In this episode I make a huge announcement which will shape everything I do over the course of the next 12 months.
The first piece in the training system I learnt - Strength & Conditioning https://cf.a1coaching.net/sales-page7i7bapza
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Hello you beautiful cycling fans, I'm back for another A1 Show podcast. Thanks for listening in again. We're back to this once a week kind of cadence back after the chaos sort of welt and the daily podcast. It's kind of nice and refreshing to have it once a week. It gives me a little bit more time to research and actually do a deep dive into topics that I think are of merit and that awards your time and you devote in 30 minutes or so for this podcast it does feel like a long time between chatting to all you listeners out there so I may at some stage open to two podcasts a week but at the moment we're gonna stick it to one podcast a week. So I'm gonna start off today's episode. I'm gonna try and hold myself together for risk because I've known to be emotional from time to time. From a poem I got, my dad wrote for me last week, it was my birthday, and he wrote this poem as a little part of the present. So he wouldn't write a lot of poetry, so it meant a loss. And yeah, it's always nice. Actually, I'm just going to show up, I'm going to read it. To tense to talk I breed through fear, sweat and blood have got him here. Dier as he pushed to grind it out, fitness was never in doubt, but mental will require a test to climb to sprint to be the best. So he hits the gas, his races on, the line draws close, my breath is gone. The checkered flag cuts wind and rain, hands trans-coyward, but some in vain. The crowds they saw are pushed aside, who has won the fans they cried. But in that moment I turned inside, who cares who won my songs alive and fit to fight another day and I would be there to light his way. Yeah it was a girl present and a mental law and it's definitely a present. I will treasure I'm not a massively materialistic person. I always like, you know, experiences or some that somebody's gone to a bit of effort to put together. So I appreciate that one a lot. So yeah, also feel free to send me in. Birthday presents, that's totally cool. People have actually been sending in some some cool stuff we had a CBD oil get sent into us during the week which is pretty cool it was actually it's a cool mix because we talked about CBD in one of our last podcasts but it was a different type of CBD so this is a CBD that was mixed with coconut oil and the coconut oil obviously it changes the consistency completely of the CBD oil it comes like almost like a gerundal teller but the company that made us have an experiment with two more to the prescription they wrote me a nice little I'm not as well the prescription they says prescription that's a very medical term for a pseudo medical product But anyway the recommendation they said was to rub some on the bottom of your feet before bed and also on your legs on Rest days so the company's called raised spirits if you want to check that out I am not in any way affiliated with that. I just merely got a free can so thought I'd give them a little shout out for that Okay before we jump into today's topic topic. I want to talk about show sponsor. So the show sponsor today is it's a product that I've been wanting to put together for a long time. It dates back to when I was riding the bike full time and I had a friend at the time who was riding for Team Sky and as I got talking to him, you know, conversation flows a little more loosely on the bike. And as As I got talking to him, it became clear to me that there was a system, there was a process. Checkboxes, you need to take each winter to prepare for the following season. What's separated, bad amateurs from good amateurs from pros was compliance with this system, who complied with it the most. One of the prerequisites to winter training to get started, winter training was a strength and condition on plan. So the way I was explaining this since gone on and obviously researched this stuff a lot as we're starting to build a coaching company. The way you explain it to me at the time is still probably the easiest way to explain it to you guys. Even the world's most powerful supercar, the biggest engine in the world, it gets no speed, it gets no traction down, it's not a viable supercar unless it has a strong chassis. So we use that as an analogy and the chassis in this case is our muscles, it's our core, it's our stability, it's our ability to transfer power and the only way we can do that is with an effective strength condition and off season plan. I for years steered away from creating a strength condition and plan.
I thought there's a bunch of strength condition and experts out there. I'm just going to leave it to them. But it was with growing frustration that I went to strength and conditioning and inverted commoners expert after experts and came away frustrated, came away just feeling that I wasted my money on gym memberships and personal trainers that what they were talking about just didn't represent the needs I had as a cyclist. I needed to stay lean. I needed to build lean body mass but I needed to build very cycling specific power. There's no point being able to chuck huge heavy things around the gym. The plan also needed to be periodised because what are we doing if we're not periodising the plan and especially periodising it around our training and as we're getting closer to the season. So we took the dive, we partnered with a bunch of physiologists and sports scientists and we put together an amazing 12 week periodised strength and conditioning plan, video tutorials, step by step instructions on how to do it. This is a plan I think the perfect time to start is off season but it's a plan that I would use as maintenance all year round and if you're wasting your time if you have a gym membership And you're not following this plan. It's an absolute waste the price on it. It's stupidly cheap We've priced at a 49 euro. I want the price of like the value of it I'm giving a bunch of stuff away with it for free the value of it I don't know it's upwards of 400 euro But when we talked about the price now, I just wanted to get this into the hands of as many people as possible so that's You know the first step the prerequisites your winter china start on this track condition plan jump on to it And it's so easy to follow get to the gym twice a week At best You're gonna have an ineffective winter without following the strength condition plan at worst you're gonna be injured But you know time I'm always harping on about time being our most valuable important asset So don't waste any time don't just waste a year of plugging along trying it without just taking the boxes just let someone else learn from mistakes but they don't have to be your mistakes. Okay, let's dive into our substantive topic. So I want to start and I want to talk to you about Hollywood actor and you might see this as a strange place to start but it'll make sense, it makes sense. So it was around 1990, Jim Carrey was a stand-up, but Canadian stand-up comic, he was trying to make his way and act, but he was a nobody, nobody known. And he wrote himself a check for 10 million euro, and he dated it for five years from then, and he said for acting services rendered, and he put that check in his wallet, and he carried that check with him every day, and he looked at that check every day. Now if we fast forward five years Jim Carrey's won the biggest names in the Hollywood dumb and dumber, Ace Ventura, the mask, a bunch of other cool movies and he was obviously bringing in 15, 20 million per movie at the time and as a little tribute to his dad then when his dad died in the mid 90s Jim Carrey took that 10 million Euro check and he put it in his dad's that's called pocket and you buried him with that check in his pocket. That's the power of goal setting and that's the topic for today. We're going to talk about goal setting and we're going to talk about the differences between an idea and a goal and exactly I know we've touched on goal setting before but not in much of a deep dive but I also want to make this one real and talk to you about my goal. So this week I have announced that I'm coming back racing next season. I've been looking around for a couple of years, riding the bike to the coffee shop and back but I haven't done an introvert since I hung up the wheels racing full time, probably back in 2014. So I haven't done an introvert since then and two busy coaching you guys. So I said, in the immortal words of Dr. Dre, give me one more platinum plaque, then fuck up, you can have it back. So I'm back for one year. Good buddy of mine, Peter Ryan. I must get Peter on me, do a podcast with Peter. Peter Story's brilliant, he's visually impaired. He was a hauling player at our national sport here in Ireland. He was a hauling player for temporary and I don't know how the AG wasn't going to completely bastardized his story here which is a cool story but he started having visual problems and anyway long story short he is visually impaired he went to the last olympics in Rio and he's been training since then for the Tokyo Olympics so the setup is the tandem you have an able bodied athlete on the front and you have a visually impaired athlete on the back and I've had a chance to ride a peter a number of times he's a good buddy of mine off the bike but I had a chance with some you know Wrangolins as there is in any squat, internals and I'm committed now for the next 11 months to jump in on the front of the bike for the run into Tokyo.
So then me and Peter had to chat and we had to think okay so what's the goal and so the goal it's two parts the goal firstly is to qualify for the Olympics in Tokyo and secondly to win a gold medal in the road race in Tokyo. Now that's a scary goal even saying that out loud is a scary scary goal. So you know if it's if the jobs work down it's worked down well so it's probably gonna be my last year of putting this sort of time commitment into Silicon. I haven't done it for a few years so I was like like we We got a shield for that top step. It's a road race and any road race is a winnable road race. You have a puncher's chance, depending on how preparation goes. You can go in as favored or you can go in as a small chance with 11 months to get it right. So I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do. But when you hit any goal, when you put out any goal like that, there's a number of elements to go to. It's so I know exactly the date. The road race is on in the Paralympics. I know exactly what we want. on the top step on the podium. So the difference between a goal and a good idea is you know a good idea I'm gonna jump on the tandem and yeah we'll shoot for a good performance in Tokyo. That's a good idea, a good idea is like I'd like a house, I'd like an apartment in the city center. That's a good idea. A goal is I want 2000 square foot penthouse in Temple Bar with views across the Liffy boy the tortiot of April 2020 that's a goal I want to lose weight that's a plan a goal I want to lose 10 pounds boy the 20th of April at noon 2020 you know these the difference between goals and ideas It's the vagueness of them. When we make it detailed, we make it a goal and it takes on a different form. So that's the first part of what I would encourage you guys to do is to get a goal and to write it down and to write it down in detail. I'm not just talking cycling here. I'm talking all areas of your life. Like don't just have your goal as I want to get a promotion and work. I have a goal as I want to increase my sales in my sales position by 30% next quarter. And I will do this by developing six new client relationships, starting social media marketing, whatever it is. But that's a detailed goal. So what I encourage everyone to do is even to pause this podcast now, get a blank piece of paper or a little book. If you have a gold book, that's a cool idea because what I'm going to ask you to do is to revisit this gold book every single morning and every single evening. So when you're going to bed at night, I want you to pull out your gold book and have a quick little flick through it. Read and vividly imagine what it would be like to achieve that goal. The same when you wake up in the morning vividly imagining what it would be like to achieve that goal. Start adding to it. What house do you want? What partner do you want to meet? performances you want in cycle and what you want from your health, what body weight you want. Start building out this gold book, the ideal version of yourself. Revisited every morning, revisited every night. Something really powerful happens when we revisit it in the morning and the night. We have a system called our reticular activation system and our reticular activation system helps us notice things that are important to us. So an example of this is did you ever get a new car and say you bought the new Tesla and you buy the new Tesla and as soon as you get the new Tesla you notice how many people have Tesla's. The Tesla's have always been there, people have always been driving them but now you just notice them and it's because you've switched on that particular activation system and nailed her in your consciousness, now they're noticeable by you. So if you switch on your particular activation system for your goals, you'll start finding ways to achieve those goals, ways that you didn't even know existed before. You'll start seeing little paths. You know, I'm not really into the universe will conspire. But I don't know what mechanism brings us this, but it's absolutely true. it will start to happen for you, where your attention goals, your energy will flow, and you'll start find creative ways to overcome problems that are standing between you and reaching those goals. So step one, create your goals, book, step two, every morning, every evening, vividly imagine them, and step three, it's automatic. That reticular activation system is gonna kick straight in. So that's a pretty powerful concept, the idea of a gold book.
I know some of you won't take action on that and you'll just, you know, think about a goal and you'll be a lot less likely to achieve it than those who just commit, take the plunge and do as I said there and grab that gold book. But what's going to happen is, and exactly what happened to me when you set a goal. So I set the goal and the more you'll be embarrassed that you should almost be embarrassed to say it because if you're not almost embarrassed to say it, it's not a big enough goal. And it's something like when I say, yeah, I want to win a gold medal in the Paralympic Road race in Tokyo, that is almost borderline embarrassing to say. And that's how I know it's a good enough goal. But Jim Rowan is a guy who I've a lot of time for. He's, I don't know if you'd say he's a philosopher, but he's, He's in the Tony Robbins vein, but he's an old-school. He's an OG. He's a good quote that I like. He said, you want the set of goal that's big enough, then the processing of achieving it. You become something more to be coming. So I think that's powerful. It's never a work in compliance year in year out what the tragedy is. when somebody sets a goal and misses it. Like if you had a goal to win nationals and you end up getting a podium or we've a goal to go and win the gold in the road race and we ended up getting a second. You know, setting the goal and missing it isn't the big tragedy but setting the goal and hitting it and still not being happy. That's the tragedy because you just didn't set that goal big enough in the first place. So let's have a collective exhale and just consider that for a second And as we do, I'm just going to let you know about, so I've been mucking around these 30-day challenges. We had the 30-day challenge where I was off sugar. The latest 30-day challenge is off caffeine. Sorry, it's off coffee. It's not off caffeine because I'm still drinking counter-coke and stuff post-shining. But it's off coffee. The reason is 95% to 99% of all my caffeine intake comes from coffee. coffee. Caffeine is a powerful performance answer one but when you use it all the time you nullify the effects of that performance answer. Two it's down in the shit out of my teeth. So I want to see up number three I want to see if I can actually quit it and if I was addicted to it I don't like the idea of being addicted to anything so I wanted to see how hard it was to give up. And on what I'm like 10 days in I can honestly report it wasn't hard to give up at all. I've noticed absolutely no change for me. Energy levels unaffected. It was just a habit. I've just replaced it with green tea, calamity, regular tea, whatever. It's no problem. So if you're taking your dicks as a coffee, maybe, or maybe you've different... Obviously, all of us have different chemical compositions and different substance, different dictific tendencies for each of us, but for me, it wasn't anything. But I've also drawn in another 30 day challenging conjunction with this just to get me started with training for this for Tokyo. I'm doing a daily accountability session on Facebook Live. So I'm talking every day about what my training was for the day, how it went, what I've been up to. And yeah, I'm enjoying that 10 minutes I'm committing to daily. Sometimes it's going to be pure nonsense. There's, you know, errors and errors of research goes into the podcasts. absolutely no research goes into this Facebook live. It's as Joyce said a stream of consciousness. So tune in if you're looking for a daily insight what I'm up to. Okay, so the second thing I want to chat about on goal setting is when you set a goal like gold in the Paralympic World Race, there's three things are going to happen. You're going to considerations, fears and roadblocks are going to immediately spring to mind. These are very natural. If you don't these are like stop signs. But if you don't see these as a natural part of the process and an expected part of the process, you're gonna interpret them as a sign that you should give up. They're not a sign you should give up. They're a very natural part of any stretch goal-setting process. So let's run through what a consideration is. So for me, consideration for Tokyo. How am I gonna find the time the train. I'm already super busy with A1. We're on this big huge pivot at the moment where ultimately I'm not going to talk too much about the pivot but it's going to happen in the next month or so. The podcast I suppose is the first part of that. Traditionally, we've been a coaching company and trying to get going.
It's May 4th, A3. I see there being more value in it. I quite am back doing this full time. People always ask me, you're a lawyer. What are you doing doing this this, coaching, full time, it's, you know, you went the last skill for seven years. It's impact. It's the impact that has on people. And I work with clients and I see them, you know, losing huge amounts of weight, achieving goals outside of cycling, like, you know, losing weight, which gives them motivation to meet somebody new, which gives them the confidence to get a promotion in work, which it's the butterfly effect of it. And the butterfly effect, that was huge. And it's what motivates me to go on. You know why we're trying to find new innovative ways to market it so we can get that message into the hands of people who need it because I know our message given to the right person at the right time can change their life. So that's why I'm so passionate about pushing a one. But so one of the natural considerations then I have is how do I find time to train around that because I don't want to sacrifice a one. I can't sacrifice a one. So now I've got to be creative. Like do I need to sacrifice sleep? So I need to sleep so important to training, recovery, but also as we talked about longevity. But so do I need to just cut out unproductive parts of my evening where maybe I don't chill out and read or watch Netflix for a half an hour and even like just a bit of engineering I have to do to figure it out. It's not a zero-sum game, it can be all done but it needs to be figured out and other considerations like how do we fund this? Like it's expensive trying to get to Tokyo. We got to qualify, we got to go racing World Cups in November in Manchester, training camps in New York, December, we're off to Toronto for the Worlds in January, a bunch of World Cups around Europe. How are we going to fund all this in other consideration? Another consideration might be like, what if I crash? I can't afford to be out of doing what I do, like work training from a mental health. What if I crash and I get injured? I've buddies who have been badly injured. These are all natural considerations they're going to spring to mind. But as I said, they're a natural part of this goal setting process. If we know they're a natural part of it, when they come up, we'll find solutions rather than using them as excuses to quit. Another part of it's fear. So fear is going to be another thing that's going to come up straight away. Like so fears around this would be like, what if we don't qualify? You know, like I'm actually telling all you guys, I'm qualifying. Like my parents are talking about maybe they'll come out to Tokyo next summer. We haven't even qualified. Qualification is hard. It's super hard. don't qualify, will I look like a, will I look like a Phil? Will people think less of me? What if I can't, like I haven't tried, here's another one. So I haven't tried and properly structured. I'm talking to you guys about trying all the time, but I haven't had a structured training plan since 2014. Like what if I can't get back to the level? Like the level for the tandem, for the pilots on the front, it's, it's continental level. It's like toward here pro say. So I need to get back to my 2012, 2012, 2014 level. That's difficult. Like, what if I can't do that? That's another fear. And then like another one might be, like me and Peter are great friends at the moment. Our girlfriends hang out, we hang out, you know, what if over the course of this, which is more into a professional relationship, what if we're not buddies anymore? What if it gets in between us? These are all fears. But again, we need to see these fears as natural. natural consequence of setting a stretch goal. The last one is Roblox. So Roblox are just their real world circumstances that we just you need to deal with. There's stuff that's just gonna throw up like a Roblox might be one of scratches and breaks of collarbone. How do we get around that? And actually an obvious Roblox here in Ireland is we used to go to Toronto for the World Championships in January to race on the track. We don't have a track here in Ireland, they've been talking about it for God knows how long and it still hasn't happened. So yeah, there are some very natural roadblocks we're going to encounter along the way. But as I say, if we're aware that when we set that stretch goal that we're going to have considerations, we're going to have fears and we're going to have roadblocks. And that they're a natural consequence of setting a goal.
We're armed with a tool that a lot of people aren't armed with because when most people see one of these things, they see a reason to quit. They see a reason to say a face. If qualifications not gone brilliant, because, I don't know, maybe just be some budgetary concerns and we can't get out to races. That's a prepackaged ready-made excuse that we can go, well look, we tried to qualify, but it actually didn't happen because, well, we couldn't raise money to travel. So yeah, unfortunately we can't go to Tokyo. Like we can head these off at the outset and we can go, no, we're gonna encounter considerations. We're gonna encounter fears and we're gonna encounter roadblocks. These are natural. We need to figure out how to navigate and plot a path around this. We got a lot in there. We got a lot in in our little small 25-30-minute podcast this evening. So to recap, because I want this podcast to be actionable and not just, you know, something that you're going to listen to and go, oh, that's interesting because there's so much out there. There's so many podcasters out there that are out there to mum. There's so much content on YouTube that lack of information isn't your problem at the moment. It's taken action on that information. So I'm at very select points, you know, you've never heard me say boy CBD oil, you've never heard me say, you know, get these recovery boots, get these blue light blocking glasses, like I've given you information about them and then let you choose. But on the goal setting one, you should take action on this. It's an actionable step. I'm going to give you a couple of actionable steps. Actionable step actually have probably giving me two actionable steps today. Goal setting and the strength training course. But the goal setting on to recap it. We need to figure out what those goals are. Difference between a goal and an idea, it's the detail. Paint it in a lot of detail. Write it down in your goals book, review it morning and review it night. That's going to turn on your reticular activation system and then be aware that we're going to have considerations, we're going to have fears and we're going to have roadblocks. You know, join all around those brainstorming them if you need to be. Try and head them off, but know that they are a natural part of that stretch goal setting and that once you realize that you'll figure out Little solutions to get around them Okay guys that has been this podcast before we wrap up. I want to give a brief shout out to work to our surviving show sponsor our soul show sponsors Sorry is click funnels click funnels is an amazing product which I am passionate about I'm passionate advocate about it We've had a bunch of people approach, no spells, sponsorships for the podcast. And I'm the ones who I do bring on are companies that I am passionate about and I'm really love. And this is a company I use. It's a company I use for our email autoresponder. I've gone through, you know, A weber, Mail, Chimp. All these companies, usability is terrible on them all. Compared to ClickFunnels, the user interface, the user journey, it's amazing. I'm not a techie person, so it's for me, it's just so easy to use. runs your marketing campaigns. It's brilliant. There's a 30 day, sorry, there's a 14 day trial for ClickFunnels to all our show listeners. I'm going to pop a link down below for that. I'd say to you, just check out the 14 day trial. They have amazing training in there for free as part of the 14 day trial. Jump on one of those amazing trainings. Embrace yourself in it because it'll take you from knowing absolutely nothing to being an absolute God in your small business and just blown it out of the water. Go out to your actionable steps today, build out that goal book and the link for the strength and conditioning plan is down below. Go get yourself a copy of that and then start smashing it out in the gym. Thanks for listening and I will be back to you next week. Enjoy the roads and be safe out there. Talk to you soon.
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