“But I think it's a triathlete or elite athlete mentality in general. It's that almost the 80s when you're not training your competitor is, and when you meet him or her in a race they will beat you. It's that fear that someone else is doing it, and I think we need to pull back from that, which is very hard because it’s industries based, you know, multi-billion dollar industries based around this. Look at yourself, everybody's an individual, find what works for you, and there is that optimal solution for you. It might not be what Jan Frodeno does or Craig Alexander did, or some other Olympian, but it works for you. And in the end, you can only do what's good for you to be the best you can be.” This episode of the Smart Athlete Podcast is brought to you by Solpri, Skincare for Athletes. Whether you're in the gym, on the mats, on the road or in the pool, we protect your skin so you’re more comfortable in your own body. To learn more, go to Solpri.com. JESSE: Welcome to the Smart Athlete Podcast. I'm your host, Jesse Funk. My guest today has a slew of certifications. I, unfortunately, can't get through them all because it may take up the whole hour. But he has level two certifications from USA Cycling and US Masters Swim as well as level one certifications from USA Triathlon and USA Track and Field. Welcome to the show, Marco Nicoli. MARCO: Hi, Jessie. Great to be here. JESSE: Thanks for thanks for joining me, Marco. We've been talking for a little while before we got going. As a little bit of history, we're definitely going to get into what you did. So, I had you a while ago write some kind of also research papers almost on ground contact time for the website, and I was atrociously late on getting them out. Partially because I was like people need to see these. There's a lot of good information here. And I wanted to save them, but that was the dumb approach. So, I apologize for that. MARCO: No worries. JESSE: So, let's just jump right into that ground contact time. Will kind of give the-- So, for anybody watching on YouTube, I will have links down in the description so you can jump to those articles. If you're on SoundCloud, probably have a link there. On iTunes, you may have to Google for this. So, you Google Solpri, S-O-L-P-R-I, and then run like a pro, it’s a three-part series from Marco. So, you kind of came up with this and almost all say pitch this to me. Where did kind of thought of pulling data about ground contact time come from? MARCO: Well, it was kind of an organic thing. I started running with power awhile back maybe two, two and a half years ago when the Strike Pod first came out. I'm a data geek to start with. I've just always been that way. And I thought, let's see what this generates. And after running with it for about a year, I was amazed at the amount of information I could glean from my own data, things that I never even thought about. And then one of the big numbers that I saw was changing a lot was ground contact time, so I started researching it. And just as a little thought experiment to kind of give it away, three and a half hour marathoners will hit the ground about 78,000 times. If you reduce your ground contact time by 20 milliseconds, that is very small, that's about 6% for the average runner, which is not very much very possible, you'll reduce your marathon time by over 14 minutes. That is a big amount of time for absolutely nothing more than reducing your ground contact time, which reduces your time but doesn't increase your O2 uptake or your effort. So, it's really for the same fitness you can run 14 minutes faster in a 3:30 marathon simply by doing some plyometrics or some slight workouts, additions to your regular workouts. So, that's where it all started. I'm an efficiency, freak, so to speak. So, I just wanted to see what can we do to make it better? And what does the data tell me? And how does it correlate with other things? And then the idea just got going, and then I started talking to you about it. And then I crystallized some of my thoughts. JESSE: And so anybody that it's like a data geek, like Marco, he's got like tons of charts with the actual data to look through in the articles, like they're pretty in-depth. They’re something you need to like, sit down and chew on really to digest absolutely everything, which is awesome. So, you're talking about plyometrics. Practically speaking, is it just a matter of figuring out how to make that firing sequence faster? Or is it like a nice little mental trick or how do you go through and actually get your athletes to make that small, very almost micro-adjustment? MARCO: It's a combination of physical and cardiovascular to a certain degree. Because your muscle fibers, your type two muscle fibers are the ones that are going to be mostly responsible for that explosive power, that explosive strength jumping off the ground. But on the other hand, a lot of the power that is generated during your stride is also called the elastic return. Which is essentially your leg is a spring and when you hit the ground, some of the soft tissues will contract a little bit and then spring back out. And that gives you essentially free power, free energy to propel yourself forward. And the plyometrics and explosive workouts will mostly target that aspect to basically give you that free energy, free return. Then, of course, you have that higher ability to sustain fatigue with your fast-twitch muscle fibers. But all of it is a pretty straightforward training program. It just takes a little bit of time because you want to make sure you don't affect your body in a negative way. These are very high-intensity damaging workouts, a little goes a long way. And the biggest problem I have with my athletes is they do too much. JESSE: I mean, I feel like that's pretty much power for the course, especially when we're talking about, I assume mostly triathletes that are working with you. I think we're prone to think more is better, especially because we're like, well, it’s the longest in this event, so the more I can do, the more prepared I am for this period of time. But it is always a balancing act between your current fitness, future fitness goals, and straddling that line, so you don't get into overtraining. MARCO: And having tested that on myself and putting myself in the hospital with overtraining trying to see how much volume I can possibly take, I want to avoid that for anybody. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. And going back to the more is better, there's only, you know, once you can ride 112 miles and run 26.2, there's no prize for running 75 miles off the bike or riding 600 miles. You just trying to get that particular distance as fast as you possibly can. And more is not always better in that respect. JESSE: So, I have to back you up, because most of the time, overtraining doesn't lead people to be in the hospital. So, can you tell me more about what happened there? MARCO: Well, I wanted to kind of improve as a triathlete. And so I put myself through a one year program of okay, you know what, let me ramp up the volume. And I got up to about 37 to 40 hours a week of training with a fair amount of intensity. That worked very well. So, I decided, well, let me see where the breaking point is. Let me just progressively do more and more and more until something happens. I wasn't quite sure what was going to happen. But I figured if I'm going to test this, I want to test it on myself to make sure I don't do it to anybody else. And there is a breaking point. I mean, in my case, it was almost complete renal failure, endocrine system failure, pituitary gland no longer working. When you get that message from your doctor saying-- using the words fatal and 48 hours in the same sentence, you kind of start paying attention. But it was a combination of intensity and volume. It doesn't happen in a vacuum and it doesn't happen very quickly. I mean, you're familiar and you’re listeners are familiar with the concept of overreaching, functional overreaching and non-functional overreaching. You have to go well beyond that to get into the full-blown overtraining syndrome. And there are many, many, many warning signs that you need to blow by and ignore before you get there. So, if anybody has any doubt of whether they're overdoing it take stock, take a step back, and take a look at it because it's not something you want to go through. JESSE: Yeah, I mean, there's all these kinds of safeguards even just mental safeguards in a normal work out where like, I can use-- This is the end of week two. So, I do a three-week cycle, two up one down. This is the end of week two for me. So, I was in the pool this morning and just feeling tired to start with. And it's like, that's kind of one of the many signals where it's like, all right, your body's starting to ask for
Smart Athlete Podcast Ep. 36 - Marco Nicoli - RUN THE DATA - Part 1 of 3
But I think it's a triathlete or elite athlete mentality in general. It's that almost the 80s when you're not training your competitor is, and when you meet him or her in a race they will beat you.
