The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
Coach Adam Pulford delivers actionable training advice and answers your questions in short weekly episodes for time-crunched cyclists looking to improve their cycling performance. The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast (formerly The TrainRight Podcast) is brought to you by the team at CTS - the leading endurance coaching company since 2000. Coach Adam pulls from over a decade of coaching experience and the collective knowledge of over 50+ CTS Coaches to help you cut throught the noise of training information and implement proven training strategies that’ll take your performance to the next level.
The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
Athlete's Mindset: Unlock the Power of Athlete Identity
Overview:
You are an athlete. Yes, you. Even if you don't always feel like one. Even if you're not as fit as you'd like. Being an athlete is part of your identity and who you are. It influences your priorities, eating behaviors, sleeping choices, and even your relationships and career decisions. Athlete, coach, parent, and journalist Pam Moore joins Coach Adam Pulford to delve into the power of athlete identity and how leaning into it can improve all aspects of your life and performance.
Topics Covered In This Episode:
- Defining athlete identity
- Occupational therapy insights on athlete identity
- How athlete identity changes with life transitions (kids, jobs, marriage, etc.)
- Maintaining athlete identity when life gets busy
- Adapting athlete identity with advancing age
- How shame affects athlete identity
- How self compassion improves longevity in sport/training
Guest:
Pam Moore started out as an Occupational Therapist before committing to her passion for writing and becoming a journalist. A regular contributor to The Washington Post, her work has also appeared in Time, The Guardian, and Runner’s World, Bicycling Magazine, and for well-known brands like Peloton. She earned a certification as an Intuitive Eating Counselor.
Show Links:
- Pam Moore's Website
- Pam's Podcast Real Fit — Pam Moore
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Host
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for more than 14 years and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.
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Welcome back. Time Crunch fans. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford. Your identity as an athlete how important is that to you? How does it influence the races that you participate in or the amount of training that you do? How does it change throughout your life, with your career, your kids and as you get older? Or have you never even thought about it? Today, we'll touch on all these questions and why it matters when it comes to your training habits, motivation and performance. I'm here again with Pam Moore, as you may remember from a previous podcast I did with her, pam's an occupational therapist by trade, a former columnist at the Washington Post, an endurance athlete herself and a podcast host. So, pam, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me back. I'm really excited to be here, Adam.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, I'm excited to chat with you more. I always enjoy our times together, whether we're writing articles, doing podcasts or trying to figure out life together.
Speaker 2:We want to go on a bike ride. I feel like that's something we haven't done together that we need to do.
Speaker 1:We should, and I come to Boulder enough. So next time I'm in town I will look you up and we'll go pedal a bike.
Speaker 2:That would be amazing.
Speaker 1:Perfect. So I won't lie to you on this one. Pam, when I first spoke to you about doing a podcast on athlete identity, I wasn't sure if it would land with our audience. If it would land with our audience, but the more it took shape, the more I thought about it. Ask you some questions. I think it's a message that anyone and everyone can resonate with and also benefit from. So let's start with the basics. When we talk about athlete identity, what are we talking about and why is it important?
Speaker 2:What are we talking about and why is it important? Such a good question. I think identifying as an athlete the biggest thing maybe not the biggest thing, but an important thing is it can be so positive when you identify as an athlete. All of a sudden, all of these things that I think people who aren't athletes, they might think, wow, that must take so much discipline to do all that training, to supplement it with the weight training and you know getting in the gym on top of the cycling and the healthy eating and the early mornings, or you know fitting it in. Wow, so much discipline.
Speaker 2:I think most athletes would agree it doesn't really take a lot of discipline when it's already built into who you think you are. Right, that's kind of what your identity is. It's who you think you are. It also has to do with culture. If you identify as a cyclist, you're probably hanging out with a lot of cyclists and that also makes it really easy to you know, find people to train with, to get all your training questions answered, like that can become your social life. So it's almost like harder not to train than it is to train, because that's that's your people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to say like if you're, if you're in it, if you're in the thick of it, you're in the culture, like those habits are built. So the, the, the actions, yeah, it's almost like subconscious, it's automatic at that point you don't have to try super hard to be an athlete, you just kind of are doing it right.
Speaker 2:You just are. Yeah, it's just who you are. It's not like, how am I going to fit my work? It's not like, am I going to work out today? It's like when am I? How am I? Where am I going to fit it in? You know that you are so in that way, having that identity is great and it's great for building community. Like every time I've moved to a new place, I found people very quickly through my endurance sports communities, yeah, even swimming, I think. Um, even though it probably took me like six months to form the relationships in the pool that you would form in like a 10 mile run with the same person, cause you just have limited seconds at the edge of the wall. You know like you form those relationships.
Speaker 1:It's just it's so true, like. So, living on the front range. Sorry to chime in, but living on the front range. Boulder, colorado Springs, moved out to DC and I was like man, my endurance life is over, like I'm just going to become this fat internet coach. That's what I always like told myself. I mean, it's a negative way of putting it. I got out here and some of my best friends, now to this day, are out here. People who ride, hike, do all the things, but like the network of people that are out here, that ride is incredible. Even more so and even more welcoming.
Speaker 2:I feel the same way. Actually, even though I moved to Boulder largely because it's a hot spot for triathletes, I found it much easier to make friends in a new city when I moved back to my hometown in Rhode Island than in Boulder, because in Boulder people are like well, I'd ride with you, but my coach told me to do hill repeats. I mean, buddies were way faster than me, they'd wait for me at stop signs because there weren't that many women cyclists. It's like you found somebody that was weird like you. You stuck together Totally. It's a thing, it's a you are. It shapes your good habits right.
Speaker 2:By the same token, I think if you over-identify with your athlete identity, it can have some harmful consequences. I think if anybody who has been injured or has had to be in a caregiving role which I guess we'll get into as a parent, any life event that interferes with your ability to train and race, can cause you to really question who am I and what is my worth, and if that is something you are facing, you might be over-identifying as an athlete right when you start, you know it's one thing to be disappointed by the result of a race or like getting dropped on a group ride. It's another thing to question your self-worth when you don't see the athletic results that you were looking for, and so I think we have to be careful to separate our worth from that identity. Because you know, something I tell friends and family and that I sometimes have to remind myself is like, hey, I don't love you because you're perfect, I don't love you because of how you you know, for my kids, for example, I don't love them because they scored well on a test or did well in a swim meet. Like I don't care about that. Honestly, I don't even love them because of their personalities. I loved them before I even knew their personality, when they were a newborn who did nothing. You know, like I'm sorry, I'm sure everybody listening who has a newborn loves their newborns. I love mine too, but you don't love it because of the way it cries, poops and sleeps. You just love it. And so if you could think about loving yourself in that way, like totally unconditionally, like you have worth just because you're here, that can solve a lot of the over-identification problems.
Speaker 2:But we can talk about that later, but that's I think that's in a nutshell to me what athletic identity means. And just a little backstory. You mentioned that I have a background as an occupational therapist. I think a lot of people don't really know what OT is Like. Maybe they know like, oh, my kid had it for sensory issues or ADHD, or my mom had it when she was recovering from a hip replacement. Ot's roots are in mental health and we talk a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's actually true. Um, we started out in psych hospitals in the around the turn of the century, which is ironic because, um, mental health funding is like the first thing to go when governments and healthcare systems want to cut things. So I think there aren't very many OT jobs in mental health anymore. But, like, we talked a lot in graduate school about like sort of the theoretical underpinnings of like why do occupations matter?
Speaker 2:Occupations are more than just your job. They're like everything you do, like from eating to training to you know, farming, like whatever it is you do in your culture. Those things are meaningful to you and our job as OTs is to help you get back to those things right. But the first thing we need to understand as professionals is why does that stuff matter? How does that inform how you see yourself and why? You know I might not think that the app, the occupation of like I don't know, basket weaving, I might not see the value in that, but that's because I don't understand your culture and that has deep roots for you and your family or your culture or your religion or whatever you know. So, so that's, um, that's something we talked a lot about, um, in my OT background.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting. So just kind of recap so far, athlete identity, viewing it as neutral, viewing it as it just is. However, when it gets to have, like this, extreme thought, behaviors like shame, which, which is a thing right, you can shame yourself into doing something or you can motivate yourself into doing something right? That, that shaming and that extreme behavior, that's what we want to talk about as kind of avoiding right.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Okay, which I'd say to. In the athletic culture there's a lot of shame. There's both self-shame and also shame upon others. That's maybe even starts as funny and then it gets a little out of control. But again, go in the positive way. Motivate yourself to get a workout, motivate yourself to have that recovery shake in your recovery window, as opposed to shaming yourself into it, and that's going to be the more positive right.
Speaker 2:I totally agree and I think there's a time and a place for shame, but I think it should be very limited, like, I guess, what I'm trying to like. I can identify with the shame. I definitely did a lot of self-shaming and in my experience it's not sustainable because if you're coming from a place of shame, you will not listen to your body, you will listen harder to that place in yourself that is telling you you're not good enough. Unless you do X, y and Z and I promise you it might not happen right away, but it will lead to overtraining, it will lead to injury, it will lead to burnout and, if nothing else, you're not having fun with it. If you're seeing it as some sort of benchmark to like satisfy your ego, that cannot work forever. It might work initially, it cannot work forever.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly, and that's part of the motivation and that's part of the habits that I want to kind of talk about in this podcast is like, why are you doing what you're doing? Is it born out of shame or is it born out of motivation for a positive goal? It comes down to self-talk, and we'll talk more about that here shortly. But what is your self-talk? Become aware of it, and is it benefiting you? Is it, is it uplifting to you, because that that will help you in that performance with longevity over time, or not? And so in that way I think we can all identify that. You know, when we were a kid, as an athlete, if you were an athlete as a kid, you viewed yourself as one way. As you get up, you know, maybe through college, into your twenties, your thirties, your forties, this identity shifts over time. So for you, pam, I mean maybe start maybe with yourself of how that changed just when you went from like twenties to thirties. And then how did it change when you became a mother?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Um, I identified for a very long time as being terrible at sports and gradually became an endurance athlete. And the reason I was I identified that way is because I was terrible at sports. I was picked last for everything. I was terrified of the ball. I also I've been nearsighted, like extremely nearsighted, since I was six, but I did not wear glasses until I was 10. Not that I didn't have glasses. I had the glasses. I was very vain. I would not wear them.
Speaker 2:So when you cannot see the ball, you're not going to catch the ball, and when you don't catch the ball, it's not fun and you don't want to do it. It's this feedback loop. So, and I'm sure I'm not like genetically blessed, it's not like my parents are pro athletes and it's like this weird anomaly that you know. But it was funny because I really remember my first Ironman. I was in my late twenties and my sister made some reference to like all these crazy athletes and I was like, or maybe she mentioned triathletes but I was like, oh yeah, but I'm not one of them. And she was like what do you think you are if you're not a triathlete? You're about to swim two and a half miles and bike 112 miles and run a marathon all in one day what are you? And I was like I'm somebody who does triathlons. It took me a long time to realize, oh wait, I'm an athlete. It was not like something that happened all at once. It was sort of a gradual thing, probably in my late 20s, early 30s, when I was like, oh yeah, all these years that I've been like wearing the spandex and prioritizing the workouts and like all my friends are people I would not recognize in the grocery store if we ran into each other in regular clothes, without helmets or goggles or some form of spandex, like, oh yeah, I guess I'm an athlete. Um, but then you know, you have.
Speaker 2:I had my first kid in my early 30s and my experience as a mom was just like everything changed all of a sudden. I was like you know, I was privileged, lucky to have a maternity leave, but then I'm like not going to work, Like I identified very strongly with work I didn't realize how strongly until it wasn't there for me and I was like whoa, whoa, All I do is like stay home and take care of a baby. Who am I? And you know, my body was still recovering from pregnancy and childbirth and I remember saying to my husband like my life is flipped upside down. I don't know who I am Like, do you and he? I don't know if this is the experience. I don't think he's a spokesperson for all men, but he was like no, I'm not having that experience. You know, he was still going to work, His body hadn't been turned inside out, didn't change for him all that much yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it really didn't If anything for him. It was like more pressure to be the provider, financially, for our family, so that I think he had to like double down harder on that identity, which I'm sure that's no picnic, I know that it's not, but one of the things that I did after my first kid was born she was born in February I put a sprint triathlon on the calendar for June and I was like, come hell or high water, I'm doing that thing and it was not pretty. And you know what's funny, I realized in hindsight the swim went really poorly. Even though I'm a terrible swimmer, I've never been intimidated by open water and I felt like I was hyperventilating on that swim and it took me a because I had lost so much weight so quickly after giving birth, but I certainly hadn't lost like all the weight. Looking back, I'm like my wetsuit was actually suffocating me. That's why I had such a bad swim, but I didn't know it. So I guess my body image was like surprisingly good, but um so that happens and everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but, like being an athlete, it was important to me to do that little sprint triathlon a few months after giving birth because I wanted to continue to be who I was. I was like, even if I'm not going to work and even if I don't still see my friends as often as I used to, a lot of things are different for me. That has to be the same, like it has to be, and that was really good for my mental health and I'm glad that I committed to that and things changed for me. Before that I was really into triathlons. I love going for long bike rides.
Speaker 2:Um the summer I got pregnant. It was like we were going to me and my husband were talking about either doing the triple bypass, which probably many of your listeners know, but if they don't, it's like an iconic um Colorado bike ride that takes you something like 117 miles over three passes. It's like over 10,000 feet of climbing. It's a big deal and I was like I'm either going to get pregnant or do that ride. And then I got pregnant. I was like I'm not doing that ride and what's fun is my kid is about to turn 13 and I just signed up for the ride. I'm doing it. Um, yeah, I'm so excited. It'll be my first time doing it this summer. Um, maybe my last, I don't know. But all of this to say, things changed after she was born. I didn't have all the time that I had, so I really focused hard on running, cause that's the most time efficient of the three sports that I was into. Um, and I just had to change what being an athlete looked like for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think too I mean our time crunched athletes will resonate with this is you have kids and if you had more time where you're still time crunched before kids now you're extremely time crunched with kids. You have to be so much more dialed. You have to be so much more flexible with your time. You have to be really creative super creative.
Speaker 2:And it's some really creative things in those early years.
Speaker 1:So let's hear about one. But first I will say here's where that shame comes in, right, Because you say well, I was doing 10 hours a week and now I'm only doing six. You suck, or something like that. It's like I was doing 10, now I'm doing six. But you know what, that's the reality, and you don't even have to put a positive spin to it. You say that's the reality, but I can still do six. So let's do six, yeah.
Speaker 2:But it's kind of looking at like what is the minimum, um, minimum effective dose, just like you might do with a medication. Or what's the minimum? What do I need? What's the bare minimum I need for to stay somewhat fit Maybe I'm not as fast as I was, but I want to stay somewhat fit. I want the mental health benefits I want to maintain my identity. What would that look like for me? What's the minimum? Define what that is. That's what I would say. Define what that is and then go from there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, agreed, and I actually so, as you're a listener on the podcast, so you may have even heard this. But we had an audience member write in and said basically what is that minimum dose time? So time crunched, what is going to give me benefit? And my answer was super simple at first. Then I gave some examples. But like, just start. Like and that's the beauty about being an athlete Like we have some good habits in place. I would say take action and just start going 20 or 30 minutes. You can change it from cycling to running if you want to make it a little bit more bang for the buck, but four times a week of 30 minutes is better than nothing.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Something is. That's something I really embraced since having kids. I used to think why would I exercise for just 20 minutes? That's so dumb to change my clothes and maybe have to take a shower who has time for that? And now I'm like I don't have time, like not to do that, like I need sometimes, if that's all I have, that'll get the job done. I agree with you Like trial and error See start small and see if that helps.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:If it doesn't help, try more or keep it short, but intense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I also think too with with the. I don't have kids, so I can't speak specifically to this, but I coach a fair number of people with kids and we always look for creative solutions and creative pockets to get some volume Right. And usually that's communicating with the spouse or the other family members of you know, saturday's my day to train, sunday, sunday's your day to train. So something as simple as that.
Speaker 2:Something that we set up like from the very beginning which has kind of held out all these years. Yeah, the oldest one is almost 13. Right off the bat we decided Tuesday, thursday were my early morning to do what I wanted and my husband's job was to do whatever with the kids, like get them out the door, give them breakfast, whatever the day needed. And Monday, wednesday were his days and that's been like, and Friday was kind of a free for all and we've kind of maintained that basic structure all these years, like we'll flip it around based on oh, my group ride is Tuesdays. I really want to do that. Can I have whatever? We, you know, flip it as needed. But having a basic structure in place so you don't have to renegotiate it every day or every week is awesome. Highly recommend that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's something to fall back on from that framework standpoint so that your like lizard brain can be like okay, tuesdays, then Thursdays, those are my days, all good, we'll help get you through the like crappy times of I haven't worked out for three days oh, I feel like a slug and all these other like weird self-talk things that come up. You can always see the light at the end of the tunnel, and if you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel, it's like start digging and find the light, because that will that will help you get there, and I think too, in that way, I do have some athletes where they will become empty nesters soon, and so you start to plan on how much time you're going to have when the kids have flown the coop, right, whether that is finally taking the big trip or having a year where you actually um, you know, do big races January all the way through October or something like that. Get yourself excited when, when you come back and you will have time again. I guess is what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's huge, that mindset of like realizing this is a season it's really hard to see when you're in it. I think if you had told me like you'll do the triple bypass someday but your kid will be 13. I would have been like what, 13 years from now seems like forever, but it's not. It's not Like I had wanted to join this women's cycling team for a long time and I felt like like I couldn't do any group rides for the first few years of my kids' lives because I mean I could have done whatever I wanted.
Speaker 2:I did not prioritize that because I was like I want to spend the precious time I have riding my bike, not driving to the bike ride and waiting around. And then, you know, every person on the ride adds another five minutes with the arm warmers and the peeing and the stopping and the whatever. I was just like I don't have time for that. But then eventually I did and that brings me a lot of joy that I now do and it's so great and it's just like, yeah, that just wasn't an option for me five years ago, but it is now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly Exactly, and I think you know, again, all these, all these things that we're talking about, of how it shifts and changes with the seasons. For many you know many listeners, um, listening here on the podcast, it's like they've kind of chosen to be an athlete for life. I mean, some people listening, it's just you know they're just getting into it and it's, you know, it's exciting, it's confusing, it's all the things, um. But for a lot of people, and a lot of people that I know have tuned in and asked questions, they've been doing this for several years and as things change, you have to adapt and change with it. And I know that everybody listening here is an aging athlete because we're all getting older with each passing moment. Now, some of these aging athletes are younger, some of them are older. So, pam, how do you see identity change as athletes hit their forties, their fifties? The men lose testosterone, the women go through menopause. Power or pace is going the direction we don't want it to. How does the identity change? Or to couple with an athlete.
Speaker 2:What I see in happier athletes is that the happier athletes maintain their identity but they change their behaviors, whereas the less happy athletes they still identify just as strongly and they expect to be doing the same amount of training, to require the same type and amount of recovery, to be continuing to place in all of their races, and they're frustrated because they're like banging their head against a wall, because that's impossible. Aging happens. You can't avoid it, and so the more successful, happy, sustainable athletes that I see tend to accept my body is changing and so my expectations are changing. I might, instead of having like a seven-day training cycle, I got a 10-day training cycle, so I can fit in two really hard workouts in 10 days instead of seven days. Or I accept that I need more sleep, or I accept that I need more downtime.
Speaker 2:Or many runners that I know have transitioned to trail running because it's like comparing apples to oranges when you're looking at road times versus trail times, even one trail to another, there's no comparison, right? So they're focusing on different sports or different aspects of the same sport and just like they're in it more for joy than competition, I think especially I think with the loss of testosterone, people's egos sort of naturally recede. I think it's a function of maturity and probably somewhat hormones. But I do think as we age we start to hopefully be more comfortable with who we are and what matters and I like I can speak for myself. Like I was so obsessed with my performance in the past because I didn't feel that great about myself and I was using it as like kind of a low hanging fruit to be like, oh well, if I can complete these hours of training and if I can reach these finish lines and if I can have a PR, then I feel good about myself. And I realized now that's a recipe for shame and it's just not fun to live that way, to realize now I've gone through some therapy and I have we talked about this offline a little bit the idea of self-compassion and if that's new for your listeners, I think, the idea of self-compassion it sounds really sappy.
Speaker 2:It sounds like, oh my God, if I give myself compassion, I'm a loser. I'm a lazy loser, I'm a stupid snowflake and I'm probably just going to lie on the couch all day and eat Pringles if I give myself a pass. But that's not what self-compassion is. Self-compassion is simply realizing that you're worthy, no matter what. It's actually very simple, kind of hard to do, but the more you practice, the easier it gets. And when you extend yourself compassion, you'll find that, like you, it doesn't mean that you're like, oh, this race got hard, I think I'm going to drop out. It's, this race got hard and I believe that I can finish it. Oh, and I believe that if I'm experiencing like heat stroke symptoms, I'm going to do the smart thing and listen to my body instead of my ego. So I think, overall, being a self-compassionate athlete makes you a more sustainable athlete and a happier athlete, because at the end of the day, most of us are doing this for fun.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, I couldn't agree more. And everybody needs to hear this men, women, juniors, older athletes everybody needs to hear that because, again, if you're on that struggle bus and you're like super hurting, but you're, you know you haven't lost a limb and heat stroke is not there, yeah, it's still finished, because there's a lot of lessons to be learned just by crossing the finish line. Meanwhile, if you're in the break and in a break of three, right, and you're just on that struggle bus, but hey, you know what, if you sit on and make some good adjustments, get that heart rate down, taking a gel, maybe you're still on the podium, right. So it's tuning into what's going on, accepting the realities, like, oh, I was feeling really good, now I'm not. What do I need to do?
Speaker 1:We did a podcast about intuitive eating. This podcast may be intuitive living or intuitive training. It's just that simple awareness of tuning into what is reality and then framing it up so that you still have that joy over time. That you still have that joy over time. And athletes have a terrible time with this because of our self-talk, of the, the false things that we say should, when it is just like kind of uh, made up in our heads, right.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Um are you? Have you ever interviewed Aaron Ayala on your podcast? Are you familiar with her?
Speaker 1:I'm not no.
Speaker 2:She's lovely, she's a sports psychologist and an elite cyclist. She came on my podcast a while ago and talked about self-compassion. She told me actually we talked about this, for I read an article for bicycling about like things you can do to make a hard ride easier and one strategy that she had that I love. It's like a form of acceptance. She said, instead of going I'm tired, just simply reframe and go. I'm having the thought that I'm tired.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You haven't, like told yourself something ridiculous like I'm energized. That would be a lie. We wouldn't believe that you know. So it's not like some manifest new age affirmation. It's separating yourself from the experience a little bit so that you have a little distance. The thought isn't necessarily the reality, it's just you observing that you're having the thought. It makes a lot easier to disconnect from that thought and let a new thought come. Because that's what thoughts do? They kind of come, they go. You don't have to attach to every single thought.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a hundred percent, and that's. I'm no sports psychologist, okay, so let's lay that out there right now. But I would say that's the exact strategy I use in my coaching practice. Uh, when we're framing up a goal, a race strategy, or we're you know doing a retro on how a race weekend went, or something like that, and I would say I would say, I mean, I didn't come up with that strategy myself, it came a lot from a Byron Katie. So if anyone wants a framework, I love her.
Speaker 1:Yeah, check out her. That process is called the work and she wrote a book called loving what is has nothing to do with athletics. However, I have found a Supreme linkage to self-talk and the athlete in a performance setting with using that strategy of asking four questions and turn it around. It's because it again, you get tired. You start telling yourself you're the worst. You're not, you were never going to finish. What are you doing up All the? If you just slow down and like look at those thoughts just kind of like floating up there and be like whoa, where, where did Alan come from? Right, and you can let it go, come back in the moment and and figure out a way to be like I said, just find it's like a little bit of freshening up there so you can get back in the game that's what I do.
Speaker 2:Before you can even change the thought, you have to observe that it's actually just a thought. That's right, not the truth. Um. Will you link to byron katie's work in the in the um in the show notes, because it's so powerful and anyone can do it in like five minutes.
Speaker 1:For sure. Yeah, anyone can do it in five minutes, and I think when you get good at it, you just then subconsciously do it anytime that you uh see a thought come through your head. And another tool that I use for the. I don't know if some people may be polarized by this, but Sam Harris is another one.
Speaker 2:Um, I use his app on um waking up, and he has Sam Harris, the Stanford neurologist who has the podcast called um making sense. I love him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, he's good, so I mean, he's kind of he's dry, so uh. So I and I, I absolutely love him. But if people are looking for some resources out there and again, these two podcasts I'm doing with Pam, they're a little different than my actionable percentages of FTP and all this kind of stuff, but what I'm doing is I'm equipping your brain to how to proceed for a great new year of being an athlete and and we we spend so much time talking about how to train the body, and I do that on the podcast. When I'm working one-on-one with an athlete, I'm doing like sneaky things as well as like in your face, things of how we train the brain as well as the body. Yeah, and I would argue.
Speaker 2:You know, you mentioned, like oh, byron Katie, it's not really about sports, but it's so helpful. I mean I would almost argue that like I'm older I get, the more experiences I've had, everything pertains to everything. Like there is no separation. Like everything I've learned on the bike pertains to life, everything I've learned at work pertains to the bike. It's all the same thing. Like case in point.
Speaker 2:Like I have this background as a journalist, right, but journalism is changing so much. I'm sure everyone listening is I don't know if you're in like you guys are in the athletic corner of the internet, probably, but like in the journalism corner of the internet, all I see is um outlets folding left and right, um, the rates that I'm earning are like the same as I was earning six years ago. It's not sustainable. And if I identify so hard as a journalist, I'm just gonna be like I suck, there's nothing left for me, there's nothing left to do, ah. But instead I'm like, yeah, that's definitely part of my identity and I love going to my like journalism, happy hours and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:And I have learned so many skills from journalism. Like I'm a really good interviewer, I'm a really good listener, I know how to look at a situation from different angles. I read media critically. There's just like and just the same. If you identify so hard as an athlete that like when you can't sustain training 20 hours a week anymore and now you're like a failure, it's like, no, actually that experience has poised you to do so many other things, or to train differently, or to explore pickleball. You now you have all this time and you know you have the discipline to do whatever it is you want to spend your time doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. And I think for the listeners who may be raising an eyebrow of, uh, I won master's national championships and now Pam's telling me to pick up, pick a ball. What? Maybe pick a ball is great. Nothing against that, not necessarily what we're saying. We're saying become adaptable, because if you're an elite athlete, you're a master's athlete, weekend warrior, the one who's more adaptable is going to win. So if you're interested in winning, become adaptable. In in up here in your brain. That's where it starts. And so, in that way, what can athletes do here? What can you do when that identity changes and you and you identify that what I was doing is no longer working as effectively as it used to get? You got to change with it.
Speaker 2:And it's kind of as simple as like going with the flow or not, like you can fight the flow, but it's going to be really hard and you're probably not going to win.
Speaker 1:Totally.
Speaker 2:You can do it whatever way you want.
Speaker 1:Totally, totally, like at some point with my athletes it was talking with Pam, I think I was saying off camera, like some of my 60 year old, 60 plus athletes, you know that that power's going down FTP and a row in sprint power and so part of the strategy is saying, yep, it's going down, but let's mitigate that downfall, that downfall.
Speaker 1:So you just accept the fact that it is going down, but what we can do is not let it fall as much. Typically, I find that FTP actually can last a lot longer than if we need to, and I covered this in a couple of my podcasts with Joe Friel, which I forget the numbers itself. Just Google or, sorry, go to Apple Podcasts, go to Time Crunch Cyclist type in Joe Friel. You'll find him there in the Aging Athlete and in there too he talked about changing the structure of your training week. Move toward a nine and one, just like Pam was saying, a 10-day cycle versus a six and one or a seven-day cycle, because as we age maybe we get a little bit more time rich and the frequency is more important than that like huge volume or huge intensity. So having more frequency as you age is really successful for some of these athletes going through the decreased testosterone, menopause and all the things that we mentioned.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think too, like and this is advice, I think not just as I mean, like you mentioned, we are aging. Every minute, every second we're aging. But whether you consider yourself an aging athlete or you're in your 20s, the new year is a great time to just reevaluate what makes a workout or a season or a race successful. For me, right, like whenever I do a race, I go into it with some performance goals, but also process goals, so that, even if the performance doesn't go how I want, I've got the process goals built in which I have much more control over. So I would say, like, if you are aging and you're not sure where you fit with your athletic identity, maybe just ask yourself what does success look like? And if success is only defined as watts or times or places, maybe you either want to give up the sport Cause it's just not fun for you anymore, or see if you can change the parameters of what success looks like for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think that's right and I think too, along with that is like I want our listeners, I want my athletes to have outcome goals and I want them to achieve it via wise process goals. So process is how we get there, outcome is what we achieve right Podium or power production, whatever. And I want those to be realistic and also aggressive. Okay, so, like when you're doing that, don't just like throw some huge number out of the air, like ground it in something. Use science, use past history in order to make good goals. And if you do that, I think a lot of this takes care of itself. But that's the framework here.
Speaker 1:Now, if, if you're just not hitting those goals and the process isn't going well, you need to reframe it. If you're one of these athletes where it's like, if you think I'm not going to ride today, oh, you're such a failure, you haven't trained enough, who are you? And you're not getting to the big races anymore, what are you going to do? Just give up. If that's some of your self-talk, watch it, catch it, maybe like get with Pam, like hire a coach and delve into some of this self-talk, because self-talk, my opinion, it's way more powerful as an athlete and as humans than we think it is.
Speaker 1:And if there is anything that you take away from this podcast for the rest of this year, work on your self-talk. Maybe a little bit more than you're stressing out about FTP power, and I bet you'll unlock some wild gifts between your ears. You still got to do your training, Okay, you still got to do your training. You still have to get after it. You still have to have the hard days and the long days. However, just check that self-talk a hundred percent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I kind of went on a soapbox there, pam, but as we're, as we're starting to like wrap this up a little bit, I think, for for me is you want to live a life that has a mixture of both athlete life and non-athlete life going on, so that you uh don't become like the weird endurance athlete that goes to the party and he like sits in the corner and he's like sipping his water and and and just kind of like being, uh, the weird endurance people that we are right Like. You want to have a good mixture going on, and that's like my point number one. My point number two is self-talk. If you start to observe and become aware of that and there's a lot of negativity in there start changing around. Use some of the techniques that Pam was talking Google Byron, katie and the work. Check that out. Those are really good resources.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, and I think that if that's not enough like I think a lot of people are walking around with like trauma from you know shit, their parents said shit, their coaches said maybe you need to get with a good sports psychologist and work that stuff out in someone's office, Cause it can be hard to go there by yourself. If you know, try it for sure, but if it's not working, don't give up and go. Oh, this wasn't for me. You might need a little support and there is no shame in that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally, and I think to the other podcasts that I did with Pam. We talked about unlearning some of the stuff that we've learned and carried through with us in life and when we're looking to change something big like that, you have to unlearn. That's the examine life that we talked about and in that podcast that had to do with intuitive eating. But if you missed that podcast, go back and check that out, because I think these two podcasts link pretty well together. Podcasts go back and check that out, because I think these two podcasts link pretty well together. And I do want to say to our listeners, if any of this today, as well as that previous podcast, resonated with them, they need more Pam Moore in their life. So, pam, where can they find you and how does that work? Are you taking on clients?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Thank you for the plug, Adam. Absolutely, I help as an intuitive eating coach. I help women heal their relationships with food and exercise. So particularly this episode is really pertaining to that exercise piece. If you're noticing that, like you only feel good about yourself if you've trained X amount of hours, if you've met X metrics, um, and it's just taking over your life to where, like you said, you're either actually in the corner or like metaphorically in the corner, like you're in the conversation, but your mind is calculating what time you need to leave this party so you can wake up early enough to get in the miles or whatever. Uh, let's talk. My best way to find me is my website Pam dash more M O O R Ecom.
Speaker 1:Perfect, perfect. Well, pam, this has been a pleasure, uh, always talking with you, and this time we've got a couple of microphones to record what we're talking about. And I do think, like I said, these two episodes may be a little different than, uh, the flavors I've put out there before, but, I think, probably even more important. So, pam, thank you for sharing your knowledge and taking the time, um out of your day in day in Boulder to talk and share your knowledge with us.
Speaker 2:My pleasure. Time Crunch Cyclist is actually like one of the podcasts that I frequently listen to, so it's just super exciting to be part of it, so thank you.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, thank you for listening and let's pod again soon.
Speaker 2:Let's do it.
Speaker 1:Okay, Thanks, Pam. Thanks for joining us on the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want even more actionable training advice, head over to trainrightcom backslash newsletter and subscribe to our free weekly publication. Each week you'll get in-depth training content that goes beyond what we cover here on the podcast. That'll help you take your training to the next level. That's all for now. Until next time, train hard, train smart, train right.
