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3 UNCOMMON HABITS TO INSTANTLY BECOME A BETTER TRIATHLETE | BEN HOFFMAN

Name: 3 Uncommon Habits To INSTANTLY Become A Better Triathlete | Ben Hoffman
Uploaded: 2023-12-15
Duration: 43 min 54 s
Description: Ben Hoffman, a professional triathlete approaching the twilight of his career, shares three uncommon habits that separate elite athletes from the rest.

with Ben Hoffman

43:54·15 December 2023

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BEN HOFFMAN

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Ben Hoffman, a professional triathlete approaching the twilight of his career, shares three uncommon habits that separate elite athletes from the rest. Drawing on 20 years of experience, Ben explores how mindset, community, and recovery—not just raw training volume—unlock genuine performance breakthroughs, and why these principles apply far beyond sport.

Key Takeaways

Prioritize recovery and stress management over training volume. The equation is simple: stress plus rest equals growth. Most athletes get this wrong by overtraining while underestimating life's accumulated stressors (financial, family, social media), leading to diminishing returns.
Build strong teams and social components into your training. Human connection and community are more critical than isolation for sustained performance. Lonely athletes at the top often struggle with depression and regret, regardless of medals.
Develop your mental game as a competitive advantage. The physiological ceiling is increasingly accessible to younger athletes, but the ability to unlock mental potential—managing self-doubt, embracing difficulty, and maintaining motivation—separates champions from peers.
Set concrete, clear goals even during off-seasons. Without specific targets to work toward, athletes struggle with motivation and purpose. Goal-setting is one of the most refined skills athletes possess; translate it into life after sport to maintain direction and happiness.
Enjoy the process and check in daily with whether you're having fun. A happy athlete is a fast athlete. Peak performance only happens when everything in life is 'vibing'—relationships, nutrition, rest, and community—not just training metrics.

Expert Quotes

"A happy athlete is a fast athlete, and I can definitely say for my career the only times that I performed at my potential or peak were when I had everything in my life kind of vibing—my relationship with my wife, feeling like I was fueling my body well, getting good rest, connected with family and friends. It really takes all of that."

"I wish I would have dedicated more time to the mental side and maybe honing that skill set, because really I think the final frontier in athletics is unlocking the potential of the mind."

"The best piece of advice I could give people going down this path of high performance is to make sure you build out teams and social components to what you're doing, because I think we rely heavily on our human relationships and that typically is what causes people to be depressed when they don't feel connected to others."

KEY QUOTES

“I wish I would have dedicated more time to the mental side and maybe honing that skill set because really I think the the final frontier in you know Athletics or at least the most important one is probably unlocking the potential of the mind.”
Ben Hoffman — Professional triathlete

“To me it's always a pretty simple equation of stress plus rest equals growth and I think people often get that equation wrong and they end up stressing their bodies way more than they're you know recovering and you don't get the the positive stimulus out of it.”
Ben Hoffman — Professional triathlete

“There are Norwegian kids that have been winning a lot of triathlon races and they say things like they've avoided having girlfriends you know they keep themselves in these environments where they have zero distractions essentially and the only focus is really on doing the training doing the recovery doing every little piece that they can to be as best as they possibly can.”
Ben Hoffman — Professional triathlete

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT10 SECTIONS

Building teams for high performance

The best piece of advice I guess to take this one step further that I could give people that are going down this path of high performance is to make sure you build out teams and social components to what you're doing um people that you're training with have a goal for the end of the week on volume you want to hit you have a goal for today how many yards you want to swim or how many kilometers you want to run or miles you want to bike you know I wish I would have dedicated more time to the mental side and maybe honing that skill set the most important one is probably Ben welcome to the roic podcast awesome to be here thanks for having me on I'm excited I don't often chat to triathletes we do occasionally but we try to keep uh the bloodline pure well I uh I'm used to the jokes for sure and uh what I will say is that I'm not just a triathlete I actually did some road racing early in my Triathlon career and uh dab a little bit in gravel you know racing um and I consider myself a relatively proficient cyclist I do follow the cycling news as well out there so um I'm a bit of a hybrid athlete I'd say I'm actually just always baffled as the workload you guys get through even I'll include non-pro Tri athletes into this I've lucky enough to chat to you know some of the best bike riders in the world in the podcast and some amazing writers winning world tour races or training 17 hours 18 hours a week There's age group athletes in triatlon that are training a lot lot more than that how do you find the time in the day to do it well it's certainly becoming more difficult as my life um you know expands and becomes more complex with two young children um and as I get older too it's just more challenging to put in the same workload that I used to but yeah I think when it's your job um you you just kind of make it happen I mean for me it's always been something that I've been passionate about and I yeah I love it enough so it's not hard for me I guess to get out the door and do it I am actually more baffled um as you touched on by the age group athletes who have jobs amilies and they're also training you know 25 to 30 hours a week um and somehow recovering and doing it week after week after week that's the one that really gets me but uh when it's your job I would say you know it is it's tough no no question um but yeah when the passion is there it's just something that you do because it's what's required to reach the level you want to and um yeah there's enough hours in the day I'd say but that's the part I I do wonder about is there an element of they're not measuring if are recovering during these sessions like how many age group athletes would go faster which is the ultimate goal by doing a little bit less and prioritizing recovery a little bit more I do see that with cyclists who are trying to balance conflicting demands on their time as well it's like you know what squeezing two and a half three hour session in after work in between feeds with the kid like You' be probably a lot better to do 60 minutes and stretch for 30 minutes I fully agree I mean I think even in this day and age of you know whoop devices monitoring HRV we've got all the gizmos but the reality is that people are probably more stressed than they've ever been and you know to me it's always a pretty simple equation of stress plus rest equals growth and uh I think people often get that equation wrong and they end up stressing their bodies way more than they're you know recovering and uh you don't get the the positive stimulus out of it so and like you said it's you know getting sleep eating food and then also just the other stresses of life I mean you know Financial uh children whatever it might be they all pile up and I think people tend to underestimate them and man even things like social media can be you know kind of a drain sometimes so yeah it all it's all out there there coming from every angle and I think you know that's kind of been the thing that I've learned a little bit more as I've gotten older and hopefully a little wiser and more mature is that uh you really have to prioritize the recovery and you don't need to go you know Gang Busters in every session or always try to match what you did when you were younger it often doesn't pan out and isn't something sustainable so yeah I would say for most people out there you know airing on the side of maybe a little bit less would be probably more beneficial um to go faster and and Achieve those you know top results like you were talking about do you think the job is slightly changing from when you turned Pro like when you turned Pro cycling or triatlon I think it was more of an absolute focus on winning races times being competitive against your peers while that's still important and if you're the goat and you're winning these races

The rise of the athlete brand

That's still very valued but there's almost a secondary element which seems to be valued as much and that's the personal brand we're seeing a lot of athletes that aren't the top athletes they're kind of mid-pack athletes but they're building quite a big brand and they're able to you know command quite big paychecks and endorsements off the back of that I fully agree yeah I mean I look at even a generation before me people like Craig Alexander Chris McCormack and you know they Embrace social media to some degree but I think they kind of were in this I guess housian period you know where it was like they could just basically focus on training and you know show up at a few races a year really nailed at the world championships and um not have to worry so much and I've had conversations with cow with Craig Alexander where you know I think he's quite appreciative um to have been in that sort of yeah time period when it wasn't really maybe the same requirement um that said some people really thrive on it right I mean some people really like this stuff it gives them a lot of energy to get out there and kind of Build That Brand like you said do the YouTube channel um constantly be on social media but for me yeah it's kind of it's been something that's actually kind of come in you know from the start of my career till the end um it's something that's really blossomed I guess and and it has been something that shifted um but yeah I feel like and and I've done kind of maybe a bit of a compared to the youngest generation coming through now I don't do nearly as much as they do um but yeah I feel like I've had it pretty good actually and I do enjoy it from time to time but I don't think that especially again with two young children now and just being a bit older I just don't have the same bandwidth you know to to tackle all this but to your point um yeah there there are different um I guess ways to earn a living in the sport probably more Pathways now or different Pathways and uh you know with the the beauty of the internet is that you can connect with people all around the world just like we are right now and you know somebody who maybe didn't have a voice before can have one and sometimes that's a good thing sometimes it's not um but it's uh it's certainly a world where everyone can be seen and heard now what's perception in the professional TR on uh Collective to athletes that are really embracing like I'm thinking LEL Sanders do people look like a little bit funny at him is it like you know what are you doing are you a social media influencer are you an athlete or what's the perception about him yeah I mean personally I would say I know lion a little bit you know I mean I've raced against some plenty of times he actually lives um about 45 minutes from me here and you know I'm in Tucson Arizon right now he's in Oro Valley which is just like a little suburb of Tucson and yeah it's you know it's a bit of both I would say um certain people think that it's a bit of a joke I think and that it's um maybe he should be focused more on you know the performance side but Lionel's he's a tough example I guess because he's the guy who's still winning races right he's still up there um in most most cases I mean maybe his performance at some of the World Championships hasn't been perfect in the last few but he's an incredible athlete and he's still winning races and then he's also doing YouTube stuff and I feel like he has a a decent balance in the sense of um it doesn't feel like he puts an incredible amount of energy into it it feels like maybe it's more of the people around him that are helping you know do those things I mean he has to sit down and do the conversation of course but it's not like he's the one doing all the filming and editing and everything else so I think he mainly just kind of talks to the camera here and there and um yeah I don't know I mean I think for me um you know it's more of a perspective of is this healthy for him is this something that is actually helping his performance is it something that he enjoys doing and uh is a real ad I mean financially it probably is and I guess you know it depends on what you're after if your only goal is high performance then maybe this is extraneous um but yeah I would say everyone's opinion is a little bit different mine's kind of a balance where I'm like personally I never had the interest in dedicating this kind of energy and time to it because I did I thought it was a distraction um and inevitably too you know you're going to get yeah a lot of opinions a lot of people out there and he's certainly not insulated from that we've seen that you know I think he takes that uh he takes that on and it doesn't seem like it's always a benefit for him you know he's not getting positive feedback from everybody out there obviously there's plenty of haters

Young guns take over Ironman

And so um when you internalize that I think it kind of tends to impede your performance and um I question yeah whether it's actually a positive for him but um it's probably a positive for the bank account is there a bit of a change in the guard going on in Trion at the moment you know you're coming towards the Twilight of your career I think it's Yan frino last year as well is this you know the dawning of a new year of kids coming through it certainly seems to be I mean we've seen it happen so many times you know whether it was uh I don't know when Tim da and Yan frino came over from itu guys like that um you know there's always been that kind of I guess cycle um where basically you've got these kids that did draft legal racing you know the itu racing um and the Olympic distance and then they after an Olympic cycle they come through they start doing half Iron Man and Iron Man distance racing and typically their skill set translates really well not not for everybody but you know um they're incredible athletes they've really hone that speed and the the form and skill for the three disciplines and so yeah with a little bit more volume and a little bit different training stimulus they seem to do really well so it in one on one hand yeah um there is there is definitely a Changing of the Guard but it's also something we've seen before so it's not like a big surprise to me um but yeah you see for sure I mean Sam Lelo 20 is he 23 I think just won Iron Man World Championships in n and I mean that's insane I mean you never would have seen that happen you know 10 years ago um but yeah it seems to be that there is a younger group of guys that are showing that you don't have to be in your mid to even late 30s anymore to perform in Iron Man distance and and that is a little bit different than maybe some of the previous you know um Olympic cycle changes that we've seen I think we're seeing that across the board in a lot of Endurance Sports like Kip jogi's record dropped at the weekend um seen in cycling with uh like pogacha win the Tour of France at 22 like you wouldn't have dreamt of throwing a rer in like I remember Christian vandeveld on the podcast talking to me about Johan brunal ringing his dad and asking his dad if it was okay if he brought Christian to the Tour of France because he was so young and he was like 22 years old at the time as well it was taught to like physiologically harm athletes to do an endurance block that was so long and you're T of France roer were typically thought of it was 30 35 around off vintage where you had a decade of hard racing in the legs whatever's happened across Endurance Sports in the last five six years that old rule book has just been ripped up and we're seeing younger and younger athletes just smashing it yeah I fully fully agree with that I think um I'm not sure you know it almost makes me wonder a little bit about what the reason for that is I mean it makes you kind of think that well we used to think that it was physiological right but maybe it's just more of the mental side where people believe now that this is possible and um that's all the more that it takes right like just breaking down the barrier and I mean I've always thought about that in my own training and then also especially with running I feel like it's kind of really apparent there where you know Kip chog you know you can look at him and say well he did this sub two project and he ran 15 15940 or whatever it was even if it was you know the circumstances were a little bit Le you know less I guess real in some ways than a race would be um but just doing that I think kind of set the tone right for opening people's minds and that that's a whole another topic for discussion but I always tell the young athletes coming through that you know I wish I would have dedicated more time to the mental side and maybe honing that skill set um because really I think the the final frontier in you know Athletics or at least the most important one is probably unlocking the potential of the mind um you know obviously the training has be done the science continues to improve whether that's um you know well all things really the technology you know the Sports Nutrition the coaching all of it but yeah really understanding how to yeah get the mind you know to unlock its potential I think is kind of what what we might be seeing more and more of and might be the reason for um because certainly you know the ideas about building up this mitochondria or whatever it was um don't really hold water when you see these guys in the early 20s is doing what you know the guys in their late 30s used to do I wonder is are we going to just see a drop in age every year are we going to start to see 17 year olds 18 year olds winning these big races because what I'm

Are endurance athletes peaking younger?

Kind of thinking about is your comment that you're 40 now and one of the challenges you're finding is you have two kids and it's difficult to start squeezing in training now around conflicting demands but as we age we definitely start accumulating more responsibilities even I'm thinking of myself at 25 I was a lot more financially aware or maybe financially self-conscious than I was at 16 at 16 I'd literally travel the world with you know a packet of sandwiches in my backpack and you wouldn't even care if you had somewhere to stay and sports kind of going like that where you're go going from Big Race to altitude Camp to Big Race to altitude Camp to get ready for this stuff but the more and more extreme these training Protocols are becoming the younger and the younger the athletes that suiting I'm wondering is Ultimate Evolution it is to the point where we're nearly seeing it like gymnastics where the best athletes in the world are 17 or 16 or 15 yeah I mean it very well could be and I don't know where that line is with endurance sport where how much is you know required but I think yeah physiologically potentially your recovery um is better when you're younger right I mean maybe just from a hormonal standpoint and yeah just it's kind of anecdotal but you know you watch kids and it seems like they get hurt and they come back really quick right but you get older and those injuries kind of linger and it just seems like it takes longer um so potentially yeah you know just that ability to handle a high training load and then like you said you know I've seen this multiple times and it's been talked about there's actually a couple of Norwegian kids um that are pretty good too you know that have been winning a lot of traon races and uh they talk about it very clearly um where you know they say things like they basically for you know obvious reasons well not obvious reasons but they say it's obvious um they've avoided having girlfriends you know they keep themselves in these environments where they have zero distractions essentially and the only focus is really on doing the training doing the recovery um doing every little piece that they can to be as best as they possibly can for this one specific thing they're doing of triathlon racing and as you add those layers as you add those stresses you know they inevitably become probably distractions on some level so yeah it's a it's an interesting thing to think about um but it it certainly on its face seems to have some value you know that you the people that yeah maybe can do do the training load um at a young age and then they just have nothing else going on either that or yeah maybe a little bit later on but they keep them themselves in that insulated environment where there's really nothing else except for the training and recovery and racing yeah it starts becoming more of a challenge when you have a little bit of cash in your pocket and I'm not even talking about making crazy bank but I remember being a student and been totally broke then moving to France and signing for an amateur team over there and been totally broke making 50 a week so like nobody's overweight when they're making 50 a week like I never struggled to make race weight when I was making 50 a week because I would run out of money before the end of the week to buy food so I was starving but then when I got my first contract her I was actually making a little bit of cash now all of a sudden I'm on a coffee stop on the spin and going well maybe I will have the muffin and Starbucks when I didn't have money for that previously because a bag of rice is the same price as a muffin so you're kind of looking at it like that so it does get harder and harder as you age to live the monkik life that we need to be elite athletes yeah I agree with that and it's it is kind of an ironic thing right this uh idea of achieving wealth and maybe even some some sense of status through the results as well is a bit of an illusion right and actually maybe a distraction from the ultimate goal if it is just getting the result in you know the growth as a person and athlete um you know optimizing all of that yeah it's uh certainly something I've thought about where you I don't know you're just kind of sold the story right from previous generations where it's like you want to get the house you want to have the sports car you want to get the nice clothes whatever it is and you know like you said be able to eat whatever food whenever you want and um yeah and really you know the special time even if you don't appreciate it fully is probably when things are at their most simple and uh you're working really hard and that is something that like I really talk about with people when I'm trying to remind them and training that you know when things get difficult in your e- jerk reaction is to shut it down and your body's telling you to quit because that's what it's programmed to do because it's programmed for survival um that in fact that's actually

Embracing the hard moments

What you want is the difficult and challenging experience right I mean when you look back that's what's rewarding that's where you feel like you earn something um because it's honest you know you pushed yourself really hard and you kind of had to ask yourself the question like do I have it and uh and then you have to deliver and and you know it's hard to stomach it when you when the answer is no and you didn't have it um but in the same way I think that can motivate you and make you stronger and better for the next time because you don't like that feeling so yeah I always remind people that when you have that first that initial reaction of kind of I don't know if I want to do this or this just hurts or whatever that it's actually what you're you know depending on your mentality and what you're striving to do um it's actually what you should be looking for and and probably what will be most rewarding in the end I think it's really interesting what you said there about Ty it back to mindset being one of the most important qualities that an athlete can have there's a certain amount of emotional intelligence to identify that when you're on the way up when you're you know you're Conor McGregor and you've won the first World title fight and you've made 50 Grand that's actually the high point and you need to do everything to preserve that environment that mindset when the Temptation because we're programmed from society is to look ahead I think it'll be better when I'm making a million euro fight it'll be better when I have the seven figure endorsement contracts But ultimately once you get those seven figure endorsement contracts all you ever try and do is scrape and get back to that moment to live humbly and recreate that mindset you had when you were on the way up yeah it's a really strange thing that we uh allow ourselves to be duped you know um by but that said I do think yeah there's maybe a more optimal balance than like just starving you know um I think yeah maybe having a little bit more and you know having the appreciation for sure but uh yeah but what you said I mean really that's kind of the whole thing that's the Zen of life right I mean appreciation for what you have and not be striving all the time to have things be different than they are to to be grateful for and appreciate what you have in the moment um sure you can be you can definitely have goals and things you're working for but whether it's pain whether it's struggle whether it's sitting on the couch and you know taking it easy you have kind of an equal appreciation for all those things today's episode is brought to you by better help as we pedal closer to the end of another year I can't help but reflect on the highs and lows that come with it whether it's the excitement of the holiday season or navigating the occasional seasonal Blues it can be a little bit of a roller coaster right well I've been thinking about how this time of year can be a little bit overwhelming dealing 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description below how have you found turning 40 is it difficult to start thinking of yourself as someone other than b the triathlete and shedding that IDE identity to become B whatever the next step is definitely yeah I um I always considered myself yeah reasonably intelligent and you know I felt like I had more Dimension to me um than just being a triathlete but after 20 years of doing it it does become your identity and you know I dedicated a lot of mental and physical energy to this career and in some ways I still really am um so I think that I thought that I would be different though no no lie there um you know I watched some friends of mine that were older and I was like well it's I definitely saw the struggle and yeah I kind of maybe minimized it because it wasn't my experience um and now that I'm here I can honestly say that yeah it's challenging you know I mean to reimagine yourself or revisit things that maybe you kind of let uh fall in the background and yeah to decide what it is that you want to do moving forward because when you're

Life after pro triathlon

An athlete I think one of the biggest things is that you have these goals in front of you that are so Crystal Clear and um yeah you're always striving to get these to achieve these results to increase your performance whatever it is and you know I think the real world of jobs and everything else is probably a little bit more nebulous than that and um you don't have the same autonomy often and yeah I think uh short story uh or short answer to you know could be a really long one I I can see that it's going to be really challenging for me to make this transition and um I'm really just trying to enjoy this Final Phase of my career and not not um go too far in the future because even with this you know I feel like year to year there's so many examples of things that happened in my career and people that I met and you know the the way that it affected the trajectory of my career that happened within six months or a year so often that it's like what I don't know what's going to be happening in a year people ask me what I'm doing next and I'm like well this is what I'm doing now and I don't want to do a disservice to it you know I don't want to get so far down the road with planning as we talked about this imaginary future that I'm not able to live where I am now so um yeah that's a long way of saying I think it's going to be a challenging process and probably more so than I imagine but um hopefully one that you know some of the skills that I've learned in the the Sporting Life will help me navigate it you mentioned on the journey you let things fall in the background what did you mean by that well I've always considered myself a bit of an artist so um yeah I grew up with a father who was a building contractor and you know I um I guess was a bit of a photographer ceramist woodworker even some metal working as well which I still occasionally do in my offseason and um yeah you know things like that just seem to little hobbies and things like that um also you know I grew up in western Colorado in the United States for people that's not that are not familiar with that it's a pretty outdoorsy State we have mountains we have Canyons Rivers everything and um I grew up Outdoors a lot we were camping um backpacking fly fishing rock climbing skiing all the stuff outdoors and you know as this became my singular Focus for the last 15 to 20 years I really just kind of let all those other sports fall to the you know Wayside and um and it's a bit weird because I it was such a core part of me you know before I started Tron in my University days that uh yeah it was a pretty you know I held on to it for a while but it was a pretty abrupt end to most of that and now that I have kids of my own I think about the way my parents raise me and the things that we did and um and it's stuff that I'm really looking forward to incorporating more which is why we're heading out to go camping this weekend actually like high performance sport is putting the blinkers on and I think that's the dichotomy that a lot of people that aren't high performance athletes don't realize there's not a lot of health or balance attached to high performance sport there's a lot of obsessive dedication and exclusion of people Hobbies interests like was it just hobbies that F by the wayside or is there friendships you've lost along the way be it family or social yeah I would say I'm not nearly as connected with my extended family as maybe I was in my you know younger days and then um for sure friendships I mean that there's no question I can't count the number of weddings that I didn't go to because I was going to a race you know and um yeah I just saw some friends the other night that were in town they actually run kind of a Psy it's called the cycling house here and they do camps you know weekly camps with riders here and uh yeah I haven't seen these guys you know in gez a year or two and um yeah we just talked about you know one of them in particular was part of my early Triathlon days when University of Montana and Missoula and uh we were just talking about some of the friends and people that were on our club team and you know where they are now and how one of them did just get married a couple years ago and I was invited to that but it's like you know I didn't go and uh yeah that's certainly a piece of it but I've always tried to check myself because and maybe this is just a justification it probably is on some level um but when you you know people talk about sacrif when they're talking about doing a sport and I I really struggle with that concept a little bit because I feel like people are painting this picture like woe is me on some level even if it's a small amount right and I kind of look at it like well

Sacrifice, regret and pushing kids into sport

This is what you do to do the thing you said you wanted to do and you know if you don't want to do that thing then there's plenty of other things to do and you can do all those things but kind of to say after the fact like oh I made all these sacrifices and I you know it just doesn't really land well with me um I look at more as just this is what you do if you want to do the thing you want to do and when you call it sacrifice I think it kind of brings in a negative component and yeah almost like you're trying to call attention to yourself as if you're special but you know it's really just that's the decision you made do you regret any of those decisions I typically don't live with a lot of regret um mostly because I don't think it's super healthy or productive um you know I mean it can inform things moving forward like choices that you make um but yeah I would not say I regret it I mean the rewards of what I've done have been tremendous and so I kind of look at it more that way that the things that I've been able to experience and the rewards that I've gotten from this career and this job have been yeah more than I could have ever imagined and you know everything every pathway is going to have its positives and negatives I guess but uh yeah this has been a pretty special life and pretty special career that I wouldn't trade a lot for my sister had a baby about uh seven eight months ago and baby boy and it's the first I don't have any kids and it's the first nephew in the family and I was thinking about Sport and would I push him down or even not even push him but encourage him down the route of high performance Sport and at some point I think sport does start becoming unhealthy and it's an example I use all the time but if you take uh Michael Phelps or Bradley Wiggins and they get to the very top of their chosen profession but when you get to the top of the chosen profession when you get to the top of the mountain and you're the most decorated Olympian ever or you win a tour to France on Olympic gold in the same season but you're lonely depressed isolated no one there to share the victory with like can we call that success like do you want that for your kids would you push them towards that well my wife and I have certainly had these conversations and I mean our general mindset is that we're not going to really push them towards anything we're going to try to expose them to as much as we can and let them decide for themselves I mean I think question them back from us rather than push them towards it also a great question and I would have to say and you know the idea is to give them the skills to make decisions for themselves that are well thought out and of course you can't see down the road um but I think I would share my experience share the positives and negatives of my experience but at the end of the day no I mean if it's their choice to go down the path whether they have the information or not you know you never have all of it um I'm going to I think have to yeah strike that balance of sharing what I believe and what I think but not in a way that's meant to steer them towards anything um I think this is their life and yeah you learn that at some point as a parent um pretty quickly on actually they you start to see the independence and it's like you know it's one of the most beautiful things to realize they are their own person and uh inevitably they're going to be a little bit like you but I uh I'm mostly just excited to have them create you know the life that they believe that they want and to support that in whatever way I can but I agree with you I mean the irony is that achieving this thing that again is put on a pedestal especially in a country like the United States I think we're the kings of you know putting that first place the gold medal on a pedestal and maybe every country you know lays claim to that in some way we all do we all go to the Olympics whatever but it's especially part of this extreme American culture I think you know we're a culture of extremes and um yeah it's ironic because you believe that this is going to provide some sort of yeah fulfillment I guess um but probably at the end of the day it's only one small piece of what makes a complete and fulfilled person and you know ironically you end up quite alienated from people when you become that very best you know in your category and like you said you can be depressed you can be whatever else and I think humans are social creatures so the best piece of advice I guess to take this one step further that I could give people that are going down this path of high performance is to make sure you build out teams and social components to what you're doing um people that you're training with um because

Community as a performance pillar

I think that yeah we rely heavily on our human relationships and um that typically is what I think causes people to be depressed when they don't feel connected to others I think that's super important and we're seeing more and more research on the importance of community so like I spoke recently uh to Dr Cur and he's done a lot of research on longevity and he's identifying the pillars that everyone is you know sleep hydration nutrition strength conditioning cardiovascular health but the one he puts more focus on than anything else is community yeah that's really cool to hear I mean I think I always say it to the people that are around me and especially that I'm entering this phase now where I think I'm more focused on giving back and less about just getting what I can out of it and I always tell the younger kids coming through that like you know you really just have to like yeah enjoy what you're doing you know we're not robots I mean you know it's there's a robotic component yes of course like food in food out you know Sleep Train you know what all whatever but at the end of the day we're not we're not just like computers so you really have to take care of those human elements and respect them and maybe like put them like you were saying um above you know some of these other ones that we have you know to create the most healthy athlete because I've seen it time and time again I still remember watching the Tour of California back when Peter sagon was racing and you know I remember it was Maybe Christian bandelt and somebody else announcing and they were talking and you know Christian said something he's like well it's no surprise while he's winning why he's winning these races just look at him like all these guys are obsessed about their weight you know their gear their power all this stuff and Peter's just having more fun than everybody and it really always stuck with me because it was like it's so true it's very simple um and it takes a you know it takes more than people probably realize to be happy or you know to enjoy what you're doing that way sometimes but um that should be really the focus like checking in with yourself every day and saying like am I enjoying this and if I'm not what are some of the things that I might do to make myself enjoy it more you know and or what are the things that I can look back and say these gave me a lot of joy and incorporate more of those because a happy athlete is a fast athlete and um I can definitely say for my career the only times that I performed at my potential or Peak were when I had everything in my life kind of you know vibing and um yeah that's my relationship you know with my wife um feeling like I was feeling my body well getting good rest connected with yeah family friends everything um it really takes all of that to I think get to your you know potential but you know Ben you anyone listening to this you could rewind the last two three minutes and replace the word athlete with worker and that's amazing advice like if you're you're chasing a promotion in the bank and you're working long hours and you're isolated from your community and you're making sacrifices when you get to that ultimate destination like and you get that big promotion you're after if you're socially isolated and you're miserable the journey is just not worth it and likewise if you're saying you know one of the best things you learned was to have fun along the way like imagine you're working in the bank and you're having fun along the way you know it's what everyone's looking for from their job yeah well certainly your life is what's happening now not what you're planning it to be and um you know I think it's really critical to yeah enjoy your life as much as you can um enjoy the process and not always be motivated by some sort of moving Target essentially you know because as you said I mean it's like you want that seven fig contract you want you know whatever it is and um when you when you get there typically it's not really what you imagined it was and you want something else and um and you end up in that kind of vicious cycle of always wanting to be somewhere that you're not and um yeah that doesn't sound like a recipe for mental health uh to me so I definitely think choosing something that you're good at that you enjoy and then yeah figuring out the ways to continue making it enjoyable um as much as you can each day because that's really again what your life is some uh some free advice totally unsolicited advice for you from my 800 odd episodes on the podcast to athletes who've transitioned out of their chosen sport well and contrasting against athletes whove transitioned out poorly I can notice one very common tread that people that transition well they take what we do as athletes amazingly which is goal setting and they bring that into the real world and they start using that straight away in the real world like if you think about how amazing and refined athletes are at goal setting like we've season goals you've break that down into

The offseason goal-setting slump

Monthly or quarterly training goals you even have a goal for the end of the week on volume you want to hit you have a goal for today how many yards you want to swim or how many kilometers you want to run or miles you want a bike and then you step out into the real world and it's like well I just tread in water there's no plan anymore and we wonder why we're miserable so that's one I would definitely encourage you to focus on well I certainly appreciate it and um it's something that I it's actually quite on my mind at the moment because well I want to do a little bit more racing this season and um it just hasn't really panned out that way uh The Guiding that I'm doing with this paratra athlete you know he was ready to be done with a season ended up a bit sick after the world Champs and came home and yeah I mean I just you know no more races there and then I looked at the calendar and nothing was tremendously motivating to me as as a goal so here I am in the the offseason or H season as I call it and you know I find a very common thread that pops up for me during this time is that I'm not super happy you know you think you're going to to be like having this time to rest and whatever else but I find that it's definitely a challenging time and it's often because of what you just said that I don't have an immediate goal a clear-cut goal and I find that I'm just not really using my time very well and I look back at the pandemic and I think I was guilty of that then as well I mean we had children and so that became you know a focus of ours and it was very easy to put a lot of energy there but for my own personal goals I didn't have a lot of those and it was really a difficult time where you couldn't uh Orient yourself well and yeah it was confusing for sure so yeah I'm certainly very aware of my need for having concrete goals and uh you know how that translates like you said figuring out how that translates um will be interesting but I'll definitely keep it on the the front of my mind how have you found the transition across the tandem I know you're not fully done with uh Trion yet you still have goals and Ambitions there so transitions maybe the wrong word but how have you found the the sort of dual balancing effect of triatlon plus moving into tandom world yeah it's a it's a it's a brand new one I um you know I'm I'm known for my Iron Man distance racing and uh that's an eight hour race typically for us depending on the course and now I'm doing Sprint distance racing which is typically just under an hour of racing so it's quite a bit different and uh you know I found that aside from the training being different and obviously riding a tandem being like a completely different experience that uh you know when I the craziest thing is when I switch back and forth for example if I'm training with Owen Cravens the kid that I'm guiding and uh and then I jump on my bike the next day after being on the tandem with him like wild feels feeling is crazy yeah it's just like you go from being feeling quite uh I don't know what the exact word is it's not that it's cumbersome exactly but it's you just feel like a little bit uh like disjointed or something on the bigger bike like driving trailer on I felt you know exactly school bus or something yeah and then you go back to the sports card it's like whoa this is a big difference so that part is for sure different um also just the the feeling I think of of racing with and and for somebody else not just yourself where you feel quite responsible um not only for their safety when you're going 30 miles an hour around these corners on you know tight tight courses but um also just in the sense of like helping them achieve the goal that they have and making sure that you're sort of not a limiter you know as much as you possibly can be um and then obviously that the guidance goes beyond just uh you know the guiding in the race itself you know I feel like in especially in my case Owen is a is a younger kid he's 20 years old I'm 40 now um it's a big age difference and so um there's an opportunity there for me to Mentor him about you know the experiences that I've had in my career and the path that I've taken and um yeah and just sort of help maybe guide him in that sense as well but it's been really rewarding um I guess as a final note and it's something that I'm excited to continue doing for another year as we head to the par Olympics in Paris so has his I'm assuming he's uh predominantly indoors for his training with his visual impairment has his Lo of indoor training red off on you yeah I mean it has actually a bit and it's something that I've realized I need to do more of just because of the nature of the racing we're doing and

Indoor training and guiding a paratriathlete

The intensity that's required both um you know for the run but especially on the bike side and um yeah unless I'm out there on the tandem with Owen or unless he's riding with somebody else that can be you know cap the captain on on the tandem um he's pretty much stuck on the trainer and uh you know it's as at the age that he's at that's also probably one of the most critical elements is to be um you know on the bike building that aerobic base and volume as much as possible obviously the run's really critical too but you know there's a limit to the amount of volume and stuff that you can pile on especially the intensity there but yeah it's uh it's kind of open my eyes so to speak to to that world again and and reminded me just how critical it can be um for developing you know your threshold power and things like that how's your indoor train setup have you got it pimped out with Co bikes multiple fans yeah so I'm on a I'm for my indoor setup when I'm home in Tucson um actually have a wat bike Adam and it's um a major upgrade from any of the trainer systems I've used I was used to using you know the old oh man fluid trainers back in the day and like a wahoo kicker and on the sand and the fluid trainer oh it's just terrible yeah I mean and even way back into yeah College days just the the very first iterations of of cycling trainers are so bad and I think it kind of you know that shaped maybe my mindset I'm also being an outdoors kid from Colorado I I I love being outdoors I love riding my bike the joy you know of being outside is is a big piece of it for me but um yeah now with the setup that I have here I mean I actually have it we learned kind of during the pandemic it was cool because initially all the pools closed everything was shut down the gyms everything and I was lucky because I had already built out a home gym in my garage I have weights out there um I have the watt bike Adam I have a sauna um you know I have a treadmill and I also have a sponsor Master Spa who makes a basically it's a swimming treadmill it's it's a swi see these random wi Housman they're brilliant and I mean I really you know basically I was I could stay at home as long as I had food here I could do all my training from home um and it was actually pretty pretty cool because you a lot of people started reaching out to me especially on the pool side you know to use the to use the spa um because the pools were closed and you know kids had swim meets they were still trying to get to colleges you know to get scholarships so it was kind of a crazy time there but yeah I mean in terms of the bike training especially for what I'm doing now the yeah the the bike that I'm on it's just it's such a massive upgrade I mean I'd actually never been on a stationary bike like that you know a proper actual bike built for indoor training like that but just the difference in how quiet it is and how smooth it is is is like yeah it makes it a lot more enjoyable um especially when you're doing that high-intensity work it just feels stable and smooth and like you're really getting everything out of the workout um but it's kind of my yeah my go-to now you know I do a lot of like five minute threshold work Sweet Spot intervals things like that and um yeah it's uh certainly more enjoyable than the indoor training that I used to do Ben I love this conversation best of luck on your journey towards Paris we be rooting for you really appreci it yeah it's been great to chat I think it's always good to talk about these topics and bring them back into you know the front of your mind even if you're um aware of them it's good to be reminded and I appreciate the advice as I transition into the next uh phase of my career whatever that might be thanks for your time everybody thanks for tuning in to today's interview if you like this interview I'm going to put another interview up here which I know you're really going to enjoy and please click on that subscribe button talk to you soon

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How do professional triathletes balance training stress and recovery?+

Ben Hoffman argues that performance comes from applying the stress-plus-rest-equals-growth equation correctly, which means accounting for all life stress, not just training load. Work pressure, family demands, and social media consumption all count against your recovery budget. Most athletes would race faster by reducing training volume and protecting sleep and downtime instead of stacking more sessions on top of an already depleted system.

Do triathletes train too much volume?+

According to Ben Hoffman, many age-group and elite triathletes undermine their own performance by chasing the volume of younger or fitter peers without accounting for their personal stress load. More training only produces faster racing when sufficient recovery surrounds it. Hoffman contends that deliberately training less, while protecting recovery, is a more effective strategy for most athletes than adding hours.

How important is mental training for triathlon performance?+

Ben Hoffman treats mental skills work as a dedicated, structured part of his training programme rather than an afterthought. Consistent mental skills practice separates athletes who perform to their physical potential on race day from those who do not. Hoffman recommends treating it with the same seriousness as swim, bike, and run sessions.

Does having a training group make you a better triathlete?+

Ben Hoffman identifies a genuine team or social structure around training as one of the most underrated factors in long-term triathlon performance. Training alongside others provides accountability, motivation, and a standard to measure yourself against that solo training cannot replicate. Athletes who build or join a committed training community tend to be more consistent and better prepared on race day.

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Key Takeaways

Prioritize recovery and stress management over training volume. The equation is simple: stress plus rest equals growth. Most athletes get this wrong by overtraining while underestimating life's accumulated stressors (financial, family, social media), leading to diminishing returns.

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Develop your mental game as a competitive advantage. The physiological ceiling is increasingly accessible to younger athletes, but the ability to unlock mental potential—managing self-doubt, embracing difficulty, and maintaining motivation—separates champions from peers.

Set concrete, clear goals even during off-seasons. Without specific targets to work toward, athletes struggle with motivation and purpose. Goal-setting is one of the most refined skills athletes possess; translate it into life after sport to maintain direction and happiness.

Enjoy the process and check in daily with whether you're having fun. A happy athlete is a fast athlete. Peak performance only happens when everything in life is 'vibing'—relationships, nutrition, rest, and community—not just training metrics.

Expert Quotes

"A happy athlete is a fast athlete, and I can definitely say for my career the only times that I performed at my potential or peak were when I had everything in my life kind of vibing—my relationship with my wife, feeling like I was fueling my body well, getting good rest, connected with family and friends. It really takes all of that."

"I wish I would have dedicated more time to the mental side and maybe honing that skill set, because really I think the final frontier in athletics is unlocking the potential of the mind."

"The best piece of advice I could give people going down this path of high performance is to make sure you build out teams and social components to what you're doing, because I think we rely heavily on our human relationships and that typically is what causes people to be depressed when they don't feel connected to others."

KEY QUOTES

“I wish I would have dedicated more time to the mental side and maybe honing that skill set because really I think the the final frontier in you know Athletics or at least the most important one is probably unlocking the potential of the mind.”
Ben Hoffman — Professional triathlete

“To me it's always a pretty simple equation of stress plus rest equals growth and I think people often get that equation wrong and they end up stressing their bodies way more than they're you know recovering and you don't get the the positive stimulus out of it.”
Ben Hoffman — Professional triathlete

“There are Norwegian kids that have been winning a lot of triathlon races and they say things like they've avoided having girlfriends you know they keep themselves in these environments where they have zero distractions essentially and the only focus is really on doing the training doing the recovery doing every little piece that they can to be as best as they possibly can.”
Ben Hoffman — Professional triathlete

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How do professional triathletes balance training stress and recovery?+

Do triathletes train too much volume?+

How important is mental training for triathlon performance?+

Does having a training group make you a better triathlete?+

3 UNCOMMON HABITS TO INSTANTLY BECOME A BETTER TRIATHLETE | BEN HOFFMAN

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KEY QUOTES

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