The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

Heat training is one of those topics that is a) poorly understood and b) deployed by coaches and athletes everywhere, which is…not a great combination. In this episode of The Infirmary, Chris walks you through the adaptations we are after when we heat train, the possible mechanism by which those adaptations occur, and then practical suggestions to apply these principles to your own training. Most...

This interview with sports psychologist Brian Baxter reveals how mental training techniques can transform athletic performance at every level. Baxter, who has worked with athletes for over 20 years, breaks down the essential mental skills that separate good athletes from great ones, showing why anxiety management and confidence on the playing field or race course are just as crucial as physical pr...

The triathlon world erupted when Ironman announced their new age-graded qualification system for Kona. But after analyzing the actual numbers from recent races, the changes aren't nearly as earth-shattering as the internet forums suggest. Chris breaks down the math, examines real race data, and explains what aspiring qualifiers actually need to know. If you want to read this podcast in article for...

This comprehensive swim technique presentation reveals what really holds swimmers back and why swimming improvement is so different from cycling or running progress. As a Swim Smooth certified coach, Chris breaks down the five major swimming technique faults that prevent triathletes from swimming faster, demonstrating why swimming drills for adults require a completely different approach than othe...

In this candid conversation with former Campfire athlete Annie Solonika, we dive into what really matters in the coach-athlete relationship from both perspectives. Annie shares how a strong coach-athlete relationship requires clear communication and expectations from the start. As both a successful triathlete and business owner of Full Circle Stretching, Annie offers unique insights on balancing t...

Chris sits down with professional triathlete Ben Hoffman, who has won eight Ironmans, seven 70.3 races, and landed on the podium an unreal 28 times, one of which was the 2014 Ironman World Championships in Kona, where he finished 2nd. The biggest takeaway from this episode, I believe, is a concept that Ben returns to several times: you simply let your body express what it has been trained to do on...

I have heard it a million times: a triathlete tells me “I swam and swam but it never changed my time, so I just stopped swimming.” I really feel for this athlete, since they are clearly frustrated, but there’s a better way to train for triathlon. In this show we walk through: What goes into effective endurance training in the first place How neglecting your swim hurts your overall triathlon perfor...

One of the hardest skills for any endurance athlete to master is pacing, and when you’re running a hilly event or participating in a bike race with a lot of elevation changes, pacing gets more difficult. In this episode, Chris walks through the pitfalls athletes often fall into, the biggest of which is the “fly and die” approach where the athlete hopes to “bank” time by running harder or faster ea...

“Progressive Overload” is a topic that gets tossed around a lot in endurance circles, but, just as with other topics like “FTP” or “core strength” or “recovery,” progressive overload is more nuanced and complex than it first appears. At it’s most basic application, progressive overload is “the steady and systematic increase in training load in order to continually force an athlete’s body to adapt...

Chris sits down with Brad Culp, author of the 2024 Book The Norwegian Method: The Culture, Science, and Humans Behind the Groundbreaking Approach to Elite Endurance Performance . After some book-nerd talk about the structure Brad and his publisher chose for the book (the first few chapters provide a brisk but necessary and engrossing history of Scandinavia’s Viking culture and boatbuilding technol...

Remember what it was like when you had just set out upon your endurance journey? At first everything felt incredibly hard, but after a short amount of consistent training things started to feel easier. Those, our friends, were your “Noob Gains,” or the improvements that happened in the first months (or years) of this new habit. Today on The Infirmary we explain how and why Noob Gains happen and of...

Chris sits down with Phil Batterson, Ph. D., host of the CriticalO2 podcast and physiologist for Moxy Monitor. They have a discussion about the oft-discussed “Art and Science of Coaching,” focusing on what coaches can learn from physiologists and vice versa. It’s a fascinating conversation that ranges from debunking long-observed tenets of the coaching world (FTP = 95% of 20-minute power, for one,...

In this episode we talk about the importance of annual training plans for athletes and coaches, focusing on the need for clear goals and structured training blocks. We break down the types of goals you should use in your annual plans—outcome, performance, and process—and explain how to effectively build and manage a plan based on those goals. We give you three different examples of annual plans an...

Chris sits down with Joe Howdyshell of Summit Endurance Academy , a mountain sport coaching company based in Breckenridge, CO. What is a “mountain sport coaching company?” Joe (also known as @badasscoach on Instagram, although these days you can find him over on Substack talking to athletes) primarily coaches sports such as Ski Mountaineering (SkiMo for short), mountain biking, and mountain runnin...

What is “mastery,” and how can we develop mastery in endurance sports? What even IS mastery? What does it look, sound, or feel like? In this episode, Chris walks through what mastery is and how you can begin to build mastery in your own sports. If you’d like to learn this process through reading, check out our series on Mastery over on Medium. The link here is a friend link, so you’ll be able to r...

You can find Alex at Alex Larson Nutrition and on Instagram and Facebook @alexlarsonnutrition, playing with three kids, or watching all the Star Wars intellectual property she can get her eyes on.

Linsey Corbin has been one of the most consistent professional triathletes of all time, qualifying for Kona 14 times, winning eight Ironman events, and managing to show up year after year even while dealing with Injury. Linsey walks us through her process for reviewing the past season and looking forward to the next year, and she shows us how she bridged that sport-specific process to her life out...

Now that Ironman World Championship season is over for the year, after the women raced in Nice last month and the men just raced in Kona, we thought it would be helpful for those of you excited about those races to hear what it takes to qualify for them. Too many athletes believe that qualifying for races such as Kona, Nice, and Roth (all long distance triathlon) requires speed. It doesn’t. Qualif...

Endurance Spin signups: https://www.campfireendurance.com/endurance-spin-202324

It’s a tale as old as…well, it’s probably around 40 years old, but for a sport as young as ours, that’s fairly venerable: a hard-working triathlete puts in their time over the course of a season, qualifies for Kona (or Nice, which is a really great site for a world championships, go ahead and @ us), and then, through a combination of poorly timed heat acclimation, arduous travel, wide-eyed enthusi...

Fatigue resistance is an idea that has been around for a long time, but it’s having a bit of a moment recently. A few companies are trying to develop fancy metrics like “durability” to measure (or, um, monetize) this concept. We don’t need to monetize it. Fatigue resistance is a simple concept, one that it is easy to track and train. This episode defines: What fatigue resistance is and isn’t Why i...

Chris sits down with elite amateur and Campfire Coach Emily Arcuri to talk about training and racing all the way through 32 weeks of pregnancy. Emily offers three different periods of her journey and thoughts about what you should expect if you decide to follow her example.

Chris chats with Campfire coach and professional triathlete Adam Goulet about why strength training is crucial for endurance athletes and how they can incorporate it safely and effectively in their training.

Chris talks through just WHY it takes so long to prepare correctly for an Iron-distance triathlon. We also talk about the great Gordo Byrn and his influence on proper conditioning within endurance sports. Gordo's substack, Endurance Essentials Gordo on Rich Roll's podcast