Watched it. I feel like he’s putting the blame on his training load from 3 years ago, and ignoring this keto / fat adapted thing he was more recently doing, which I think he is still on, maybe???

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

I enjoyed in the sense of him showing things that I was not even aware we could test with a blood work

But you have a point, I think there is nothing more important that a balance nutrition plan.
Plus off season
Plus wine
Plus 10pounds and no training for a month ( I do it every year, every year )



I think going to extremes in order to have content can bring some problems attached with it

Agreed! He doesn't mention keto diet once in this video, and praises Plews in the video. However for many people, studies show Keto diet leads to a leaky gut and intestinal inflammation which would explain ALL his issues of not being able to absorb nutrients. I don't believe he's overtrained; I think the keto diet doesn't agree with his body.

He actually published a video 9 months ago titled: Why I Got Fat on a Low Carb Diet. This has been brewing for a long time. All diet related. Not training related as he has lots of videos how he increased his fitness through Zone 2 training.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyXtgcO_Qko

I think Taren would be better served to just go back to eating a normal, well-rounded diet that includes plenty of carbs from whole foods.

Yep, I've been waiting for this video from him based on his training load, nutrition, and general accumulation over the past couple years.

Good to see someone with a platform make this video, hopefully it resonates with other AG'ers.

Remember folks, performance does not equal health.

Health first!

I also agree with his inability to connect keto into this video.

Man, an 84 year old patient with better hormone levels...yikes!

I like his message, but I would prefer more 'established' data and experts to go through the overtraining logic.

He points it all to 2017, where admittedly, he trained hard and without expert guidance, but seems like a stretch to me to point to 3 years ago as a source of overtraining when in the 2 years right after it you not only performed really well, but basically CRUSHED the type of results most people (including here) expected given his prior results. I mean, literally NOBODY expected him to become a 4:30ish HIM and mid-9 (whatever it was) IM athlete, especially given his limited experience at the IM distance. His results were so good that it would not be unreasonable to have seriously asked if he were on PED (I'm pretty sure he isn't - too much to lose for him on that!)

I'm not a sports nutrition/physiologist expert, but to me it was quite alarming to me when I saw how much volume he started commiting to both during and after his great race results. I mean, he was 16-20hr/wk and sounded like Plews wanted him to go to 20+hrs/wk to really be in line with what a top KQ AGer under his tutelage was doing. Even with tons of z1-z2 work, that's a lot of freaking training for someone who on 'normal' training goes like 5:15-5:30 before his big rampup.

I was also expecting some sort of big decrease in his race performance or training following his crushing outperformances. That's NORMAL when you hugely outperform your well-established past results, which he had. I wouldn't be surprised if he was pushing up against the very limits of his max genetic ability on those performances, and thus any added training = overtraining and slump.

I think farrrr more likely is that he recalibrated his expectations to improve on his already amazing HIM/IM performances and ended up overdoing it. I'm skeptical that 2017 was the catalyst for this all - if anything, I'd say that 2017 laid the ground to make possible these big performances. This is a common story amongst pros/elites, that have a year or two of grinding and big volume without great results to show, and then they breakthrough afterwards, even if they are decreasing volume.

I'd also like to hear more scientific validation of all these biomarkers he's using - I know overtraining is still not well studied for biomarkers, but it sounds to me like he's too willingly accepting what someone is concluding of some lab results without the medical establishment really agreeing that these biomarkers are worthy of such conclusions. (Your MD likely wouldn't tell you any of that stuff after seeing those results.)

Not really interesting. He's blaming his training. When how he looks is purely based on his diet, he's eating too much and putting on fat. He also was spewing gobbledeegook about what endurance athletes should be eating.

Over the past several years he has been a product shill. He's eaten things from these various companies that have no real data to back up their claims because of the way supplements are regulated.

Oh then he takes a shot at Eric Lagerstrom's coffee montages, why?

In his coffee he put collagen protein (which is fine, helps with hair growth). But then loads tea tree oil and ghee in there, he was like "doing it without butter". Well guy, Ghee is butter.

He's shared plenty of his diet over the past several years, he's never had a diet in place that will support his training. Don't do whack fad diets.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Which of course is the most important part.

I'm not buying the 2017 thing either. Back in my younger days I went through a program that for 72 days we: ate 1 meal a day, slept for 4 hours a day max, and walked about 500 miles.....It was the US Army Ranger School. They also tested our blood as part of a look at what that kind of beating does to you. We got the same kind of blood panel that Taren did. All my numbers were rock bottom. Testosterone was almost zero. Cortisol was sky high.

After 30 days of rest and a normal diet......the numbers were all back to normal. Now my feet were still beat up but the point being that I'm not buying that over training 3 years ago was his problem if after 30 days of rest and eating a normal diet my blood panel was back to normal.

folks blaming the keto diet.. step back further, he had his vegan phase for a bit too. originally these diets to remedy initial signs of fatigue? perhaps it was the drastic change from one diet to another? or if anything across the board, on vegan and keto, he ate a lot of processed foods (supplements) as opposed to more whole foods.

Just listen to the podcast he put out on race nutrition for the cognitive dissonance. Talking about carb timing/restricting carbs, yet sitting 20lbs overweight and overtrained since changing his diet. Look, do whatever you want, but you have to be willing to try new things if things stop or aren't working. I listened to that podcast to see if I could learn anything I should try. He mentions that it should be simple, but then makes it complicated.

I train quite hard and with a fair bit of volume. Since my shoulder healed (call it end of Feb) enough to ride and run, I've been consistently putting in 14-18 hour weeks with a 8-12 hour rest week every 6 weeks or so. I've learned that (duh) you need to fuel your workouts if you're doing multiple workouts in a day, and that the better/more I fuel long or hard workouts, the better my diet and hunger is throughout the day (again, no shit, sherlock). Obviously if you're only doing one workout per day, you can take longer to recover, etc. I feel fine, and I haven't gained weight or anything. I don't know why everyone wants to make it so complicated. Unless you're KQ or a pro, you really don't need to focus SO MUCH energy on eating.

By the way...I have been using corn starch (think I heard this on ZenTri, so thanks Brett) as my primary fuel. It's damn cheap, a $1 bag gets me thru a week or ten days), works well, and keeps my energy really steady. No gut problems as with the high-octane (expensive) stuff. After 3-4 hours, I start wanting some solid or sports food, but most of my rides/workouts are 3 or under anyway. Works great in the gym, too. Just be sure to toss a blender ball in your bottle. Tastes good with a little honey and green tea and/or lemon juice. Easy to add a little salt and sugar for extra hot/humid/whatever days.

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"The person on top of the mountain didn't fall there." - unkown

also rule 5

So Tarren who has been charging people for training and nutrition advice is now saying that he has had it all wrong? I feel for any of his viewers who have tried to emulate him and are heading down the same hole..

Well, no. He’s saying that he got it wrong 3 years ago, and that’s the reason for the problems now even though what he’s been doing more recently is correct. Or something like that.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Lol 3 years ago??? What he did three years ago must have been one heck of a ticking time bomb if it's only surfaced now..

For the last three years he has been advising all these left field diets and supplements, that's where I'd be looking.

Content creator that has come to have a fairly high opinion of himself. He did not overtrain to run mid 80s half marathons as a man. He was not posting fast times. He is not a picture of health or fitness. His appeal is being the Everyman. Content creator looking to find and sell the next magic bullet. He sounds more and more like the beginnings of a Ben Greenfield, advocating quack and hack and monetizing it. But since he is so motivating he is protected from criticism from “haters”.

yep, seems like a cycle of influences/coaches in the endurance world (like ben greenfield) they reach their peak thinking they know it all and fall from glory hard.

kind of reminds me how someone was giving me running advice who has become faster than me, regarding stress fractures I get.. he who never got an injury..... now has a stress fracture

But......but....he is a coach,who has a coach so surely he must know what he is doing.

Notice how the world's best aren't doing this hokey crap?

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"The person on top of the mountain didn't fall there." - unkown

also rule 5

I agree...I thought the video was very honest but it reminded me that anyone can call themselves a coach and pretend to know what is best and really have no idea what they are talking about.

Taren has zero idea what over training actually is.

He's all screwed up because of all the crap he supplements and eats.

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blog

Another classic TT video....

1. Identify another problem rooted in insecurity
2. Find the 'expert' and justify to your loyal fan base why they are the most qualified to solve the problem
3. Pay some exorbitant amount for testing that can validate your problem
4. Make a YouTube video that's makes TT the unqualified expert of sport science 101
5. Presto chango, problem solved and don't forget the product placement

Cool. UCan is a corn starch based product, but it's expensive. I wondered if anyone just tried corn starch.

That's the trap of making your living as a content creator; you get the Dr. Oz effect. You constantly have to tell your viewers about some new, wonderful thing that is the magic bullet. The constant search for the new, better, and newsworthy makes it difficult to stick with what works, and pushes you toward endorsement of extreme solutions (plus the non-established products are the ones that are more likely to want to pay you). Tried and true can't generate the views that hype does.

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

If he had of kept on the journey man approach he would have maintained authenticity and been able to try all these kooky diets and approachs as a interesting experiment for his viewers. His subs would have naturally gained traction. But he needed money so jumped too quickly into selling advice and product placement.

Yeah that’s why I wanted to try it. Sure, ucan now has a protein blend, and technically they’re product is longer lasting than corn starch...but it’s also $2.10/serving. And I’m probably about a dime per bottle, plus a bag of green tea and/or honey/lemon. I’ll take it as a furloughed airline employee right now.

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"The person on top of the mountain didn't fall there." - unkown

also rule 5

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If you read the comments following his FB post or his YouTube video you will see how he is treated by so many as the Guru of all Guru's and that he is the font of knowledge of all things triathlon..This is the part of the "Coaching" industry that wasn't mentioned in the "Coached or Self Coached" thread.There are plenty of dodgy coaches out there who have cult like followings in their respective communities,Taren just took it to the next level,very much like Ben Greenfield.