Advice or Expertise?

Brett Sutton coaching seminar Brazil.

Training advice is everywhere. Expertise isn’t.

An athlete can wake up, check their recovery score, ask what it means, watch three videos telling them their training is wrong, then listen to a podcast promoting the opposite approach. By breakfast, they’re completely confused. We have more training information than ever yet athletes are no better informed.

Information Is Not Expertise

Knowing a lot about training doesn’t necessarily mean you can coach. A well-made video, a scientific paper or thousands of followers proves very little.

Coaching is knowing what an athlete needs, when they need it and what should be left alone. You learn that through years of working with real athletes and taking responsibility for the results.

I’m often asked whether the Trisutto approach is too simple now that we have more science, data and technology. My answer is no. Simple and easy are not the same thing. Complicated and effective are not the same thing either.

Performance Is the Test

At Trisutto, we work backwards from performance. We don’t start with a fashionable method and try to fit the athlete into it.

Our approach has been developed over decades with athletes ranging from beginners to Olympic and world champions.

We’re not against new ideas. If something helps an athlete, we’ll use it. But being new isn’t enough. Can the athlete recover from it? Can they repeat it? Are they improving? Does it suit them, or has it just added another layer of complication?

That's the test.

We’ve Seen It Before

If you coach long enough, you see old ideas return with new names. Methods that were criticised thirty years ago are now promoted as breakthroughs. That doesn’t worry me. If the information helps athletes, then good.

What does worry me is athletes continually changing direction. They try a new training philosophy, then a new metric, diet or recovery gadget. A few weeks later, they start again with something else. Endurance is built by doing the appropriate work consistently and giving it time to produce a result.

An Athlete isn’t a Spreadsheet

Power meters, GPS, heart-rate monitors and sleep tracking can all be useful. But the data should help us make decisions. It shouldn’t make the decisions for us.

The important questions haven’t changed.

How do you feel? Are you recovering? Are you getting stronger? Are your performances improving?

If your watch says you’re getting better and your race results say you’re not, believe the race results.

Who Do I Believe?

Don’t automatically believe the person with the biggest following, the newest method or the most scientific looking presentation. Look at the experience behind the advice. Has the person used it successfully with different types of athletes over a long period of time? Look at the results, not the engagement.

Popularity isn’t expertise, and making training more complicated doesn’t make it better.

So when somebody tells you that everything you’re doing is wrong, stop and ask:

Is this advice or expertise?

Coaching and training plans available for every athlete.