Slow
writing, on
the inner game.
Notes from twenty-six years in endurance sport, and a decade of clinical work on the mental side. Essays on training, attention, patience, and the quiet things that make the difference. Published when they are ready, not on a schedule.
Tim Reed: Letting Go
You largely gave me the foundation of a lot of what I understand with the psychological side of the sport.
- Length
- 3
- Published
- 25 Oct 2026
Tim Reed: Letting Go
You largely gave me the foundation of a lot of what I understand with the psychological side of the sport.
Anaerobic Threshold
If you are afraid of threshold it’s because you aren’t intimate enough with it to understand it.
Ironman Truth
Can you run the pace you desire, fully loaded or not?
The Dreadmill
Relax. Lean in. Focus on the rhythm.
A Lesson from a 5 Time World champ
Your internal state does not dictate your external performance unless you capitulate to your thinking…..
Ironman - the first 10kms is danger
So you start the run at your feet, not your head…..
Turn your Pain into Performance
Decisions, not conditions, determine who the athlete is at any given moment.
Enduring Hell
The irony here is that your ability to endure is directly correlated with your ability to surrender.
You can't coach suffering
“Suffering” is the most important leg of a triathlon. The big three live within it; endurance, tolerance and resilience.
You can't outtrain doubt
It’s the silent prediction of your own failure that does the real damage…
Training Hygiene Wins races
Don’t do it for the sake of it; Be fully in it or don’t do it. If you do it half arsed you’ll race half arsed.
Build The Unbreakable
Stop rehearsing collapse. Rehearse build. You need to wax when everyone else wanes.
Every Second Counts
The problem is that you do nothing to promote a better moment by abandoning the one you’re in.
Junk In-Junk Out
Real hard sessions should demand an equal response from your brain and body. Are you up to it or not? If not look at why.
How To Not Wreck a Prep
Heres the thing: you're not making up for lost sessions, you are adding to what you are doing right now through anxiety and creating a mess of the future.
Ironman Micro Quit
It’s not just about managing fatigue under load- it’s about not losing your shit under load.
The 3-2-1 Resilience Hack
Most athletes don’t break because they’re weak. They break because they can’t tolerate feeling weak.
Giving Up
Because it’s about attitude not aptitude…
Attention
If you aren’t happy with what you’re doing, take the information and act on it.
Hope is Hopeless
That will lead you to your knowing, not your doubting...
Toxic Self Abuse
We’ve bought into the idea that we have to flog ourselves ten different ways to Sunday just to get the most from ourselves.
The Power Of One
A life organised around fear is a contracted life. You will never know how far you can go unless you are willing to go too far.
Overthinking
The only way to step into your power is to let go of who you were pretending to be.
Valour
The main problem is …We don’t actually allow ourselves to feel fear. We think it.
Blind Ambition
When reality doesn’t meet the ambition you built, that’s your moment of truth.
Settle
Force travels through its own relaxation, not its tension.
The Enemy At The Gate
The problem isn’t the bad races. It’s the script you run that says, I can’t allow imperfection.
Surrender To Victory
In the end, you surrender to victory…You bend to its measure, not yours.
The Simple Truth
Amplify speed. Simplify the process and you amplify the progress.
Deep In The Pit
What’s the lesson? You can’t trust your thoughts!
Death By A Thousand Cuts
Pain produces speed. Speed produces pain. They’re twins.
Hanging Onto Pain
So indeed, pain is temporary and suffering is optional.
The Guts to Trust Your Gut
The most dangerous thing an athlete can do is work toward fulfilling someone else’s expectations. They generally produce their worst training and racing that way.
In The Trenches
You’ve got to stop having an opinion on what happens, and start looking at your response to it.
Grind
Someone out there with half your talent is winning with twice your consistency.
Gilesys Key Run Tip
When you spread your toes while running, you’re changing both the mechanics and the neurology of your movement
Relax At Speed
The more you relax, the more you can relax. The more you can relax, the more relaxed you become.
Do You Really Wanna Get After It?
Then you begin to truly understand that the uncomfortable trials you face will also introduce you to your own strengths.
Quiet Quitting
The quitting we do when we cave in on ourselves is the most destructive. That voice of dissent in training is the same voice that leads to desperation in races.
Grace Under Pressure
Grace is flow. Grace is trust that the moment itself is carrying your development. A damaged ego will chase, push, force, overanalyse, and overwhelm itself.
The Goldilocks Zone
Chaos is an idea we are not comfortable with, but there’s no growth without it. You have to get what you don’t want so you can attract what you do want.
It's Messy, Get Over It
Perfect and tidy is a myth. You start, you suck… get over it.
Hold, Don't Fold
If you don’t develop durability, you’ll be like a cat with nine lives. You’ll have some good races, sure— Then wonder why your middle name is inconsistency.
If you don't Mind, It don't Matter
Instead… break bread with it. Sit down with the resistance. With the suck. Have it out.
Get Real With Yourself
You’ve got to find a way to be there for all of it—not just the parts you approve of—if you want to truly know yourself.
Rack em and Stack em
Yeah, you tick the box and feel some satisfaction. But deep down you know you’re completing — not called.
It Ain't Relaxing
It’s not about the armchair. Truth is, you can suffer at the hands of your own mind anywhere.
The Discipline Habit
Is your environment fresh, with a clean slate and session variance? Or is it the same old mouldy grind?
Consistency Is King
Real talent is the ability to end this day like yesterday never happened and tomorrow isn’t coming.
Shape Shift
If you can’t regulate your emotions in training, you won’t regulate them when it matters most.
Empowered Racing
Visualise the dog in you, that grounded, instinctual energy that knows it wants to bring something deeper.
From Chaos To Flow
You’ll engage reality with mechanical movement made of an external input. That’s chaos man. That’s not embodiment, that’s embrainment….
The Power Of Attitude
Complaining isn’t just venting—it’s reinforcing. It’s like telling your brain, “Hey, turn this pain up to eleven!”
The Plan and The Pattern
We often change things that don’t need changing on an outer level and end up lost and confused. But it’s not your plan, it’s your pattern!
Hard Yards-Grave Yards
Preparation is a measure of what you can absorb, not what you can get done.
Turn Worrier Into Warrior
Worrying is like worshiping the problem. Better you worship the solution and take any action you can to mitigate the issue.
Fight For Survival
The war between seeking the known and dealing with the unknown. But here’s the thing, trying to make things safe and known makes you unsafe. You’ve got to let that go.
Going Through It
The avoidance we use in our heads to escape suffering increases its intensity because your body is intelligent, it wants to be listened to.
Turn the screws
Trust your plan, not your pain!
High Performance Triathlon Coaching: Breaking Free from Cookie-Cutter Training
Move beyond textbook coaching. Connect with athletes on a deeper level. Create champions by breaking free from rigid systems.
The Moment of Truth
We train in fear rather than power! Most people train to avoid failure rather than to invite success.
Stop Training, Start Listening: The Path to Ironman Success
Your body whispers what your mind resists: pushing harder isn't the answer – mastering the art of recovery transforms good athletes into champions.
Evolve
You are creating the exact conditions you are experiencing. If you are a victim of the session, you are victimising yourself. Your body isn’t responsible for your toxic thinking.
Re-accredited as a High Performance Coach
AusTriathlon has re-accredited me as a High Performance Coach, its top level and by invitation only. What that means after coaching since 2000.
Craft not Graft
Make no mistake, it’s not graft, it’s craft….The craft is to make what is hard, easy!
A Campaign of Misery
An addiction to intensity. If it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t work.
The Warriors Hat
There is a power play at work in most challenges. It’s not about overcoming anything, it’s about meeting the power and matching its energy.
Bend Reality
Everything you avoid in trainings reality is going to be up in your face close and personal on race day and completed sessions do not allow for that, unless you’ve been fully in them boots n all.
Wreckage
If it breaks, it breaks for a reason. Don’t do the same, do different. It’s not about being courageous either, that just confirms that you are afraid.
Real Power
You are no longer bartering your body for fitness or comprising your personal integrity for the goal. Strength comes in the quiet groundedness of self-reclamation.
Anxiety - Do it Anyway
No longer a victim, you begin to rise in the shadow of what you thought was your ultimate downfall.
Yes
The world is full of great trainers who are in a state of shock at the level of pain they experience in a race, because simply put, they aren’t ready for it.
Defeat Is Psychological
In sport in general, we attend to our thoughts way too much, and not anywhere near enough to our body’s direct messaging.
Ride The Lightning
If you want real progress, eventually you have to be willing to ride the lightning. That's a risk and there’s no way around it.
Be Alive Now
Breathing half a breath, living half a life. Training half asleep and racing half awake.
The Extra Mile
You need your passion, your will and your lust. That’s fuel not to be fucked with.
Shocker
If you resist the feelings, emotions and the discomfort of not feeling good, you are resisting the teaching your body is giving you.
Nobody Cares
Here’s the thing, if you are going to do what you please, then you are going to have to let go of what you think pleases others.
The Next Step
Accept the schooling you get: We don’t get what we want, we get what we need.
Eighty Twenty
Anaerobic threshold is the flashy sibling of sub threshold work, but make no mistake, it’s the sub threshold work that AT takes all the credit for
Eric Lauricella, Pro Triathlete speaks about his breakthrough
Grant, everything you said worked exactly how you said it would. I followed the mental prep every other day and came 7th in my first Ironman in Canada.
Get It Right
Do something completely different and relax the threat, relax your body into the process and learn how to enjoy what you think is discomfort.
The Love Of The Race
If you can reach down into your guts, heart and soul and access love, you will suffer almost anything for it.
Foundational
Think of yourself as a doomsday prepper; what are you going to do when the shit hits the fan?
The Love Of Coaching
After 24 years of full-time triathlon coaching, I look back on the Aeromax years and why coaching is mentorship grounded in intuition.
Gilesy's Tips: Anaerobic Threshold
If you don’t train it correctly, you will be dictated to by a body that is not trained to do what you are asking of it.
War and Peace
Not one second should be wasted on aversion, avoidance and resistance.
Stop The Chase
Everything you reject about yourself is a rejection of your experience!
No Quarter
You gotta reconnect with your refusal to make yourself a mental victim over and over again. You have to stay out of that rabbit hole.
The Heart of Danger
Better a cruel truth than a comfortable illusion. Break your heart as many times as it takes to find your true limits.
Harden Up-Soften Down
You need to soften down against the discomfort you feel in your body, relax, let yourself pour like a fluid into the hurt.
Beast Mode
The aerobic oxygen carrying capacity and strength you are chasing evolves, breathes and expands in the space you create for it.
Purposeful Intent
You are going to need to re-connect and re-remember your why over and over again to make that habit an automatic action.
Get After It
Here’s the thing: that Stoic idea of challenge weakens you…I’m dead serious, the tension and resistance adds to the hurt exponentially.
The Nurture Of War
The best of you is out there on the killing fields, the dead bodies of a thousand athletes strewn all around.
Busting Down The Door
The warrior you are looking for inside yourself is silently waiting for you to show up for yourself.
Back To Basics
You gotta get in the trenches man! You have to learn how to dig in when everything is getting blown to shit.
Fight
Now is the time to fight like you are the third monkey on the ramp to Noah’s arc… and Brother, it’s starting to rain.
Reverberation
The repercussions of the reverb are happening in your body and nervous system, they will continue to choose the familiar path of chaos until you learn how to choose consciously and differently.
BackBone
Dedication is an investigation, an inner inquiry and a deep listening to the embodied winds of your own soul. It’s the warriors' inner prayer that you make to yourself.
Combat
Training is a war waged with yourself, and it's the mind's resistance, not the course, that blocks flow. On meeting the rawness of racing with presence.
David Bones: From Zero to Triathlete
His guidance was like finding the missing piece of a puzzle, bringing clarity and focus to my scattered efforts.
Give in, Don't give up
Resilience isn't built in killer weeks but in sessions where you're tired and fed up. Give in to what you're feeling, settle, and don't give up.
Dedication
Dedication is the warrior's prayer. On fierce focus, staying present when doubt creeps in, and the psychology that turns desire into results.
Embracing the Symphony
Discover how integrating mind, body, and heart fuels exceptional athletic performance.
A Sacred Drive
Embracing life's difficulties and discomfort is true bravery. True aliveness requires accepting the inevitable challenges, heartbreaks and vulnerabilities that come with it.
Change
Racing is a test of what you can tolerate, not just speed. How endurance athletes can meet discomfort with acceptance and move past their mind's limits.
Coaching: It's About Bringing Out What You Hide Within
Grant Giles redefines coaching as a transformative journey, guiding athletes to unearth their inner strengths and innovate through self-discovery
The name of the Game
A good coach makes themselves progressively unnecessary. Why effective triathlon coaching is mentorship that AI or a tour guide can't provide.
Nine Lives
Kicked at the swim start, a crash at 110 km and a bent derailleur. I look back on Ironman Fredericia in Denmark and what it taught me about not giving up.
Seamless Transition from Today’s Plan to TrainingPeaks
Today's Plan closes on 12 March 2024. A step-by-step guide for triathletes and coaches exporting training data and setting up TrainingPeaks.
Course Review: Ironman 70.3 Geelong - Victoria's Premier 70.3 Triathlon
A course guide to Ironman 70.3 Geelong: the sheltered Port Phillip Bay swim, a mostly flat 90 km bike and a 2.5-lap run that passes the finish twice.
Huskisson Triathlon Course Guide: Swim, Bike and Run
The Husky triathlon presents a picturesque yet demanding course in Jervis Bay, offering athletes a perfect blend of beauty and challenge.
Clayton Fettell: A Journey Of Transformation
I didn't really have all that much success until I opened up about my own struggles with him.
Guts
Triathlon keeps getting more technical, but race day still comes down to attention, intention and grit when things get tough. Consistency beats content.
Fabio's Triathlon Transformation: From Tragedy to Success
Having a coach was crucial. There were times I doubted the process and would have given up if I were alone.
Mastering the Mental Game in Triathlon Training
Triathlon coach Grant Giles integrates psychological techniques into training, enhancing athletes' mental and physical strength.
David Arnold's Triathlon Transformation
Grant taught me that mental toughness is not about being brash or overly aggressive, but about a soft, gentle process of awareness and acceptance.
Campbell Wallace's Triathlon Journey: A Story of Transformation
That day, as I crossed the finish line, it wasn't just about the time on the clock. It was a testament to the journey Grant and I had embarked on together.
Key Insights for Aspiring Pro Triathletes
Essential tips and strategies for transitioning into a professional triathlon career.
Ironman 70.3 Sunshine Coast: Australia's Premier 70.3 Triathlon Challenge
The picturesque Sunshine Coast half-Ironman in Mooloolaba, Australia boasts a scenic triathlon with varied swim conditions and a challenging bike and run that yields fast times.
Grant's Complete Guide to Training for a Half-Ironman 70.3 Triathlon
A Half-Ironman 70.3 is a rewarding triathlon covering 70.3 miles of swimming, cycling, and running. While challenging, it offers a more approachable balance for training than a full Ironman.
The Cost of Triathlon Coaching in Australia: Investing in Your Success
Explore the varying costs of triathlon coaching and understand the value and costs behind your investment in athletic growth.
For The Win
Keep race week simple. Let go of expectations, stay out of judgment and relax into your nerves so you arrive at race day in flow.
Straight Shooting
Coaching isn't about adding something to an athlete. It's about removing the obstacles. On self-trust, and being ruthlessly yourself.
The Point Of Hesitation
Every athlete reaches the point of hesitation, where doubt speaks up. Why you need to feel it fully, accept it, and then choose growth over comfort.
True Intelligence: Gilesy’s Insight on Thought Hygiene and Inner Clarity
The essence of true intelligence, advocating for self-examination, inner clarity, and mindful expression to navigate life and sports effectively.
An Unveiling of Trust and Self-Discovery
Trust and self-reflection as critical drivers for breakthroughs and transformation in every athlete's journey.
The Grounding Power of Solidity in Triathlon
In the whirlwind of triathlon's growing fame, maintaining focus and leveraging the energy can propel athletes to peak performance.
Unlocking Athletic Pinnacle: My Holistic Journey with Triathlon Training
Discover the balance between mental fortitude and physical capability in my 13-week Ironman 70.3 program, designed for peak performance.
Demystifying Training Intensity Distribution for Triathletes: Finding the Right Balance
Striking the Perfect Balance Between Zones for Peak Performance.
Harnessing Data and Tech for Triathlon Training
Dive into how Grant integrates power, pace, and heart rate metrics using platforms like TrainingPeaks to sculpt elite training regimens for triathletes.
The Triathlete's Training Bible Book - Summary
Joe Friel's newest edition dives deep into triathlon training, merging art and science to guide seasoned athletes towards precision and peak performance.
Breaking Free from Athletic Prisons: A Journey Within 🏊♂️🚴♂️🏃♂️
Unlock the barriers limiting your athletic potential by embracing the present, avoiding judgment, and celebrating every step of your unique journey.
Unraveling Periodisation: The Triathlete's Blueprint for Peak Performance
Explore periodisation's role in triathlon training, a structured roadmap ensuring athletes excel across swimming, cycling, and running for race-day success.
Personalised Training Plans for Your Triathlon Goals
An experienced triathlon coach will fully customise your training plan based on your distinct goals, current fitness level, time commitments, and preferences through flexible online platforms and open communication.
In-person local coach or remote coaching?
The accessibility of remote coaching through video analysis and regular check-ins makes finding your ideal triathlon mentor possible, regardless of proximity, by opening up options to work with the best coaches aligned to your needs.
Finding Your Perfect Triathlon Coach
Carefully evaluating credentials, coaching approach, communication style, and overall rapport will help you select the ideal triathlon coach tailored to your unique needs and goals.
The embodied athlete
Power transfer needs an open pathway. Why triathletes who brace and tense lose coordination, and how staying relaxed under pressure helps you hold speed.
Breathe Easy
Stuck on a plateau? Many triathletes blur easy and moderate training. Why nose breathing marks real easy, and how too much moderate work blunts your speed.
Optimising Mind & Body: 13-Week Ironman 70.3 Program
Grant Giles combines psychological strength with physiological training in his transformative 13-week Ironman 70.3 program, blending mind-body excellence.
The Art of Coaching
While coaching combines art and science, its true essence lies in fostering self-reflection and exploration in athletes, emphasising human connection over structured plans.
13-Week Ironman 70.3 Race Preparation Triathlon Training Plan
A 13-week Ironman 70.3 distance triathlon training plan used in conjunction with TrainingPeaks. This is ideal for the intermediate age group athlete.
On the front foot
Mount an attack, not a defence. If you go into a race with a survival mindset, you are on the back foot before you even start. Lets discuss.
Artificial intelligence
Will AI reshape triathlon coaching? I'm taking a wait-and-see view: coaching is a human endeavour built on your subjective experience.
A step into the dark
When a race hurts like hell, it's your own darkness surfacing. Accept it as part of the experience, so you grow instead of resisting.
Get Busy Living
Everybody dies, not everybody lives. On living from the heart rather than the head, and why chasing the mountain top lets life slip past you.
The River flows
Life is always flowing, whether a creek, a torrent or a frozen lake. On letting go of the bank, feeling what you resist and choosing flow.
Nerves
Pre-race nerves are normal. Resisting them escalates the anxiety. How to stay grounded with what your body feels before race day.
The Punisher
The inner punisher that shaped me as an athlete, and how fear of your own thoughts, not failure itself, can hold you back.
Discovery
I don't want followers of my program. I want triathletes to explore their own experience in it. On coaching as discovery rather than preaching.
All Torque
Torque is intention turned into attention. Why climbers make peace with gravity, and how cutting inner talk helps you apply effort directly in training.
Elegance
Worrying about worrying drives a neurotic search for balance. On not fearing your thoughts, and being still enough to meet another person's essence.
Go Beyond
Trust is the felt sense vehicle that carries this energy that has the capacity to take us into the twilight zone, into the state of zen or flow where we are able to let go of the concepts and allow the pain and discomfort to circulate without resistance.
Forecasting
Forecasting how a race could go wrong tends to programme it in. How triathletes can notice doubt early and train awareness over fear in every session.
Masks
The personas we present to the world, from shyness to Instagram, and why relating mask to mask leaves us missing what is real in each other.
Show Up
Your racing isn't about the course, the wind or other competitors — it's your response to them. On acceptance as the flow state every athlete is after.
The Dream
A lifetime of waiting for the next thing, a childhood sketch of a dream house, and why life is a process rather than an outcome.
Disappearance
Lost in paperwork and longing for the river: on busyness, nature and the regret of rushing through a body that won't stay vital forever.
Normalise
Normal is a statistical idea, not a standard to live by. On mental health, creativity and individuality, and why you are not broken as you are.
The Moment of Truth
Every athlete meets a moment of truth. Why ego and excuses collapse under pressure, and why accepting what is real builds true resilience.
Shackled
The busyness and material slavery we use to avoid being alone with ourselves, and why love has to start with yourself, not with your thoughts.
Let It Die
Holding on invites suffering. On letting things end, the micro-deaths in every day, and how accepting death can ease your fear of living fully.
Toxic Positivity
Forced positive self-talk can push pain deeper. The case for honest self-talk, and for accepting your darker side rather than hiding it.
Stay With It
When a hard session doesn't look the way you wanted, that gap is where adaptation happens. Why triathletes need to give up their demands on the moment.
Ironman Australia Reflections
Watching Ironman Australia as a coach, I saw athletes stuck in their heads. My advice: stay embodied and deal only with the piece you are in.
Growing Pains
Pain is the price we pay to play. You can't get over pain, only through it, and letting it teach you brings stillness and personal growth.
The Fear is Near
One man's roadmap to fear and ambiguity in sport and life: why a low tolerance for not knowing forms, and why moving toward fear helps.
Speed Power And Flow
Lessons from surfing for endurance athletes: speed and power matter, but flow comes first. Why relaxing into tension stops you exhausting yourself.
Pain the way
There's no outrunning or overcoming pain in endurance sport. Why the ability to suffer comes from dropping resistance and letting pain be there.
Identified
How I identified with my racing and coaching career, and why nothing you do or own is who you are, only the essence you pass on to others.
Flowering
A hundred years from now, no one you know will be here. A flower in bloom, and what it says about transience, being present and love given freely.
Observation
On consciousness, meditation and why the way you look at the world shapes the reality you create, including in sport and performance.
Brain Training
Neuroscience shows the brain predicts rather than perceives in real time. What that means for athletes, and how visualisation trains the feeling you want.
Neutral
Your mind feeds on stories of victimhood, right and wrong. On slipping into mental neutral and watching your reactions without judgment.
The Beginning of the End
Nothing comes together until everything has fallen apart. On pain, and why it is okay, even necessary, to not be okay for a while.
A racing Mind is a Bursting Heart
What does your heart long for, and what has worry really cost you, in the chase for things that never settle a racing mind or bring lasting peace?
Trapped in Pain
On nostalgia, grief and painful memories, and why feeling them rather than stuffing them down can make you a better human and a better athlete.
Dialogues n Epilogues
Why you can't think your way into mental toughness: the inner voice that argues against you, and why relying on it to back you up never works.
Turning Point
Fading in long threshold sets usually means an oxygen problem, not a threshold one. Why triathletes should build tempo and aerobic threshold power.
Active Rest
I don't schedule rest weeks or drop-off tapers. Here's why, and the injury, fatigue and malaise I see when triathletes break rhythm.
Spontaneity
Prepare out of fear and you race in fear. Sport is art, and trust and instinct serve you on race day better than clinging to metrics.
Storm Chasers
Stop trying to calm the storm, calm yourself and the storm will pass.
You Know It Ends
Emotions rise and pass, but we cling to them as if they were solid. How attaching to happiness keeps you waiting, and why you are none of it.
Inviting Trouble
Seeking comfort eventually makes you uncomfortable. Why athletes grow by moving towards discomfort rather than staying with the safe bet.
Chaos
Resilience comes through suffering, not avoiding it. On emotional dysregulation in hard training, and following the pain back to your body.
Dark Clouds
The trauma we carry from past generations, why holding on to the past makes us fearful and protective, and how facing it may help break the chain.
A painful Story
In endurance events and in life, it's about playing bad cards well. Feel hard emotions fully without getting lost in the story about them.
Rock Bottom
Why privilege breeds expectation, why rock bottom is a better teacher, and why the road to the goal holds more than the goal itself.
Entertaining Trouble
A triathlon coach on why athletes chase what they fear, and what a hairy stand-up paddle session taught him about doubt, instinct and the mind.
Motivations Shadow
Apathy is motivation's shadow. Why you don't need a reason for training or life, and how attaching reasons to experience can leave you flat.
Consider This
Your body can handle more than you think. How doubt and overthinking cut you off from basic trust in yourself, and the quiet intuition underneath.
Power
A Garmin or TSS score can't measure everything. On the paradox of performance, functioning on fumes and how fast you can return to flow in a race.
Exercise Wheel
Coaching is more than a physical prescription or data analysis. Good coaching builds your self-knowledge, because you are the path.
Fear Flows
Fear in sport often comes from a lack of self-belief. The feeling of fear is safe, and staying with it brings you back to the present.
En-Courage-Ment
Courage lives in not knowing. On letting go of control, leaving the safety of the shore and finding what you are capable of in sport and in life.
Superiority
In training and racing, the aim is to be superior to your former self, not to others. On the inner shift that helps you handle setbacks without judgment.
Faith On Trial
Why we struggle to trust each other, how faith is earned rather than given, and how growing trust changes how you see the world.
Excuses
Missing a session isn't the real problem. It's the self-berating voice afterwards that drags triathletes into form slumps and steals their enjoyment.
Rest
Rest is not inactivity — it's an empty headspace. How rumination drains athletes, particularly in race week, and why you should move fast and think slow.
Just Breathe
When did anxiety become the measure of effort? On pressure, information overload and constant doing, and why inner silence lets you hear your own guidance.
Athletic Patience
Endurance sport is a long-term process. On patience, and why an athletic vision built on intuition and drive must not tip over into obsession.
Racing in Hell
Races where you feel bad are your best opportunities. Drop the judgment, accept the discomfort and race on tired legs without the story.
En-Courage-Ment
Courage lives in not knowing. Why growth in sport and life begins when you let go of control, and why you needn't wait for loss to force that discovery.
The Perfect Prep
Wait for the perfect preparation and your chance goes begging. Success in sport is a measure of your capacity to handle the mess.
Dance On The Edge
Reality is an edge where past, present and future meet. On rumination, seeking safety in a transient life, and why life can only be lived in this moment.
Destiny
Wanting a goal isn't the same as believing you can reach it. How old mental scripts keep goals out of reach, and why you should write out what you believe.
Walk Away
Let go of what doesn't serve you. Walking away from negative self-talk and doubters builds faith in yourself, as does acting like you're already there.
The Love of Your Fate
Life can strengthen or weaken you. On loving your fate — victimhood, grief and change — and the freedom that comes from staying present through it.
Handling Race Pressure
Gilesy explores the internal conflicts athletes face, emphasizing that true success stems from aligning feelings and instincts, and introduces somatic experiencing as a key method to prepare for challenges.
Focus
Focus isn't something you do with your head. Why mental noise and division cost you focus in key sessions and races, and why you shouldn't think about it.
Don't Tap Out
Counting down the kilometres to when the pain stops can turn a race into drudgery. How triathletes can separate race facts from their thoughts about them.
The Race In The Pain
It's not the pain in the race, it's the race in the pain. Why endurance athletes should train to absorb more pain rather than avoid it.
The Name Of The Pain
Data on discomfort is useful, but it's a yardstick outside you. Why endurance athletes should feel into the suck first and let the numbers confirm it.
Mens Mental Health
From about 40, many men face big questions of why that can turn into anxiety. On the courage to face that inner shift rather than hide behind looking okay.
Pressure
Pressure is really protection — the fear of losing what you have. Why it pulls you out of presence before a race, and how staying grounded changes that.
An Inconvenient Truth
There are no magic pills. Success in sport and life is a slow, inconvenient process of patience, letting go of old mental models and learning from failure.
Breakthrough Now!
Training aimed at a future that isn't here yet drains quality from the session. Why being present now is how you prepare for a breakthrough on race day.
Loven the Pain
Your response to pain in training is largely conditioned. A simple practice for endurance athletes: feel rising discomfort without trying to escape it.
Utility
Your first instinct is often right. How overthinking costs triathletes in races, and why relaxing and quieting the mind lets instinct work.
Conqueror or Saboteur?
You can't conquer a race until you conquer your limiting beliefs. How negative self-talk and old scripts quietly sabotage athletes and their performance.
Go On Feel
You can't learn to trust your body by listening to your thoughts. On training by feel — tracking the energy moving through you, so you flow, not force.
Going Hard
While athletes often prioritise intense training, true progress hinges on a delicate equilibrium of effort and ease, urging a shift from brute force to flow and balance.
Race Face
Instead of becoming one with the race, become none with it. Drop judgment and separation, and flow comes naturally on race day.
Toughness
Cross winds, choppy swims, stifling heat: challenge reveals your unconscious content. How triathletes can use that contraction in training to grow.
Fiction n Friction
Move out of the resistance to what you don’t want and accept it fully as part of the learning in this goal that you have set yourself.
Rescue Today
Embrace discomfort and challenge for personal growth and development, emphasising that seeking safety and repeating old thought patterns leads to nothing but apathy.
Lift
Lift, the state of zen and flow in sports, is created by focusing on enthusiasm, passion, and motivation, rather than allowing mental pressure, tension, and external noise to drain your energy and rob you of your best performance.
12-Week Olympic Distance Triathlon Training Plan for Intermediate Age Group Athletes
A free 12-week Olympic distance triathlon training plan used in conjunction with TrainingPeaks. This is ideal for the intermediate age group athlete.
10-Week Ironman 70.3 / Half Distance Triathlon Training Plan for Intermediate Age Group Athletes
A free 10-week Half Ironman or 70.3 distance triathlon training plan used in conjunction with TrainingPeaks. This is ideal for the intermediate age group athlete.
Reframe The Pain
Reframe your pain. Reframe the game. Stop thinking it, start allowing it.
The Mind Games
Some headspace advice for those about to race.
The Last 4 Weeks
Four weeks out from an Ironman, stop testing yourself. Trust your form, cap long runs at 90 minutes and let your body peak.
The Power Of Now - Summary
Eckart Tolle's spiritual exploration offers profound insights on staying present, serving as an unparalleled manual for athletes at all levels.
The Art of War - Summary
Sun Tzu's ancient teachings emphasize clarity of mind, spiritual preparedness, and the idea that true victors win the battle even before it begins.
The Complete Enneagram - Summary
A blend of ancient symbols and modern psychology, the Enneagram offers profound self-knowledge and unique insights into human behavior.
Battlegrounds of Illusion
Sport is a metaphor for life. Why winning satisfies — the judgment falls silent — and why chasing the next goal can't fill the void unless you're grounded.
Critical Mass
Your inner critic is a learned voice, not you. On where self-criticism comes from, how it shapes our judgment of others, and why awareness of it matters.
Fragments
Living through goals, achievements and outcomes fragments you. My own experience, and why your sense of self is already complete.
Haunted and Deluded
Stress and pressure come from memory and imagination, not the world. How the mind projects its own reality and why we end up victims of our own thinking.
Precluding Opposites
Lessons from a chaotic period: why resisting what you fear can invite it, how injury or illness can carry a lesson, and why belief precludes its opposite.
The Wounded Mind
The mind hoards experience and files it as safe or unsafe. On living by heart and instinct instead of a conditioned, wounded mind that keeps life small.
Functional Dysfunction
Athletes train their bodies into efficient movement patterns while old mental scripts from childhood run unchecked. Why the mind needs the same attention.
Motive
Attach to the process, not the outcome. Why external rewards leave athletes empty, and how loving what you do builds lasting motivation and flow.
Mindset Setmind!
Why I dislike the word mindset. The mind is a lost hitchhiker you can't tame. The real question for athletes is who's in the driver's seat.
The Athlete Stress Redress
You are not your stress or anxiety. You are aware of it. Drawing on my own anxiety as an athlete, why self-definition keeps you stuck.
The Truth About Our Potential
Don't ask thought to run your reality. Why athletes get caught in doubt, fear and expectation, when performance happens in the ruthless present.
Developmental
Athlete development is a matter of awareness before it is physical. How training on autopilot, the way we live, holds back progress in endurance sport.
Hitting the Ground
Injury, illness or a bike crash: the moment it happens is your opportunity. How athletes can choose healing over resistance when setbacks threaten goals.
The Soft Skills
There's nothing soft about the soft skills. Why compassion, self-awareness and presence matter to athlete and coach alike, and why they drive performance.
Success and Failure
Success and failure are one face. Advice for athletes from a non-duality view: learn as fully from failure as from success, or you'll repeat the lesson.
The Power of Ground
Pressure to perform isn't coming from sponsors or expectations — it's in your head. Why athletes move toward goals only in direct contact with the process.
Feeling Stuck
Feeling stuck is often resistance to reality — the gap between what is and your picture of how it should be. On the trap of measuring life, not living it.
Performance Anxiety
Performance anxiety feeds on judgment, the past and the future. Why presence is the missing ingredient, and how a daily mental reset can help you.
Make Change or Stay the Same
Whatever you are not changing, you are choosing. Why identifying with your struggles keeps you stuck and how negative self-talk feeds it.
The Unforgettable Fire
Real motivation moves from the inside out. On intrinsic motivation, why hype fades, and why you can only point others toward their own drive to train.
What is the Goal?
As a coach, my goal is to sell you on yourself. How we split sport and life into likes and dislikes, and why to become conscious of being conscious.
Taught to Win - Conditioned to Fail
How childhood conditioning not to fail plants failure in the subconscious, why the fear of winning may run deeper than losing, and what athletes can learn.
An Athletic Braille
Ticking off a session is not the same as executing it. Why triathletes need to know what each session is for, and drop the need to be defined by results.
Transforming Pain
Your judgment of pain does more damage than the pain itself. Why the ability to suffer in endurance sport is psychological.
Surrender As Performance Power
Surrender is not giving up. Why endurance athletes find real strength by meeting the challenge from within, not chasing answers in technology.
Defeat is a state of mind
No one is defeated until defeat is accepted. On mental capitulation in training, triggers as teachers, and why resilience is a choice.
Your X-Factor
If you really want to find the x-factor of the athlete in you, there’s only one rule to apply. Refuse to impersonate.
Competitiveness
Competitiveness can help or harm you. Why comparison and envy pull athletes off their own path, and how self-awareness keeps your drive working for you.
Perception
Things are only as hard as they seem. How unconscious likes and dislikes shape your experience of training, racing and life — and why awareness changes it.
Racing Husky: A Coach's Report on Two Athletes, Two Races
Exploring the blend of endurance and speed, this detailed account shows how specific training and mental readiness led athletes to success at Huskisson tri.
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