a hole, made me doubt everything I thought was important about who I was and how I behaved.

And it was quite devastating.

So what I try to think about a lot is what experiences have I had as an athlete that have been really meaningful and how was the coach involved in that experience?

So that's how I come at it.

And if I had to settle it into sort of two major buckets, I think that the first one would be meeting the athlete where they are.

And that means both physically, where is this athlete in terms of their fitness?

Right, that's pretty obvious.

One, their experience.

Have they been an athlete their whole life?

Do they have experience in triathlon, et cetera?

So not only meeting them where they are physically, but also really trying to get a fairly early grasp on where to meet them emotionally and how to meet them there.

And sometimes that's a little bit trickier because you can have athletes come in who appear to be brimming with confidence, only to find out that actually confidence is a big issue for them or that have these enormous goals, only to find out that they don't have the skills or the time or the intent to chase those goals.

And so really trying to figure out first of all how to meet the athlete, where they are.

And then the second one, I think, is really believing that people can do hard things.

I think both of you, as both of us as athletes have had the experience of looking at a workout that has been given to us and thinking, I can't do that, I don't think I can do that.

But by virtue of the fact that the coach believes that we can do it, we find nine times out of 10, wow, I can do this thing.

So believing that athletes, regardless of where they are on their journey, whether they're training for their first 5k or whether they're trying to stand on a world championship podium, just con.

Just believing that they can do really hard things.

And I really believe there is a lot around, if you have an external stimulus, an external person saying, oh no, you can do this, then that athlete often finds they can.

So I would say those are two that I think about quite a bit.

What about you?

I love a couple of things you said in there, one being this idea of meeting the athlete where they are.

And one of the things that I have not really struggled with, but evolved as a coach over time.

When I began at this, I always viewed myself as a cheerleader.

And the reason for that is because early on in my triathlon career, I felt like that's really what I needed.

And I've only had three coaches in triathlon.

I've been in the sport for 20 plus years and I've had three excellent coaches, but they've all been very different personality wise.

And Steve Johnson, who, the late Steve Johnson, who was very dear to me and passed away just a couple years ago.

Now, he was not a touchy feely guy, but he was a taskmaster.

He really held me accountable, he held my feet to the fire.

And I have, I think in the last couple of years really started to reflect on that and realize that sometimes that's what athletes need.

And so when you talk about meeting an athlete where they are, that's what I have realized.

Sometimes that's where they are.

They need that.

You don't, they don't need a cheerleader.

They need someone to hold them accountable.

And so I spend a lot of time when I start with an athlete trying to figure out what is it they want?

Do they want someone to just be a cheerleader or do they need someone to really hold them accountable and say, hey, you could have done this or what happened to that workout?

Or why did you cut things in half?

Or things like that?

And it's a delicate sort of thing to navigate, but I find it really important.

It's really tricky, right?

Because when you get it wrong, when you think, okay, this is the time that I have to pivot a little bit from cheerleader to okay, let's really try to X whether get the workout in, plan the week, whatever.

And sometimes you hit the person at the wrong time and it backfires and oh, it feels terrible.

So you don't.

We don't always get timing is everything.

Timing is everything.

The other thing you said that I loved was that idea that we've been given workouts that we looked at and thought, oh my God, we can't do this.

But knowing that our coach believed we could was a real motivator.

And I have recognized that in my athletes as well.

I have workouts, look, I have some very hard workouts I give them and I only give it to them when I know they can do it.

And sometimes they come back to me and they say, what the hell is this.

And I say, I know you can do this.

And that's all it takes for them to at least try.

And sometimes they don't, sometimes they can't.

And it always, like, it's interesting when they come back and they apologize or they feel like they've let me down.

And I'm like, you are not doing this for me.

I understand what you're saying because I have felt that way, too.

But this is for you, and I'm going to give this to you again because I know you can do this.

And it is so rewarding as a coach, when an athlete has that breakthrough and they're able to do something that was previously hard.

I have an athlete I've been working with for over a year now, and I used to give him these hard cycling workouts and he would just curse at me.

And he's.

I never had workouts like this.

And now I give them to him and I give them with a little comment that says, the old you would have hated this.

The new you is looking forward to it.

And he's 100% on board with that.

So it's really.

It's nice to see that.

And I do love.

We were joking about how every coach says athlete centered and communication, but that is as much as it's cliche.

I think we both very much believe that.

And getting to know your athlete, getting to know what their goals are, making a program.

I.

My sort of mantra is training has to fit your life, not the other way around.

Because I know how busy I am and I know how hard it is to get training into my life.

And it's very important to me that I don't have to bend my life to fit my training.

And so I work very hard with my athletes to do the same thing.

I agree.

I think our jobs is part project manager.

Right.

I think you do the same thing I do, which is I ask my athletes to put into training peaks.

If they're a doctor, what their shift schedule is, if they're a pilot, where they're going to be on certain days, if they're going on vacation.

Exactly.

What they can do on vacation, if they have to pick up their kid every day at 5, what that looks like, so that I can create a program for them that is challenging but achievable logistically because otherwise everybody's frustrated, right?

They're frustrated.

They don't feel.

They feel like they're letting themselves and me down.

I don't understand what their life is made of.

So I don't.

I Can't create something good for them.

But, yeah, no, I think that's.

I think that's really.

And I know that with everything you've got going on, you do that with your coach in terms of.

This is exactly what I can do on each day, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right, let's move to the swim and we'll try and talk about each of the different areas, although I fear we'll run out of time.

So let's see how fast we can go if we have to.

We could split this into two segments, but sure.

How do you work with athletes on the swim?

What's your kind of global approach?

I think it.

Unfortunately, it's one of those things.

It depends.

Some athletes come to you having been a high school or college swimmer, and they know exactly how to execute swim sets, and they're fantastic.

Right.

Other athletes come and they literally can't make it across the pool.

I have some real beginners who want to do a 70.3.

So if we're on the pointy end of that, it's a huge benefit.

Right.

Because we can.

Athletes who come to us with a swim background, we can actually use the swim to build fitness.

So not only do we have run and bike to build fitness, but we can use swim to build fitness, which is great.

Whereas athletes who are just learning how to swim, it's going to be a year before they're using swim to build fitness.

And so for them, it's really about how do we get you to a point so that on race day, you can get in the water brimming with confidence, knowing you're going to make it through the course.

That's what we want.

We want them to stand in that swimsuit thinking, I can do this.

And so sometimes that's as basic as you need to go find an adult learn to swim program.

You need to find a swim coach and sign up for eight lessons.

You need to find a friend who swam with you and get them to take you video and send the video in.

So we.

Or if they're at the point where they can begin to swim, Repeat hundreds and 215 or so, go join a master swim.

So you can swim under the eye of somebody even if they don't give you that much coaching.

So there's a lot of ways to.

To skin that cat.

Because most of our athletes are remote.

But it really depends on where, on how they come to us.

What.

What about you?

So my whole thing about swimming has changed really dramatically since I worked with Steve, because Steve had me Swimming so much.

And I kept protesting because I didn't like swimming.

I felt like I wasn't a good swimmer.

I felt like it was a lot of energy invested not to gain anything.

And his whole philosophy was swim more, to swim better, swim fast, to swim faster.

And the swim is the setup for your whole day.

And if you can come out of the water feeling fresh, with good fitness, with whatever form you have, then the whole day is going to go better.

And he would show me, he would show me my files and he would show me how you're coming out of the water.

Your heart rate's so high, it's taking you the first 10k.

Just get your heart rate under control of the bike.

The first 10k of the bike.

To get your heart rate under control, you can't exert yourself appropriately.

We need to have you coming out of the water with a lower heart rate.

And he was right.

He had me swimming three times a week, 3,500 every time, which was way more than I was swimming before with really hard drills.

And it made me better.

And so now I have that philosophy with all my swimmers.

No matter how good you are, no matter how new you are now, not Everybody can swim 3500.

I recognize that.

And so I adapt.

Basically, in the first few weeks that I'm working with someone, I give them the 3,500.

But I tell them, don't feel compelled, you don't have to swim this.

Swim as much as you can.

And I watch and I oh, you were only able to swim 2000, then your workouts are gonna be 2000.

But as much as possible, I try to get them all swimming three times a week for whatever that distance is that they can fit into a comfortable one hour or so workout.

And I want them swimming fast because I think the way you learn to swim fast is by swimming fast.

And I had one athlete ask me how come I'm not doing like 600 meter sets?

And I'm like, because you don't need to, because you're in there.

You're in there swimming 3200.

Whether or not you swam a 600 doesn't mean you can swim the distance you need to, because you're over swimming what you have to.

So I have enjoyed applying what I have experienced with swimming to others and seeing them benefit because they all tell me that they feel so much better after the swim than they did now.

I warn them, I'm not necessarily going to make you faster because we know how long it takes to get faster.

But I tell them I'm gonna make you feel better, like you said.

Oh, that's so interesting.

Yeah.

We'll have to continue this offline too because I have a couple thoughts.

One is the whole act of getting to the pool takes extra time, right?

So if you have athletes who have limited amount of time, where are you going to spend your allowable time?

Are you gonna spend it with a third session in the pool?

Are you gonna do a little more biking so you can build fitness?

So that's always an open question.

That's a finesse thing and that's gonna be different for athletes.

But if I have an athlete who can manage it, three swimmings a week is my kind of what I'd like.

But there's no question I have athletes who only do two because of exactly that.

And I recognize that.

Yeah, yeah.

Let's move to the bike.

What is your general approach to bike training?

I will upfront admit a heavy bias because I as an athlete love biking and I know that for biking it's such an opportunity for pretty much everybody across the board to build fitness without getting hurt.

Right.

We can't always build fitness swimming because we're not good enough.

We can't put too much volume on an athlete in the run because if you're going to get hurt in triathlon, it's nine times outta ten it's on the run.

But unless you crash, biking is a great opportunity to build fitness.

So again, it depends a lot how athletes come.

To me, it depends what equipment they have.

I have athletes across the board.

Some athletes don't ride trainers at all.

Some athletes live on their smart trainer.

Some athletes have power meters, some athletes only have a heart rate monitor, et cetera.

So it depends.

And also cold weather, hot weather, comfort riding outside, fear, getting lost, there's a lot out there.

So again, meeting with them where they are, encouraging them to take a few risks so that we can continue to stretch their ability to do lots of different types of workouts.

But yeah, my, my athletes all will bike at least three times a week.

And sometimes depending on what their run and swim volume is, it'll be four.

And it's a mixture of threshold, a lot of base riding and then depending on the season, we might do strength work, we might do tempo.

That's yeah, a bias towards the bias.

I start my riders out in the winter months with a lot of above threshold work, a lot of sprints, a lot of really hard efforts.

And I try to basically I think of it as pulling their FTP up from above and only once they've gotten through that.

And I want to then start working out their endurance.

So think of those workouts as being an hour to an hour and a half.

And then once I want to start building out their endurance, I drop all of those threshold intervals and everything then is like sweet spot.

So 85 to 90% of their FTP.

And now I'm trying to push their FTP up from below at the same time as I'm building out their endurance.

And so the workouts will get a lot longer.

And I mix in things like variable cadence sessions and things like that.

I agree with you.

The bike, the bike is going to be the big thing for everybody simply because the bike is.

It's the biggest percentage of the race percentage.

Right.

I definitely believe that.

I have had great success in building strong cyclists because I put such a big emphasis on the strength stuff.

And I was going to ask you about favorite workouts, but I'll just share because this workout and you told me, yes, I'm evil.

I think I know what you're going to say.

And I think my athletes think I'm evil too.

But they all feel like they get something out of it.

And it's this workout where it's a four by eight minute.

I, I could have put money on it.

Yeah, it's four by eight minute best effort with four minute recovery in between.

And they have to learn.

So there's no, it's not a dictated power.

It's actually you are determining what your best power can be that you can hold for that eight minutes but then repeat for each interval.

Right.

And it takes some getting used to.

You have to really.

So you have to learn how to measure your effort.

You have to learn to sustain your effort.

And only once they've perfected that 4 by 8, then I go up to 4 by 10, eventually 4 by 12 and all the way up to 4 by 16.

And that's where they cut.

And I, I've had athletes curse me for it, but they definitely, I see their FTPs like, their FTPs when they're doing that takes place over two to three months because it takes a while.

And their FTPs will go up like 10 to 15 watts without a doubt because it really forces you to dig.

It forces you to get strong and they compete against themselves because they really want to hold that last, at that last interval.

So it's a great, it's a hard workout, but it's a good one.

And then we start building out the endurance and like I said, we Drop a lot of that.

I'm a, as I'm a huge believer in the trainer.

I think that is so time efficient and you get you.

There's no coasting, there's no downhills, there's no stopping at lights.

You just get.

Every hour is worth an extra at least 15% because you have to pedal the whole time.

I was interesting, I was going to say a minute ago, I think we're influenced by our own experience as athletes.

You live in Denver, you have to be very time efficient because you have all these other responsibilities.

As an emergency room doc, you spend a ton of time on the trainer.

I would never do triathlon if I had to spend all summer on the trainer.

For me, the pleasure in this sport is being outside.

Yes, I'm on the trainer all winter.

There's a huge benefit in it.

There's no doubt about it.

But I live in a quite a rural area where I can do very high quality sessions.

I'm also a good enough cyclist that I can really dial in effort to 2 or 3 watts regardless of the terrain.

And that's just a matter of experience.

But so again, I think this is a matter of meeting the athlete where they are in terms of where do they live, what's their comfort level riding outside, what roads do they have to ride on?

How good a cyclist are they?

Can they really dial in a quality effort outside and hit it?

So if I say, look, you've got to go ride 45 minutes at 230 watts and then take 10 minutes off and then do 10 by 1 hill repeats at best effort, they're gonna hit it right.

There's not gonna be a problem with stoplights and using technology and everything else.

Because then those sessions, those are some of my favorite sessions to give tempo effort with a hill repeat finisher.

Because I just know that builds incredible fitness on the back end, particularly for races where you've got hill climbing.

But again, you have to have the right terrain.

Almost everybody has them.

But what do you do with an athlete who doesn't have a power meter?

Do you change things in terms of how you.

Most of my athletes who don't have a power meter do ride a smart trainer all winter.

And so they have.

They understand the concept of what it means to apply power.

So.

And what it means to apply power evenly.

So that my hope is that by the time they get outside and we talk a lot about this, I actually have athletes I requested athletes do a little bit of a lot, a little bit of workout of each trainer, workout off erg mode so that they know what it means to hold that power.

But yes, it you begin to get into heart rate, there are ways to calculate speed.

It depends a little bit on the course that they're on.

Certainly a power meter is a wonderful invention, but I have probably about a quarter of my athletes don't have them outside, or maybe even a third.

Yeah.

All right, let's move to the run.

With the time that we have left, I think we're going to miss some of the topics.

So I'm going to count on you, our listeners, to let us know if you enjoy this segment because a bunch of segments, a bunch of stuff we're not going to get to include here that we could do another segment on.

So if you really like this segment, please let us know.

We'd be happy to come back and do another one.

You can of course do so in all of the usual ways, but I'll mention them again.

You can email us, you could put it into the Facebook group, you could leave a comment on Instagram, whichever you like.

Just let's talk about the run.

How do you approach the run for your athletes?

What's your philosophy there?

I feel like every single one of these starts with the the disclaimer.

It depends.

I have a number of athletes who come to me who are new to triathlon or who are coming from an injury or they've been frustrated by injury.

And so for a lot of them it's a very long, slow return to run process.

There's a lot of walk run.

I'm a big believer in walk run and we've had a lot of success with getting athletes to the point where they can run the whole half marathon of a 70.3 and they were limping a year before.

So it's when that works out and athletes believe in the protocol and they follow the plan.

It's delightful.

Certainly there are athletes who are very run resilient and you can pile on three, even four runs a week, depending on their age and their sort of history with injury or lack thereof.

In which case it's a lot of base running, usually one quality run a week, which depends.

It depends a little bit where we are in the season.

I'm a big fan of progressive runs, starting at a certain pace and moving up through the effort.

So I'm interested in that because I give a lot of progression runs.

So what is your philosophy like?

Why do you give progression runs?

What do you think they do for the athlete?

I'm curious if we are aligned on.

The Let me hear your answer first.

So my why is because I've done them forever and I believe that they're really useful for the long run because what they do is teach you and they train you to be able to run faster as you become more fatigued.

And that is invaluable in a race situation where you're getting towards the back end of your 70.3, you're fatigued from the bike, you're fatigued from the run.

And I'm not necessarily asking you to run faster, but I'm asking you to hold your pace and hold your form.

And by doing those progression runs, which I lengthen over time, I ask my athletes run at a slow, comfortable pace.

But every mile you're going to knock off 5 to 10 seconds per mile so that at the end you're running significantly faster than you were at the beginning and doing so when you're into a 10 or 11 mile run, that's hard.

That's hard.

And learning what it feels like mentally to hold your form and to make yourself run faster when you're tired, to me pays off hugely when you're in a race.

Right.

And I know you've seen that in spades in your own experience as an athlete.

We always laugh about that sort of 9, 10 mile mark in a 70.3.

Right.

Where you just hate your life and everything starts to go down the toilet.

But if athletes have, through practice and through motor memory, the experience of keeping on top of cadence.

Right.

Cause cadence leads pace.

And keeping on top of the mental game of saying, I can do this, I've done this before, I've done it a hundred times before.

I'm just going to let my tell my body to do what it's done before.

No, we're not necessarily asking them to massively negative split their half iron, their half ironman run.

We're asking them to hold pace because, boy, how often do we see.

It was an incredible first eight miles and then wheels fall off.

Yeah, a lot of times.

So yes, those are great workouts.

Yeah.

The other thing I would say about running is that I like you very slow with the build.

Even with people who come to me with good track record of running, I tend to be pretty slow.

I like to go first with low frequency and build the volume and then eventually once the volume's up, I'll start increasing the frequency and I build out the long run slowly.

And then once I have, once I feel comfortable that they are run adapted, only then will I increase or will I start with speed.

Yeah, and that is tough.

A lot of my athletes are impatient and they don't like the weight.

They keep asking when's the speed work coming?

And I keep trying to remind them that if you're going to get hurt running, it's going to be doing too much too soon or doing speed work too soon.

And most of the things they buy into that.

I definitely have athletes who show irrational exuberance.

It's a borrowed phrase.

And I keep reminding them, look, my job is to get you to the starting shoot healthy and if I don't do that, I have failed.

Sure, things come up and it's not always the coach's fault for sure, but there's a definitely a guardrail element of wow, that must have been a really fun run.

And it was 40% longer or 40% faster.

And I would just remind you that.

We really want themselves, right?

Yeah, exactly.

We're coming to the end of the time that we have, but I feel like there's a lot left on the table.

And again I'm going to say to you, our listeners, if this has been useful and of interest, please let us know.

We'd be happy to come back because still to discuss are things like nutrition transitions, gear choices, communication and within communication are things like how do we handle when athletes go off the reservation and do their own thing or maybe move workouts around or things like that.

So those are all things that we'd be happy to come back and chat about again.

Alternatively, if you'd prefer that we just I just do some more interviews, I'm happy to do that.

We're here for you, so let us know.

But I do want to.

So let me end with one thought which I know you'll vehemently agree with, is when I was thinking about my sort of bullet points to open with, one thing that I wanted to remember to say was, and I know you agree with me, is wanting the athlete to delight in the journey.

And I know that as a coach I absolutely delight in my athlete's journey.

When an athlete has a great 5k or has a PR in their half marathon or texts me sometimes.

I had an athlete once who every time when he completed a really hard workout, he would just send me a text that had that boom motif, you know, like the cannon going off.

And that was an indicator.

I gotta go look at this file.

Because he's really excited about it, right?

He's really proud of himself.

And so to be part of that, of course we also share our athletes missteps and tough days and quote, unquote failures, which aren't really failures, but they feel like it at the time.

And we're sad about those, too.

But when an athlete is.

Is moving in a positive direction and so proud of themselves, and I get all choked up.

I mean, I had an athlete break his marathon pr shattered it a couple of weeks ago and it was several time zones away.

And I'm reading it, looking at the splits and practically and just so exciting for this young man to have done this.

And anyway, is hoping they delight in the journey and knowing that we also delight in their journey.

I love that you use that word because whenever I start with a new athlete, I always say, thank you so much for putting your faith in me and inviting me on this journey, because I consider it a journey as well.

And I love being a part of it.

I love, like being at the start and then watching them blossom and go through.

And just like you, watching those splits come through is just, I always tell them, I say, every time you run over a time mat, just know that I'm watching.

And you could, if you're feeling tired, if you're feeling whatever, just remember I'm cheering for you, I'm encouraging you, and just know that somebody's out there watching and pulling for you and so happy that you're out there doing it.

Yeah, it's really been just.

I'm so happy I came to it because as much as I've enjoyed being an athlete in the sport, being a coach in the sport has been arguably even more enjoyable.

So, Juliet, Yep.

Thanks so much for sticking around and doing this segment.

I think this was great.

And again, to all my listeners, if this is something that is of interest to you, let us know.

We'd be happy to come back and discuss the other subjects that we didn't get a chance to get to in the time that we had.

And we always are here and willing and excited to talk to you and whatever is to your interest.

That's what we want to talk about.

Juliette Hockman, my friend, my colleague, thanks so much again for being here for both the Medical Mailbag and this segment.

I'll see you again on the next episode.

Thank you, Jeff.

My name is Stephanie Van Bever and I am a proud Patreon supporter of the Tridock Podcast.

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