What is The Athlete Blog?
In short, The Athlete Blog is a place to discover how to use data & individual metrics to ‘tune the lifestyle up’ for lifelong performance. To lead an active and fulfilling life and say YES to running that marathon, embarking on a mountain trek with a group of friends, or going for a surf camp with your family. That is the promise I aim to deliver on for anyone who engages with my website. And I do it by sharing tools & strategies that help optimize the lifestyle for lifelong performance.
The blog was originally a way for me to share my experience across multiple sports (both as a professional and amateur athlete). My goal was to help others get in top shape and able to fulfil their awesome (and sometimes crazy) athletic goals. Over time, that “project” grew into a business that educates and inspires thousands of people to start their own adventures and live life to the fullest. Healthy, strong, uber-productive and – ultimately – happy.
I truly believe in the power of physical exercise to kickstart a journey of self-development and a way to discover our purpose in life. Which is why cultivating the athlete’s mentality and applying it to daily life is at the core of my philosophy. Developing oneself, focusing on what matters, accepting challenges, persevering, embracing change and overall becoming the best version of yourself. And doing all of it by listening to yourself – through individual metrics.
Who is the resilient athlete?
In my coaching practice I often use the term resilient athlete. Essentially, it’s someone who understands the long-term value of self-care and creating foundational strength in the body and mind. That person is in it for the long haul and builds him-/herself from the ground up to withstand any pressure, be able to jump on any opportunity and take any challenge life throws at them head on.
In other words, resilient athletes do not put their entire lives on hold to zero in on one specific race or challenge. Instead, they stay active throughout the years – no matter what.
Logically, becoming one is not an overnight thing, but rather a continuous process. And that is exactly what The Athlete Blog delivers – a step-by-step framework designed to build foundational fitness and develop resilience through gradual mindset and lifestyle changes.
The Athlete Blog provides lots of actionable advice to incorporate into daily life – one small step at a time. Strategies to cultivate the mindset to overcome setbacks and grow in confidence. Systems to adopt healthy lifestyle habits to have more energy and feel less stressed. And, of course, training tactics to get fit for all those experiences and adventures you dream of having throughout the lifetime.
The story behind The Athlete Blog
My name is Andrejs Birjukovs and I’m an adventure, running and triathlon coach. At heart, though, I’m a multisport athlete with a background in swimming, kayaking, marathon running and long-distance triathlons. Originally from Latvia, I represented my country on numerous occasions in World and European Championships, as well as the Universiade.
Throughout my competitive athlete career I’ve learned the value of reinventing myself through consistent physical exercise and lifestyle changes. Now I use that experience to coach others how to sharpen the art of listening to their bodies through individual metrics.
It takes a burnout to pivot
You can say I learned the hard way that pushing hard does not guarantee success.
For a long time I lived in search of peak performance. Tunnel visioned on a specific race/result. Looking to squeeze out every ounce of energy I have only to arrive at the finish line with nothing left in the tank. In a weird way exhausting myself fully brought a sense of achievement and made me feel good about myself – that I’ve given it my best shot.
In the moment, I thought I did what all top athletes do – train hard and give your best. At the beginning that strategy worked really well. I managed to go from a back-of-the-pack rookie to a world-class athlete in span of a mere few years. It felt great to win national championships and place in Top20 at World & European championships. But I wasn’t prepared for what came next. I stopped progressing, got over-trained frequently and started to suffer from illnesses and injuries frequently.
My body was telling me something and I decided to press the reset button. I reviewed all of my past training logs in search of answers to the question what is going wrong? I looked for patterns and started to put together all the knowledge & experience I had from different training philosophies into my own training methodology. And that’s when I felt I’ve discovered a deep reservoir of untapped potential.
The power of data, individual metrics & listening to your body
Taking a break and diving into my personal metrics helped me to gain perspective. I organized my training process based on what my body needed and it felt as if I’m building myself from the ground up – stronger, faster and more resilient.
Up until that point it took me years of daily mistakes to find the path that would ultimately lead me to lasting results. But once I figured it out, everything started to fall into place very quickly. I was recovering much quicker and progressing again. In fact, in my first year back I broke my long-standing Personal Records. But I didn’t stop there. Instead, I started writing programs and giving training advice to some of my friends – a hobby that quickly turned into a passion and then business. Since then, I tested my methodology in several different sports, coaching hundreds of athletes of all levels of performance reach their best.
That was when I started my blog. And as it grew, I launched my data-driven adventure, running & triathlon coaching program, as well as created a range of digital products to support people on their health & wellness journey.
In the nearest future I’m aiming to create an online course that would put all practical resources in an easy-to-follow framework that I use during my coaching sessions. Moreover, I am also excited about my book “The Resilient Athlete” that will be published later this year.
Current challenges (business & personal)
The biggest issue in health & fitness business is the amount of information (and misinformation) that is currently out there. While everything is just one search phrase away, navigating through all of the available information and understanding what’s relevant can be time-consuming for a regular person. So, many tend to deviate towards what’s easy and quick – 3 easy steps to six-pack abs, 5 secret tips to lose fat quickly, 4 weeks to your first 5K. Most of that advice is actually valid, but it’s also very simplified and misses the foundational principles that would make the performance improvements last.
On top of that, the wearable technology is booming which provides people with data about their bodies – heart rate, sleep data, stress, speed, race & VO2max predictions, etc. However, the understanding of that data and how the body works (so that an athlete can make an informed change) is often not there.
For coaches that often means we have to find a way to connect with a person who has already tried a lot of quick fixes on their own and, most probably, saw little result. They might have even played around with wearable technology and tweaked their lifestyle themselves, but had hard time putting things into perspective and using that technology in a productive way
Sharing the fact that sustainable results require time, effort and discipline is not something that people are very excited to hear. So, even though as coaches we have experience in building fitness and developing a healthy lifestyle, we have to consider that every person’s situation is unique.
The challenge is always to get a person excited about doing the work and forgetting about those quick fixes that didn’t work. That includes looking at the current situation from an individual’s perspective and understanding what the lead domino is. In other words, what is that one step that would help them optimize the training process and start implementing lifestyle changes they need to get where they want to go. It can be coming up with exciting challenges along the way to gamify the approach or vary the training process to ensure they can fit activities into their busy lifestyle. The sky is the limit.
On the personal side, the most challenging issue I’m facing is that there aren’t enough hours in the day to finish everything I planned to do. Host coaching calls and create training plans. Write informative blog posts and film YouTube videos. Learn about new training methodologies, psychology and communication skills to develop myself further as a coach. And much more.
At this point in my business, I’m doing it all alone while working a full-time job and trying to be present for my wife and kids. It’s hard to stay focused on creative work with so many other things happening in the background. Not to mention how challenging it is to carve out some time during the day to complete the tasks I have in mind. Which is why I’m looking into how I can get support and outsource some of the work to be able to scale the business.
Opportunities in the coaching business
Where there are challenges, there are always opportunities. In my athletic and corporate careers, I learned that growth only comes when you overcome resistance. It can be lifting weights in the gym, running intervals at the track or pushing yourself to learn something new. Starting your own business is definitely a way to create that resistance and force yourself to learn.
When I started my blog I knew very little about web-design, SEO, writing in an entertaining way, photography, videography, coaching and communication, social media, business. Through practice I learned all of these and many more skills, which now enable me to provide a much better service to the people who are interested in improving their health & wellness. It’s been a lot of work and I know there’s more ahead, but I am excited about this opportunity.
Digital product business is still relatively new and the best part of it is that it’s very personality driven. That means, people who provide the same service might be presenting the information in a different way, which means there’s still a lot of room for new businesses to join. It’s a unique opportunity where a person can leverage their personality into a brand with a worldwide audience. And then use that brand to develop new and exciting products that help people in a meaningful way. As mentioned already, I’m personally working on an online course that would help them incorporate some of the elements of a very efficient athlete lifestyle into their own lives.
My business advice to others
I used to be that person who thought he needs to learn everything before starting a business to be able to manage one. But my experience taught me that even getting 2 university degrees is not enough. Surprise, surprise, I don’t know everything. And that’s ok, because just like personal transformation, business is a journey. It’s not possible to establish something that will stay the same for years to come and will finance your retirement. You will change, the world will change and, inevitably, the business will change. So, the only way to keep up is to keep going.
As they say, you can only steer a ship that is already moving, so just start and keep learning & growing. If you have an idea for a project, just go for it! You don’t need to have everything figured out before you start.
I hope you found this helpful. If you’re interested in learning more about life-long performance, sign up for my newsletter to stay connected. I share new articles, tips, products, and resources weekly to help you do more and live full!
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