Ep 04. Performance, inspiration and coaching tips with John Newsom

Transcript

CAM HARPER

Welcome to Nutrition Mission with ANZCO Foods. My name is Cam Harper and I'm your host for season one of Beef, Lamb and Ironman where we will be bringing you nutrition and good health from New Zealand's finest beef and lamb. Today we will be talking to coach and Ironman competitor John Newsom about what it takes to become an elite athlete and stay tuned for our sprint to the finish segment at the end of the podcast where we do a series of quickfire questions. John Newsom was named the 2011 New Zealand Triathlon Coach of the Year. He's got a graduate diploma in human nutrition, certificate in health sciences. He's also the overall Ironman 70.3 Hawaii champion 2017. He's run a marathon in under two hours 40. And look, if I went through the achievements, I would be here all day, but a heck of a nice fella and a very well-rounded athlete and individual as well. So John, how are you?

JOHN NEWSOM

I am pretty good, thank you very much Cameron. Fantastic.

CAM HARPER

Now, you know, we've known each other a long time John. I've gotten my notes here. You're a coach, we know that. You're an elite athlete as well. I mean, you wouldn't consider yourself elite at the elite level of these guys racing professionally, but you still go very, very well on the athletic endeavours that you do.

JOHN NEWSOM

Yeah, I certainly would not classify myself as elite any longer, especially as I've taken a bit of a beating from my 15-year-old son in the last couple of times we've raced. So, still like to compete and go as fast as I possibly can. And that's, you know, hopefully sort of towards the front of the age group racing. But yeah, from my day, my heyday was probably more in the late 90s and the sport has certainly moved on significantly since then, which is fantastic. But yeah, still like to compete and like to finish as fast as I can.

CAM HARPER

Onto coaching, John. You know, former New Zealand triathlon coach of the year. Tell us about your coaching background and that transition from athlete to coach.

JOHN NEWSOM

I kind of just sort of always had this affiliation with writing my own programs and stuff. You know, I was coached by John Hellermans for a long, long time, but I always had this sort of passion to dabble away and do things on my own and try to figure it out myself. And I always kind of felt that I wasn't necessarily the most talented athlete and kind of had to try to outthink some of the others a little bit, and that worked well for quite a while. So yeah, the transition was, again, you know, being in the right place at the right time. My time in Hong Kong when I was based over there, I was essentially a training partner for their guy who was going for the Olympics and I was involved in their sort of high performance program so again that was another element to my learning. Met a guy over there called Gordie Byrne who ended up finishing second at Ironman New Zealand and ended up living with him for a while and he was a great example for me of someone who was just an age group athlete and he moved absolutely everything in his life to see if he could become a professional athlete and ended up finishing second at Ironman New Zealand and also got second at Ironman Canada. But just to see his work ethic again add another string to my bow in terms of developing how you look at athletes. So it's kind of just a bit of a evolutionary process. And about 2004 just sort of started dabbling in it and a little bit more and just one thing led to another. I just ended up coaching more and more athletes and then was able to make it a profession.

CAM HARPER

So for yourself, John, I mean, there's plenty of elite athletes who are quite open to say, I could never be a coach. I just can't do it. I'm not wired that way. Obviously you are, very successful career as an athlete, very successful and ongoing career as a coach. Why do you think it is that you've had that successful transition?

JOHN NEWSOM

I’m very process driven. And so whether you're an age group athlete, whether you're an elite athlete, you kind of look at the end goal and you start working your way backwards. So whether it be you want to finish your first Ironman, or whether it be you want to be an Olympic athlete, or whether you want to be a world class athlete and really trying to win Olympic medals or world titles, you've got to look down the road, try to figure out how long that might take, and then just slowly start working your way back and trying to figure out the barriers to reaching those goals. For an elite athlete, they might be a fantastic swim biker, and then they've got to figure out the way to develop their run. If you're an age group athlete, some of them might know how to ride a bike, they might know how to run, but they've got no swimming ability, or some athletes might be coming from a position where they're overweight, and for them to finish an Ironman, they need to look at their body composition and try to get that down to make that journey a little bit more comfortable. I think to answer your question, it's about being very process driven, trying to take a big picture sort of view of things and just slowly working your way back because the athletes are quite insular and often quite impulsive and if one session goes badly in a week they think everything's going to be derailed. So I guess having that long term path and you need the intermediary steps along the way and the short term steps, you know, what are we doing this week? What are we doing this season, what are we doing this year? And then just sharing that sort of pathway with the athletes so that gives them direction, gives them more purpose to their training and whether that be an Olympic athlete or whether it be an age group or they go, instead of thinking, oh, I've just got to go for a run, it's like this run is part of the puzzle, part of the process and will sort of help me along to my sort of short, medium and long-term goals. No, I love it. I mean, and that's the thing, you need to have a good process to achieve your goals. It's very rare that you can just kind of go out there, I once had someone describe it to me saying, look, you know, and this is in a work sort of situation, to say you don't turn up for a 10K race or an Ironman or whatever you're doing, and just line up at the front and go, you know what, I'm gonna win this today. And someone says, so you done any training? No, but I'm gonna win it. You watch me go and you're 50 meters down the road and you're toast. And so you do need a good strong process and people who actually believe in that process and for you to have a good connection with that athlete as well. Yeah, an analogy might be, if you're trying to build a house, you've probably got this long-term vision of what your new house wants to look like, and then you just kind of slowly work your way back. And you've got to tweak things along the way. You might have some land remediation you need to do or something like that, but you've always got to have that end goal in place. And you do have to be a little bit careful not to get too fixated about the Hamish Carter story as a fantastic one when he was wanting to be an Olympic champion and all he thought about was winning that Olympic gold medal. And then it kind of derailed himself a little bit on the Sydney Olympics. But by 2004, he'd sort of changed that process and it was still an ambition to win a medal. But he sort of changed his processes on how to get there. And I think he had a really good team around him to try to make that happen. So yeah, it's a fun old journey. Doesn't always go perfectly. You get a few little crossroads you gotta navigate along the way. But it's nice to have that sort of end process goal in place.

CAM HARPER

So something that's often forgotten in the athletic journey is nutrition. Talk to us a little about nutrition and your beliefs and what you advise your athletes on that. And also red meat. How does red meat play a role in achieving those goals?

JOHN NEWSOM

Yes, again, if we go back to the goals, you've got short, medium, long term goals and how are you going to sort of hit those markers? And so, again, I know we're sort of focusing on elite athletes, but also just for your Joe Average athlete. You want to be fueled for your particular sessions really, really well. So, for some people that might just be so you can enjoy it. You know, if you're going out on a run and you're bonking or you're capitulating, you're not going to sort of hit your next markers as you go along. If you end up sort of breaking down, you know, then you're not going to hit those end goals. And nutrition does play a really big part of that. And meat as well does because, you know, protein is a big part of an athlete's diet in terms of recovering and then so you've got your macronutrients, your fats, your proteins and your carbohydrates but then you've also got to look at the micronutrients as well and what you're going to get from red meat is you know fantastic source of iron and that's probably really understated source that you really need to be focusing on a lot. So, nutrition, whether it be for an elite athlete or whether it be for an age group athlete, it's pretty similar principles. You've got to have a plan, you've got to have your process, and it's got to be part of that journey towards your goals. So, I'm a big believer in terms of eating red meat regularly. I think probably my number one tip that some people can sometimes miss is trying to have some sort of vitamin C whenever you're having any red meat. It's going to massively help your absorption and across other food groups as well. So not avoiding vitamin C is something that I really strongly encourage. And also looking at other inhibitors that are going to reduce your ability to absorb the iron from the red meat. So having cups of coffee and things like that with meals is really going to inhibit your ability to absorb the iron from the meat that you're having.

CAM HARPER

No, it's fantastic John. So you're listening to Nutrition Mission with ANZCO Foods. My name's Cam Harper and today we're talking to Coach John Newsom. John, a couple of things I want to have a chat to you about and I think these are both fantastic, things that you've done and continue to do. First one, talk us through your epic camps. You used to do these, or you still do these wonderful camps. You've gone overseas, taken people overseas, you have a race at the end. I follow them all on socials, I need to get off my back so I can actually come and do one with you at some point. And then the way that you changed that up with border restrictions to actually end up doing your epic camps in the South Island, I mean that is fantastic. Talk us through that journey.

JOHN NEWSOM

Yeah so epic camp was set up initially by Scott Molina who's Erin Baker's husband and he was a Hawaii Ironman winner. He was one of the big four that really helped evolve triathlon as a sport professionally. In the 80s he was like probably regarded as the best short course athlete in the world for quite a few years. And him and Gordo Byrn set up an epic camp and the initial idea was it was trying to be sort of a Tour de France type camp for triathletes and getting together sort of some pro athletes and also some highly competitive age group athletes and basically going and battering the crap out of themselves for around about 10 days in different locations to really try to take their fitness to next level and see what is really possible if you surround yourself with a fantastic support crew. And so I got involved with that sort of pretty early on. I was friends with both those guys and I think it was about 2005 I went on my first one to Australia and I was coming from a short course background, went over there and there were some guys that used to come out to do Ironman New Zealand, some Swedes, Bjorn Andersson and Klaas Björling and a few others. And I turned up and I was like, what the hell is going on here? You're going out there and you're basically training all day long, smashing each other up. But I came out the other end of that going, well, I was able to do a lot more than I thought was possible. And then went on to do my second Ironman and had a fantastic race. And so from that point on, I've kind of been managing these camps. And for a long time, they were very much focused at elite age group athletes, so people that are sort of going to Hawaii Ironman. But a big part of that, again, we're talking about nutrition. The big part of today is athletes find things that they thought were never possible and that's because they've got the support crew there that are fueling the athletes all the way through with well-balanced meals and they don't have any other distractions and they realize when you don't have kids to look after you don't have work to worry about. You just shut your phone, you shut your laptop and there's nothing else to focus on other than seeing how much you can do in one day when you're adequately fueled. You've got masseuses at night to give you a rubdown and they're able to achieve some amazing things because if you go back, I mean that's brilliant.

CAM HARPER

John, I've always been a fan of the epic camps. I think you guys do a wonderful job and you really show people what they are truly able to achieve. And the smiles on faces, tired smiles, but the smiles on faces at the end of each day and the end of the camp would be incredible. If you look at the way in which backing those sort of distances up day after day after day for that camp that nutrition really is important and I look at the likes of what ANZCO Foods provides with beef and lamb and red meat, but that nutrition part of it is so important to get you through day after day.

JOHN NEWSOM

Absolutely, you know, you obviously need your carbohydrates to sort of to pump you through but you also need to be focusing on your recovery and that's where you know your protein sources are incredibly important so you know we would be offering meat every single night and usually red meat as well. So it's a big part of recovery. So we have a caterer on the camps for a good chunk of it. And yeah, there's always going to be a red meat option and that's going to enhance recovery. Hydration is obviously really, really important, but it's just sort of chugging away at it all the way through the day. And then when you finish the day, then you're sort of focusing on the recovery, which is a lot more protein-based.

CAM HARPER

Fantastic, John. Now going back to some of your athletes, I mean you look after everyone from beginners to world champions you know, so obviously different levels of training required for these guys and different levels of motivation. What about nutritional advice for these guys? Does that vary rapidly or a lot between all of them?

JOHN NEWSOM

Not really, you know the principles are pretty much the same. I guess the difference is if you're a professional or an elite athlete you've got to be a professional. Got to be doing this right, it's your job, you have to be doing it every single day and getting it right if you want to perform. Whereas I guess for the age group athlete, the philosophy and the principles are very much the same, this is what you should be having, you know, and I'm very much a believer in a meat and three veg sort of diet. Probably, I think where we get a bit carried away these days is having a little bit too much carbohydrate, but you know, meat should be in their staple, lots of fruit and vegetables, and then it depends on how much training you're doing. And I guess where it will change is just the quantities of food. You know, for an elite athlete, if they're training, you know, 20 to 30 hours a week, as opposed to a recreational athlete that might, if they're doing Ironman, they might be doing between 10 and 15 hours, then the quantities is going to be a little bit different. But the principles remain the same. You know, you want to be thinking about how you're gonna fuel yourself for that session. You know, it might be you're not having anything. It might be you're having water only. It might be having you having some sports nutrition, then you need to be thinking about your recovery and looking at your protein sources, whether it's going to be a protein shake, whether you're going to add some meat into straight after training, or whether that's going to come later on in the day. But yeah, you've really just got to think about it. But the principles pretty much stay the same. And I've coached athletes in different parts of the world and the principles, especially with regards to meat, stay pretty similar. You know, I used to go to camps in Poland and I think the difference over there, they probably don't have as much vegetable. It's more of a meat and carbohydrate diet. In Asia, then it's probably, you know, the quantity of meat they have is a little bit less, but they have a lot of vegetables. And when you go to Europe, then it's not drastically different to the Kiwi diet. So yeah, keeping it in balance is critical and just not going too bananas in any one direction. And there's lots of different nutritional pathways you can go down these days. But we tend to often go down those pathways for a little while and then kind of come back to a relatively traditional diet.

CAM HARPER

No, I couldn't agree more, John. So if you talk about that balance, and often you look at Ironman specifically, and you look at the most people are weekend warriors or they try and do what they can to fit it around work and more often than not they'll have you know they may have a family or they've got commitments you know and it's easy to get that nutrition part wrong. So what advice do you have on the right type of nutrition and I mean I look at the likes of beef and lamb through ANZCO and you know if you've got a lot young family got a busy lifestyle what's a couple of takeaways someone could do to make up be able to make a plan to eat well, to be able to fuel themselves for that training?

JOHN NEWSOM

Yeah, well look, I think the fact I've got kids now as well, so my kids are 15 and 13, and having kids has actually made it a little bit easier on the nutrition front. It really forces you to be a bit more organised. But look, I'd probably just encourage people to go and get the Nadia Lim Cookbooks, to be honest. They've got, you know, they've separated into the different stages of the year, and they've got some really well-balanced meals in there. And they really just cover off making sure you get your meat in there, they've got your vegetables, and you've got your carbohydrate. And then you just kind of fluctuate the quantities. But I just find that's our go-to pretty much every week. We'll probably pick about three recipes out of there. And yeah, I think probably the other biggie, as I said earlier on, the big take home was - look at your vitamin C source whenever you're having any of your meals and trying to incorporate that in. So I'm not saying going and drinking a massive glass of orange juice every time you have a meal, but just thinking how can I incorporate some vitamin C. Do some research on good sources. Peppers are fantastic. I think they're the highest rated vitamin C products you can get. So maybe incorporating that into some of your evening meals and that will help you when you are having red meat. You're going to maximise that intake and the iron absorption you can get from it. And that's, especially for female athletes, that's probably one big, big area that you really need to be looking at is your iron absorption and making sure you're getting enough in to go and get a blood test, check your iron stores regularly, especially if you're an athlete, and making sure you can stay on top of that.

CAM HARPER

So as we age, John, and you and I are around about the same age, you're a lot quicker than I'll ever be, but most of us seem to slow down a little. But you're still competitive, whether it be over a shorter distance through to an Ironman distance. How do you do it or is that giving away some sort of secret that you have?

JOHN NEWSOM

There's no state secrets there. I think a lot of it is mindset. Yes, there's no doubt we do slow down a little bit, but I think we sometimes tell ourselves that we are going to be slowing down more than perhaps we need to. So there's always little areas we can look to improve. You know, it might be, I personally don't find that I'm slowing down much at all on the bike. I think my swim and my runs degrading a little bit, but I think, you know, for a lot of people it's requiring a little bit more strength and conditioning work. And also it's that protein intake, really making sure you're getting enough protein into your diet and red meat's a fantastic source of that, along with obviously your dairy products. So I think for the aging athlete, and a lot of people have heard this, you kind of got to do the little things, start to do the little things right that you perhaps could have gotten away with in your younger times. So, you know, I'm not going to point fingers at some of our best ever Olympic distance athletes, but some of them in their early careers had pretty woeful diets, but they still did exceptionally well. And I know from my point of view, if you really start to let your diet slip now. It's a lot harder to shift things, especially around the belly region. So I'd say my main take-homes would be you need to be looking at some sort of strength and conditioning, being extremely good with that. You need to look at keeping your flexibility really good, and then you need to be looking at your diet. And if you can tick those three things off, then you should be able to sustain you know, pretty good level of performance and constantly be looking for little performance gains that you might be able to get.

CAM HARPER

So for you, you know, you mentioned you're racing against your son and I think that's fantastic, you know, bringing the young fella through, trying to keep him at bay as he's heading off into the distance at times. But what’s the next big event? Like you'd class as a large training event, what is that for you?

JOHN NEWSOM

I like challenges. So, you know, it doesn't always have to be an actual event for me. So, you know, doing Everesting was my Christmas event. And I'd done an epic camp back in October as well. And I saw that as another event. So actually today is day one for me of starting a build up. I'm doing an iron distance race in Germany in June. So I've just sort of slowly start ramping things up. And it takes a long time for me to get to a level of fitness that I'm comfortable at in terms of going and doing a really big peak race. So I'm going to have around about a 20-week build up, I think it is, towards that race. But yeah, so it's gonna be in the middle of June and have a few little intermediate steps along the way, but nothing too major on the New Zealand calendar. I organise most of the races down in Christchurch, which limits my ability to do things. So yeah, next thing for me is gonna be, yeah, late June, going and seeing how fast I can do for an Ironman distance race in Germany.

CAM HARPER

You'll smash it, no doubt. And I look forward to the journey on your socials as well, John. Now, a couple of quick things to finish here. What's your go-to beef and lamb recipe? Are you a barbecue guy? Are you a slow cooker guy? What's your favourite recipe for beef and lamb? Or should I be asking your lovely wife?

JOHN NEWSOM

No, it's very much shared cooking at our place. But I'll go back to those Nadia Lim recipes. She's just got so many good ones in there. My wife does a good lamb koftas with a nice bit of rice on the side and some good veggies. So if you check out some of the Nadia Lim ones, I think it's called a lamb kofta. It's absolutely brilliant.

CAM HARPER

Fantastic. And I mean, you've had, you know, a long, a long time doing all of this. And like you said earlier, I think that there was a real swing back in the day to all sorts of scientific nutrition. And the science really seems to be coming back and I'll preface this by saying I'm no scientist, but coming back to just good whole foods, you know, that’s beef and lamb, and good vegetables. A good intake, that takes you so far doesn't it?

JOHN NEWSOM

Absolutely, you know, so you just gotta keep a nice balance there, you know. Everyone will have heard of low carb, high fat, they will have heard of all sorts of different methodologies and I've tried a lot of them and it is that sort of mix between finding out what's right for you but you've really got to look at the macronutrient side of it and also the micronutrients and that's where, you know since God knows when, meat has always been a fantastic source for your protein and iron and that's what I'll keep coming back to. That's really, really important for endurance athletes and pretty much everybody, but for endurance athletes especially, is making sure you're looking after those two areas of your diet.

CAM HARPER

Fantastic. Now finally John, we always end this with a sprint finish at the podcast, so I'm going to ask you a few questions. There's five of them and you just need to answer them with the first thing that comes to your mind. Is that alright?

JOHN NEWSOM

Go for it. Okay.

CAM HARPER

Are you a morning person or are you a night person?

JOHN NEWSOM

Morning, alarm goes off 5am pretty much every morning.

CAM HARPER

I love it. Favourite hobby that's not related to sport?

JOHN NEWSOM

It's not really, tramping I've recently got into is a really good family activity so I probably wouldn't classify that as a sport but yeah, tramping and discovering the great outdoors is awesome. We did the Humbridge track down near Invercargill a couple of weeks ago which was fantastic.

CAM HARPER

Love it. Nutrition John, is that an art or is it a science?

JOHN NEWSOM

It's a science but it's got a lot more art to it than I think most people recognise. So starting from a science point of view and then sort of moulding it to what your personal needs are on the art side of it.

CAM HARPER

You're off to a barbecue in the beautiful sunshine in Christchurch. What meat do you take?

JOHN NEWSOM

Keep it simple, sausages or hamburger patties.

CAM HARPER

Now when you get your steak and you've got that going on the barbie or you're at home, do you have that well done, medium or rare?

JOHN NEWSOM

Medium rare and there's nothing more frustrating than getting a well done steak.

CAM HARPER

Yeah, I know. I'm not a fan of the well-done steak. Medium rare is where it's at, isn't it?

JOHN NEWSOM

Absolutely.

CAM HARPER

Well, John, thank you so much for your time today. Really insightful, thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks very much.

JOHN NEWSOM

Awesome, pleasure to be here, Cam.

CAM HARPER

We have made it to the finish line of our podcast, Nutrition Mission with ANZCO Foods, season one, Beef, Lamb and Ironman. Thank you, John, for joining us and thank you for tuning in to Nutrition Mission with ANZCO Foods. If you enjoyed our podcast and want to find out more, head to anzcofoods.com/ironman for more insights and news.