Kenny Bailey (00:01)
Hey, Tom, how are you?

Tom Regal (00:02)
I'm Fantastic Kenny, how are you?

Kenny Bailey (00:04)
I am fantastic because we have a guest this year, our first guest of the year, Alex Hildebrand. Alex, welcome.

Tom Regal (00:10)
Alex, welcome.

Yeah.

Alex Hildebrandt (00:11)
Hello, thank you. First time, long time.

Kenny Bailey (00:13)
There you go. So Alex is not only a dynamic personal trainer at lifetime, but he also happens to be a triathlete who has qualified for Worlds more than one occasion. He's kind of a big deal. So Alex, welcome to the program. We appreciate you coming on. We were trying to focus our programs on sort of, especially during the winter on kind of what people.

Tom Regal (00:14)
First time on time.

Nice, congratulations. It's kind of a big deal.

Kenny Bailey (00:38)
need to be preparing for over the winter to get ready for their season for triathlon. So from a of a strength and conditioning perspective, all that good stuff. But before we get going down that path, tell us a little about yourself. So have you always been a triathlete? Did you start out as like a soccer player when you were seven and then got on a bike and never got off? What's the story?

Alex Hildebrandt (01:00)
Man, it's not a great story. I started as a baseball player who only liked to run 90 feet and a swimmer who only liked to swim 50s and hundreds. Anything further than a hundred, forget it. I would fall start and get disqualified. And then was going to play baseball in college, tore my rotator cuff, my labrum, MCL meniscus, and then my wife's aunt.

Kenny Bailey (01:08)
You

Alex Hildebrandt (01:27)
was like, you should try triathlons. I'm like, that sounds like a lot of running and swimming, and I'm not good at that. But here we are, like 12, 13, 14 years later, and still doing it. So it worked.

Kenny Bailey (01:32)
Yeah

So did you

tear everything all at once or was that just over the series of two minutes? Cause Santa labor, like that was one hell of a slide.

Tom Regal (01:47)
Yeah.

Alex Hildebrandt (01:48)
It was within a one month span. I did my shoulder first and then at a baseball tournament slid into second base. Knee got stuck in the mud and that was the end of that. Yeah. So here we are.

Kenny Bailey (01:51)
No kidding.

Tom Regal (01:51)
Ouch.

Kenny Bailey (01:55)
Okay.

There you go. Well,

Tom Regal (02:00)
wow. Ouch.

Kenny Bailey (02:02)
it

Tom Regal (02:02)
Did you win?

Kenny Bailey (02:02)
puts you on a different path.

Alex Hildebrandt (02:04)
I, yeah,

maybe we won, don't remember. So, too long ago.

Tom Regal (02:06)
Yeah,

Kenny Bailey (02:07)
That's funny.

So, you know, I think we skipped a big chunk there. Like you went from, you know, I just started in triathlons to now, you know, I'm like going to worlds. At what point did that move from, hey, this is kind of fun to like, hey, think I may have a, I think I may be good at this.

Alex Hildebrandt (02:25)
Yeah, I did my very first half Ironman 2013 ish 70.3 Muncie. And I was one of the last people to finish the race. Like they were cleaning up transition as I was finishing and I was like, I'm not spending that much time out here ever again. So I got a coach and then slowly started taking it more and more seriously. And then I don't know, just

Kenny Bailey (02:36)
Great one.

Hmm.

Tom Regal (02:43)
Yeah

Alex Hildebrandt (02:55)
lot of consistency, years of dedication to it, and finally I started to enjoy running somewhat. And that's probably now my best discipline now. So just a lot of hard work.

Kenny Bailey (03:06)
That's cool.

Tom Regal (03:06)
Nice.

Two things that popped out, or what you just said was, you got to coach and consistency. Those are the things I harp on the most, is the consistency part of it, right? That's.

Kenny Bailey (03:11)
Yeah.

Alex Hildebrandt (03:12)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

Kenny Bailey (03:20)
So other three disciplines, which one is your favorite?

Alex Hildebrandt (03:24)
definitely not the swim. That probably comes the most natural to me. Yeah. That comes the most natural to me. So I don't train it as much. Hopefully my coach doesn't listen to this. the bike I have a love hate relationship with. I like going fast. I like going hard on the bike, but at the same time, there's always that in the back of my head. Hey, you still have to run 13.1 miles. Don't go too hard.

Kenny Bailey (03:27)
Hahaha

Tom Regal (03:28)
first 50 maybe is okay.

Kenny Bailey (03:30)
Yeah

Mm.

You

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Alex Hildebrandt (03:53)
And the run

has slowly become what I enjoy suffering the most in, or what I tolerate suffering the most in. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (03:58)
Okay, there you go. That's

Tom Regal (03:59)
tolerate the most. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (04:00)
funny. So you're chilling out in Tri-Land, you're doing all sorts of great stuff, and then all of a sudden you decided, I think I wanna be a personal trainer, or how did the personal trainer journey start?

Alex Hildebrandt (04:15)
Yeah, my wife and I moved to San Diego, man, five, six years ago. Real terrible. And then around the same time, my grandfather passed away and it was some of that old man wisdoms like, do something you love. It's like not working. So I spending most of my time training anyways. I thought, why not get my masters in kinesiology and sports management and then.

Kenny Bailey (04:20)
terrible place to move for a triathlete. My god, did you, how did you, oh my gosh.

Heh.

Hmm.

Alex Hildebrandt (04:42)
Got my CSCS and USA weightlifting and all the other certifications and started training, working in a gym in San Diego, and then transitioned to the university setting for two years while we were in Boulder. And then once we had our daughter that started to eat into time with my daughter being just at the back end call of college football. And then we moved here and joined back up with Lifetime. And here we are a year later.

Kenny Bailey (05:10)
There you

Tom Regal (05:12)
Nice.

Kenny Bailey (05:12)
So you're San Diego to Boulder, and now you're doing Chattanooga. So pretty much the top five triathlon cities you decided to just bounce.

Alex Hildebrandt (05:16)
Yeah.

Tom Regal (05:20)
Yeah

Alex Hildebrandt (05:22)
Yeah, and most of my training is done inside. So it's great. I really take advantage of my surroundings.

Kenny Bailey (05:25)
There you

Tom Regal (05:27)
Yeah, yes

Kenny Bailey (05:31)
go. So thank you for joining and thanks for the background. So we have a wide variety of people to watch the program, mainly people that are getting started on the journey of triathlon and just discovering it, for anything from a sprint distance to going to be their first half to their first full. When you have a client that

comes in and said, hey, I think I'm going to do a triathlon or you're working with clients right now that are trying to get faster or better. What do you kind of, how do you set up that kind of conversation and then what do you look for for this type of year? So we're in January, getting into, well actually we're in February, what am I talking about? So dang, that month just went by. How do you start preparing folks for that of that season?

Alex Hildebrandt (06:12)
Alrighty.

Tom Regal (06:12)
Yeah, already. Yeah.

Alex Hildebrandt (06:21)
Yeah, good question. So I think the first thing is, is this their first one? Is this, do they have experience doing endurance races? Like you asked me is, they grew up running, grew up swimming, grew up cycling, like what's their background? And then going from there, if they're brand new, easing them into the strength and conditioning this time of year, seasons, depending when your first race is like mine.

Hopefully it be Puerto Rico and that's March. that's, you know, six weeks away. So time to start training or weight training specifically has changed for me. But if they're not training till racing, total Chattanooga, that's still three months away. So they can still have a proper kind of off season, quote unquote, where we can work more hypertrophy, start preparing the muscles for.

Tom Regal (06:54)
Nice.

Alex Hildebrandt (07:17)
heavier loads and whatever the demands are and then slowly add in more of a strength phase and then we move into more sport specific or race specific training. So it all starts with what their experience level is, how trained they are.

Kenny Bailey (07:35)
So when you, so let's just assume everyone's got sort of your summer, fall kind of stuff or spring, May, June, July, August kind of thing. Where do you see the deficit at? I'm gonna guess I'm gonna, maybe I'm just applying kind of my weakness, but is it around core training that you generally see that there, is it balance, it nobody trains leg day or what do you, where do you see sort of as you,

kind of see the theme of people coming in. Where do you generally have to start working? Is it smaller muscles?

Alex Hildebrandt (08:09)
I generally start bigger muscles. Legs feed the wolf, so I'll start with the legs. Whether that's squats, deadlifts, maybe. Depending if they have any back concerns or injuries in the past. If they have Olympic weightlifting, I'd prefer to do cleans over deadlifts, because then we're getting some power development there. But I always start with the legs and then slowly start adding in.

Kenny Bailey (08:12)
Okay.

Tom Regal (08:15)
Nice.

Alex Hildebrandt (08:36)
unilateral work to work on those smaller stabilizing muscles. And then obviously core work as soon as we get later into the race, if our core starts to break down, then that just leads into biomechanical problems and our stride goes. So I don't know if you can curse on the show goes to hell. Yeah. So it, the core is important, but I'll generally start with legs and then.

Tom Regal (08:55)
yeah.

Kenny Bailey (08:55)
Hey, easy there, fellow. Easy.

Alex Hildebrandt (09:04)
that becomes more accessory work that we do trickled in near the end of the lift.

Tom Regal (09:11)
So it always seems that triathletes in general only go in one direction, right? We're running, cycling, even swimming in one direction for lateral movements and stability on that. What do you suggest for athletes to work on in that case? We're notoriously bad at that.

Alex Hildebrandt (09:30)
Yeah, we do really well moving forward. One plane of motion. Some of us controlled falling is what I call it. Yeah, lateral movements or even rotational movements are a big part of it. So lateral lunges, skaters, whether you turn that into like more of a plyometric, if the individuals adept at that type of movement.

Tom Regal (09:34)
Maybe. Yeah. Falling forward. Anything. Yes. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (09:38)
you

Alex Hildebrandt (09:59)
skaters to work on power development there. Any rotational work, again, going back to the core. If we can bulletproof the core, then that will go a long way in maintaining our form and technique as that race gets longer and longer. Yeah, so lateral movements are a big part of my training. I do that more as like unilateral work as secondary work after I do a primary squat deadlift clean.

Tom Regal (10:15)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (10:15)
Mm-hmm.

Alex Hildebrandt (10:29)
and then trickle into that as the workout goes on.

Kenny Bailey (10:29)
Ahem.

So this is gonna be a dumb question, but what is it about the legwork that you're looking for? Is it the power on the bike? Is it the power on the run? Is it the push-off? Excuse me. Is it, I mean, it doesn't help on the swim a whole lot, so, or does it?

Alex Hildebrandt (10:48)
Yeah.

No,

I mean, it can, it depends on how you swim, I guess, if you take the first 100 200 300 meters out strong, then that kicks important and getting out of the water and finishing strong on the swim to kind of wake the legs up. As we head into transition seems like transitions now are quarter mile away. And so we got to swim or run further. So waking the legs up is important in the swim. But

Kenny Bailey (11:02)
Yeah.

Tom Regal (11:15)
yeah.

Alex Hildebrandt (11:20)
primarily squats, anything to activate the glutes, those are gonna be our primary mover in everything we do. So wake up the glutes, so squats, I'll do some type of warmup with bands, whether that's like lateral shuffles, band kickbacks, anything to start activating the glutes and then we get into like the bigger primary lifts. So squats are just kind of the biggest bang for your buck. I like doing front squats because now I don't love doing 100

Kenny Bailey (11:26)
Okay.

Alex Hildebrandt (11:50)
sit ups. So if I can do front squats and force us to work our core while also training the legs, that also helps take some of the pressure off our backs. So if anyone has back problems, I'll try and work more front squats with them.

Kenny Bailey (11:54)
Yeah.

And I said hex deadlifts tend to be like those. What are your thoughts on this?

Alex Hildebrandt (12:14)
Yeah, I probably do those once or twice a week with a lot of my clients. It's easier on the lower back. Similar movement to a squat, but we're still targeting similar movements that we would in the deadlift. I just like that movement more than RDLs are conventional. It just seems to be safer for individuals, in my opinion.

Kenny Bailey (12:36)
Mm-hmm. Okay.

So run me through sort of, if I, I have a race in August, right, and you're saying that you want to have more sort of, is it heavier weights, lower reps now? Do you want kind of, and then as it progresses into the season, Tom's, you know, Tom's got to, he's going to kill me probably by May with the length of running and swimming and cycling I have to do, yeah.

Alex Hildebrandt (12:43)
Thank

Tom Regal (13:02)
May?

Alex Hildebrandt (13:04)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (13:05)
Like how do you, do you taper it down then and then do you continue to do the legs or do you focus on core or is there a pattern or a sine wave if you will?

Alex Hildebrandt (13:15)
Yeah, so I kind of reverse engineer from I think you guys last week or your last episode talked about how you play in your season. So right, if you find your A race, kind of reverse engineer your strength training from that A race. So generally, I break the off season into two phases, one focusing on like hypertrophy specific rep ranges, so like six to 12 reps that can last anywhere four to six weeks.

Tom Regal (13:24)
Mm-hmm.

Alex Hildebrandt (13:42)
And then from there, we transitioned generally to the second off season phase. That's more of a strength phase where now we're just building overall muscular strength. Depending on how much time you have, that could be four to eight weeks long. Then I get into the preseason stuff. And that's for me, I think more fun because that's where we started doing more explosive stuff with power and starting to convert some of that strength that we built in the pre-season or in the off season.

Kenny Bailey (14:05)
Hmm.

Alex Hildebrandt (14:11)
into more explosiveness stuff. when we get on the bike or on the run and that's, got little kickers, got some hills, like the legs are ready for it. and then that kind of goes till we start truly competing into the season. Then it's kind of back to a more of a hypertrophy or muscular endurance type of training. That's going to be more sports specific. So we want to maintain that strength.

Kenny Bailey (14:19)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Alex Hildebrandt (14:40)
throughout the entire season. we start to lose some of that strength, then most likely we're going to see some declines in our overall performance. So yes, now is a good time. If you're not, I think you're racing in August, right? So now's a good time for you to be lifting heavier, build up that, build up that strength. Yeah. Twist his arm. it doesn't have to be like max strength, but

Kenny Bailey (14:55)
Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Tom Regal (15:00)
He loves to hear that. He twists his arm.

Kenny Bailey (15:02)
Okay.

Yeah.

Alex Hildebrandt (15:08)
somewhere

between like one to five reps. I generally give clients a rep range in there. like two to four reps, if you hit two reps, great, we'll stay at that weight. If you hit four reps, okay, we'll add a little more weight. And it's just a way for us to see on that day, are we moving the bar well? Is the weight too light? Is it too heavy? Is the stress from previous training lows starting to accumulate? And now we need to

Adjust the weight. Not every day is going to be the same for for strength training as it is for swim, bike and run. So I like giving that kind of rep range to give people a wiggle room or some type of guidance to work within in each phase.

Kenny Bailey (15:45)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Regal (15:50)
Nice,

nice. And I think it's important to talk about the fact that we always think about weight training and I'm coming, taking it from like the triathlete view of not strength training and not having the background in that, of that, they're thinking it is always high reps. A lot of the athletes I talked to were doing the 15 reps and they're doing, you know, three sets of 15. And...

Alex Hildebrandt (16:05)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Regal (16:17)
more on the endurance side of things which they don't actually need to do and it's not building muscle in them when you talk about the hypertrophy and lifting the bigger, bigger weights at the shorter reps. Can you talk a little bit more about that, of what actually happens in those two phases?

Alex Hildebrandt (16:35)
Yeah. So hyper hypertrophy, we're like building the size of the muscle. More of the strength phase is going to be more for me. think it's about building like more of the density within it. Muscular endurance that I see that a lot where people like, I'm an endurance athlete. just should be doing endurance type of reps, 12 plus reps for everything I do. Cause that's going to be sport specific. Yes.

Kenny Bailey (17:00)
Hmm.

Alex Hildebrandt (17:03)
but that can also potentially lead us to creating imbalances or we're not allowing us to recruit our muscle fibers the way we should be. We could start moving from type one to type two or type two to type one and we start neglecting the recruitment of the entire muscle, if that makes sense.

Kenny Bailey (17:23)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think the surprising thing that you said, guess, is when you said, want explosive movements when you... And I guess I never... Because I'm that old school guy, right? You never say explosive on a triathlon, right? There's no such thing. You just sort of... Right. then... But what you're saying is that's what provides you like those kickers on the hills or when you got a grade that that explosive movement is what's the thing that's going to get you over there versus, like you said, kind of slow and low, of slow cooking. So that's surprising.

Alex Hildebrandt (17:35)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Right. I,

I, compare it a lot to like bike workouts. People aren't surprised when they see their bike efforts, you know, maybe 15, 20 second efforts at 120 % of their FTP. It's same thing, right? It's still, we're still generating power quickly. This, the power movements and the strength, it's the same thing. And it's only going to help build upon or create that muscle recruitment. So when you have those.

short 120 % FTP burst, the muscles know what to do and how to recruit those. So that's how I generally compare it to endurance athletes.

Kenny Bailey (18:31)
Okay. So.

Tom Regal (18:35)
Nice.

Kenny Bailey (18:36)
So you mentioned kind of one common mistake, which is you tend to do 12 to 15 reps. Are there other mistakes that you see people, like when you walk in, say, well, why are you doing that? any thoughts of, I know, maybe the top three. Well, the top three, like, I tend to get injured fast, so I try to not do stupid things, but I continue to do stupid things.

Tom Regal (18:47)
How much time do we have?

Alex Hildebrandt (18:48)
Yeah, very yeah, well...

I think one, and I think we're all at fault of this is not taking time to properly warm up any type of mo any type of mobility. It's not sexy. Right. Exactly. So I think as hard as we can. I think whether that's strength training, swimming, biking, running, like a proper, some type of mobility warmup band warmup to

Kenny Bailey (19:01)
in balance.

Tom Regal (19:09)
What?

Kenny Bailey (19:11)
That's what the first five miles are for in a bike ride. That's the warm up. Exactly.

Tom Regal (19:15)
hammered, hammered first five miles of bike ride.

Yeah.

Alex Hildebrandt (19:28)
activate the muscles. Generally, like if people are short on time, and I'm at fault of this at two at times, like I'll just jump into it because it's not sexy, it's somewhat monotonous. And let's just get to the fun stuff of lifting heavy weights. I would say the second one is maybe not having a plan to follow when it comes to strength training. We have plans for swim, bike, run. Why not for strength training?

Why kind of go in and I see a lot of people in the gym spend two plus hours there. And I'm like, what, what are we doing? Like, why are we still here? that's not to say like, don't take the proper rest between sets, but I think a lot of time we show up and we kind of aimlessly wander around like, let's do some back and then, let's do some like press and like, just take some time to think about it. So you can have more time to do this when bike and run.

Kenny Bailey (20:04)
Yeah

Alex Hildebrandt (20:27)
And then yeah, it's not addressing any imbalances that you may have. I have imbalances in my legs from how I sit on the saddle. So my right leg, I put out more power than my left. So in my strength training, I know I need to spend more time doing unilateral work after I do my compound movement. So I can hopefully address that and then limit the potential risk of injury.

Kenny Bailey (20:52)
So I've never heard anybody say that I swim too fast. So when it comes to, I know, I just slow that down. I'm just swimming too fast. Like pull back on that. All right, easy there, pal. So I think a lot of folks, yourself included, Alex, swim is not their favorite kind of discipline.

Alex Hildebrandt (21:04)
Yeah, pull back on the reins there. Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Regal (21:04)
Hehehehehe

Pull back, just back off a little bit.

Kenny Bailey (21:18)
When it comes to that area specifically, what do you look for for sort of a strength and training program to try to get a little bit more speed or more power, maybe just less heart rate where you feel like you're, you I know it's a, it's a, it's a beautiful balance between form counts, obviously form counts in there, but if I wanted to get sort of a stronger stroke, what would you recommend on those?

Alex Hildebrandt (21:38)
Bulletproofing the shoulders to start band work for rotator cuff, internal external rotations, working on kind of the lat recruitment. basically break down the freestyle stroke and work that process. It's not sexy either, but, it gets monotonous, but as someone who has bad shoulders, again, I think that's also where taking the time to properly warm up.

Kenny Bailey (21:58)
Mm.

Alex Hildebrandt (22:09)
to activate those shoulders before I get in the water or I start a race. That way the first 500 meters, my shoulders are yelling at me like, this is harder than I was expecting. And I think a lot of that just goes with some type of shoulder maintenance program with bands, our two and a half pound weights. Like you don't have to go heavy, just enough to like make sure we're solid.

Kenny Bailey (22:37)
So what specifically,

so when you get to a race, probably had, do you have a band with you to try to get those shoulders to warm up? So what specifically do you do?

Alex Hildebrandt (22:43)
Yeah.

I triple check everything too many times. My wife says, she's like, it hasn't moved. still there. After I set everything up, I'll usually take a band. I don't run before anything like that. All if I have a band with me, I'll do some bands, try and like anchor it to a tree. If you're fortunate enough to like be close.

Kenny Bailey (22:50)
Yeah.

Tom Regal (22:55)
Yeah

Kenny Bailey (22:55)
Hahaha!

Alex Hildebrandt (23:12)
to the race venue with the hotel or Airbnb, go back and like anchor it on a door or a wall or somewhere just to start opening up the chest, the shoulders, get some recruitment in the shoulders going. Then I'll start warming up the legs. Um, get the last few carbs in and start, but yeah, it's more for me. It's like, Oh, it's everything still where I left it. Yes. Okay. Then I'll go to the swim start.

Kenny Bailey (23:33)
to the group.

Alex Hildebrandt (23:41)
I usually, if the races allow first like a warmup swim, I don't do that. I'll rather like, I'll rather like do stuff with the fans, yeah, to do that. I just, if I don't have to get cold 20 minutes before I start, I'm not getting in the water, yeah.

Tom Regal (23:49)
I don't do that. But you're doing a warm up. Yeah, yeah.

Kenny Bailey (23:54)
Yeah.

Tom Regal (23:59)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kenny Bailey (24:01)
there.

Tom Regal (24:01)
And that activation is key. I laugh at the amount of athletes at the race that are doing nothing to warm up before even the longer races, you're just kind of like, you're looking at them like the professional athletes and football players, if you get to a game ahead of time, they're out there for an hour or more doing the simple stuff, doing the arm little circles and these big guys doing these little.

little tiny movements that we always used to laugh about in gym class, right? And you watch them do this for like an hour to get all the way up just to play a game that they're short bursts, right? And then they're on the sidelines and then short bursts are on the sidelines. And you just go, we're doing this not as a professional. We're doing it for fun. costs us way more money than we want to admit. And, and yet, you know, we don't have the luxury of a training room and you know, people that are going to take care of us and everything else and we destroy ourselves.

Alex Hildebrandt (24:37)
Yeah.

Yep.

Kenny Bailey (24:46)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Regal (24:56)
We constantly get out there without warming up and go through it and we don't understand why we didn't improve And why we're hurt. Yeah, it's like am I you know, I ran out of you know I ran out of visits to the chiropractor and my insurance plan so now I can't go and you know Or PT or whatever it is So it's it's it's good to hear you talk about that fact that it's just that's huge and it doesn't take very much time before the race We're nervous energy anyway, so yeah, take a band with you everywhere

Alex Hildebrandt (24:56)
Mm-hmm.

why we're her and now we gotta go see the doctor. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (25:01)
Yeah, Damn.

Alex Hildebrandt (25:09)
You're correct.

No. Yeah.

Yeah, it's doesn't take much effort. You could do it 10 minutes before you start and be good. I joke with my friends like, I don't get in the water to swim because I'll do the bands. But like, I also got only 500 good meters in me. I'm not going to waste it beforehand. So that's that's where I'll do the band work. Or at least what I've told myself.

Kenny Bailey (25:40)
I'm with you on that one. There

Tom Regal (25:41)
I'm gonna waste it. Waste 100 warming up.

Yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah. Cool.

Kenny Bailey (25:49)
you go. How do you approach like, you got a 23 year old or you've got a 53 year old when they come to you? I mean, do you treat them the same or is it based off of ability or do you try to, do you have to take in consideration age or is it just?

A long history of injuries is generally what most older people have versus younger people, or their recovery is maybe longer, right, at 53 than they are at 23. Do you adjust that?

Alex Hildebrandt (26:20)
they recover or how we program after a race. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (26:21)
how you program, yeah, or, you know, for to get prepped

for their kind of preseason stuff.

Alex Hildebrandt (26:27)
Yeah, generally, like if it's after a season, I generally have like a transition phase where it's like take two to four weeks to just do what feels good. Don't you don't need to rush back into the weight room with me. A lot of it more is like, let's do light mobility work, do some light stretching, light work, just if you ready to the body feels ready to lift, but we'll lift, it won't be heavy. It's just like.

Kenny Bailey (26:40)
Gay.

Alex Hildebrandt (26:55)
get some type of general movement, whether it's body weight or like kettlebell or dumbbells. and then yeah, it's generally, have that conversation at the beginning while we're warming up. How's the body feel today? What hurts? What doesn't hurt? Is there something lingering from the race? Did something creep up? What can we do to speed that recovery process up? Maybe we don't touch away. Maybe it's more time to just work on stretching mobility.

how maybe it's more of an educational time where we, how can we start implementing things for before or after the race or we talk nutrition or a lot of it is outside of the weight room that we can do to better prepare ourself or prep for recovery. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (27:32)
Hmm.

Yeah. And

that goes into a matter of your 20 or 50. that,

Alex Hildebrandt (27:44)
Yeah,

yeah. I take the same approach with myself as I do with some of my clients that are older than me. It's what's the body need. If the body needs more time to recover, then we're not touching weights. We'll do more lightweight stuff. We don't need to rush into it. Especially if you have, if it's an A race or a B race or C race and we're training through it, it's not, it's not one session isn't going to make or break.

your strength training program.

Kenny Bailey (28:16)
How often during the week do you do that then? Do you at least one, three days a week of them doing strikes training? What's, what's your recommended sort of.

Alex Hildebrandt (28:23)
Off season, again, it's kind of preference off season. I generally do three or four days. as I now start doing more and more time on the bike and on the road for running or the treadmill, I try and maintain at least two days a week and they're more full body focused days. if we're like starting our taper, then maybe one day and it's like light more activation.

type of work. But I personally I do better when I just still train train two or three days a week. Not everybody does it. But that's where you got to know the signals your body sending you and ever all the devices we have now or tell us like how well we sleep, how recovered we are, like, use that data, but also use it to how you feel like, yeah, okay, I feel that spot on my

Kenny Bailey (28:53)
Hmm.

Okay.

Alex Hildebrandt (29:21)
or a ring or whoop is saying I didn't sleep well, then take it easy. So.

Kenny Bailey (29:28)
So Tom puts in a schedule for me. He says I need to swim on a Tuesday and Wells doing strength training. Which one do I do first?

Alex Hildebrandt (29:38)
doesn't matter. I would say do just make sure you give yourself time like give a 123 hour break between to fully like replenish get the proper nutrition in. Yeah, not for like swim and lift because they're two different type of exercises. One's anabolic in nature once catabolic. We don't too close to each other. And we're a trained individual, it's going to send mixed signals to the body. It

Kenny Bailey (29:40)
Okay.

So don't brick it.

Hmm. What's catabolic?

Alex Hildebrandt (30:08)
It's like breaking things down, right? Anabolic. Yeah, anabolic. We're building stuff up. Anabolic steroids. Catabolic is more going to be like break. That's swim, bike, run. It's breaking everything down. So if you do them too close together, you're going to the body's going to send mixed signals and it's not going to know which one to prioritize. If it's an untrained individual, they can get away with doing both.

Kenny Bailey (30:10)
Okay.

Yeah

Hmm. Got it.

Alex Hildebrandt (30:37)
relatively close together, but as they become more trained, they won't be able to or they'll splat toe or if that makes that answered your question.

Kenny Bailey (30:48)
Yeah, mean, it's a, I mean, my first assumption is I don't want to break down forms, I'll probably swim first and then do the lifting later because, or do I swim sore because it's forces.

Tom Regal (30:58)
I tend to program

no upper body heavy stuff on swim days. So you're not working, I mean, not heavy stuff. So I tend to mix and match what he's actually working on as it comes along just to go easier on certain things and maybe spend more time on legs because he's not powering legs. Unless we're trying to muscle and build strength on that, then maybe we'll hammer legs on a bike day.

Kenny Bailey (31:03)
Hmm. Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Tom Regal (31:28)
or something along those lines. And then it depends on if we're trying to build muscle, if we're trying to build muscle lift first, if we're trying, as we're getting more race specific, then I'll have them lift after and run first because I don't want them to be injured on the run and focus on that endurance portion of it. That's how I tended to look at my programming.

Kenny Bailey (31:32)
Mm-hmm.

Alex Hildebrandt (31:37)
Yeah.

Yeah. I would agree with that. I know my training just because I'm at the gym by 5 a.m. generally I'm lifting before I get home to bike or run. I think some of it is just like what makes sense with each individual's schedule, obviously. But I would agree where like, let's not if the primary focus or if we're in season and the primary focus is when bike run, let's not take away from

Tom Regal (31:56)
Yep. Yep.

Kenny Bailey (32:02)
Yeah.

Tom Regal (32:04)
Totally.

Alex Hildebrandt (32:15)
the gains we need to make on swim, bike and run by lifting.

Kenny Bailey (32:18)
Yeah, Is it easier for you to get somebody to build up muscle, which is harder, somebody to try to gain weight or gain muscle or somebody that's used to lifting all the time and you need to detune them down because they go for the pump, that kind of thing. Is it easier to have that experience and then detune it or would you rather mold somebody from the ground up to get rid of habits that may have formed?

Alex Hildebrandt (32:47)
I don't have a preference either way. I think the individual who is more trained will see results as long as, again, this is assuming nutrition is on point. If nutrition is on point, then the trained individual will see results quicker than the non-trained one. Now, it's taking someone new who hasn't had a whole lot of experience with lifting.

Kenny Bailey (32:53)
Mm-hmm.

Alex Hildebrandt (33:18)
you can, like you said, mold them into the way endurance athletes, yeah. And we can start catering from the beginning where maybe they don't have a preconceived notion of like, this is what lifting should be. So you can kind of skip some steps where you don't have to like, unteach them, not bad habits, but like different way of looking at their strength training.

Kenny Bailey (33:21)
to proper form and all that, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Tom Regal (33:44)
You could tell this podcast is really Kenny's therapy session. If you haven't noticed that yet. That's why we do this. Asking for a friend.

Kenny Bailey (33:47)
Yeah, it really is. All my podcasts are just therapy sessions. So let's say the average individual. Ask it for a friend.

Alex Hildebrandt (33:48)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's okay. yeah.

Kenny Bailey (33:59)
Yeah, it's a giant therapy session. So when it comes to, we brushed on nutrition, but not very much. When it comes to nutrition, before the workouts, where do you see the, it, people don't.

good enough nutrition before the workout or they think, well, I just did a great workout, so I'm going to go eat chicken wings or which or is it both or where do you see the sort of the the areas that they need to look out for?

Alex Hildebrandt (34:25)
I would probably see it more like...

probably in the sense of like, I just did a three hour bike ride. I'll eat whatever I want to eat because I just worked out for three hours. So I need all the food. Sure. There's some, some truth to that. as long as we're getting the proper protein and I'm not one who like counts macros, but as long as we're getting close to the proper protein, fats,

Kenny Bailey (34:38)
Yeah.

Alex Hildebrandt (35:01)
Usually it's on those longer days. People tend to derail themselves because then all of sudden a nice beer sounds good and a pizza sounds good because Zwift told me I burned eight pieces of pizza. So why not go have a piece of pizza? Yeah. so I, I would say it's probably after training tends to be harder. I do a lot of my training. I don't wouldn't call it.

Kenny Bailey (35:15)
Yeah

Tom Regal (35:16)
Why not have eight pizzas?

Alex Hildebrandt (35:31)
Fastedness necessarily, but just I'm not I don't love to eat before I get on the bike or before I run Sometimes you have to to train your gut to take on the proper carbohydrates during a race, but I Would say usually it's after the fact that's when I'm like, it's time to eat I didn't eat beforehand and I just burned a thousand calories. I'm gonna fake a lark deficit I can get away with whatever I want right now

And maybe there's some truth to that into the middle of the season or if your training is really ramped up, but right now where everyone probably is in the season, don't do it.

Kenny Bailey (36:09)
Do

Tom Regal (36:10)
Yeah

Kenny Bailey (36:10)
you have a, I know like when I'm in the middle of a race and I want to finish this thing, I have sort of like a food dream, like what I'm gonna eat when I get done, like after a race. Do you have like a, what's your go-to sort of food dream you have when you're, you know, six miles into the run, you got a few to go, like I can't wait to get done because I can have this. Is there something that, like what's your prize?

Alex Hildebrandt (36:30)
Yeah. Yeah. Usually,

usually when I'm swimming, I'm thinking about just getting out of the water and biking. And then I'm on the bike and I think about, let me just run. And then I'm on the run and I'm like, man, I'd really like a beer right now. And I don't know. I don't know when Ironman stopped giving away beer, real beer at races. like athletic beer or athletic brewery doesn't hit. Doesn't doesn't. Yeah. Doesn't hit the same way.

Kenny Bailey (36:37)
Hey

Hahaha

Yeah.

Tom Regal (36:55)
Yeah, when they became a sponsor.

Kenny Bailey (36:55)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Alex Hildebrandt (36:59)
I don't eat.

Kenny Bailey (36:59)
Yeah.

Alex Hildebrandt (37:00)
I, hard for me to want to eat after having a bunch of gels during a race. so usually, usually it's a couple of beers or margaritas. And then three hours later, I'll be like, okay. Where's that pizza? but usually it's a beer, a beer first. Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (37:05)
Yeah.

Totally understand.

Yeah.

Nice. Race for the beer.

Tom Regal (37:22)
So you race for the beer.

Kenny Bailey (37:25)
Tom, do you have one? What's the?

Tom Regal (37:25)
Nice.

I used to like a big steak and a glass of wine, red wine. That was like, I can eat afterwards. I can eat afterwards. I stopped that a little bit as I got older because I found actually having the alcohol made for a harder recovery. So now that I'm much older, I kind of taper off that a little bit. Yeah, much older.

Kenny Bailey (37:33)
Wow. Yeah.

Alex Hildebrandt (37:34)
Oof. WAH!

Kenny Bailey (37:52)
much.

There you go.

Tom Regal (37:56)
So, but I do like to eat within, probably within 30 minutes. I try to get something in my system right away, because then I start to perk back up. When I did like class this summer, my sister-in-law ran off to one of the restaurants and got me two double patty burgers. And we got back to the house and I scarfed one. I took a shower and I scarfed the second one and that was, I was perfect, right?

Kenny Bailey (38:25)
Wow.

Alex Hildebrandt (38:25)
How many carbohydrates do you intake on the bike? A lot. You seem to have an iron stomach.

Kenny Bailey (38:28)
What?

Tom Regal (38:30)
A lot, yeah.

I do really well with that. I'm somewhere around a thousand calories an hour or a thousand grams of carbohydrate per hour. That's what we're shooting for. So yeah, I eat a lot on it. And I like real foods. The longer the race, the more real foods I need to have. I need to have boiled potatoes, yams, stuff like that that actually settles a little bit better in my stomach. If I just do all gels,

Kenny Bailey (38:33)
Yeah.

Alex Hildebrandt (38:35)
Yeah

Okay.

Kenny Bailey (38:43)
Dang.

Tom Regal (38:59)
I kind of fall apart on the run.

Alex Hildebrandt (39:01)
Is that

in like Half Iron Man's you're doing that or is that more like the full distance? Okay.

Tom Regal (39:06)
Full distance, full distance,

half iron, I might. I might stick some potatoes on the bike and have them on the bike. I just stick them in a little, just a little bento box, So, yeah. And then I tend to mix in, yeah, a little tailwind. So you can mix up quite a bit of tailwind for liquid carbohydrates.

Alex Hildebrandt (39:14)
Where do you put those? Just in the bento box? Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (39:20)
Yeah. He's got a little spoon. They're mashed potatoes, actually. He's just...

The sun warms them up.

Alex Hildebrandt (39:33)
Yeah.

Tom Regal (39:33)
So

between that and just having a little bit, it's not like I'm having a full pound of potatoes or anything. I'm having like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, hey, the little small ones cut in half. Maybe you can get maybe five or six of those at most. It just adds for a little flavor change. So it's kind of nice.

Alex Hildebrandt (39:37)
A baked potato with you. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (39:38)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. He asked for sour

cream when he gets to the aid station. Chives? Would you happen to have any sharp cheddar? There you go. That's funny. So Alex, what does your race season look like this year? What's 2025 shaping up to be?

Alex Hildebrandt (39:51)
No way. Some chives and bacon. Yeah.

Tom Regal (39:51)
chives I actually asked for chives and definitely bacon

Alex Hildebrandt (40:02)
hopefully Puerto Rico in March. I think that's like March 15th, 16th. that's all dependent on my wife. My wife is pregnant with our second child. She's due first week in April. So right now she's given me the green light to do Puerto Rico. That's three weeks before. So fingers crossed, Puerto Rico. If that goes well and I qualify for worlds, then I'll probably shut things down.

Kenny Bailey (40:14)
Congratulations.

Alex Hildebrandt (40:32)
I'd like to do Chattanooga again. was having a good race there, but then got a flat tire eight miles from the finish last year. So that kind of derailed the day there. so Puerto Rico, probably Chattanooga, and then it depends on worlds. So if I qualify for worlds again, I'll probably try and do a September race or late August race, and then go to Spain for worlds.

Kenny Bailey (40:40)
Yuck.

Alex Hildebrandt (41:02)
I don't call November, November 15th, 14th, something around there. so I'd like to do a fall race regardless. I'd like to do Augusta. I've never done 70.3 Augusta. So I'd like to do that. Maybe Louisville. I don't know when that is in August, but maybe that 17th.

Kenny Bailey (41:03)
What in his world? Okay.

Tom Regal (41:29)
17th

Kenny Bailey (41:30)
17th.

Tom Regal (41:31)
we're doing it come join us come join us

Kenny Bailey (41:32)
We have a red star on it. That's our red star race.

Alex Hildebrandt (41:32)
Yeah, that locked and loaded. Yeah. so maybe,

maybe that, so I really, it all depends on Puerto Rico. If I get a spot at Puerto Rico, then we'll shut things down till August, at least for races. I like doing the shorter races. sometimes I feel like my coach probably gets a little frustrated because then it turns into like, Hey, we were supposed to do a three hour bike ride, but you went and did a sprint.

We're still going to do the extra two hours, right? So it's like, yes, we'll get back on the bike. but I think he knows I also do well racing myself into shape as well. that was the nice thing about San Diego season started early there. so yeah, I think Puerto Rico, Chad Nuga, a August, September race, and then Spain, hopefully. So yeah.

Kenny Bailey (42:04)
Hehehehe

Tom Regal (42:05)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (42:27)
Very cool, nice. How

you feeling for March right now?

Alex Hildebrandt (42:33)
like it's coming quick. had a good, I had a good race there last year. I do well in the heat I've discovered. So that didn't bother me. It's the bike's pretty flat. The run has like one steep hill. kind of do twice each lap. but otherwise it's pretty flat. So I, it suited me well last year. I was probably in a little better shape.

Kenny Bailey (42:35)
Yeah.

Alex Hildebrandt (43:04)
at this point last year than where I currently am, but I don't know. We'll see. Just got to show up and race. Yeah.

Tom Regal (43:11)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (43:11)
Well, you also,

I mean, you're recently smarter than you did last year, right? Because you, you know, what you developed and what you learned, right? Well, I mean, you hope anyway, you know, the course it's not, yeah, I guess so.

Tom Regal (43:17)
Maybe.

Alex Hildebrandt (43:18)
Yeah, well, I mean, we'll find out. Yeah, I'm not going

in blind to the race this year or naive. I know I handle heat well now and the humidity didn't bother me. So I think I just know the course better or know when to when I could push it or not. And Chad Newguy, I don't know if they sounds like they maybe changed the course again. So who knows?

Kenny Bailey (43:23)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's a little weird.

Tom Regal (43:45)
Not

for the 70.3. They're back to the original course, the original bike for that. They've changed it for the long course for the full distance in September. And they're probably gonna be that way. Cause I think the folks down in Georgia, that one nice section down there, I think it comes down to the fact that a full distance down there just takes, it just blocks the roads for too long. So I think that's kind of what it's coming down to.

Alex Hildebrandt (43:48)
no.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

too long. Yeah.

Tom Regal (44:13)
I don't have any insider knowledge on that. just I know for the 70.3 they are back to that original course. Yeah, so the one loop.

Alex Hildebrandt (44:19)
original course. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (44:20)
That should be fun.

Alex Hildebrandt (44:22)
And it was good until I thought Chattanooga is a good course until maybe the last 12 miles. And then you kind of go through like a couple of small towns and traffic starts weaving in to you as well. And it gets tight. The run course I liked, I think going out by the boathouse there, it gets congested on your second lap just with everybody on that path.

Tom Regal (44:31)
the root.

Kenny Bailey (44:37)
Mm-hmm. That's not fun.

Tom Regal (44:47)
Yeah.

Alex Hildebrandt (44:48)
But once you get through there, it's nice. I like running over the bridges and people yelling at you. So you got to look spry.

Tom Regal (44:56)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (44:59)
yeah, this doesn't hurt at all. Thanks, touch this sign to get good luck. Get out of my way kid, I gotta finish this thing. So, that's funny.

Tom Regal (45:00)
Yeah, look at me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Alex Hildebrandt (45:00)
Yeah, okay, I'm out of eye shot. Okay, could suffer.

What about

you guys? Anything other than Louisville? Any other race? Any other races?

Tom Regal (45:15)
Louisville.

I'll probably do some sprints to I'll be at the Nashville Music City and Chattanooga's waterfront for the I'll probably do those sprints because they're fun. I'm gonna be at them anyway So I'll be hanging out. That'll be good. And then Louisville is it for me for my a race. That would be it I don't know what else I'll throw in maybe a trail runner something else in the fall, but we'll see but got a crazy

crazy spring and summer so we'll see what I can fit in. Kind of throw that in.

Kenny Bailey (45:52)
Yeah, same thing.

I think I'll just do a couple sprints, then do Louisville, and then I got this, you know, Schmancy new gravel bike. I'd actually want to start, get on some gravel courses at the back half of the year. Start. So, yeah, I've heard about it. You see the pictures. I'm zooming in. So, yeah, I know I should have, but I don't know. just, so on top of all that, I understand you're also part of Lifetime Started to Run Club. Do you want to talk a little about that?

Alex Hildebrandt (46:00)
I haven't heard about this. Tell me more about the grab. I've heard I've heard about I'm surprised you didn't write it yesterday to be honest

Tom Regal (46:02)
you haven't? my goodness.

Alex Hildebrandt (46:20)
Yes.

Tom Regal (46:21)
yeah, yeah.

Alex Hildebrandt (46:22)
Yes. We started a run club right in the middle of winter. So nice and cold time. It's now that it's warming up more and more people are showing up. we meet at lifetime 7 a.m. Sunday morning. Recently, we've been doing really a 5k focused route this past weekend. There was maybe four or five of us who went about five miles. So it's kind of dependent on who shows up. It's open to.

Kenny Bailey (46:26)
Yeah

Tom Regal (46:26)
Good

timing.

Alex Hildebrandt (46:49)
all abilities and pace levels. We've got another trainer who also is having to run because he's in the military and he's got to pass that PT test. So it's forcing him to run. So that's good. So he's kind of also being a group leader for kind of that second pack. But it's open to members, non-members. All is welcome. We just want to get the community running together. Yeah.

Tom Regal (46:59)
Heh.

Kenny Bailey (47:00)
Yeah.

Tom Regal (47:16)
Very cool.

Kenny Bailey (47:17)
Yeah.

And it's just, it's nice to be able to run with a group of folks, right? It gives you motivation. It allows you to like, you kind of forget the miles you're on and that kind of deal. Yeah.

Alex Hildebrandt (47:22)
Yeah. Yeah.

I, some of my best running was in San Diego when I was running with my run group there and a lot of them were better runners than me. And so it forces you to just kind of get comfortable running faster. That's when I really started to pick up more track workouts and you can become a lot better runner by just forcing yourself to run with other people and get off the treadmill.

Tom Regal (47:48)
Totally. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (47:49)
Yeah.

Tom Regal (47:50)
Get off

Kenny Bailey (47:51)
Yeah.

Tom Regal (47:51)
the treadmill. Yeah. So that's Sunday mornings at what time?

Alex Hildebrandt (47:54)
Sunday morning, 7 a.m. We start, lifetime, yep, we start running at 7, so show up a little early.

Tom Regal (47:55)
7 a.m. at the Franklin Lifetime. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're moving at seven so don't show up at seven damn it not waiting for you

Kenny Bailey (48:02)
There you go.

Move it, it's a, Yeah. And hey,

I brought my dog last time, so that was kinda fun. So, you know, a little furry critter. Got a chance to get a run too, so yeah, it's kinda fun. Well Alex, we appreciate your time today, and you know, we're excited. We hopefully wanna catch up with you again in the next few months, see how your race went. Also, kinda give us some, you know, mid, sort of mid-season.

Alex Hildebrandt (48:11)
Yeah.

Tom Regal (48:12)
Nice. Very cool. Dog friendly.

Kenny Bailey (48:31)
Pacing sort of where people should be at, what we deal with, having to work around some injuries, how do we do that as people start, you know, if they start getting nagging, sort of aches and sores or, you know, how can they kind of work around those things? It'd be kind of fun to get that. yeah, we appreciate your time today.

Tom Regal (48:46)
Yeah,

yeah, awesome. Thanks for being on. Thanks everybody for all your comments and your five stars thumbs up. Give us lots of reviews. If you've got any comments that aren't worth five stars or all the thumbs up, let us know. Hey, we wanna get better at this. And we appreciate all of that. It helps the algorithm and gets this out to more and more people. So we appreciate everybody listening. So Alex and Kenny, thanks guys. I appreciate it.

Alex Hildebrandt (48:47)
Love to. Yeah.

Thank you.

Tom Regal (49:15)
Catch you on the next one.