The XLR8 Performance Lab Podcast
Exciting, in-depth, and sometimes humorous conversations with experts in sports performance and human optimization across the globe. Including athletes, coaches, elite scientists, and self-experimenters, this show has it all. Hear directly from the source about all of the behind-the-scenes happenings in our sport and the ways they go about impacting it on a daily basis.
The XLR8 Performance Lab Podcast
Does Tailored Training Even Matter?
As the indoor track season draws to a close, our athletes at XLR8 Performance Lab have left their marks on the record books. Join us for a recap of these monumental moments, including Addi Dorenkamp's record-smashing performance and Tommy Hensley's double victory. But it's not just about the wins; we're also peeling back the curtain on the transition our athletes make from our lab to their high school tracks, flourishing under the guidance of both our dedicated coaches and their school mentors.
Ever wondered how elite athletes like Caleb and Addison tailor their training to their unique metabolic data? Strap in as we reveal the results of an intriguing social media poll and how we use this information to fine-tune their event matching and training regimes. There's an art to balancing an athlete's innate talents with the need for a well-rounded skill set, and we're diving into the methods that lead to personal records and undeniable progress—without the burnout.
For those hungry for actionable insights, this episode is a goldmine. We're sharing the strategies that keep our athletes at the top of their game, drawing from top-tier coaching collaborations and data-driven improvements. And stay tuned; our upcoming episodes will be brimming with expert guest interviews, all presented in neat 20-minute packages for your listening pleasure. Whether you're an athlete, coach, or just someone who loves a good success story, this is an episode you won't want to miss.
Hey everybody, you are listening to the Accelerate Performance Lab podcast hosted by Accelerate Head Performance Coach, ben Tillis. You are about to hear strategies that have helped produce many elite middle distance and distance runners over the last 15 years. He shares why running success doesn't have to be hard. You just have to know a few key tools, from workout strategies to important info on sleep and nutrition. You are guaranteed to learn something that will help you in your running journey. Be prepared to get faster, stronger and better in your racing and training. So, as always, sit back, buckle up, enjoy the ride. Here we go.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Accelerate Performance Lab podcast. I'm host Ben Tillis and it's been great to get back with you guys here so far in the year 2024, as we're just getting started with the spring school season for track and field. It was a really fun last weekend here of the club season. Before Iowa started their school season, we had the chance to take a good number of athletes to Northwest Missouri State, the Bearcats. They put on a great youth series throughout the winter. This was their third meet that they had there. We've taken athletes to each of those meets. This one we took probably our largest number Really had some awesome, outstanding performances throughout the course of the meet with some great runs, like in our mile.
Speaker 2:We had some great runs by Adidoren Camp setting the Iowa indoor record for 1600 with 453, or teammate from Valley Cocoa Cooker running 508, as well as on the boys side, tommy Hensley winning the mile and the 800 races that were about, I believe, about 45 minutes apart in 419 and 156. So he had a nice day as well, including other teammates that also lots of guys running some really great performances in those events as well. Rice Reynolds 49, 25, I believe, in the 400. Marie Day winning the 400 on the girls side. Chloe Judisch going 219 for runner up in the 800 on the girls side as well. Jessica Kine dominating the sprints, as always, and just across the board, some truly amazing performances. I'm sure I'm forgetting some of even our top ones, but really just excited to have had the athletes out there training hard with us all winter and getting to see a lot of them Getting out there for the first one of the off season first and last before they started in their school season, and others just putting a bow on some of the great performances you know they've had throughout this winter.
Speaker 2:It's just been really fun to see some of these athletes really develop and showcase their skills with different athletes, you know, putting on different performances across the country, starting from we've been to Arkansas, louisville. There's been athletes up in Minnesota, kansas City, maryville, chicago. You know there's been athletes everywhere and we've still got some more fun places to go for the championship meets and new balance and adidas. It's gonna be great just to see some of our athletes just test their medal against some of the best in the US and Also it's gonna be fun to see them now test their medal against their fellow High schoolers. In the school season there's so many amazing runners and I always saw a lot of them at that meet at Northwest. So just getting them back in their school colors is gonna be a lot of fun for us just to see how they Bring all the tools that they've gained throughout the winter. It should be a lot of fun to see them do that.
Speaker 2:So I'm really proud of all of our athletes, really excited by that, grateful and thankful to all the coaches that helped us out this winter. We had some fun new coaches that were in. Several of them are former athletes and Hayden Kuhn did a great job with some athletes of ours this winter. So did Riley Witt. We've also added Shailin D Young into our our group with assisting athletes and some of the longer events and in her Triathlon stuff as well always grateful. Alan Davis helping with nutrition. Austin O'Brien's, the sports Psychology side of things, and then the, the wonderful crew at engineered performance in Ankeny, where our facility is Just and mainly our. Our PT are the one that's really digging in with us. Taylor we're super excited that she's joined us and just really fired up for what's to come, that she can offer to our group and Just so many awesome people that have contributed and just brought a lot of smiles To my face. The kids face is just enjoyment, helping them achieve the goals that they want to achieve and some of them recovering and getting back into it and and just ultimately allowing them to chase their dreams and their goals. So we're excited to see them back with their schools.
Speaker 2:You know it's always kind of interesting as the as athletes return. You know we like to showcase. We had a lot of tests here in the you know kind of the waning weeks of the off-season when I should say kind of the indoor season. A lot of these athletes go cross indoor, outdoor Maybe there's it's similar to probably college and pro anymore. The off-season is a little bit variable depending on the athlete. I'm just trying to make sure everybody's getting some good training but also getting chances to race when it makes sense for them as well. And one of those things that you know we often are trying to balance is giving them those opportunities at big meets to see athletes that maybe they won't get a chance to see, always that exact caliber. They see the same, you know, athlete from the same school at seven meets in a row and so on. So we're always trying to find ways to give them more unique opportunities To do so. So it's fun to watch that happen.
Speaker 2:Definitely always kind of a transitional time is as a lot of them work their way back into their schools, and we're oftentimes working with school coaches to talk through some of the things that they're working on in the winter what their data showed from when they tested, both metabolically, some different things that maybe we found out, you know, again from the psychology side, the nutrition side. Just there's always different things that give these athletes a chance to be successful. So we're always looking into that and trying to have fun with how we showcase that on social media, how we showcase that, you know, with the families that that trust us and some of the new families that are checking us out. We're always excited to have new athletes. We're definitely taking on some more right now. Now's that kind of time of year.
Speaker 2:Sometimes we hear from a lot of middle school kids that maybe are finishing up basketball or something and getting ready for, you know, their middle school track season here coming up in a month or so Just definitely excited by you know, their excitement and their energy for their season as well, you know. So if you've got athletes that have come back to your school and they're fired up and ready to compete, we hope that we put them in a good position so that they can do some great things. You know for the school as well, and we're going to be right there alongside them. So I know, you know there's definitely you know some challenges that you know we've run into and we understand it that there are some coaches that maybe see this as a challenge, but really we're trying to just we'll stay alongside of them, working, trying to come up with the best avenues for them to have success. And I think, as adults I've been in the education system as well and just trying to work to figure out what's the best way to create continuity for both the individual as well, as you know, your team and how to blend all that together. So you know it's not always going to be smooth, but the job is on our end. It's always been to give the athlete the best tools possible and work with them to have success.
Speaker 2:So you know, if it's not the cup of tea, if you hear something on here, you know that throws you off, or you see something on our social media page and it just really gets under your skin. You know, here's the easy answer Just don't follow it. You know, just leave us be. It's all good you can. We're not going to lose any sleep over it. If you unfollow us, it's not the end of the world. We're here loving what we do. Our athletes are loving what we do, but if you're somebody that's enjoying it, you know share with your friends as well. See if there's more things that maybe there is something of value. That's all we're trying to bring here with the podcast and with social media, and working with these athletes is bring some things of value. So certainly don't know it all. Just got a lot of we've had a lot of almost a thousand tests now in the facility, so we got tons of data to go off of, you know.
Speaker 2:So if this isn't your cup of tea and all you plan to do with it is just go. You know, for lack of better way, just go and talk crap about it. Then just move on to something else. That would be the probably mature thing to do You're certainly welcome to be a mature and just continue to follow and use it as a way to, you know, degrade the success of either our athletes or the coaches that work with our athletes, but otherwise, you know, have some fun with it. That's what we're trying to do. You know it's our athletes. Have fun creating, you know, different accelerate meme accounts and things, even to poke fun at ourselves, because it shouldn't be that serious.
Speaker 2:We're supposed to have some fun with it and just do our best to spread some, some ways in which we see athletes having success and getting better, and we hope that you've been able to. You know, see whether it's athletes in your own school. If they've come to us, man, it's just they want to get better, they want to push themselves. You know they're never coming saying you know, what I have isn't good, they're just saying I want more. And then sometimes obviously there's some challenges in combining those things, but it's only because the kids desire the opportunity to chase success at the highest levels and it's been fun to see how Iowa has progressed the last few years with that. So you know you can get on board and, and you know, push yourselves, find your own resources. If we're not that one again that challenges and builds you up and builds your team up, and you know, if again, if it's not us, then, you know, be mature, just unfollow it and move on to the next thing. If it is us, you know I said we love to engage with you, we love to, you know, come up with ways to help provide more resources.
Speaker 2:We've heard more podcasting, more, you know, just getting more info out. There is something that's valuable to everybody. So I'm back in the seat trying to make that happen. And so, again, if you love that good, share it, pass it on. If I'm not for you, it's really easy to just not hit play on our podcast. So, but if you're here and that's you and you're finding yourself having a hard time in pause because you're just looking for the, the thing to say that that, you know Makes me look bad or something, go for it. You know, more, more time spent with us working with athletes, if that's what's tripping your trigger. So we're just gonna keep moving on. The best thing that I see moving forward with all of these athletes is just that they have such a passion to take Everything to a new level, the excitement that they have to look for what makes each of them so unique and one of the ways that Kind of jumping into this week's we talked about how, on on Instagram, we put up a poll.
Speaker 2:I happened to have two athletes in the facility doing a workout doing different workouts, really, actually but I posted the poll and happened to be Caleb Tempest and Addison Doran camp to elite level Athletes in Iowa and, really, you know, have done some things nationally as well throughout their careers. And and the question was which one would thrive more on More aerobic based, longer, slower type of training? Pretty straightforward question. I think we had believe it was like 71% said adi and 29% Went with Caleb, and so I think it shows that I think most of you generally get it. The correct answer, based on the metabolic data that we have, would be adi, you know, and so why is that? Well, that's what we get into and we work with the, the information we get from the tests as well as what we can see. A lot of you don't have test information. You can use your you know. There's some common sense information that goes with it as well.
Speaker 2:Right, adi's gonna thrive on more long-distance training. Her events get better as the distance goes up, right, and Caleb is one of those that has the ability to go down to the 800, be competitive at the eight and the mile and then, as the distance goes up, some of that extra power that he brings from the eight and the mile are gonna present more Challenges in the longer races and vice versa. The lack of the top-end power is what's gonna be a challenge for someone like adi Is the races get faster, but it's also it makes them amazing at the events that they go where their strengths are. So, as much as we'd love to short their weaknesses right, as much as we'd love to go, let's try to make them, you know, a robot. And okay, they're already strong. Okay, this person already has greater Robic ability, right, all right, we look at somebody like adi. We go yes, she's got phenomenal Robic ability. All we've got to do is add speed and she'll be phenomenal.
Speaker 2:Well, if we add anaerobic power, sure, maybe that event that has been, you know, lagging behind, maybe on the opposite side, on 800 or something, shows some improvement. But what could that potentially do? Then? See, the 5k or the 3k, right? Is that now too much? Anaerobic power? The, the VLA max, as we've talked about in some other ones, is that too high? So our production of lactate is too high. Now For events, she, their, her main events, and all of a sudden, you know she's not, she's producing too much and struggling. Those events, why are they her main events? Well, I mean, again, let's be honest, the data that she's produced in her racing basically tells us she probably has more slow twitch fibers, percentage wise, than this Caleb. He's probably gonna be a little more explosive as more fast-switch fibers, right. And so if they have that fiber type, each fiber type is going to Improve and get stronger and more productive when trained to its strength.
Speaker 2:Sure, you certainly can take fast-switch fibers. There's plenty of data on that. With threshold training and so on, there's certainly ways in which we can take it and make it behave more like slow twitch fibers. Okay, so that they don't have all those. You know, some of the properties that they have are, you know, more inclined to be Something that's, you know, likes to like a slow twitch, but was still some of their original fast twitch properties as well. But when you put it together then with the athlete that has more fast twitch, well, slow twitch fibers don't really find ways to become, you know, suddenly behave more like fast twitch, okay.
Speaker 2:So if you take an athlete that has a high preponderance of, let's say, fast twitch fibers and you think I'm going to train them for the two mile by simply having them, you know, run a bunch of longer running to improve their aerobic, you know, fitness or stamina. The downside there is, if it's that slow, you're really only training those slow twitch fibers. But if there may be 50, 50 fast switch and slow twitch and all you're doing is training in that slow twitch range to try to make turn them into a cross country runner, or you need them as a mile or two mile that year and they're more of a 400 runner or something, you're leaving all of their natural strength, those fast twitch fibers, untapped and undeveloped. You're going to have to find a way really to help teach those fibers to behave in a way as much like you want the race to operate as possible. That's why, really, it's all about getting them in the right event. So then, the right event is the event that's closest to what their fiber type naturally can be trained at, so that each fiber is when the training is going on. It's getting the right mesh between how often we work this type and that type, this system, that system, the crossover and all of those things. So, again, 71% of you were able to process that as you were looking at that and God, that makes sense, yeah, or whatever.
Speaker 2:She's somebody again, if you know her background, a little stronger across country and so on, and so it doesn't always require all the in-depth testing. Now, if we want to, how do you get her to 453 for the mile and four seconds under what? The 5k, the 5k national champ we had last year and Peyton, no, we ran at the same meat. To take that 1600 record from her for full seconds is a lot. You got to have the data and that's where you know we get people that might say that threshold pace is not right. There's no way that that's the right pace. Well, I hate to break it to you, but we've got.
Speaker 2:I probably take, you know, with someone like Addie, probably 50 samples a week of lactate while she's doing threshold type workouts, and I hate to break it to you again. If you're somebody doesn't think that's what it is, you're welcome to come in anytime. This is an open invitation to anybody that says you know, if your coach says that that number or something is inaccurate, tell them they're welcome to come in anytime. Seriously, love it. Usually it's fun. Get to meet coaches and get to show sort of how it all works and how we're able to do it, and then the data it's on, you know, just the lactate pro. You show them, there's the data and we're able to see the paces at which they can run and so um. So someone like Addie can run mile repeats around that 540 range, while staying between three to 3.5 millimoles. Some days I've seen her down in the two eight range. Some days that gets up in the three, seven, three eight range, um, but always in that range. If that's what her most recent test data shows, it's what it is. We just adjust day by day a little bit, but it's in that range.
Speaker 2:So we got hundreds of samples, even on one athlete, let alone over the course of the winter. I think we did several thousand samples um on our top athletes and each one of them PR'd significantly in each of their events, every single person um relative to their indoor personal bests, and some of them their outdoor personal bests as well were significantly better than they've been before. Um, especially at this time of the season and yet feeling you know, none of them asking for big, significant time off. We're ready Hopefully they're ready to really showcase that for the school, but you've got to find the best way to make it fit for them. So, if you have more explosive type athlete, like a Caleb, you know they can maybe run your four, your eight, your mile, give you a two mile maybe, um, maybe your Tommy Hensley type same thing really, 800 base, but can give you that mile with a kick and give it a two with a kick, um, you know, 400, and so on, um, you know, maybe that athlete needs most of the training, or a vast majority, but a good focus of the training on more of that anaerobic, more explosive type work, because that's what their fiber type is designed to do, that's where they will thrive. And athletes to have more of that longer, slower type, um, you know, muscle response. Don't be afraid of just living in that world and training them there, because that's where they're really going to thrive, that's where all of their um successes are really going to lie.
Speaker 2:So remember, most of what we're doing here is all about concepts where, uh, each athlete there's a lot of variables between you know, uh, the type of training they're doing, who they are as an athlete. You know there's some overlap, but a lot of times we're we're really just working with concepts. We've got some of the best coaches in the state that are now partnering with us. Um, and all they do. They bring their athletes in, we test and we give concepts for each athlete. So this athlete needs this type of anaerobic work and speed work and a very limited dose of some tempo or whatever, or vice versa. This athlete can handle tempo over and over and over Um, but they're going to struggle if you give them too much anaerobic work, and so you got to kind of balance that in because it's still maybe needed for the race, um, so we're just, uh, you know, having fun here with all of that data, getting to see these athletes have success.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, you know, if we weren't having fun, if we weren't seeing these athletes being successful, um, you know we, we wouldn't exist, right, we only exist by the nature of, of, hopefully, the product that we've been able to put out there. We're always looking to make it better. So if you've got thoughts or things that are, you know are going to be, you know, constructive in a way that allows us to develop even better, to help these athletes be successful, well, it means pass them on and, uh, look forward to, you know, working through the season and creating even more content that hopefully suits uh, you know what you guys are looking for. Um, we're going to start getting some guests on here having some awesome interviews as well, going to try to keep these short, around that 20 minute mark. Uh, you know, if you watch your half hour TV shows, you know in the commercials what is it? Around 20, 22, 24 minutes. So we're going to try to keep it in that range when possible, especially if it's just me, um, digging into data.
Speaker 2:Um, so hopefully that made some sense to you today that uh, again, try to find out where your athletes thrive and don't be afraid of training them there.
Speaker 2:They love training in their, you know they're, they're they kind of, naturally, you know, work towards what those inclinations are and, um, don't be afraid of allowing them to really work in the sandbox that is, uh, you know, really in their backyard.
Speaker 2:So, um, you know, small doses of the other things, but, uh, make sure we take care of, uh, what they were designed to do as well, allow them to shine in that area. So, um, again, always feel free, you know, reach out, um, give us, give us, uh, uh, shout out on social, follow us, subscribe all of those things. Uh, reach out to us directly at my info is right there on the website. Uh, so if you got something to say whether positive, negative or anything in between uh, you've got access to us. So just let us know. And, um, you know, hopefully this has been uh something that you guys can benefit from. And looking forward to more podcasts here and go through uh the next couple of months. And best of luck to everybody out there in their seasons and can't wait to see you guys on the track.
