Welcome to Healthy Each Thanks for tuning into the daily podcasts from Body and Soul. I am Felicity Hally. Do you ever get into that mental cycle where you're so tired you know you should exercise, but you just can't pull yourself out the door. But then you wonder if you do exercise, will it reinvigorate you? Or perhaps you're so tired you should just do nothing. Oh it's called well, I call it the exercise versus rest mental cycle. To shed some light on it, I am joined today by
Ellie Salthouse. She's a professional triathlete and whoop athlete, and she shares her mental mantras that the ones that help pull her through and also well she gives us the download on her rigorous training regime. Make sure you're listening to Extra Healthy USh as well where we go and be deeper into whether those one percenters, the things like ice bars and saunas actually help performance. You can catch that one wherever we get your podcasts Elly, thanks for joining us on Healthy How are you?
Yeah? Thanks for having me I'm really well. Thanks.
Yeah, I've caught you in between tours. You're in Brisbane, you're about to head to New Zealand. Where are you up to in the whole racing.
Yes, I've been back in my hometown of Brisbane for about four weeks now and I've just started my World Championship training block and I'm actually off to Melbourne tomorrow for a race and yeah, then i'll be off to New Zealand in three weeks for the World Championships in Taupo.
Now, what does your training look like in a week? I mean, I know will vary whether you're in season or out of season and what you're doing, But what's a typical training load for you?
Yeah, it definitely varies depending on what type of block I'm in at the moment, but right now, being a heavy block leading into the World Championships, I'm probably doing between twenty five to thirty hours of training at the moment. So that includes about twenty k a week of swimming, between three hundred and four hundred and fifty k of riding depending on elevation.
Well, yeah, and.
Then I'm running somewhere between forty and sixty k a week as well, So it really depends whether we're in kind of a speed week a base week. It varies, but that's probably what I'm doing at the moment, and then I have two strength sessions in there as well, and then all the recovery on top of that.
So that's why it's a full time job. People don't always understand that it takes a lot of time.
So you do that training load when you're in season and then you race, or do you taper off when you come up to a big race like the World Championships.
Yeah, I only do about seven days of time, so my table will typically start exactly a week out from a big race, and we have it pretty refined now, so my load will basically half by the time I reached that race.
But it's really.
Fine balance between being too fresh and being not fresh enough. So we really refined my taper over the last couple of years because I was finding that I was coming a little bit too fresh into some races and that can make you feel a little bit sluggish on race day. So we've added a little extra load to my race week, which is now had me coming in not quite as fresh, but I am actually feeling better. So yeah, it's a very fine balance, and I spent a lot of time refining it.
What when you I mean, it's a heavy training load in a week, and how do you kind of well find the balance between when to kind of load up and when to knock it back a bit and when you around how your body and not just your body, but your mind is feeling.
Yeah, I mean, sometimes the mind and the body aren't
always on the same page. And that's where I actually utilize the Whoop device a lot, which is allowed me to wake up and obviously see my recovery score every morning, and so sometimes you know, I wake up feeling not so great and then look at the recovery score and it probably reflects that, in which case there's probably a need for me to reduce my training that day, maybe take a little extra time to rest or even back off some of my intervals and just give myself the
time I need and my body the time it needs to recover. But sometimes it works the other way. You wake up and you're like, oh, I'm not feeling it today, and you look at your recovery score and you're actually in the green, and so you know, there's sometimes this imbalance between the body and mind. But having that objective data allows you to really be able to see what your body is actually feeling on the inside and whether you need to push today or recover it. Recover today.
But then on the other hand, there are days that I need to push when I'm not feeling great because I guess sometimes I wake up on race day having only maybe two or four hours sleep.
And I need to push.
I can't, I can't move race. So sometimes there is value in doing that as well. But every single day you definitely cannot do that, otherwise you'll end up in a hole. So you definitely need to listen to your body. And I've I've found for me having the objective data allows me to listen to it more than how my body is actually feeling.
I mean, listen to your body. It's so true. It's such a cliche. How do you actually listen to your body? What do you what happened?
Like?
What do you tune into?
Yeah, I guess I'm pretty in tune with my body after having having done this for so long. But I think your body gives you sign and you really need to listen to them. I mean, for me, when I'm in a big, big training block and I'm not feeling so great, first sign will probably be a sore.
Throat or just really really tired. When you wake up, the motivation starts to really falter. And I think those things for me are all abnormal, and those things are things that I know when I need to back off a bit to prevent myself from really getting into a hole. I think I love training, and when I wake up and I just don't want to get out the door, that's when I know for me that that's a sign that I need to be careful.
I'm usually right on the edge when that happens. So yeah, I think just really listening to the small signs. Your body is pretty intelligent and it will start giving you signs, so you just allow yourself to listen to them. And I think that's the most important thing.
How do you talk yourself through a training session when your body saying yes, but your mind saying hell no.
Yeah. I mean this happens a lot because when you are in pain, for instance, or in a position that you want to get out of, your body will also put in little blocks, mental blocks to tell you to run away from whatever obstacle you might be facing.
So I think having some mantras.
Or having some little things that you can say to yourself to get yourself out of a little rut. So for me, for instance, when I'm training and racing, I have three little things that I say to myself that I work harder than everybody, I'm the best here and no one can beat me. And those three things I just have on repeat in my mind. And not only are they very positive things that give me a little boost in morale, but they also allow me to get rid of any negative thoughts and just solely focus on
those things. I think the more energy and focus you give to a negative thought or an unhelpful thought, the more it snowballs into something bigger.
So if you can redirect.
Your focus onto something that's going to be helpful, not only will you forget the unhelpful thought, but then the positive thoughts start to snowball as well, so it works both ways. So yeah, I think that's really important to have things either written down or that you can easily remember to grab onto really quickly when something negative or unhelpful starts to come in.
Yeah, such little things, but they can be so powerful. What talk to us about a race that you're most proud of, perhaps even one that you did kind of well, you came off for our sleep, or you struggled to get through, or some a race that you powered through and that you proudly got to the end.
Well, I think this year I've had one of those races that I'm super proud of because the Pro Series race is a new series for us, and they're kind of higher level races than what we're used to doing.
And I had one.
Of those in Colorado this year in June, and I got off the bike not feeling great, right, So I had had not a great swim, not a great ride, and I came off the bike eight nine minutes down from the leader sitting in second, and nine minutes over a half marathon at our level is a very big gap.
So I was very proud of the way that I was able to mentally hold together and overcome the fact that I wasn't feeling that great physically, and I managed to run down the nine minute gap and close down thank you, Yeah, closed down the gap with one kilometer to go. So I think that's probably something I'm really proud of because more than something I physically overcame, it was more a mental thing, and I think that's often harder, especially at this level. So I think that's a race
I'm really proud of. It's not always the fact that I won, but it's something that you know, I've worked really hard on the last couple of years and when I can push through something like that, that's what makes me really proud.
Yeah, that's impressive, Well well done and all the best when well in Melbourne and New Zealand.
Thank you.
Always impressive professional athletes. Those trifle honors. How good are those little mantras? She hasn't adopt a few of those. Actually I did run with a mantra when I did the half marathon. I am strong, I can do this and my go tos anyway, what are yours? You can tell us? You can DM me across social media at Felicity Halle and also if you have any ideas for upcoming episodes around fitness let me know anything else head to Body and soul dot com. Do do you for us?
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