BONUS Episode | Pacing Strategy for Competition at Cali Open 2021

This is a special bonus episode of the platform podcast, and it is being brought to you by Kettlebell Kings. Not because they're paying me to do this ad read, but because I appreciate the work that they're putting in to make this competition come together, along with the guys at the Orange Kettlebell Club out in Oklahoma, California. So I just want to give them an extra shout out because I know how hard it is to put together a competition of this size and magnitude, especially with all of the special considerations, technical constraints, people from different countries and time zones. And I just wanted to tell them how much I thank them and how much I appreciate them and say thank you. So please support Kettlebell Kings and support the guys at Orange Kettlebell Club and lift well this weekend. Hey, welcome into the platform podcast. This is a special bonus episode that I wanted to throw out there real quick before we get into the competition coming up this weekend. We have the IKO World Championships California Open put on by Kettlebell Kings hosted by the Orange Kettlebell Club. So shout out to John Wilde Buckley and Aaron Guyette and the boys putting this together, Jason Dolby. Thank you guys so much for putting on this competition, very, very excited. To see these Kettlebell Club has five teammates competing, not including myself. And I am incredibly, incredibly excited for that. A couple of people making their platform debuts. So this is an incredibly exciting time. People working really hard. I can't wait to see how the day goes. They've earned some, they've earned some good results on the platform. So I hope it goes, I hope it goes to plan. And to that end, I wanted to take a minute here to share with everybody just a couple of tips on how we go about coaching mental preparation and strategy within the competition framework. So when we're going into competition, how do we, how do we mentally prepare? And specifically, how do we, how do we prepare from a pacing standpoint, right? So over the course of training from for, you know, many months preparing for this, for this moment, for this competition, we've been, we've been documenting and tracking our data. We've been, we've been going at prescribed sets for prescribed durations with prescribed weights at a set pace. And I track everything in a spreadsheet, you know, the, the athletes have access to. And based on that, we can see over, over time, you know, and as we get closer to the competition, we can see what are our realistic paces based on what we've been able to do consistently in practice. So we're not going into it, wondering or thinking, you know, not knowing what we've hit in practice consistently. We have dated a backup, you know, what, what the strategy is, right, and prior to, prior to this, this past week, where we did a taper, we also did some test sets. So in the events that people are planning on competing in, we did some either, you know, five, six or seven minute duration sets, depending on the phase and depending on the intensity, unnecessary for that particular athlete, but in the number of lifts, et cetera. And that's a long enough duration for us to, to see how well they can hold pace at the pace that we're thinking, and with the weight that we're thinking in the lift that they're going to be performing it. So that gives us a good, a good mark. And then from there, we come up with a strategy on, on what our approach is going to be on the platform, because preparation, mental preparation, particularly. It's a super key to performing at your best, and to also not having a disastrous performance. It really as much as anything, it helps you control nerves. And to translate nerves instead of being nervous, you just, you have to own that feeling and understand that your nerves are just excitement. So excitement of the sympathetic system, your body needs that in order to perform optimally, right. If you went into a competition and weren't a little bit nervous, at least a little bit nervous, I would think that you don't care enough about how you do in order to have a good performance. So if you don't go in with some type of nerves, you probably, you probably don't care enough about how you're going to perform. So going and going into performance with some nerves is actually a sign that you care. And it's, it's, it's not necessarily you shouldn't, you should own that feeling and turn it into translated in your head to, I am excited to be here, right. I'm excited and ready to go, right. Don't let the nerves overwhelm you because it is, it is really your body telling you that you're excited about this opportunity. And it's, it's getting to the level of excitement. And I mean physiological excitement, that it needs to be in order to perform optimally, because mentally your, your, your body knows that this is something you care about. And so it's, it's getting you to the level of excitement that you need to perform. Now with that said, what we have to guard against is over excitement, over excitation of the sympathetic nervous system, which we talked a little bit with, with Dan John about on that, that episode with Dan John where he was talking about matching your level of excitement to what is optimal for your performance, right. And so for some people that might be being super hyped up and really ready to go and like really, really jazzed for some people, it might be staying nice and calm and even keel. It really is going to depend on what's going to get you optimal performance. But it's also important that we understand that the, the set duration matters, if you're doing a five minute set, a higher level of, of excitation at the start is okay, because you only have five minutes to go. But if you're doing a 10 minute set, you don't want to be too high at the start because you'll burn out and you'll have a huge adrenaline dump in the middle of, in the middle of your set. And so we plan for that, we know that we're going to come that we're going to come out probably excited. So the general strategy that I use with most of my athletes, especially athletes who are not super experienced on the platform, is we come out slower than what we, than what we, the pace that we want to sustain for the, for the rest of the set because we know that those first couple of minutes are key to being able to finish the set. So I like to divide the set into three check-in points, the first two minutes, the halfway point and then two minutes remaining, right, those are the three places where we check in to see how are we doing relative to the pace that we want to maintain. So if, for example, an athlete is looking to come out and an average 10 RPMs across the duration of the set, typically what we would do in that, in that situation is we would come out at eight RPMs for the first two minutes. So we come out a couple of reps below what we want to sustain because I know that especially with new athletes, they're going to be excited and their heart rate is probably going to be more elevated than it would be at that pace just due to excitation. So we're going to come out for the first two minutes and try and keep heart rate down and go a little bit under the normal pace. So just for example, eight RPMs and then at two minutes so long as we feel good, right, if we feel good at eight at that eight RPMs and we feel like we can go faster, then we would go up to 10 RPMs, our planned pace, right, so we go to 10 RPMs for the next three minutes. That gives us to the halfway point of the set. We check in at the five minute mark, we say, okay, how are we doing with the new increased pace is your heart rate to high. At this increased pace and if it is, do we need to go back down, do we need to go to nine or eight, right, or even seven or six, right, it depends on how you're doing and we have the ability to check in. Again, at that halfway point and we can we can drop pace if necessary, but if things are going well, we hold pace and we stay there, right, so we stay at we stay at our 10 RPMs, so we stay at 10 RPMs until and get through and get through the most difficult minutes of any 10 minutes at in my opinion, our minutes six, seven and eight, right, those are those are the minutes, especially minutes seven to eight, right, those are the minutes that most people if they're going to fail on a 10 minutes set fail on, so we get through those those three minutes and we check in again with two minutes left, because at this point, you've now gotten through the most difficult part of the set, mentally, you've probably turned the corner and now you know you've only got two minutes remaining. So now we go can I go faster do I have any gas left in the tank and if so, we start stepping on the gas and go from 10 maybe to 11 right and then we always try and finish with the flurry. So that for us means you know maybe 90 seconds left you go to max pace maybe it's a minute left maybe it's only third with only 30 seconds left, but you check in at two minutes and see how do you feel with two minutes remaining, how do you feel. We check in and we go from there right and so all of all of my athletes come in with what I like to call plan a that's the perfect set it goes exactly to plan goes exactly the way that we want it to go exactly the way that we've strategized it plan B is. It goes well, but we may have to battle through some mental struggle and we may have to back off pace at some point in the set and then recapture it later right to make make it up later at the end with the flurry that's plan B right we have to make an adjustment at some at one of the three checking points right is a is a B plan and then plan C is. Things just are not going well and you may have to go under pace for a majority of the set or even the entire set some days it's just not there for whatever reason right there there are days sometimes you'll have bad days or there will be situations on the platform that don't go well you get into your head you get a no count whatever there's any number of reasons a set can go badly right but. What you can't have happen is be wholly unprepared for the plan to go for the set to go anything but perfect so you have to give yourself check in points give yourself anchors within the set. To look at and check in on your pace and know what your plan is at each of those fence posts right and I don't like to do it every minute for the simple reason that I don't want people to to to be in their heads too much I don't want to be checking in on pace every single minute. I like to have just three check in points first two minutes stay calm up at halftime how are we doing can we hold pace hold pace to the last two minutes checking before the last two minutes can we go can we step on the gas and finish with a flurry right so that's our general framework as far as what I coach from a strategy perspective hopefully that's helpful for people give me your feedback let me know how you approach it. But new lifters if you've never been coach you have no idea how to manage your pace you can use that framework i've had a lot of success with with athletes my athletes generally like it and it it's it works across any a number of athletes right it works for for a lot of different people and some people do it. Some people may be sprinters where they just they just go really crazy at the end some people may be metronomes where they just hold a steady pace the entire 10 minutes and that's cool too right. Some people like to start slow and build and build and build and build right it really depends on you but what we don't want is we come out too fast our heart rate gets too high we can't finish the set. Because we didn't have a plan to check in we never checked in we came out too fast our heart rate got up too far we didn't know what to do we panic and at seven minutes we got to put them down. Right you just can't go anymore right that's what we want to avoid so go in having a plan. plan a plan B plan C step under the platform knowing that no matter what happens you're prepared you've put in the work you're mentally ready. And you can handle anything that the platform will throw at you you can handle anything your mind can throw at you. Right because this game is 90% half mental as yogi bearer famously said so this is just a quick bonus episode i hope this is is a help for for me if it helps anybody i'm i'm happy. So thank you guys very much good luck on Saturday and Sunday looking forward to it very much looking forward to seeing you all on the live stream and watching people sets cheering on my athletes coach my athletes i'm going to knock out some sets myself and we're going to have we're going to have fun no matter what it's going to be great so thank you all we'll see out there stay healthy lift well and. Kixamas thanks for listening to this episode of the platform podcast i'm Jordan kundi right if you have a question please email me at twinsities kettlebell club at gmail dot com follow us on instagram and facebook at twinsities kettlebell club on twitter at tckb club online at twinsities kettlebell club dot com and please help us grow our reach and give us a review on apple podcast spotify stitcher or wherever you get your podcast until next time.