How To Pick The Right Ultrarunning Coach with Dominic Guinto, CTS Athlete Services Director | Koopcast Episode 123

trail and ultra runners what is going on what's happening welcome to another episode of the KoopCast as always i'm your humble host coach Jason Koop and on the podcast today for a second time we have cts's athlete services director dominic gunto dominic is one of the people in the space that i have come to trust the most about what really creates the best coach athlete relationships and also what is happening in the endurance space in general for those of you that missed dominic and i's first conversation this conversation is going to be a little bit of an extension of that where we talk about what athletes should actually be doing as they're trying to navigate this entire landscape of what is going to be the right coach and the right coaching solution for them whether it's going to be a static program or you work with an individual coach or you go with a coach that is working with a coaching group we kind of run through the gamut of all of those and if you happen to talk to dominic and get set up with one of our cts coaches what you should come to the table with in preparation for that experience so dominic can help you out the most and so that you can get the most out of your coaching experience i also wanted to talk to dominic a little bit about what he is

seeing in the space what he is seeing from athletes that are signing up what events are they signing up for and his insight and perspective on this might actually surprise you a little bit and finally i wanted to peel back the curtain a little bit with what does it actually take to become a cts coach why are why do we feel our coaches are the best in the industry and a little bit of the business side of coaching a little bit of the sausage making as it would be and i think that that is valuable for athletes because not all coaches and not all coaching groups actually act alike we are unique in the fact that we have a large coaching group but we are not the only uh we are not the only group out there and we're certainly not the only solution out there and so i thought just by peeling the curtain back just a little bit about what we experience and how we handle our coaches and how we handle our coaching department i hope that it informs the audience so that if they are trying to make these choices for themselves they can come to the table fully informed while it might seem like this podcast is a little bit salesy rest assured that my goal at the end of the day is i just want all the information out in front of athletes so that you can find the solution that is going to work the best for you all right so with that as a backdrop i'm going to get right out of the way here is my conversation with cts's athlete services director dominic gunto kind of a blessing and a curse having this window out here because you see how nice it is yeah i have

a hard time if i come up and i come up and work up here every once in a while i look outside i'm like god damn i don't want to go out there and go run something yeah i need but i need even after you've done a run right yeah totally that's the way i am well you know where my kitchen is i mean i'm literally looking at that road going up to the to the reservoir you could go out for a six hour ride and come home and making lunch and you're watching people like i should be out riding right now all right let's start this podcast before we both go out and run and ride and things like that thanks man thanks for coming by right on uh last time we did this dude like it was covet and you live oh yeah two miles down the road and we're sitting in our houses like we can't go over and see each other it's so weird to look at where we've come from i mean i i and i'm not saying it was it was wrong uh all the things that we did to kind of protect ourselves we didn't know any better but we sat in the house for six months we never left we didn't we're delivering groceries and and now um we look back on it like what were we doing but i don't know you know what's crazy about covid it's kind of related to what we're going to talk about is i think both you and i we thought shit was going to hit the fan from a business perspective like we were going to batten down the hatches and just like okay you know let's plan for here it comes let's plan for you know a 30 you know reduction or a 50 reduction or whatever and after it was all said and done we were up we were but i i will i will say that we did at least at least as cts did a lot to mitigate that um we brought on the train right

membership um we did the whole uh uh you know we did a lot more a lot more content delivered a lot more to the athletes and stuff but um the ones that it's kind of it was kind of like the the financial situation during covid right the ones that took a fall was huge yeah and then for most people it didn't really change anything it was very polarizing right like service industry got crammed i mean i just thought that we're so and we you know you've seen this before we're so heavily dependent upon the events or i guess at least we think we were so heavily dependent on the events yeah and there's a natural you know ebb and flow with the events in terms of new athletes that we see and new athletes that are athletes that kind of go away after their events and things like that that the events just getting shut down from one day to the next like literally the lights turning off that i think that was the the the kind of eye-opening moment in that whole ordeal well interesting segue there is and that would be from a coach standpoint when you look at the mentality of an athlete a good coach is going to make an impression upon that athlete that it's not about having to have an event come up like you're you're you're you're being an athlete is not dictated by uh by events that you have on the schedule events that you've done in the past

you can be an athlete and a damn good athlete um you know from a from a result standpoint and success that you've had and gains you've made and so forth without having a a race result or a number to go with that yeah our coaches got better during that time because they were kind of like forced to turn on the area of coach development that's probably the most underdeveloped in their you know arsenal which is this like psychological you know counselor type you know maybe you'd call him the cheerleader we talked about that last time in the podcast right i mean a lot of the coaches especially myself that are more like technically oriented we definitely had to shift that around to more of a psychosocial element and i think it was from a from a professional development really really good because we didn't have these like event anchors that that the season kind of revolved around forced the the coaches including myself to really focus on other areas in which they could engage athletes because the natural way that they would previously engage them which were the events were all of a sudden gone i thought it's cool well the other cool thing too was was there's we when else are you put in a situation other than maybe a few months during the winter where you don't have an event that you have to peak for or whatever where you can really work on things i mean that was when i went plant-based and it's two and a half years

now that but when when else would it was the perfect timing i wasn't going out to eat there wasn't doing a lot of social things there was and i will say that on a daily basis i look at my strava results and i definitely was far more fit during covid like damn i missed i missed i missed the covid days just jump on the trainer and hammer out two hours or whatever no i was outdoors that was that was awesome all right well before we kind of quit that rabbit hole since it's more of the past now uh before we go to to to too much further down i want to give the listeners an opportunity who are either new listeners or who are not familiar with the previous podcast that we did just a little bit of background on who you are and what you do and maybe why we're so chummy other than the fact that we live just a couple miles away from each other um why are we chummy i don't know other than the fact that i i shacked up in your basement for my first month out here um but uh gosh i've been with cts um i'm in my ninth year uh with cts started in 2013 are we going to give you a plaque after a decade or something i don't know i'm hoping for like a like a cheap watch or something i couldn't arrange that um but uh yeah so i've i've been i've been matching athletes up with with with coaches for for that long with cts um prior to that uh i was a race director uh sold my events to uh lifetime

fitness um so i spent years as a as a as a full-time race director production director uh you name it uh triathlons cycling races running races and uh i was also a bartender in las vegas uh special operations in marine corps uh with a reconnaissance unit uh a little bit a little bit of everything in there um that that brings it down to me being the uh the the friendly voice uh on the phone with cts and so everybody every athlete that has kind of come through our system over the last nine years has had some interaction with you so whether it's email or or phone or in person or yes that i mean and the reason i point that out is first off that's thousands of people if you want to go back and trace it back you would probably recognize way more than most people would realize because you have a pretty good knack for that i'm always amazed at your on-call memory about athletes that have signed up five or six years ago that all of a sudden come out of the woodworks or whatever you're like oh yeah i remember i signed you to blah blah blah and we talked about your dog or something like that yeah you know i i was at uh spt gravel last um last august and um the second person maybe it was the first person that i ever had on the phone at cts um walked up to the table

and introduced himself now we've talked several times since um but it was interesting i met his son i knew i knew everything about because he was one of those people that it's interesting when people call you say hello and they lip they they don't even say hello back and that this is this is 99 percent of the time they immediately fall into giving you their entire athletic history and what type of bike they have what type of running shoes they have and everything and i laugh sometimes because i want to say what if i was just like receptionist but uh yeah and uh yeah he was he was one of the first calls he's still with cts but uh yeah it happens all the time so fundamentally though you're the first person typically that athletes will come into interaction with and i'll let you i'll let you get into a little bit more detail but the way that i have always described it to people is you are match.com between coaches and athletes like you play the algorithm behind whatever match.com's algorithm is however i wouldn't i don't even know however good or however bad it is you play that algorithm from a from a human perspective and guide that athlete through the process of not only i'll just say what what solution is the best for them and that solution is combination of coach and coaching package and whatever else kind of comes into the mix yeah you know it's it's interesting how much athletes i think in all athletes whether they

be runners triathletes cyclists um have this this different perception on what of what is valuable information right in assigning them to a coach they want to come straight in the door and say this is how many days a week i run these are the shoes i wear these are the events i used to do and everything or or with cyclists it's this is the bike that i have and and i literally can just i just go through the list and go i just i just it none none of it matters none of it matters i hate to say it you know what matters what matters um i'm married i have three kids i have two dogs i own two businesses i i have to i i travel i am diabetic um those are the you know i've had a i've had a knee replacement i have had a meniscus tear i've had those are the things um or uh you know i used to be in the military or i i was an elite athlete in the past those type of things i don't care what your times were but those are the type of things are going to help me make a decision on what coaches they should be working with because let's face it all our coaches are as as diverse as the athletes they all have one thing in common the athletes they want to get better and they want to be better versions of themselves i

hate that term but it it it makes sense and all the coaches also have their own way of presenting the information and if if there's if there's an athlete that has talked to me on the phone they've heard me say this a million times and that is all of our coaches have the ability to provide you with a plan that's going to help make you faster but that plan is only as good as your want to to hear what the coach has to say to trust what they have to say um to to look forward to speaking to them each week to sharing with them your information how you felt on the ride and be honest about what you had to eat or didn't eat or drink and all that information so it's so the the only thing that's important is your the first thing that's important i should say is your relationship with the coach the other hard part is for me to just say just trust me but to even become a coach at cts you've been through you you have to have the knowledge to do it otherwise you you just don't even show up at the door well and that's kind of what i come back to a little bit is is you get the opportunity to do that personality base match because of the infrastructure and the educational focus and kind of the ecosystem that we've built because like you said you know anybody's going to be able to give you the plan and we do that i mean

that's a coaching exercise right where we give a case study out to three or four people and we have them build programs for those three or four people and they're they're pretty darn similar kind of by design you know they're going to have certain nuances and things like that but the main difference that they're that the athlete at least on the end of the day is going to experience is the personality that's that's that's behind that the delivery yeah exactly so you kind of jumped into that i mean there's going to be there's going to be people listening to this podcast that are interested in coaching right whether it's with us or with another coach and we'll kind of go through the pros and cons of that kind of like later but fundamentally if they're thinking about something like that what would you encourage the athlete to start to when they're coming up with their list right they're taking notes of this podcast what notes should they be taking in terms of the things to look for that's going to be the right coach for them with not just within our ecosystem let's kind of like broaden it out across like all of coaches which you've got a good scope of that as well i i think i think you start with the same type of exercise that people do for a lot of goal setting and that would be put together this perfect scenario these are my expectations from a coach type of situation why do you want to coach is is should be a big question that athletes have to ask themselves why do you want to coach is are you just getting a coach so that you can do a sub 24 at western states

or are you just getting a coach uh because your friends have a coach or are you getting a coach truly to have someone to communicate your um your your journey with and have someone give you guidance and to be accountable to and so forth i'm not saying those are the only reasons to have one but you need to decide what your what your reason is um and with that then you pick out in a perfect world this is these are my expectations from a coach i want to i want to talk to my coach twice a week i want my data analyzed twice a week i want to ask them questions and i want a response that day um of you know for my questions with that then you start to decide what package level you're at um and then you can you can kind of start working down the list uh for you know what what coach which coach that's going to be um and so forth one of the things that kind of constantly comes up when i i meet athletes out in the field is this concept of i'm training for x i want a coach that has done x in order to guide me through the process and you i hope everybody watching the youtube could see the eye roll right there it's not the best camera angle for it but i'll give you my perspective on this so before you started

working with cts um we had this uh kind of uh developmental philosophy with our coaches that we taught them how to coach across all sports first all the endurance sports of cycling running triathlon and then they kind of like went up into the specialization ladder and that's still somewhat you know still somewhat true but i would say to a lesser extent and the the kind of the practical outcome of that is that a coach like me with a running background i worked with runners and cyclists and triathletes and things like that and for whatever reason the ironman athletes you could just you couldn't sell them on it like it was do not pass go i am i'm doing ironman lake placid do not pass go if this coach has not done ironman lake placid him his or herself and i used to always bring up the example of nick white who coached craig alexander to multiple ironman world championships having never done an ironman himself right still there's like the buy-in for that we just do not pass go so i kind of ask you who's at the forefront of you've got to like ultimately satiate the customer demand right how important is that and how do you kind of like walk that line realizing we're talking to an ultra running audience here i want to do western states i have to have a coach who has has done western states or has some sort of intimate knowledge of that race so it's it's it's interesting

uh the exercise that we we've done internally and you completed the form um where we asked all of our coaches to list all the races that they've competed in that's right yeah and the races that they have coached for yeah and it's amazing to see how many coaches have had so much success at coaching athletes at events they've never done before um and especially from ultra running because i i feel like ultra runners and and ultra running coaches are far more in tune to um uh terrain interpretation looking at maps understanding an elevation profile um all of those type of things more so than i think more so than cycling where they're specifically looking at at power data and power output and and so forth where the course is so much more uh um the the focus yeah um from from the coaches so with that to have to have done the event it is is is less of a it is less of a uh uh a worry for the athlete knowing that the coach is going to put you know that type of work and is looking at things that way um the other thing is uh i think there's also something to be said for the coach that hasn't done an event putting far more work into researching that event than uh and and i often say that about

new coaches too or sometimes will somebody will say that coach is a little bit new i'm just not sure if if they're going to be the right coach for me and i and i say to them worst case scenario take that coach at select for like two years because you're going to get ultimate service from that coach they're going to do so you know what i mean the this the uh the the attention to detail um is really important but let's face it uh just because you know a basketball team coach hasn't coached against every team in the league doesn't mean that they can't create a plan to win against that team because they they watch video and you know what i mean they they they've observed it's no different than than a race course you look at the weather you look at the you know the the terrain there's so much information on on the internet to to gather from that and uh it's not always that important and but at the same time we're always going to have athletes that regardless of your experience you talk about nick white and and i use basketball as a reference and you know you look at how many little little little short italian you know basketball coaches there are out there that you're like dude that guy that guy was never a starting center anywhere exactly final four time yeah he's kicking ass again yeah so it's it's uh it's you you have to

you still you just have to know the game yeah yeah you have to know the game and that's um and how many how many great athletes out there are not does it doesn't automatically make you a great coach well i've always i've thought that in some ways and i see this in the coaching space a lot even with our coaches and i'm always pretty quick to correct it if you have one singular experience and particularly if that experience is you it is really hard to coach somebody else through that same event and that's even more heightened when they're in a different like time group you're saying because you're only seeing it one way you're only seeing so if you're a you know we're going to use western states as an example right so if you're a 20 hour western states finisher a good finisher right and you all of a sudden start coaching somebody who's just scraping the cutoffs that's a totally different race they're going through the sections of the course at totally different times they're hitting the peaks of the of the temperature at totally different times they pick up their pacers at like the same point of the race but a different time frame from when they actually leave olympic valley all of those elements if you only have that one singular reference point you're used to like relying on that it's really it's really it's almost more i always think it's more valuable to have four or five athletes that are in different time groups and kind of learn from that versus you actually doing it and i and even if you want to put the cherry on top we might want to talk about this

as well if you go to the race and you crew for all those athletes and then you have that eye on it as well and you see how things transpire for sure the 20 hour finisher the 24 hour finisher the 26 hour finisher the 30 hour finisher like all those different groups it actually makes it really big i think it makes a market impact i i've often thought about that that your own personal experience it's human nature it's human nature if you're if you're if you're an eight hour uh you know leadville mountain bike finisher and you're coaching someone that's going to be a 12 hour finisher you're it's almost impossible to not to want to put yourself have to put yourself in that situation you may have no idea what it's like to do it in 12 hours you're like oh man call my class it's easy you know yeah hope pass we'll be leadville runner yeah yeah we're all we don't worry about that he'll pass like oh backside you know it's just it'll take you an hour to get up it's like well yeah if you're you know you're like in the top 20 of the race maybe but if you're like you know scrape at 30 hours then it's gonna take you a lot longer yeah so the exercise that we did all those coaches our entire coaching department it's a blessing and a curse right because we have to have that data because the athletes are requesting it but yeah what i'm kind of hearing from you not to put words in your mouth is at the end of the day the broader array of experience that the coach has across

many athletes in many races is far more important yes yes yeah the the coaches um that it's not always the coach um that has run the most events it's the one that has has had the opportunity to coach so many so many athletes through so many events um you know max shoot has never done a an ultra run yeah and he has coached almost more events than a lot of than several of our our ultra running probably more than me yeah i don't yeah i don't i don't know about that i mean events uh uh alone but uh so yeah i mean especially if if you've got the science you've got the understanding for the sport um and uh i will come back and say you're absolutely right triathletes are they are definitely i'm not gonna say they're the worst but they they are they are they are the most um demanding on you had to do the event because somehow particular i think is the best word yeah it's okay i've thrown triathletes underneath the bus many times on this podcast there's i've probably jettisoned that entire i think they're probably used to it by now yeah they are they deserve it they deserve it though okay so you've got this personality based match right and or what is a yeah that's what i mean that's what i meant to say a personality based match not entirely but it's kind

of like based on personality take me through or and take the audience through your workflow because i think it's magic and i don't know how else to describe it to people when i get on the phone with athletes and some or i meet them out in the field or whatever like tell me how it works how like how does it work when i come in the door i'm like you know you talk to this dude dominic and he somehow figures it out like there's this big leap between step one and step two and i don't know quite like i can't i'm not very good at eloquating it so tell tell the listeners your process and then i'll just regurgitate it anytime anybody else what i'm hearing you say is i i am i am magical you're magical you want that out of me you go ahead you got it now uh you know so it doesn't happen i don't get a chance to talk to all the athletes um so it what what i think this is a good forum for is to say when you do fill out a coach consult on the website we we may not talk we only talk if someone schedules a call with me or they call into the office so i'm taking the information that um that gets provided uh when people write things up so if you're if you're looking for a coach don't just put i'm doing leadville and never summer and uh you know i don't know and and a death valley half marathon or something like that and then not put any information so because i have i have nothing to go off of um and i oftentimes will reach out to somebody with another email that

says you gotta you gotta give me more how many kids do you have yeah exactly yeah yeah do you have you have a dog uh yeah um and uh so the the process is i i initially will look at the at the events to ensure that this is a uh this is a truly somebody that's going after ultra running versus half marathon or marathon distance um because there's there's obviously a a difference i know a guy that wrote a book that talks about that big difference um and uh and uh and then from there i i i really jump into the the information that they've provided again most athletes do a really good job at giving a couple of paragraphs of this is what i'm looking for these are injuries i've had in the past these are my goals um and uh i i wish that i got more of this is what i expect from a coach um because that that to me is it provides even more information but with that um uh i either have i have coaches all segmented in my head um as far as their strengths are concerned there's nutrition there's strength there's um there's the i i just totally want to hang out with you on the phone and give you some ajw um and uh and give you and give you uh some really cool information and and get you to the finish line and it's going to be a

lot of fun and i'm going to use you know my my history to uh to help you through that and so everybody has that um so with that there there's there's also a reality here that that we still have to talk about and there's the business side of we only have so many coaches um we definitely have more coaches than probably any other group out there um they're not always available yeah so it is um i would be i'd be lying if i if i didn't say you know sometimes you're you're not you're you're getting you're getting the best of of what is what is available i can't i can't give Jason Koop to every select athlete out there i can't you know or corinne or whatever and not everyone is available so i'm looking for uh the coach that best matches those needs um and i also and i've had a lot of success with this but i like to provide um two especially from people that have uh that i haven't spoken to yeah um two really different coaches two really different communication styles now they both may have strength training backgrounds or nutritional backgrounds those things those components are are are look or what the athlete's looking for but sometimes from the way that the person's uh provided the information uh i don't i don't

know whether they're the you know uh you know really outspoken communicative type person or somebody who's a bit more reserved um uh age helps uh for me a lot to know a little bit about about the athlete has you know this is a difference between you know the expectations of a 24 year old runner and a 67 year old runner um and i typically won't match one with the other yeah um but um so that and then i will search uh uh the events uh cross-reference it on that list um of all of the events because let's face it if i if i can find someone that not only has the personality match but has also done the same events why yeah why why wouldn't you do that and we're online coaching it's remote coaching so you're not meeting your coach but again if your coach lives in the same state or if there's an opportunity to consult with a coach that lives in the same state great you get the opportunity to maybe meet at a race or or or do your your weekly call over a cup of coffee one day uh to get a face-to-face is is always a great uh you know bonus yeah i've all i was just reminded of that today i got off the phone with one of my athletes who lives in manisoo springs just a few miles down the road from us and he's going through or he needs to go through uh a heat training protocol and normally that's kind of an

ordeal because you got to find a gym that's near your house and you got to find when it's open and then what temperature is the sauna and you know is it you know now in covid right do they have good you know hygiene protocols and things like that and i was like i'll just go here because i know because i live here right i've used that sauna and i go to that gym i know it's clean and i know the temperature is correct it's got all those elements i'll just go here it's super easy just good but i wouldn't have i would if if i didn't live here or if i hadn't lived here for 20 years i wouldn't have known that but that's a really small use case it really is but we when athletes say i have to have a coach that lives near me i immediately immediately think to myself what what what's what's the reason for that what what's the um unless you're it's a totally different type of coaching yeah it's it's it's it's totally different financially too again let's let's not ignore the there's there's still kind of a business side to this year that um you know are you going to roam with your coach three times a week for an hour or two hours each time i mean you know what do you what do you pay a therapist or even a even a personal trainer um you're you know you now you're talking five hundred dollars a week to to train with a coach that lives next door to you i want to go over the business side a little bit it's probably something we weren't planning on talking about but i think it's i think it's interesting for the listeners to kind of peel the curtain back a little bit because it's not an industry that everybody's really all that familiar with and

we can divulge some things that i think are interesting and also uh actionable right to the listeners in terms of if they're really thinking about getting a coach like why these things like coach athlete ratios and stuff like that actually make a difference but before we get to that i kind of want to synopsize what you're just going through the way that i was internalizing it is like the technical details of i want to coach with a strength training background or a background in this type of race or a PhD nutrition or whatever right that's kind of the course filter the fine-tuned filter is going back to the personality match and you get through that fine-tuned filter by first they get to the course filter okay we know people who have the strength training background nutrition background or whatever and you almost take a polar opposites approach from the from the from the fine-tuned filter meaning i'm going to take people who communicate in two really different ways because then the choice is very obvious right well it it and it's and it could be obvious in a way that they didn't anticipate yeah usually i've talked to athletes after the fact and they and they say you know what going into this i looked at this coach's profile and and i thought for sure i was coming in and doing this but no way i want to start working you know with this coach uh because we had such a great conversation we communicated so well that's who and i and i tell people all the time after your

two consults your choice should be simply based on that person you organically got off that call with and thought that's who i want to talk to yeah i think because so much of the the it's once again it's kind of i kind of have to remind myself to to keep going over this fact it's unique to us because we do such a good job of educating our coaches i would say that that's that's not universally true because of the spectrum of education that exists across the entire coaching ecosystem and especially in trail and and ultra running coaches where there absolutely is i think the listeners out there would be well served to just look at the experience the educational level well i'm going to ask you this question kind of at the end as well when when you need to give everybody the pitch at the end you gotta get every sales guy's got a pitch man uh so anyway we'll we'll kind of we'll go over that later um you mentioned that you wish uh you wished athletes had more expectations coming in the door right or you knew about their expectations better coming in the door what else is on your wish list as an athlete as the athlete services director uh i wish people looked at the website before they email um here here's my other here's my other favorite thing and and that's a wish list

because it literally i i cannot and i would love to do the psychology on this every coach consult says midway through after you've had your coach consults here are your next steps there are there there are asterisks it's in bold letters and it's underlined and it says next steps three times a week three times a week i get an email that says i had great calls with with the coaches and i'm ready to sign up what are the next steps it just goes back to people don't read it it goes right back to the the guy that you know i didn't i didn't see the arrow at that on course right and i went off course for however long and they're like really the arrow was six feet long and it was orange and uh anyway race director experience yeah exactly um what are my expect what what would i like to see is uh again i just i just as with anything in life i just want to see honesty people i just want people to be honest about what their expectations are and you know what if someone if someone was honest enough to email in and say i want to talk to my coach five times a week i want them to provide strength training and nutrition and everything else like that at the select package level for 197 a month i can then be honest and say hey this we don't have that that that doesn't exist and rather than get three months into it and they say this isn't really what i was expecting yeah um and uh

it's interesting when you talk about expectations because i also tell athletes the same thing i tell our coaches and that would be our coaches have expectations too and and don't be surprised if they tell you what they are i expect you if you don't do the workouts tell me why you didn't i if you do do the workouts to provide me the information that i i'm looking for to help you be a better athlete um so uh you know if i ask questions if you if the athlete asks a question of the coach they want the coach to respond and that's and that goes the other way this is a two-way street coaching has to go both ways not just because if you're just looking for a plan then just sign up online and get a plan yeah yeah you know what our one of our number one coach uh pet peeves is what's that it's athletes who sign up and then don't engage with the program which i've always found really fascinating because if you look at the health club industry that's what their model is based off of people signing up and not going to the gym because if everybody showed up they wouldn't there'd be no room in the gym exactly there'd be no there'd be no room in the gym and i just i i kind of take a little bit of pride but i think it's also awesome that the biggest source of frustration that our coaches have are people who are under utilizing their the service right they want to work harder for their athletes they want to work harder to get them better and it frustrates them when for whatever reason

the athlete is just engaged i think that's a cool like culture that uh that that just exists within our within our coaching department and i and i i see it come from coaches i think you did it with me last month yeah like hey i haven't heard from this guy in three weeks or you know and he's coming up on his on his on his next billing again the business side of things and uh because i think i i feel like i feel like the coaches the coaches are really invested in in the success of their athletes and i think and i think it's a it's a it's a good thing that the coaches take it they take it a little personally like hold on for a second i'm supposed to be their coach this guy this guy's gonna walk away one day and go oh yeah i was with cts i didn't get anything out of it you're like well did you do anything um you know what's the uh i heard a great saying the other day was don't be disappointed in the results you don't get from the work you didn't do yeah exactly and uh and that's that's exactly what i think a lot of people like yeah the program just didn't work for me and i can go back into their training peaks and go like yeah well you didn't do any of your workouts uh all right we're gonna honesty honesty all right there we go that's on dominic's wish list honesty so you get you if you talk if you get a hold of dominic make sure that you have your expectations lined up and you're going to be honest we'll leave it at that all right sweet we tippy-toed around this enough let's talk about the business side of it we'll peel the curtain back as much as you can divulge um let's start out with first off cts was founded as a cycling only

company i mean i was the first running coach that they hired in the early 2000s and for one reason or another it's largely luck uh we've kind of carved out an ultra running side of the business which is most of the audience that's listening to this you see everybody that comes in the door the cyclists the triathletes the mma fighters the everybody in between give the audience a sense of like i know you're not going to give volume but just the breakdown of the sport groups that you see come in the door yeah i mean it's of course it's primarily it's going to be runners cyclists and triathletes not necessarily in that order um but uh triathlete numbers have probably uh decreased a bit but that's i think that's industry-wide um and uh you know where at at one point it was kind of an 80 20 cyclists and runners um uh percent wise um and now uh we're at about 33 percent uh 32 percent uh runners uh versus cyclists um you know the the growth in the running industry is has been been fantastic and that's that's all different distances but primarily ultra running um it's uh and i like to a lot of times think that um i've seen that uh ultra running is the uh is the iron man of of of the 2020s

yeah we're just making fun iron man and and only only in the respect for it it's it's kind of that next that next that next challenge uh for a lot of people um uh and uh but to see that to see it happen and we we like a lot we we mine a ton of data now um you know uh that's a bad thing you might want to qualify that everybody's gonna look at me like oh you're stealing my personal information no not not not training peaks data um but just number of athletes and we know you we know how many how many athletes are triathletes and um there are very few you know uh they're they're uh very few that that don't fit into one category there's a handful of others um but uh but yeah the the numbers of of of ultra running uh athletes you know continues to to increase and uh it's a it's it's a good thing and i and i think people realize the value to quality coaching yeah also the space is getting so big and so mature i mean you've heard me say this that i i tried to start ultra running coaching way before and actually did start and i got laughed at all all those meetings and they were soon yeah too soon exactly that's exactly they didn't even think it was too soon they just thought never you know right and i mean i mean that and without any hyperbole where i i worked the system and went

around to the meetings and went around to the athletes and tried to you know tried to make hay and nothing nothing kind of came out and i probably gave up on it for like two or three years and for whatever reason or another like the whole ecosystem kind of came around to this fact that you know coaching was a thing and now it's like a robust i would say it's a robust industry where there's not only single coaches out there but also coaching groups and interestingly enough the other day it was it reminds me of cycling coaching in kind of the mid 2000s in terms of its stage of maturity where there's a lot of people getting into it right and this they're all being all of the coaches in that space are kind of being they're kind of being lifted up by the rising tide that's not gonna last forever and as we saw in cycling you know in the early or mid 2010s once the once that uh once that ecosystem starts to have a little bit of a dip the first thing to go is the discretionary stuff and that happens to be coaching and a lot of those cycling coaches from the early 2000s are now they're in another they're in another industry i think that'll happen five or seven years from now and kind of a copy paste but outside of that you see the athletes kind of coming in the door like what trends have you seen just from them in terms of what are they requesting like what things are they into and what like how how as coaches can we help satiate that so i think probably the the biggest thing that i see and and

and they're you know out there you know we have the train right membership and and that is you know where people buy a static plan for a 50 mile race or 50k or 100 mile race and um and and for some people that that works just fine the trend that i'm seeing is there are far more people now that are that have more than just one run on on their on their schedule um and they're trying to make sense of you can't have a static plan if you're doing a mountain bike race and you're hiking the appalachian trail and you're doing uh a hundred k you know a month later uh a lot of people have so many different things that they're into or they they're they're still incorporating uh you know crossfit or they're still incorporating uh some other type of strength training into uh there there are very few athletes anymore that are really one-dimensional and it's uh i i would say that that's that's probably the biggest thing that i see um um consistently um now is is the athletes that are doing um it's really interesting to see how many ultra runners have gone uh by way of testing out gravel riding for instance for cycling i mean

i mean corinne's been doing tony kraprytska for that uh phenomenon bringing that to the forefront you know what it's it's that same it it's it's a it's it's become a recovery uh type of thing and they still feel like they're out on trails yeah um you know they're still in the dirt and they're not as technical as mountain biking so they don't hurt themselves right i could probably get myself in trouble on a gravel bike but um yeah it's uh it's been a really interesting um kind of crossover that and that and i think they see a lot of uh a lot of the same components of that real challenge i mean look at the you know the black course on sbt is it's 140 miles of gravel riding it's not a 50 mile road ride that you can just get on somebody's wheel and and and kind of i'm not taking away anything away from people that are doing that but i'm saying it's similarities to the the challenge of of ultra running the challenge of it's not a smooth course it's it it changes throughout and you're you're outdoors you're in uh you know you're in the mountains you're uh those type of things that are uh really common that those are the common things that they have do you think a little bit of a by product of that though is the fact that there are now a lot of static programs that you can find in trail and ultra running and that's kind of satiated that one race market like i'm training

for this 50k and i just want i just i just want to just tell me what to do right which is the prototypical static training plan uh audience and so you're just not seeing that because they have enough to choose from yeah you're probably right i mean they're they're already buying they're already they're already buying that plan or they're always signing up for the for the train right membership um we do have uh we do have a lot of again there's there's more data in there somewhere of how many athletes come on with the train right membership which in the past was time current cyclist yeah yeah the number of athletes that we have that continue to come in and say i've been doing time current cyclist programs for years and it's time it's time for me to actually talk to a coach and kind of take it to the again i hate these terms but take it to the next level um and and get a coach um but you know their feeling is if i've had some success just with some direction yeah how about if i have have someone who can tell me well you missed those two workouts last week here's how you change it up next week and to really kind of peak for again when you start adding more than one event uh you know if you have a 12-week plan what if in the middle of those 12 weeks you're doing three other events yeah you know what i've always said it makes a difference after three to five years because you can get away and continue to improve just physiologically yeah by doing the same thing

over and over and over without any sort of over contrived manipulation or overarching architecture or anything like that and you can improve for about three to five years and then after that three to five year period you start to stagnate and then it's like well now what do i do i can't do the time crunch cyclist program or whatever the running equivalent of it is another year and expect the exact same results i've got to do something different and i don't know how to contrive it in any other way i've always thought that that's a byproduct of that right there so i i think i think you saying that is is also something that i want to bring up about coaching and that would be um i don't i don't care if your coach is Jason Koop uh after three or four years and often it happens athletes come some people do it every year which i think is a little excessive but we'll come in and say listen i love my coach just need i just i just need a different perspective yeah yeah and to work with another coach again we're all all of our coaches work with the same coaching philosophy um you're not you're not having somebody go from one method to a completely different um method but uh to get a different perspective uh to get um you know every coach has a has a different hack to kind of you know get through something whether it's you know whether it's it's it's shoes or pacers or or aid stations um or or nutrition but um just kind of freshen things up um and athletes will come to us all the

time like and i and they'll say i've talked to my coach about it they totally agree and i just want to talk to a couple other coaches and and see you know if there's there's somebody else out there uh just to keep things fresh um so uh if people are doing that with humans let alone yeah a plan that's written in uh in the back of the book so let's pivot a little bit yeah peel back the curtain some more on the business side people ask me this stuff all the time i don't think you guys realize that like people are like honestly starting to get really curious about this nobody used to give a shit about like the inner workings until like the last couple years and now for whatever reason i get asked about this a lot a lot of times um so we try to have like a product scope right where we have different coaching packages we have different coaching levels and i'll give you the opportunity to like give the pitch whatever your pitch is later you said you don't have one i know you got one in your back pocket somewhere it's probably written down on an index card but fundamentally why do those things matter like why does the coach delineation from what we call expert senior and pro pro premier coach right in terms of our coach rack and stack how you know how experienced they are or whatever why does like what fundamentally why does that matter why does it matter to the athlete or why does it matter to like why does it matter so you're talking to me you hurt my feelings i don't care

i've known you for long enough why would it matter if somebody were working with me versus somebody who we just hired and trained let's face it i mean experience is important um your your experience your ability to look at something immediately based on i've dealt with hundreds of athletes that have have faced this and come up with an immediate response based on your experience um there's there's a value to that there's there's value um that that people can pay for or will pay for um based on that experience um regardless of what's in some of those packages whether there's nutrition service or a strength training service um or they get money off of a camp or response time and i and i tell people often they'll say i want to work with okay you know Jason Koop or or uh john fitzgerald or and i tell them they they only work at you know premium or the ultimate package and above and they'll go okay well i don't i don't need all those services like i understand that but you want that coach um you know i mean if you want a mercedes sometimes you know like oh i don't i don't need the backup camera and i don't need the you know the you know the the extra cylinders or the you know no you want

the mercedes you're going to pay more for that that product that's that again we can we can dance around it all we want there's you know there's uh there's there's still some uh uh there's there's still uh you know supply and demand well that's exactly where i was going to it pairs up with another element that you mentioned earlier which is supply and demand which is kind of dictated by the coach to athlete ratio right that each coach works with and we have a model of both full-time coaches and independent contractors but even across both of those models they're kind of modulated by what how many athletes are they going to eventually take on right and how are they going to monetize that there's kind of no other way around it and as you were starting to allude to earlier you know if you want the mercedes in our in our analogy there's only so many mercedes available right right because they've reached that they've reached that level but and i'm wondering if you can articulate because i've tried to do this a lot and for whatever reason it seems to kind of fall on deaf ears why is it important for coaches to keep their athlete count in check and i ask you this because i know you know both how both sides of that coin work meaning there's a right amount of athletes so that the coach can develop and earn a living and you know serve their athletes the best they're engaged in the process but then there's also a too much where it goes over to the other side so i wonder if you can

kind of articulate that for the audience like why is that balance or that that coach to athlete ratio important without getting into too much specifics of i think because i've i've been public with i think whatever the right ratio is but you can kind of dance around i think i think there's i think there's a lot of there's a lot of different um parts to that but the the main thing comes down to their ability to deliver quality service or a quality product if you will and if if a coach has too many athletes that they can't they don't have the time um to to do the research for the athletes it's not time to spend with the athlete then what ends up happening is the athletes not happy um maybe they're maybe they're not mad but they just they're not they're they they just know that they're not um they're not getting what they expect and um and they eventually back off and what ends up happening is this coach now that had let's just call it 25 athletes um they're constantly going back and forth between 15 athletes 22 athletes 17 athletes 25 athletes and they're constantly onboarding new athletes which takes a lot of work there's a lot more work in that first three months to six months in you know building a program getting to know the athlete and so forth and within that with all that additional work on trying to bring their athlete load if you will

up to 25 which becomes this you know maybe where they um you know they can still pay their bills and and do those things again there's there's this is this is all still real world stuff where people have to you know they're they're making our coaches make a living off of coaching um very few of our coaches have that is this is just a a part-time job that they just have five athletes um so this is where they're making a living and they need to maintain a certain number of athletes and when doing that if you're constantly dropping athletes um there's there's uh there's a lot of uncertainty for the coach and and it has to it has to come out in the coaching that gets provided to the athletes that are that are there all the time the make a living part is really important there for two reasons the first one is when you're making your living from it you sure as shit are gonna have your stuff dialed because the if you go from in your example 25 to 17 athletes you go from putting bread on the table to not being able to put bread on the table right when you're doing it as a side hustle you're a lead athlete and you're getting money from your sponsors or you got a shoe store and you're you know kind of do it on the side you kind of don't care because it's kind of like i know that that sounds flippant they care about the people but you don't really care about the product that you're delivering or at least the

incentive isn't there for you to care about the product that you're delivering because you're looking at it as kind of gravy you know yeah in a lot in a lot of cases but the second thing and i think that this is not as intuitive to understand is that when you're doing it for a living and you constantly have a higher athlete load that you can manage with a high level of quality that increases your experience and your efficacy dramatically and we see this with i see and we see this when our coaching eco our own coaching ecosystem and i see it outside as well where the coaches that are working with 40 athletes constantly they have they are twice as good as the number of the as the coaches that are working with 20 athletes for the same period of time so i'm working with 40 athletes after two years i'm going to be twice as good as that coach over there that's only working with 20 athletes for two years and that's just because you have two times more experience you take any job any repetition that's going to be like roughly true i'm not going to say that there's not a point of diminishing returns but that professionalism i think goes it goes a long long way in producing a high quality product in my opinion or high quality service in my opinion because of because of those two aspects that just forward feed this investment notion and then let's face it and this carries over into every industry if you're a financial

professional um if you're i don't i don't know a mechanic it doesn't matter the better you get you then can demand more money yeah but also by demanding more money at higher package levels and we've had this conversation lots of times you take on less athletes not so much not just because you've you've you've reached a a financial um uh result that you're looking for but also at that higher level those athletes um require more attention it takes it takes more time to coach a of your time to coach a premium or an ultimate athlete that has more communication uh more frequent data analysis more time planning you know uh on the phone with them than it does a select athlete so a coach can handle more select athletes than they can those higher level athletes and um yeah when you talk about pulling back the curtains yes we we have coaches that only work with athletes at a certain level um because they've they've they've earned that from their from their experience and um uh and and the the desire for for athletes to want to work with them um with their we have multiple coaches that

athletes reach out all the time i want to work with this athlete tell me a business tell me a business that does not look at that and say all right i could charge more yeah i mean again if you can you can call it what you want you can say oh i can't believe that they're they're requiring that much well tell me your business and tell me that you don't say for whatever reason though and this is what i mentioned earlier this is one of the aspects that i that i see in the ultra running side that i saw in the cycling side in the mid 2000s where coaches are constantly underpaying themselves nobody's forcing them to do it they can set their own prices because by and large they're you know people hanging a shingle out there but they feel that as if they can they want to compete on price right and all that is is just the proverbial race to the bottom right because there's always somebody down the street that's going to do it for ten dollars a month less and that person's going to do it for five dollars less than that person this person's going to do it for 250 less than the person before i'm like you guys everybody can kind of like play that game to a certain extent but it does a disservice to the entire coaching ecosystem when people are constantly doing that because you you can only handle so many people and i found that when i talk to people out in the space like the actual athletes that are signing up the people that are curious about coaching they have a they have an intuitive feel for the work like how much the work product actually takes meaning if you told somebody this coach spends

20 hours a week coaching and they work with 40 people they're immediately going to go oh they're only spending 20 or 30 minutes per person they and they can figure that out and they know what that product is going to be oh if i get on the phone with that person for 15 minutes for one week they only have 15 more minutes to look at my files analyze the data answer an email do research on the race like all these other things and then it starts to not make sense or it does make sense if they have that ratio kind of in line that's been enlightening to to really see unfold like the light bulbs kind of go off when i explain or when they have asked other coaches like oh so-and-so coaches this many people and so-and-so coaches that many people and this athlete over there who trains 30 hours a week coaches 30 people and i know that they only spend 10 hours a week coaching or whatever they've got a they seem like they've got a good feel for it i guess is what i'm saying what what's interesting from the business side of things is how different it is for a company like cts versus the uh the the loan coach that has his own shingle um that coaches on his own um because although there's there's time now for that coach their other 20 hours is chasing down credit cards marketing social media because if you're if you're not doing social media today you're there's no way and it's one of it's let's

face it's one of the reasons why um cts has has the strength that we have and the coaches that want to be there that are willing to say okay you know cts is taking in x and i get you know x minus whatever those expenses are because i tell i say this to athletes all the time we let our coaches just coach and when an athlete says hey i had an injury i need to go on hold or i need to take right change my credit card they go okay great i've copied athlete services on this and we take care of that and our coaches just coach our coaches aren't chasing credit cards they're not trying to to post things they don't have to post things on social media to to gain new athletes um we get athletes coming in the door on a daily basis i sent out nine coach consults today so 18 coaches got coach consults today in all different sports but if you're doing that on your own even even even as even as you who has who has the presence and a book and so forth you're not bringing that number of athletes in you're you're just not um there there are only so many athletes out there that are looking for a coach let alone know of you want to hear you know and and want to consider you know paying for for coaching so um that is a huge huge amount of time that they don't have to spend and they're just

spending with their athletes um it makes them better coaches yeah and fundamentally it makes them better and that extra time that they get to spend again we'll we'll probably talk about this uh in a little bit but the amount of time that our coaches spend together yeah on the phone on zoom calls doing continuing eds and exchanging information about athletes new technologies training methodologies events that is that is a value that you you're just not finding with um with you know the lone wolf out there um you're cut you're segueing into the next thing which i was gonna say just give me the pitch you're already doing it say i told you you had it in your back pocket index card or whatever you just have to pull out this speech about you know how our coaches just coach and all this is it really like when you have when you have athletes come in the door and they're like listen i want to go with cts and i'm also talking to coach x outside of cts yeah and coaching group y what do you tell them i i i most most of them know and and it's interesting because the the most popular response that i see for coaches coaches or for athletes that come in to cts and their reason for it is i feel like i'm not getting one coach i feel like i'm getting a whole team of coaches and that is absolutely true and you sit

through every one of those over those you know the journaling calls the the the continuing eds that with all of those coaches where a coach will bring up hey listen i've got this athlete who's got this issue or that issue or they have their training for this and they're you now have this team of people who who can kind of you know turn their their their virtual chair around and and ask the coach behind them um and i often wonder what what do other coaches do that are that are out there on their own are they are they just googling things and saying wow you know i have an athlete who's you know who's not hydrating properly even though he's he's in taking you know he's taking in this much stuff like where else do they go do you are they just googling it and and accepting you know whatever information they come or or just you know reading white papers constantly and and i just we have so much information to draw from it is it is such a cool thing to see and it is the it is the one singular thing that has kept me at cts has been our coaches and their their communication with each other and support for each other it is it is really one of the coolest things that there is to see and and how how they operate together and share information um about athletes and technology and um you know

some of them are huge nerds that um you know that that others will will feed off of well and it takes time to develop that i think that's what actually is not appreciated a lot is that you can't just get a group of people in a room and expect them all to be better because they're only going to be slightly better than the sum of their parts right and if you don't have people that have 15 or 20 years experience in the room it's hard to really raise all those ships because you know you have this proverbial learning model where it's learn one do learn one do one teach one i want to make sure i cut the right order right there's a big gap between doing one and teaching one a huge gap the proficiency that you need to have coaching is enormous so that you could pass it down to the next person yeah and i was really fortunate in my early part of my coaching career where you know the chair that i could turn around was to people like dean golich who had you know maybe 50 olympic and world championship medals underneath his purvey jt kearney who had you know 40 years of experience working at the olympic training center with thousands of athletes across many different sports ed burke who was one of the pioneers of exercise physiology particularly in the in the in the endurance and i could go on and

on and on and on and on and i'm not saying that that's necessary but that sure as heck blunted the learning curve for me you know i mean that made it tremendous because i i knew what i could i knew the information that i that i could get was so valuable but more importantly they were such good teachers right they wouldn't just give me the answer they'd be like go look it up that's that's what that's what to me is so impressive about our coaches is that they are always willing to share that information with the other coaches yeah there's there's never been a time again nine and a half years there's never been a time where i've heard a coach go yeah i don't i don't i don't i don't want to reach out to you know this new coach and and answer any questions for them yeah you know i get athletes from other coaches their their coaches delete their training isn't that crazy they what they're so i get athlete not from other coaches within cts but other coaches outside of cts after they're done coaching after they're done coaching them they'll delete their training or they'll delete their coach comments it's like the first time i saw it i was like what i was like really like you just like your training's nuked like you don't have like a record of it and he's like no they nuked the spreadsheet or whatever i was like that's the most bizarre thing ever anyway that's another aside but i'll give you a really good story i think you've heard this from uh adam polford who was on the podcast a couple weeks ago um so but i'll tell it in the first person so training peaks has this

coaching summit every year that they either hold in boulder or they hold in england sometimes they hold it somewhere else in europe and it's a it's a very very high quality coaching summit um they bring in the best of the best i've spoken there on the kind of the business side of things corinne's spoken there on the environmental side of things and they just bring fantastic speakers they usually have a couple hundred of uh coaches from all different types and all different experience levels uh come to a a physical conference every single year and discuss anything from the latest technology to physiology to the business side to psychology like you kind of name it it's a really really well done uh conference and hats off to training peaks for being able to orchestrate that because it is a value add in the in the industry and more coaches should uh should go to it but anyway we have this um we have this kind of permanent piece of architecture within our coach development system that's kind of become like one of the like the fundamental anchors of it and that's the schedule review and all it is is how it's described you put an athlete schedule on the screen and the rest of the coaches in the virtual room or the physical room get to kind of scrutinize it and tear it apart and it's a it's a it's a pretty critical process not pretty cool it's very critical process um and deliberately so it's very it's meant to kind of like forge the fire and the predominant theme of that fire forging is why

why are you doing what you are doing why is that recovery one run one hour why is it not 40 minutes why is it in an hour and a half like you have to be able to justify every little bit and piece of it and some of those bits and pieces are material and some of them are immaterial but when you're forced to do that with people that are way better than you it makes you a much a much better coach but it is a kind of an excruciating process particularly for our new coaches and it it doesn't it doesn't hurt the fact that we've kind of like built it up over the course of the years so anyway we're at this training peaks conference and uh we're we're sitting down at lunch and this coach comes up and goes hey do you guys actually do this schedule review where you put athletes training up on a projector or a slide or whatever and everybody else gets to tear it apart like it's become this myth like outside of the company because for whatever reason you know we have all these coaches respond to them with yeah i've totally made people cry before well no somebody threw a computer one time no no kidding she uh is like her i don't know a couple weeks within job or whatever and it weren't being any harder to her than anybody else and it by no means was unfair at it for it was not unfair let me put it that way she got so frustrated she threw her computer against the wall which she didn't own her computer at the time it was a company she picked it up turned against the wall it smashed into a hundred pieces and i think she left in a couple weeks or whatever but needless to say the the

process that you mentioned it's um both enlightening for the coaches because we all get to learn from each other but it's also very deliberately difficult because that level of scrutiny is ultimately one of the things that the athletes can take advantage of the most because their coach has confidence and whatever they're they've been prescribed because it's been through the fire right and and i tell people all the time you you've got you've got to believe me that just to get in the door is challenging enough for what's on paper and then after that you have to go through this process not everybody makes it through no no not everybody makes it through and those those that do and that's one of the reasons why even though there's times we bring on new coaches um i have such confidence in those coaches and their ability to deliver coaching that is going to benefit the athlete that it doesn't always have to be you know your coach doesn't have to be Jason Koop john fishgerald stephanie howell corinne malcolm like they don't have to be this name that you've heard on podcasts or has won events and so forth they you you you have to know that the coach that you're going to get um is and and it's i've been around long enough now that i can see the new superstars that are kind of coming through i mean

on a on a daily basis i i talk about ryan anderson and just and and just the quality of of all of our coaches between neil and michelle and just nicole rasmussen and they're the quality of of the coaches and the the the commitment that they have to continuing to become better coaches um is it's it's really impressive and it's not just again it's it's it's not just lip service again it it's uh it's so cool to see and i and i know that you continue to if you didn't see it you know you you couldn't continue to do this either oh no they're light year i tell i tell those guys and gals this all the time they're light years ahead literally light years ahead of where i was at their stage of development like so far it's just absolutely incredible so as much as i would kind of like gush over the dean golich's and the jt kearney's and things like that for whatever reason that that education and that development continues to snowball year after year after year even though i'm not nearly as good as they you know as me at my stage of development is not nearly as good as they are at their same stage for whatever reason we produce these coaches like john is he's a better coach than i am right now you know let's just kind of face it i mean he's kind of gone through the scrutiny and gone through the fire and he doesn't get nearly enough credit for for for how good he is and that's cool to see you know and we don't have to take it in from a competitive standpoint you know

it's just like what's good for the gooses what's good for the good for the gander but i just i think it's cool shit to see because i never dreamed of it being that good and it's it's cool now too that we have there's some structure to it as well with having a coaching director um you know in in chantelle that's that's really pulling all of this together and pulling these minds together and sharing the information and uh like i said it's a fun process to see and keeping in mind from that business side our coaches are just coaching again they're not they're not collecting money and you know and and chasing credit cards down and um it's it's uh it's yeah it's uh it's a cool situation to be in we ended up leaving the pitch a little bit pitchier than i thought we were going to be that's cool people will deal with it was that the pitch is a little bit pitchier than i thought it was going to be yeah you know what i didn't i didn't i'm not throwing you know coupon codes and stuff out there so hashtag dominic 20 for 20 off we haven't discounted coaching in like forever no because we don't need to no no it's it it is it's it's it's it's worth it i mean it's you know so it's it's like i said it's it's fun to see and i i i enjoy i enjoy talking to the athletes don't ever don't ever hesitate scheduling a call with me it's it's it's in my signature it's it's what i'm it's what i'm here for all right we're gonna talk to everybody we're gonna leave you to that because it's nice outside and i know you want to go ride your bike yes i do we're very very compromisional answer

that uh where can athletes reach out to you with all of their newfound expectations and honesty that they're going to come to the table with dominic uh when you go on to train right.com uh it's going to pop up it's going to say schedule a coach consultation i'm going to click on that button fill out that form and it'll give you all the opportunities to to uh to share all your information we'll set you up with two different coaches to talk to you get to test drive a couple different you get to interview your coach before you even uh before you sign up um you talk to him for 15 20 minutes um and just just see if that you know talk about your dog talk about what's coming up be honest um yeah and just be honest um let us know what you're looking for um my name will typically be on the uh in the signature of that that email and you can always schedule a call with me um if you if you want to talk about things uh um as we go through the process thanks for coming on the show man i can roll thanks for peeling back the curtain dog's barking at just the perfect time okay he wants to go for a ride too man insatiable that dog thanks man i don't thank you for doing what you do man you make all of our coaches jobs a lot easier so we can do what we can do all right folks there you have it there you go much thanks to dominic for coming back on the

podcast and talking all about what makes the best coach athlete relationships out there i know there are a lot of trail ultra runners right now that are looking at their calendars they're looking at all these audacious events in front of them and they're thinking how am i going to tackle this all and if you think that coaching is part of that solution we would absolutely love to help you out you can hit me up on social media or you if you want to talk directly to dominic you're just listening to him for the last hour you can find him at train right.com in any case i appreciate the heck out of each and every one of the listeners if you like this podcast please feel free to share it on social media or share it with your training partners as always this podcast comes to you ad free and sponsorship free and that is my commitment to the audience to bring you the most unadulterated content that is out there in the podcast space today i've made that promise at the beginning of starting this podcast and i'm going to continue to make it to you each and every single week and so if you could share this podcast it'd mean a lot to me personally as always you guys we will see you out on the trails you you you you you