Before triathlon, there was nothing in my sporting history that suggested I would ever compete at a professional level. That is not false modesty. It is just the truth.
Growing up, I always played in the second team. Football, other sports, it did not matter. I was never the standout athlete. I spent seven years doing Olympic weightlifting and eventually quit because I was unhappy with my progression. I was not making any high-school athletics teams. I liked sport, but I was never particularly good at it.
When I started triathlon, the pattern continued. For the first 12 to 18 months, I was solidly average. Nothing about my early results suggested anything remarkable was coming. But within seven months of my first race, I had earned my professional licence.
Here is what changed.
Everything I Tried That Did Not Work
Like most self-coached triathletes, I consumed everything I could find online. I tried every popular training approach and searched for the magic workout that would unlock my potential.
- Polarised training (80/20): The concept of doing 80% easy and 20% hard sounds simple, but without a precise understanding of where those boundaries actually sit for your physiology, it is easy to get wrong. Most athletes end up spending too much time in a moderate intensity zone that does not develop either end of the spectrum effectively.
- Chasing magic workouts: I spent hours searching for the perfect interval session, the secret combination of work and rest that top athletes supposedly used. The reality is there are no magic workouts. Only the right workout at the right time for the right athlete.
- Hammering threshold and VO2 max work: This is where most ambitious triathletes go wrong. High-end work is painful, it feels productive, and it gives you impressive numbers on a screen. But doing too much of it leads to one place: injury and stagnation. That is exactly what happened to me.
After cycling through all of these approaches, I was barely any faster and picking up injuries. It was frustrating, demoralising, and a pattern that a lot of triathletes will recognise.
The Simple Changes That Made the Difference
The breakthrough came not from doing more or finding some hidden training secret. It came from simplifying my approach and focusing on a handful of principles that actually drive performance in endurance sport.
I started training to heart rate. This was the single biggest shift. Power and pace are useful metrics, but heart rate tells you what your body is actually doing internally. It keeps you honest on easy days and ensures you are hitting the right intensity on hard days. Without it, I was constantly training in a grey zone that produced fatigue without meaningful adaptation.
I started training just below threshold rather than above it. This is counterintuitive for most athletes. The instinct is to push harder, to go above threshold because it feels like that is where the real work happens. But training just below threshold, in the upper aerobic zone around LT1, builds the metabolic machinery that underpins everything else. It improves fat oxidation, increases mitochondrial density, and raises the ceiling on sustainable race-day power.
I used VO2 max and high threshold work sparingly. These sessions have their place, but they are a finishing tool, not a foundation. When I stopped treating them as the centrepiece of my training and used them strategically, my progress accelerated dramatically.
I learnt to correctly execute sessions. This is often overlooked. Knowing what the session is supposed to achieve and executing it precisely, rather than turning every ride into an impromptu race, is a skill. It took discipline to hold back when I felt good and push through when I did not.
I stopped chasing volume. More is not better. Better is better. I reduced my training hours and focused on quality and specificity. The result was faster adaptation, better recovery, and significantly fewer injuries.
Why This Matters for You
This is not a story about natural talent finally emerging. It is a story about an average athlete finding the right approach. The same principles that took me from middle-of-the-pack to professional are the principles that underpin every training plan I write for the athletes I coach.
My number one goal is not just to give you a program. It is to teach you how the program is written and how you should execute it.
Understanding the why behind your training transforms how you approach every session. When you know that today's sub-threshold ride is building your aerobic engine for race day, you do not feel the need to smash it. When you know that Thursday's VO2 max session is the one day this week to push hard, you bring everything you have.
The path from average to competitive is not about talent or finding a secret method. It is about applying the right training principles consistently and with precision. That is a learnable skill, and it is exactly what I teach inside my coaching program.