How to coach beyond data

Bevan McKinnon has coached triathletes for over 20 years, hosts one of the sport's longest-running podcasts, and won his age group at Kona in 2016.

We talk with him about what changed in his coaching when he stopped starting with the workout. Bevan makes the case that the objective data most of us build our training around tells us very little on its own. A flat CTL can hide an athlete who is genuinely getting fitter. A completed session guarantees nothing. "The brain is auditing the body at every single second in time," he says, and his argument is that we have largely stopped listening to it.

He shares how he opens the conversations most coaches avoid, why he asked a physiologist to write an Ironman race plan with no numbers in it, what heat preparation actually costs an athlete, and his one-word answer to the question of what age groupers can learn from professionals.

We also get into fuelling, recovery capacity, and why he now describes himself as a health coach rather than a triathlon coach.

Bevan is the founder of Fitter Coaching and hosts Fitter Radio: https://www.fitter.co.nz/bevanmckinnon

Follow him on Instagram: @fitter.co.nz