With the Hawaii IRONMAN World Championships looming, one can’t help but wonder about the level of performance to expect from an ever-growing field of high-performance athletes whose athleticism seems to trend upward every year.

Beyond Kona, professional triathlon has witnessed performance and endurance levels rise and the makeup of endurance athletes shift based on the growing demands and expectations of the sport.

In today’s episode of the Purple Patch Podcast, IRONMAN master coach Matt Dixon uses his experience as both an athlete and coach to examine the shift over the past few decades in the athletic approach to training, nutrition, recovery, and all the elements needed to perform at the professional level in today’s triathlon landscape.

Matt takes a look at the future of Professional Triathlon through the lens of its past by highlighting 6 main principles he has observed around the changing of the sport.

• The Application of Science: Improved access and understanding of scientific data for optimal training and recovery.

(34:03) "We have seen over the last five to ten years, a wonderful marrying of coaching, experimentation, research and applied research on the fly, or with a collaboration to accelerate learning of what truly works, and perhaps most importantly, what doesn't work. There has been a radical increase in the understanding of what it takes to achieve performance improvements."

• Triathlon as a First Sport: Early exposure and focus on a multisport approach.

(37:28) "In the last few years, we genuinely are starting to see athletes that grew up as triathletes. It was their first real elite experience. And with this, we started to see the average age of world-class being dramatically reduced."

• Perceptions of Possibility: the elevation of athletic performance through breakthrough individual performances in all three disciplines.

(39:58) "There is simply no place for being a weak bike rider. You cannot excel without being a great runner. And you also have to ultimately swim at or very, very close to the world-class level in swimming. It's a prerequisite now."

• Evolving Nutrition and Fueling: The evolution of science and approach in stabilizing energy, predicting performance levels, and improving recovery.

(44:41) "this has proved to be a genuine and serious performance paradigm shift, particularly in long course racing, those that are benefiting from it, they're bonking less and experiencing less gastric distress."

• Advancements in Equipment Technology: The radical increase and optimization of technologically advanced triathlon equipment.

(47:05) "Gimmicks are less dominant now. There's a smarter filter going on. And the access to all of this equipment is much more democratic."

• Structure of the Sport: The shift in race format and approach by the Professional Triathletes Organisation.

(49:29) "The race formats and the structure has elevated the required range of participating pros. And I predict that this is only going to accelerate over the next three, four, or five years. What it means to be a serious professional triathlete is going to change."

The aim of this episode is to shape your expectations and performance levels based on an understanding of what it means, and what it takes, to deliver a world-class triathlon performance.

Episode Timestamps

00:00 - 03:38 - Welcome and Episode Introduction

03:45 - Episode 236: Evolution of the Pro Performance - an IRONMAN Master Coach Insight

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