S1E14 · Katee Gray: Holistic Endurance

Hey Legends, welcome to the Virtus Performance Podcast. This is episode number 14. Today I sat down with Katie Gray of Holistic Endurance. Katie is a triathlon and long distance endurance coach, former PT. She's someone who loves diving into the depths of hormones, the endocrine system, into nutrition, into gut health and into how we can best create a holistic environment for our athletes. So she's a wealth of knowledge and a wealth of support for myself and the rest of the Virtus team and the Virtus family and all of her endurance athletes that she coaches. So this was thoroughly enjoyable and I certainly got a lot out of it.

Hopefully you guys learned a lot too. Enjoy. My personal and business goal is to be just a little bit better every day. I believe everyone, especially normal people have a story to tell. The Virtus podcast exists to help us all find small ways of consistent improvement by discussing the journey and experiences of each of our guests. Katie Gray, welcome to the podcast. Thanks a lot. Good to be here. Super, super exciting to have you. Tell me a little bit about yourself. I am an endurance coach, triathlete, well I try to be, and a wife to Mitt Gray, mum to two border collies, moved to the Peninsula about three years ago, business owner.

What else? That's a lot. Yeah. Plenty. Tell me a little bit about being a coach and being an endurance coach. What does it involve? First of all, I've found my bliss, which I think is pretty cool. Awesome. Yeah. It's a lifetime passion for me now. You know, it started out as a hobby of my own in terms of being an age group triathlete and coaching became this side gig where I had my other full-time jobs where I, they were, I guess my career and that involves strength and conditioning, personal training, sales and marketing and gym management.

And it was an odd thing for me to fall into because I don't fall into things. I set goals and I chase them. I haven't realized that at all. I would pick up on that. And yeah, I mean, I've set goals since I was very young and I think I would have been 14 or 15 when I set the goal of I'll own a gym, I'll run a gym. That's my, that's my thing. I said about that. So you knew that all the time back then. As soon as I left school, I went about that, did my degree in exercise science and that goal was achieved very rapidly.

And then I just kept putting bigger goals in front of myself in regards to growing in the fitness industry. So to fall in to coaching that had nothing to do with being in a gym or running a gym or anything along that line was really interesting. And I didn't intend to be a coach full time. It literally just happened and I think that's been the best part about it. It took me by surprise and I can't imagine it any other way now. That's awesome. That's awesome. Tell me about back when you used to run gyms and would coach as a PT and what kind of drew you from that lifestyle to the lifestyle of being a coach, an endurance coach?

Yeah, because I was and am so driven, it can, it's a blessing and a curse. Definitely. And what I found was even though I was super successful and doing very well, getting great results with my clients, I got to love and enjoy what I did on a daily basis, which sometimes it's easy to forget that that's a rarity. Yeah. I was definitely burning myself out in hindsight. I did not know that at the time. So I went about studying my degree. I worked two to three jobs through that entire degree. And then the final year I thought it would be smart to work full time and study full time.

So that was interesting. I was also a massive party animal and an athlete. So you can imagine it was a massive recipe for disaster. And after those years in uni, I was running my PT business in Perran and was well into the triathlon scene by then had dabbled in a couple of my PT clients that wanted to do triathlons and helping them. And I had joined a triathlon club for the first time, even though I'd done triads by myself for six years, I didn't injury snowboarding and wanted camaraderie and a group. And I was introduced to this whole new world of tri clubs.

And I was introduced by a friend of mine and he was an amazing influence in my life. And he was a coach at that club, or he became a coach. And then a couple of years into being there, he was in an accident on beach road and hit by a truck and he was killed on that day. So he was always in my ear about working too hard, working too much. And I was like, nah, man, I've got goals. And I was so driven by that income and the prestige and people recognizing what I did and having this amazing business.

And it took his death to shake me up and go, wow, life truly is way too short. And he wasn't the only one in my life telling me that. I've got an amazing brother and best friend who's very similar to him and was also that influence in my life of, you need to chill out, have some fun and relax, 23, calm the F down. And yeah, so I let my whole business go. What was that like? That was big. That was really tough. Like a massive ego step and fear financially and lots of different things going through my mind.

I'd also met my now husband. So that was a big shakeup of, oh, I don't want to work all the time. I don't want to come home at 10 o'clock because there's someone there that I want to be with. And that was also a big factor. And I never pictured that for myself. I was just going to be this independent woman, never fall in love, never get married, et cetera, but he changed all that. So I took a salary based PT job managing to studios in the city Rialto Towers and that was another reminder of work balance.

So the three directors there were a great inspiration in terms of how to live authentically as a personal trainer and not be this role model of fitness that's just burning the candle at all ends for the sake of making other people healthy. But what about me? And they were all really balanced in work life. They were surface, very chilled out, like complete opposite. And it really shone a mirror up for me. And they really challenged me because I was essentially working harder than them. I'm like, this is their business. There's three of them and I'm doing more than the three of them combined.

They were encouraging me to slow down and do less. I was like, what? I don't get this. It took me long enough, but I got there and I embraced it and that was life-changing. That was set up new habits for how I wanted to live my life and my goals became very different. It's like, okay, well what I want to do and how I do it has to be centered around life balance as fluffy as that term sounds. Balance is 50/50 to me. And yeah, all my goals since then have been based around that direction. When was that?

Give me a little bit of sense of timeline. 2017 now, that would have been 2011, 2012. Yeah, cool. What was the first steps you took when you made that shift from being busy to lifestyle? Yeah, working less, doing more for myself, not being driven by others' perception and expectations and this prestige. I think Triathlon had a big influence on me in that way in that I finally found this community where it was okay to just be me and who I was and I was like, oh, so there are other people like me out there and

I can be my innate tomboy and I don't have to put on high heels and dresses every weekend and party in an environment that really doesn't feel comfortable to me. And you know, lycra and cycling shoes became my norm for the weekends. But it still took me a while to learn my lesson and a couple of years later, I fell in a massive hole of physical burnout from all the training. I didn't know any different. So you've just gone from smash yourself at work, smash yourself at training and struggled to find that balance in something else.

So that came to a head in the end of 2014. Talk me through that. I had my first ever DNF. So at that point I'd done, DNF did not finish. I had done over 50 triathlons and I had, up until that point, literally improved every single race. Not many people do that. It's usually an ebb and flow up and down. So for me, I didn't know any different. And there was this expectation of improve, improve, improve, improve. And there was sort of six months worth of serious warning signs. So there were warning signs. I reckon there's been warning signs for 10 years, if you really look at it.

It's a combination of so many things. Takes a little while to actually look at those warning signs and take note of them. I could have easily blamed solely my coach at the time or my work, nutrition, whatever it was. It was so many things I could blame, but really it's a holistic approach when it comes to cultivating or finding a solution. So leading in to that DNF, I had no motivation to get up and train. There was a lot of apathy. There was a lot of emotional fragility, lots of tears, like sitting on a wind train and riding and crying and doing it anyway.

Riding on the bike for seven hours and crying in the rain. Not super sustainable. No. Or healthy or happy or all those things. When you're in an environment where everyone else is doing that, you don't know any different. And I'm sucked in. Yeah. And it's amazing because I see it all the time and I know how I did that, but at the same time I don't. It's really interesting when you've had those experiences and now you can look back and you've probably got athletes who start to delve into the same cycles and things like that. And you're like, please stop, please listen, I've been there.

As a coach on that front, I have learned there's only so much I can tell people. They really do have to come to that on their own. I can guide them. But for me to simply say, you're on the path to burnout, you need to pull back. That's not going to cut it. Yeah. It's little things and then just giving them the advice when they need it and when they ask for it. But at the end of the day, it's up to them to make their own decisions to figure it out themselves. Yeah, 100%. And look, at the end of the day, that hole that I fell in in that DNF was what I needed to create a shift.

So had someone tried to protect me from that, I wouldn't have learned what I've learned and I wouldn't have gone down the path that I've gone down. So it was absolutely meant to happen, no matter how hard it was. So the swim was fine, but I got on the bike in that race and just felt heavy and horrible. I got two flats and never had a flat in a race. And then 10 minutes into the run, I was hating it. I was like, "I do this sport for fun." I was miserable. And I ran past Mick, husband, and I was like, "I'm out."

It wasn't even a... I didn't even have to toy with the decision. So you didn't fight the decision? No. I hadn't even thought about it on the bike. It was just, this doesn't feel right. I've never felt so much pain in my legs and my glutes and fatigue and sluggishness ever in my life. And that's with a lot of experience and a lot of sporting history. So yeah, there was just no hesitation. I'm like, "I need to pull out. This is not right." There was a lot of tears that followed that day, a debrief with coach.

What wasn't helpful at the time, but definitely drives me as a coach now, was I had expressed concern in the lead up to that race with my coach. I'm tired. I'm fatigued. I can't get out of bed. Really struggling mood, et cetera. Hormone's out of whack. I proposed a few ideas and he was like, "Nah, you got a motivation issue. Get on with it." Yeah, so it didn't look any deeper. And so it's safe to say we broke up after that race. But I still learn a lot from him and it does drive a lot of my decisions as a coach these days.

Thereafter, a couple of months later, I found another amazing coach who was a huge inspiration and had a massive impact on my career as a coach. There's a few patterns here. So he started coaching me three months after that DNF and I had gone about healing and rebalancing and researching in that time for what was going on with me in terms of adrenal exhaustion, burnout, overtraining syndrome and the hormone balance side of things as well. With a keen interest in physiology, it wasn't a hard thing to do. I loved it. I wasn't at all. You actually looked forward to learning and things like that.

So this new coach gave me new strategies around training, stripping back intensity, stripping back volume and opened my eyes to a different way of doing things, which felt so right. And I'd moved to the peninsula and there was just more balance, more nature. The burnout was so significant that I actually had to stop work for six months. So there was a big financial strain and sacrifice there. And that's why I feel very passionate about preventing other athletes in going into that position because the stress it had on me and Mick was immense, but it was what I needed to do.

And in that time, because I wasn't working, I had the time, sometimes had the brain function to do the research. And I started a wall of post-it notes and that's what started the framework to my ebook at that point during the burnout period. Started to work again and was working with that coach towards my first Ironman. And it was a couple of months in and he said to me, "Katie, you don't need me. I'm stepping away." I was like, "What?" You're my coach. I'm going into my first Ironman. I need you, man. What are you talking about?

He said, "You don't give yourself enough credit. You know yourself better than anyone. You've done the research. You've done the work. I've guided you. You can do this on your own." I was like, I was so taken aback. But by setting me free, he did me a huge service in terms of my coaching career. It's amazing humility from his part to be able to step away. That's his biggest character actually, Trey. And yeah, by setting me free, it was just this confidence in my ability to coach myself and coach others that I just catapulted from there on in and I just needed that.

Is that what started Holistic Conjurance? Is that the- Yep. Yeah. So Holistic Endurance is my coaching business that started with just a couple of athletes. Originally, it was actually called Peninsula Triathlon Coaching. I like Holistic Endurance better. Totally. It's a little catchier. And then I started attracting athletes Australia-wide, mainly because of the content I was putting out there with my ebook, Healing the Grumpy Athlete, and sharing my story and experiences. So that shaped how I now coach, which is that I've got athletes, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and it doesn't matter. I've got an amazing relationship with all of them irrespective of where they live.

And I learned that that was one of my key skills, was developing relationships without being face to face and being able to impact people. It's tough, tough kid. Didn't have to be super close. And there are limitations to that. And that's where key referrals come into place, having a good functional movement specialist to refer out to face to face because that's one of the key things for technique work or bike fit. Yep. So that's the premise of what I do. It's personalized coaching, utilizing online platforms and constant communication so I don't step into the world of template programs at all.

Good. Very, very, very good. Has, I guess, the goal when you started Holistic Endurance, has that changed over the last two, three years? And how has it changed, if so? I've got my vision brainstorm, of course, from when it first started. And I reflect back on that. It's cool to look at it, isn't it? It's very cool. I found out it was a couple of weeks ago. And as much as in my head I was like, my instinct to answer to that question is, yeah, to change shapes. But when I look back at it, the essence and the core is the same.

And that has always been to inspire change in the endurance community culture around developing athletes that are robust for the long term, especially at a high performance level. I might not coach the high performance athletes that are on their way to the Olympics, but if I can influence the coaches who do coach them, all those athletes just seek out more information and be their own advocate for health rather than just getting thrown up against a wall and see who survives. That's my ultimate goal. Yeah. Yeah. And I can see how passionate you are about allowing

athletes to look after themselves and to, I guess, empower them to learn and educate themselves rather than just being, yeah, the ones that just, let's see who can last the longest and stay in one piece. And it goes actually beyond just athletic endeavors and performance. When I say athletes, I do just mean anyone. Everyone's an athlete. Everyone's an athlete. Everyone's just at a different event. Yeah. It goes beyond that. It goes into life and instilling these beliefs, behaviors, and habits that set your life up for the long term and wellness and health. So yeah, not working 70 hour plus weeks, et cetera.

Don't tell me that. I'll get to you later. There is a big, I guess, gap for most people when they think sport and life, but as we know as coaches that couldn't be closer together because everything that you're able to do in sport or in training or in movement, it just reflects onto your life. I think when you start making those hard decisions around doing those extra sessions and looking after yourself with nutrition and sleeping a little bit more and not working 70 hour weeks, then that allows everything else to work a little bit better.

And I think that's the best thing that I've probably learned off you and policy endurance is just looking at everything from, yeah, outside your bubble and allowing you to look at all the different factors. Yeah. If you can't fill yourself up, there's no way you're going to be able to fill up anyone else. And that's what I was trying to do for so many years as a personal trainer and it drained the life out of me. Mental health was horrendous and I couldn't recognize it at the time. One of my favorite quotes by Mark Buckley is, "You can't give what you haven't got and you can't share what you haven't experienced."

Why was experiencing everything you've experienced so important for you as a developing coach? It gets shown up as a mirror to me quite frequently and it often comes up when I'm feeling frustrated or stuck, which is great. And what it reminds me of is that I've gone through my own struggles and challenges for a reason and for a purpose. And the athletes that come into Holistic Endurance come for a reason and it's not just about me helping them, they help me too. They really teach me lessons and help me see meaning in all the shite that I've gone through.

So they really respect that relatedness of I've been in the hole, I've come out of the hole, I've gone back into the hole and not learnt my lesson and come out of that again. I've had the injuries and the niggles and the struggles and had to be this really strong advocate for my own health and injury prevention and management and not just listen to and take one person's word. I'm like, "You know what? I'm going to dive in a little bit deeper to that and get my own answers." Because what I've learnt through coaching and with myself is no one individual's solution will be the same.

And same with training programs. They're never, I don't think, they should be the same. No, I agree. And the further I fall into those rabbit holes of nutrition and training and medication and all those different things, the more you realise that everyone's response to the same stuff is going to be different. So we're all going to adapt slightly differently to the same stimulus. So if we treat everyone like they're exactly the same, then they're not going to have the same response. And we're going to end up with some people that respond really well, some people that don't respond well at all, and some people that respond negatively.

And I think the sooner we realise that there are many roads that lead to Rome and there's many ways to skin and cap and things like that. KP always cracks up when I use that stage. Sorry. But when we realise there's a thousand different ways to do these things, it allows us or empowers us to find the way that's best for us. And yeah, the way you train is going to be different the way I train and the way you prepare is going to be different the way I prepare. But everyone thinks there's a one size fits all or a magic bullet or a quick fix and things like that.

And it's just, it doesn't work. And I think that's why there's a great message for anyone, let alone athletes is comparisonitis is not going to get you anywhere. Because what the person is doing next to you might be working for them. It doesn't mean it's going to work for you. Yeah. Yeah. But, and it doesn't necessarily mean that it won't work for you, but something that I've started to, I guess, dive into a little bit more about physiology is, physiology isn't always like my physiology isn't the same today as it will be in three weeks or three months.

So what I need to eat today and what I need to put in my body today and what training I need to do today is going to be completely different or maybe completely different, or at least a little bit different to what I'm going to do in three months. So I think that's where it starts to get a little bit deeper and a little bit more confusing because, well, what's right for me now is not what might be right for me down the track. Yeah. And if you reverse that, which I think is super interesting,

is how you feel now isn't a product of what you did or ate perhaps an hour ago or a day ago or a week ago. Different mechanisms of our physiology take time to develop. So if I use, because this is my hormone nerd expertise, if I use the menstrual cycle as the example, if someone's having a crappy period of PMS and cramping, it's probably what they were doing or eating or drinking or not doing three months ago that has led to that cycle because that follicle takes three months to develop and skin is however many weeks of developments.

And so someone might break out and pimples go, "Oh, it was the chocolate I ate yesterday. Sorry guys, doesn't work that way." Yeah, that's it. But then it just throws so many more factors and variables into the melting pot, which is no wonder people are so confused and people are so up in the air about what to do and how to do it. It doesn't have to be confusing, but I get why it is. Yeah, definitely. Let's go back to business talk for a little bit. What are the main mistakes you've made in setting up your business and running a business and whatever you learned from it?

And as a business owner myself, you could answer that question a thousand times. Yeah. Trying to think of the key ones. I can tell you there's been plenty. Overriding. Not having enough faith and trust in myself. That would override any small, poor decision, large, poor decision. It all comes back to that. Not having enough trust and faith in myself and going after it regardless. And taking detours from what feels right in my gut and my instinct and not listening. That's where poor decisions come from. When do you know it's the right time to pull the trigger?

I've got a very strong instinct. So it's that. I just make sure I listen to it. And where there's an opportunity and a presence of calm. Yeah. That's when you know it's right. Right time. Yeah. I don't feel it's right for me to make large decisions in the presence of major stress. Yeah. That's where poor decisions are made for me. That's good. I like that. I like that. Are you busy at the moment? Yes. Very. That's good. I don't like the word busy. I don't like to glorify it. And so the fact that I even just said that I'm super busy is a rarity for me.

So when someone says, "How are you super busy?" I usually say, "No, I'm not." Because I don't like to buy into that. I'm in a unique- Yeah. I asked you yesterday and you said, "Yes." I was like, "Yes, I'll ask you tomorrow." I'm in a unique position at the moment in that I am genuinely busy. And that's okay. And that's what I need to do for the business right now. One of our key head coaches has just had a baby, which is incredible. Awesome. But obviously, workload goes up. I've known about it for nine months, so that's okay.

You can only prepare so much. Yeah. And yeah, it's just hitting me at the moment. I also know it'll be short term. It just means I need to turn up my self-care. And I've put quite a few steps in place of things that, one, I need to let go during this period so that yes, my workloads increase, but other areas have to come down. And I've stretched myself and I've been more flexible with a few things, particularly training. I've just had to let my key goals go for a little bit. And that's a choice that felt right and is totally okay with me.

Because yes, I could train the 10 to 15 hours required to get me strong and fit for this event that I want to do. But it'll knock you down for the rest of your stuff. Plus do all this extra work and continue to build the business and live up to every other role in my life. But I'm not silly enough to make that mistake 10 times. Yeah. Good. Good. So you're learning. Yes. Good. What is the training goal? Where are you headed now? I did my Ironman three years ago and I've essentially been on my comeback tour ever since and it's been a bloody rocky road.

It has not been smooth. It hasn't come together as I would have liked. It's very easy to reflect on it negatively because I haven't achieved the goal of coming back to long course racing. So that's half Ironman and above. But if I draw on it and I really look at it, there's heaps and heaps of positives because I have learned a lot in that time. I've come a long way personally and physically, particularly on an injury front. I'm a different athlete on a strength and power front. I'm a completely different athlete thanks to you guys.

And so I have this innate knowing and feeling that when I'm ready and the opportunity presents itself, I will be able to express my athletic potential better than I ever have before. So there is that deep knowing there's no fear around that or like what if I don't or what if, what if, what if I don't have that because I know the recipe I need to get me there happy, healthy, strong, fit to execute that. And I've also know that my greatest strengths is my mental fortitude in racing. That's probably been a lesson in resilience the last three years.

It's really funny. For all of the athletes, and when I say athlete again, I mean everyone, for everyone listening, what are your training principles? What are the principles you try and follow? Basic principles? What that means is encompassing many areas. It's not just about swim, bike, run or heading out for a training session. It's the recovery protocols afterwards and what are they, what works for you and the accountability and management of that. It's lifestyle factors like mindfulness practice, breathing and work-life balance, going to the movies, having fun, laughter, date nights, all those sorts of things. Yeah, it's about making your training program work for you, not against you.

So I'm a really big believer that when I deliver a program, it's based around an athlete's work or life schedule. If they let me know they've got a wedding, I'll literally program around it. Have three days off, enjoy yourself and we'll, you know, increase load leading in so it becomes an adaptation and it actually becomes a useful time. Or working late one night, put extra practices in place to de-stress from that. Like if I run seminars, they usually give an evening and I know that if I don't put practices in place, I will not go to sleep.

I've been under bright lights, I've been talking, cortisol, adrenaline, so I need to put extra practices in place to de-stress. So that's part of it. Then there's the functional movement and the strength and conditioning that I'm a big advocate for, for endurance athletes done the right way. Then you've got the more sophisticated side of it that we encompass is utilizing your hormones and this goes for males and females to your advantage and looking at hormone health for performance and also performance for hormones. So not ruining yourself in the pursuit of performance. And then there's the physiology side of it which is just a formula that needs to be applied to the individual.

Talk to me a little bit about cortisol and stress and the main issues with people either over training or over working or under recovering or whatever term you want to use. What are the main issues that come with that? So cortisol being a stress hormone gets released in four different environments or situations and what they are is that stress can be perceived, actual, physical or mental. So it's that four combination. So it could be a training session, it could be a fight, it could be a meeting, it could be general anxiety, you could be lying on the beach thinking about something that's stressing you out and that's still a physiological response that's going to produce cortisol.

Which is why I remember when I discovered Virtus actually and legs up the wall in the last five minutes as part of the program, I was like, "I'm sold. This is brilliant. These guys know what they're doing." That is king because training releases that spike in cortisol and we need to balance it out before we go on and have coffee which increases cortisol, rush to a meeting, raises cortisol, look after kids and yell at them, raises cortisol. Live their lives, raise cortisol, yeah. Just pummels us. So if we can take these moments to breathe, be present and slow down, that is king because we can't change stress.

Stress is going to be part of our lives. Stress is a good thing if we look at it as a good thing. It's all about perception and that cortisol response, if it keeps getting demanded on, it will eventually go, "Uh-uh, I can't keep up with this high demand of stress that you're trying to put on me. I'm going to have to start slowing down in other areas." That's what your body is saying. So it might downregulate hormones or gut function or immune function or something to make you slow the F down whether you get sick or you get tired or you sleep through your alarm.

Or we get an injury that keeps niggling or something along those lines. There will be signs. For females, it would be PMS or irregular cycles or other hormonal symptoms and guys can experience the same and drop in testosterone and all the things that come with that like lack of libido and lack of mojo. So it's really just being in tune and with modern life, I think the biggest thing is people are too busy to be in tune. They don't stop and think about how they actually feel, what they ate, what they did. They're not present. That's a big part of it.

So with that depletion or the demand on cortisol, there's a big fallout in many areas, but it will show up differently in each athlete or each person. The first step is awareness. Second step is testing. Without testing, you're guessing. So it has to be done on pathology testing to develop a plan from there on in and make sure you've got some holistic practitioners in your corner. Why is that objective data so important to any athlete or human? Why do you think it's so important? One, to not guess. Physiology is complex and it's so individual. We can't make assumptions just based on the list of symptoms.

We just can't. It's dangerous. Just because someone's showing up with a list of symptoms might not mean that X is going on in their body. We have to find that out first because if you put interventions in place that work against that, it can be dangerous. If we don't have that data, we can't tell if those interventions have actually improved or ... Yeah. You've got nothing to work with. You don't know if all the effort you're putting in is working. It's like when you get under the bar and test your PBs, your 1RMs. Yeah. It's exactly the same.

Benchmarks, right? It's a different thing to measure. The psychology of it, too. Let's say the testing is in relation to health and wellness for a nutritional protocol. It helps that buy-in and motivation through the process of, "Oh, cool. Everything I've been doing is working." On a physiological level, it's changing me. You get to see the needle move even if it isn't just on a piece of paper or ... Yeah. Inflammatory markers down. Gut function up. Whatever it is. You'll feel it, but it is nice to have that data to back it up. Talk to me about the importance of strength training for endurance.

Why is it so important for long-course and short-course triathletes and endurance athletes to be strong? While we're on the topic of the cortisol release, I find that when you integrate strength and conditioning into an endurance athlete's program, one, you don't have to program as much volume, so it decreases the training load for swim, bike, and run without compromising performance in any way. It's going to reduce your likelihood of injury and overuse and all those kind of things. Yes, exactly. Then you decrease the cortisol demand because your volume's lower. You're developing power and strength in the

gym, so there's less of a need to spend time at threshold, which is where the oxidative stress and damage can be done in athletes when they spend too much time at that. That's one element is the hormone balance because strength and conditioning also elicits that testosterone response, which works inversely with cortisol. It helps balance that relationship out. Further to that, it's the mobility. It's the functional movement to be robust and prevent injuries and breaking down, which is absolutely the most common thing that gets in the way of a triathlete or endurance athlete's success. It's just

teaching patterns and teaching efficiency, which if you don't know how many steps you've taken a marathon, but if you've taken 50,000 steps and we can make every step that little bit more efficient, it adds up significantly over a long period of time. Funnily enough, I knew this. I'm a personal trainer. I've done exercise science. Here I was doing triathlons and not doing my strength training for years, and that was incongruent. Once I figured that out and got back into it, it was great. Then coming to Virtus and lifting heavy and legs up the wall and just bringing all that hormone balancing components into strength and conditioning, I was in my heaven.

I did the FMA with Mark Buckley back in 2010. That also shaped the way I lift and move and work with my athletes as well. Also, I'm usually looking for an FMA or an FMS practitioner to refer them out to, to give them a solid foundation. We've got our baseline. We've got our objective data to utilize at the start. For all the endurance athletes and listening, there are lots of different ways to get strong. I think too many coaches fall into the trap of, "Hey, my way is the best way." There's a lot of different ways to get strong, but to simplify it, there's three ways we can improve our strength.

We either move a maximum weight slowly with the intent to move it fast. We move a lighter weight super quick. Those two ways, they're more a neuromuscular adaptation, so we get our nervous system and our muscular system working together. Then the third way is your classic stock standard, three sets of 10, bodybuilding approach, which is your repeat effort method or your fatigue method, which can still improve strength, but it's not quite as efficient because strength... I guess everyone in here will know that it's a neuromuscular adaptation. It's not just a muscular adaptation. It's definitely one

of those things that as soon as we get endurance runners that don't do a lot of strength work, we get them in and get them moving heavier loads than they might not be used to. It's a completely different type of adaptation, so your body just goes, "Hey, this is different. We've got to mix this up. We've got to change the way we adapt. Otherwise, we're not going to get better, and we're not going to improve." I see the results coming thick and fast when an athlete shifts to that approach. Yeah, exactly. Do you think it's an education thing in the triathlon community and the endurance community?

Do you think it's getting better? Yeah, unfortunately, it's not common. I feel like it's getting better. More people, more consumers, athletes are asking the question, "What about strength and conditioning for athletes?" It's coming up. There's definitely a lack of knowledge on it with coaches, so that's one of my missions, one-off. Where are you? Yeah, the most common conversation I have with triathletes that have designed their own program or got it from somewhere where they're using, say, high-rep, minimal rest. It's essentially-- High-rep endurance, right? Yeah, exactly. Then I say, "Well, you swim back running 10 to 12 hours with a focus on aerobic endurance.

Why do you need to spend-- Thousands and thousands and thousands of reps. To build more endurance. You don't. You want to focus on neuromuscular adaptation, strength, and power, which is much harder or takes longer to develop if you're swim-bike running. Yeah, of course. Of course, but as we know the research shows, and I can share some studies and things like that in the notes, in the podcast, but if we just train for endurance versus if we train for endurance and strength training at the same time, your endurance will be better if we have that strength training adaptation as well because you're more efficient because your recovery is going to be quicker because you're going to be stronger.

Every movement that you make is going to be that little bit easier on your body. There's the metabolic effect as well, which we didn't mention in terms of the body fat loss becomes a whole body, and body compositional changes. I had an amazing result with an athlete who-- It's just another reminder that there really are no barriers. She's 72. That's awesome. Developed a strength program back in January for an Ironman program to qualify for Kona World Championships. Lots of injuries. It was up in the air whether that Ironman would come together because of the history of injuries and inflammation.

She did a body poly metabolic test back in January and redid one last week. In that time, so what's that, eight months, has stayed exactly the same scale weight, so we were really none the wiser other than her performance benefits. She's put on five kilos of muscle mass and dropped 6% body fat at 72. There's no reason why it can't happen at 72. It's just what we're told or where we get funneled into that belief that we can't change when we get older. Oh, no, it's too late. That's in the presence of training 12, 15 hours of swim by crime.

That's crazy. Not stripping down that catabolic effect because the structure of the sessions was right. There you go. You're broken down. Throw a different stimulus at the body. It's got an amazing way of adapting. Talk to me about a difference from a programming and coaching point of view between your general triad training and your long-distance triad training. Honestly, it's actually more dependent on the person. Cool. Good answer. It's more dependent on time availability, life stresses, kids know kids, work hours, general susceptibility to stress in terms of stress response and resiliency. Everyone can absorb it differently. That's probably the key factor.

The other key difference in terms of how I program and our approach is that for the long course guys, they would have 85 to 90% of their time zone two or below, so aerobic predominantly. And then the main difference, if it was short course or general triathlon, is just that they have a bit more intensity in there and speed efforts of that anaerobic work. That's honestly, that's it. It doesn't have to be complicated and especially for an age grouper. If we were talking about elites, it'd be very different. Cool. Good answer. I think this is

just Ryan's question, but how can your mindset and your athlete's mindsets affect health and training and what are the main ways you see it being affected? It's everything in my eyes. That's why I would like my athletes to communicate what's going on in their life because their training needs to be adapted accordingly. Let's say they've got an increased work demand or stress. Their training intensity or volume should be decreased because there's an extra stress demand and the same with mindset. If someone's feeling low or anxious, that is absolutely going to impact how they are feeling training or how they respond as well.

But I do believe that mindset difficulties or troubles or whatever are part of it and that adversity builds better athletes so don't shy away from it. Don't try and go, "Oh, I've got to fix that." Yeah, have the day off or let's try and fix the problem. It's just being aware of how you feel and what you're feeling and then allowing yourself to deal with it in the best way you can. It's acceptance. It's noticing, okay? I notice I'm feeling a bit anxious. What do I need to change? Yeah, and to have the power to not have to change straight away and to be able to write it out and deal with it.

Yeah, let yourself feel what your body needs you to feel. Don't push it away or fight it away and that's a really great strategy in terms of race psychology as well. Rather than trying to block out pain or pretend the pain doesn't exist, embrace it, literally embrace the pain. I remember going to my first half Ironman was when I first experienced, knew it was an injury and was just plagued and it didn't really improve from there on in and I hadn't run for six weeks. It was absolutely a question mark as to whether I'd even start the run or finish it and it was all going to come down to my mind.

I remember it was about 10k. I got the first into the run of 21. I got the first sign of knee pain. I was like, wow, I haven't run further than 10k. This is awesome and when I felt it, I had the strategy. I was like, all right, pain, welcome to the party. Let's do this. Show me what you've got and I didn't feel it. So the next 10k crossed the finish line and couldn't walk properly, but that's the power of the mind and yeah, if you can implore those tactics of life just day to day when you come up against challenges in a race or a game, it's much easier to default to, okay, cool.

I've been here before. I know just to take some baller and run with it rather than panicking and running around with it like a chicken with a tail cut off. Yeah. A big concern with anyone most people doing a triathlon, whether they're beginner or advanced is often the swim and they panic themselves and they psychologically ruin themselves and they get in their own way. Rarely is. It's a bit of a shitstorm at the start. There's hundreds of people and arms and elbows flailing around. You're going to get hit. You're going to get whacked and it's

about not worrying about that and just accepting that it's going to happen and ideally practice getting kicked and whacked in training, which builds your resilience, but it's more about your mental approach to that. Yeah. Do you remember Maddie's question as we're walking upstairs? Yes. How do you keep going when you're in the middle of a race or middle of a run and you just can't, in your head you're going, I can't do this anymore? My belly just did backflips because that's a really strong one for me and this is where I think my skill, mental

fortitude in racing comes into it because of hardships and adversity and everything I've faced in life and in triathlon, it makes those moments easier because I've had battles before and I've overcome them and there's all this evidence. So I draw on the evidence. That's one thing. And I draw on the emotion of failure and taught myself through what it would look like if I didn't push through pain or adversity in this moment. If I was to pull back right now and miss my goal by two minutes, what would future Katie think of that? That's usually a big one.

That's heavy, that's good. Yeah. I remember end of my Ironman again, I'd gone in injured. This is not my story anymore. I will not say that again. I'd gone in injured again, hadn't run much. I think my longest was 10k and I have to run 42 off the bike. So again, a big question whether I finish. A knee, a minuscule issue in the knee. So I was banking on at least getting 10k pain free. 2k kicks in. I was like, oh crap, what am I going to do? I get through one lap of four and

I stop at the fence to adjust my knee and fix pain and chat to Mick and someone was standing next to him and I was like, I think I should just pull it out. If I've already got pain now, how am I going to do this? And they said, you can walk a marathon in under seven hours. I was like, right, goal switch, let's do this. And my brain just went and of course I didn't walk the whole thing. I did jog walk. I even bloody ran backwards and I became this hero on the course where there was this cheer squad that kept yelling at me, run backwards, run backwards.

I became this, I don't know, entertainment. And I made friends with this seven year old guy that was my guide. So he would, I'd be facing him running backwards and he'd tell me if I needed to move left or right. And so I didn't trip over anything. So it became fun. And then the last lap I ran most of it, but I blocked out all the pain. I remember a lot of the pain. My other knee, my good knee had gone by this point. And the emotion of what I was about to do was hitting me and it's hitting me now.

And I had 3k to go and I was hobbling and yeah, I just kept saying to myself, this is for all the bullshit. This is for everything you've been through. And I ran so fricking fast. But then I think 200 meters from the finish line when the red carpet comes in, I slowed down and I, I soaked it in and I absorbed it and it was phenomenal. And that's what keeps driving me now. That feeling. Yeah. It's not the success. It's the thought of failure and not want to let yourself down. Future Kate. Yeah. Yeah. Success drives me, but it's been both.

It's been both. It's more about loss of opportunity to express my potential. That would disappoint me. That's a good question for you and I want a really short answer and I know there's a lot of context and it depends on the athlete and things like that, but if you meet an athlete in Australia, what advice would you give them? Learn the difference between slowing down and calming down. What do you wish all athletes knew about hormones? All people, all humans. They provide you with really important messages to listen to. Yeah. Yeah. Hormone imbalance shows up in symptoms and we need to listen to those symptoms because it plays a role in long-term health but also performance.

And I would like athletes and everyday people to respect hormones rather than fight them and acknowledge that there are ebbs and flows and work with that and rather than fight against it. Yeah. Acknowledge how you're feeling and adjust accordingly. How as a collective can we all improve our endocrine function? So what are the steps you'd suggest someone go through? Legs up the wall after every training session with belly breathing. No pre-workout. That's something we don't encounter anymore which is good. Yeah. Breathe. Yeah, belly breathe. Meditate. Mindfulness and the word meditation has an interesting connotation for people.

It sort of goes over their head. They don't absorb it but really it can be moving. Mindfulness while you could do it while walking the dogs. While you're waiting for a doctor's appointment. You don't have to sit in the corner cross-legged with incense burning. Yeah. Tried that. Got like eight days into a 12-day trial and I can't do any more. You actually never followed up with you on that one. No. I'm just like no, I'm done. But I've found other ways to do that mindfulness. It's moments. Yeah. Exactly. Yoga, going for a walk. Doing my mobes downstairs with some chilled out music.

Music. That's my meditation time. Yeah. From an endocrine point of view, where you spend most of your time, set that environment up to be calm. So if you spend most of your time in your office, look at the sort of light source that you've got. That's the stress. The music, the temperature, the toxins, whatever it is. They're all endocrine disruptors. And so if you can minimise those, that's going to help your function and system as well. Sleep's obviously imperative. It's also about sleep hygiene and quality. It's not just about hours, you know. What do you mean by sleep hygiene?

Hygiene is the habits before you go to bed. Getting off screens and blue light. And if you, let's say I was doing a presentation and I was going to be under bright lights and in front of computer screens, there are like glasses you can get that are blue light blockers. They're coming out in a more fashionistic style these days. The old ones look like tradie glasses like you're about to get on a grinder. And there's apps you can install on your devices and your computer. One's called Flux, f.lux. To reduce the blue light. And if you've got an iPhone, just the night mode.

It's super simple. Turning off phones or do not have phones in bedrooms. It's about breathing or legs up the wall before bed because if cortisol is high before sleep, melatonin can't increase or struggles to increase. And without melatonin, we don't get to those deep stages of sleep. Without deep stages of sleep, we don't get restorative sleep. So you're essentially wasting your time. Yeah, you're waking up tired and the vicious cycle repeats itself. You're not sufficient. Yeah. We could talk all day about hormones and we could talk all day about nutrition and gut health and things like that.

But I want to give you a little bit of take on both of those two things. What are the cool things you've learned about gut health in the last couple of years? Because I guess it's something that we're starting to get a little bit deeper into the research and starting to see a little bit more applicable research and things that we can actually do to improve it. The biggest thing is that your gut health and your gut microbiome dictate your mental health. Which is mind-blowing. 80% of serotonin is made in the gut. And I think that's phenomenal.

And that's where I get a bit of a bean in my bonnet about the quick response to medication without a consideration for gut and nutrition. You know, when we're looking at health again, back to that word, it has to be holistic. It's never going to be one thing that quote unquote fixes someone. And so yeah, I see that poor gut health leading to poor recovery in athletes are quick to get sick or poor immunity. A lot of people say, oh, I'm a teacher. It's just a guarantee. I'm around kids all the time. I'm going to get sick.

That definitely doesn't have to be the case. If you're getting sick more than twice a year, something isn't quite right. If you're fatigued all the time. That's the other thing for females as well that your gut health will also impact your hormones. Therefore going to impact how you feel. Your PMS, your fertility. It's phenomenal. It's a vicious cycle. But also guys, it's your sperm quality. So if you want happy, healthy little tackers running around, guys have to focus on just as much on their gut health and fertility. That's a whole nother topic as women. Yeah. How can we figure out if we've got good gut health or not?

Pay attention. Pay attention to stool movements. Pay attention to the form, the color. If you Google the Bristol stool chart, basically want to focus on sitting somewhere in the middle of that chart and noticing changes in that and look back at what you've eaten recently and how that impacts you. Pay attention to bloating. Chew, chew your food and stop and breathe. Step away from the desk. Try not to eat on the go. Oh my goodness. As a personal trainer, I'll never forget. I did a lot of mobile. I would be making, I'm cringing, a rice cracker turkey avocado thing while driving and eating it on the way between clients.

It was just silly. So yeah, paying attention to symptoms. If you get tired and lethargic after you eat, that's an indication that your digestive enzymes probably aren't up to scratch and you can't absorb that nutrients. And that's where the whole term or the word healthy to me doesn't mean much. It means something different to everyone. It's a big blanket term. There's so many different aspects of health. Someone can eat a quote unquote healthy and be in very poor health. Yeah. And that comes down to their gut and how they're absorbing nutrients or if they've got a dysbiosis or any balance in gut flora.

And that was actually a really, you asked the question of what's the coolest thing I've learned about gut is the levels of a coli will impact melatonin and therefore you sleep. Yeah. It's just people look at things and go, well, my diet splits, everything else should be good, but it comes, we use a 10 scale wellness chart, which is, let me see if I can reel them off, which is just movement, nutrition, hydration, stress, it's relationships because obviously that could be a big source of stress. It's the sleep quality, sleep quantity, energy levels. I think I'm missing one.

But anyway, it's all of those things because they've kind of the 10 things we've identified is where most people can, can fall off. And if you're hitting a seven and eight and nine for most of them, and then there's two or three things that are one or two, and that's going to put off everything else and that's going to stop you from an athletic potential point of view. It's going to stop you from reaching those things that you want to reach and from a health and happiness and relaxation point of view, it's going to stop you from being able to get into those, into that nice, happy head space.

And yeah, I think too many people will just go one factor and they go hell for leather and they go super, super deep into one factor, but they don't look at the other things. They've got the blinders on. Biggest takeaway. There will never be one solution. Where do you get all your information from? What's your, how do you learn and grow and improve? Mostly mentors. Definitely people. Why are your mentors so important? I wouldn't be where I am without them. 100%. Yeah. It's having enough humility. I will never know everything. I just never will. And I'm very motivated by education and always seeking solutions.

And that's where again, athletes teach me things. They'll present a case to me or something that's going on. And you have to go down a rabbit hole and learn about something and speak to, speak to the people around you. Yeah. It's their stories and their experiences that shaped my education and common themes also shaped my education and what I seek out in mentors. You know, if there's a common theme coming up with athletes that there's something that they're struggling with or I'm hearing or questions that I'm getting or I'm seeing things in the industry that frustrate me, I'm like, that's where I need to focus my attention without trying to do it all at once.

That's probably my biggest thing. Yeah. I don't understand that at all. Where do you see, or where would you like to see your industry going in the next by 10 years? What changes and what improvements would you like to see happen? I'd like to see a change in the development pathway. So for juniors into elite with a more encompassing view of educating around functional movement, mobility, immunity, gut health, nutrition, hormones, particularly for female athletes, the dropout rate of female high performance athletes of 18, 19 is huge. And that is that's usually when there's a massive hormonal change going on and they either come out of it or they don't and they fall out of the sport.

And that's really disappointing to me. I want to see a big change in that area. Second to that is age groupers. I want to hear less stories of burnout, infertility, hormone imbalance, struggle, depression, et cetera. I understand that endurance sports are very attractive to help fight demons. That's why I do it. That's one of my biggest whys, but it becomes a problem when the sport creates those demons. It's burning them out or it's having a physiological response that's causing that ill mental health. There's definitely a difference there. And I'd like to see that prevented or decreased.

And then a shift in the culture is you always have competition and an ego and that's healthy at times, but perhaps more athletes recognizing that doesn't have to be on all the time at every session, particularly in warmups and cooldowns, just not necessary. You don't have to race in a warmup. Yeah, train's a race, not the other way around. Yeah, I like it. I've got Greg's question. Did you read it? Yeah. Good. From whom, if anyone, do you draw inspiration from and why, particularly in quiet moments when no one is asking? That's a big question. That's a huge question.

I thought about it after I saw it this morning quite a lot and there's some key people, a couple I've mentioned today. That coach, unfortunately he passed away in December. So his legacy really inspires me and helps me carry on because at his memorial service, it was ingrained in me that to be a coach and to coach is a massive privilege. And sometimes when athletes are frustrating you and you're listening, that can be hard to remember. So that's a massive inspiration. The other person is my brother. All my drive and a tight perfectionism is the complete opposite to him.

And he provides that inspiration of balance, coming back to nature and adventure and fun and laughter that I deeply need in my life. Unfortunately, he's over the other side of the world. So that's hard. I do see him in team one of three weeks. So they're the big ones. And honestly, the other one was me and my experiences because I've been through a shit storm and I've come out the other side many times and I have to be my own cheerleader with that. I've got a bunch of questions for you. You can be as succinct or as lovely as you like.

First one, if you could have a billboard over the top of Monash Freeway, what would it have on it? Are you ready to achieve your athletic potential holistically? Good. There's a little logo in the corner and a vertice logo on the other side. At least heavy. Legs out the wall after. What is success to you? Changing people's lives while feeling abundantly happy within myself. Awesome. Has that changed over the last six, seven years? 100%. Seven years I would have said a doll figure. Yeah. That's really cool. That's awesome. Do you have any morning rituals? Yeah. Mainly walking the dogs and getting in my arm and latte.

How do you milk an arm? With a not bag. Shout out to Caleb who brings us all the coffees. If you could give teenage Katie one piece of advice, what would it be? Boy oh boy. Stay true to yourself. Don't be misguided by other people trying to pull you off the tracks. In nightclubs. What's the last book you read start to finish and what did you learn from it? That's quite a few. I'm trying to remember the last one. I'm pretty sure it was Siri Lindy's autobiography who is one of the greatest triathlon coaches and greatest world triathletes going around.

The other reason she's pretty remarkable is there's not many female coaches at that top end and she coaches the best of the best in the Ironman world. Her autobiography was really inspirational, great messages and it was this reminder that yeah, I put her on this pedestal in the industry of how amazing she is and I get very, very starstruck around her. At the end of the day, I am her, she is me. I'm no different. I have every opportunity to do what she has done. That's cool. It'd be cool to have someone to kind of

look at and see that they're just another person but at the same time see what they've done and kind of give you an idea of the path. There's a few female coaches paving that way but it's a massive one already. That's the nicest thing you've ever done for someone. I'm aware this is a tough question. Everyone gets a tough question. It's always interesting. I feel like it's a combination of little things. It's my nature to hold people, whether that's metaphorically I don't need to be around them but I think deeply, it's again a blessing and a curse about people and life and so perhaps the nicest things or the greatest things I've done for people they wouldn't even know about.

That's cool. I like that. Yeah. I might be walking with the dogs down the beach, looking at the ocean, thinking about someone going through a struggle or a great for time and sending them some sort of message or vibe of strength or communicating something out there. Awesome. What are you grateful for? So many things. I'm actually, I am grateful for the struggle. Too many people probably don't look at it as something to be grateful for. I wouldn't know what I know. I wouldn't have come across the people I've come across and I wouldn't value life the way I do.

If you could give everyone in the world one personality trait, what would it be? Compassion. Good. Awesome. I love it. Alright, a couple of favourites to finish off. First thing that comes into your head. Favourite movie? I can't answer it. I'm useless. I sleep through them. Traditionally it's been Blood Diamonds but I haven't watched it for a long time. River movie. Favourite artist, recording artist? So many. What are your go to tracks? Ben Howard. Good. Favourite resource? New information or? Podcasts. Favourite podcast? Uh oh. I've got a big list. Too many. Cool. Favourite puppy? Again too many.

It would be in general adventure. Adventure in nature. Favourite quote? Don't know if it's my favourite. It's the first thing that comes to mind. We suffer more in imagination than we do in reality. Awesome. It's on the wall out there. I love it. It's really cool. Thank you very much. Thank you. It was awesome. Hopefully people got something out of it and I'm sure we'll do another one if people want us to. Yeah we'll go more into the science of the hormone stuff because I know the ladies and even the guys want to know more about that.

Yeah we will have a seminar on hormone function and exercise at Virtus at some point so keep your eyes peeled for that but Katie thanks for coming. Thank you. See ya. Thank you very much for listening team. If you would like to hear more about Katie you can search Holistic Endurance on any of the social medias or on Googles and you'll be able to find her website. If you enjoyed the podcast please share or subscribe. Yeah that's pretty much it. Have a wonderful day.