The Athlete's Compass

In this episode of The Athletes Compass Podcast, Dr. Kristen Holmes, Global Head of Human Performance at Whoop, explains why sleep-wake consistency may be one of the most powerful yet overlooked drivers of performance, recovery, and long-term health. Drawing from years of athlete and wearable data, she shares how regular sleep timing is linked to better physiology, improved resilience, and stronger performance outcomes across sports. The conversation also covers practical circadian habits, including morning light, moderate exercise, breathwork, and time-restricted eating, plus strategies for athletes racing early, parents navigating broken sleep, and women experiencing perimenopause or menopause.
Key episode takeaways
Sleep-wake consistency may be more predictive of performance than many athletes realize.
Even Division I athletes may show declines in resting physiology with as little as 45 minutes of sleep timing variability.
Sleep consistency helps drive sleep quality, restoration, and autonomic robustness.
Four free habits can support better sleep consistency: morning natural light, moderate activity, slow-paced breathing, and time-restricted eating.
Low-to-moderate intensity exercise can act as a recovery-promoting tool, while high-intensity work should be used strategically.
Breathwork after stress can help prevent stress from accumulating across the day and disrupting sleep onset.
Eating most calories during daylight hours may support circadian alignment and reduce competition between digestion and sleep.
For early races or travel, athletes can “bank resilience” by staying consistent in the days and weeks before disruption.
Parents with young children should treat poor sleep as a temporary phase, use strategic naps, protect early-night sleep, and avoid bright light during night wakings.
Fitness appears protective across many contexts, including shift work, menopause symptoms, and general resilience.

Four core circadian behaviors that improve cardiorespiratory fitness through consistent sleep
Paul Warloski - Simple Endurance Coaching
Marjaana Rakai | Nordic Performance Lab

In this episode of The Athletes Compass, Paul Warloski, Dr. Paul Laursen, and Marjaana Rakai explain Athletica’s Workout Reserve and the new Systems Engagement feature. Workout Reserve is described as a battery-like metric that shows how close an athlete is to their historical best across different durations, from short sprint efforts to long aerobic performances. The team discusses how athletes can use it in real time through Velocity or Garmin, how negative values can signal breakthrough efforts, and why good historical data is essential. They also explain how Systems Engagement helps athletes and coaches see which physiological systems were stressed in a workout or race, making it easier to reverse engineer training toward the actual demands of an event.
Key episode takeaways
Workout Reserve acts like a “battery” showing how much capacity an athlete has left relative to their recent historical bests.
A value near 100% suggests the athlete is fresh relative to that effort, while 0% means they are approaching a known personal limit. Negative values indicate new, uncharted territory.
Workout Reserve can be viewed retrospectively in Athletica, live in Velocity sessions, or through the Garmin Workout Reserve data field.
Systems Engagement shows which energy systems were stressed during a workout or selected segment, such as neuromuscular sprint, anaerobic, VO2 max, threshold, or aerobic systems.
A 30/30 interval session may engage both VO2 max and threshold systems, which matches the expected training adaptations.
The tool is most useful when athletes have enough valid historical data, including power or pace tests such as FTP tests, 5K tests, or sport-specific calibration sessions.
Workout Reserve and Systems Engagement are based on external load, such as pace or power, not internal load measures like heart rate, lactate, or RPE.
Coaches can use Systems Engagement to check whether an athlete actually trained the intended system.
Race analysis can help athletes identify which physiological systems were most taxed, then design training to target those demands.
Not every session should push Workout Reserve to zero or negative; easy aerobic sessions still have a purpose.

How a ProTour cycling coach uses Athletica Workout Reserve
Workout Reserve: A New Way to Understand Performance with Dr. Andrea Zignoli
Scientific Paper in Sports Engineering
Race Analysis - Volta Valenciana
Garmin Connect IQ | Home
Train and Race with WR on Garmin
Athletica Workout Reserve | Home
Paul Warloski - Simple Endurance Coaching
Marjaana Rakai | Nordic Performance Lab

In this episode of The Athletes Compass Podcast, Dr. Iris Nafshi joins the team to discuss her research on “Iron Moms,” endurance athletes who train for Ironman while navigating motherhood, work, family expectations, and guilt. Drawing from her PhD dissertation, Beyond Grit and Guilt, Iris explains that athletic identity does not compete with maternal identity; it can expand it. The conversation explores how moms persist through complex schedules, emotional pressure, limited support, and societal expectations by reframing guilt, building systems, practicing self-compassion, and embracing the mindset that “something is better than nothing.”
Key Takeaways
Athletic identity and maternal identity do not have to be separate or competing roles.
“Balance” may be the wrong word; integration and seasons of focus are more realistic.
Mom guilt often comes from societal expectations that mothers should be endlessly selfless.
Many Iron Moms reframe training as role modeling strength, commitment, and self-respect for their children.
Grit helps athletes start, but it is not enough to sustain long-term training through real life.
Iris adds self-compassion to the HERO framework — hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism — creating “SHIRO.”
Support systems matter. As Iris says, nobody does Ironman alone.
Flexibility is essential: shortening a workout, moving it, or doing something imperfectly is often better than skipping entirely.
“Something is better than nothing” becomes a powerful mindset for training, work, creativity, and life.
Children are watching, and they often notice the dreams parents pursue — and the ones they give up.

Dr. Iris Nafshi
Paul Warloski - Simple Endurance Coaching
Marjaana Rakai | Nordic Performance Lab

In this episode of The Athletes Compass, Dr. William B. Irvine joins Paul Warloski, Paul Laursen, and Marjaana Rakai to explore how Stoic philosophy can help endurance athletes train, race, and live with more resilience. Irvine connects rowing, coaching, discomfort, failure, and competition to practical Stoic ideas such as focusing on what you can control, reframing setbacks, practicing negative visualization, and valuing process over outcomes. The conversation moves from “keep your head in the boat” to “one more stroke,” offering athletes a grounded mental toolkit for handling race-day adversity, physical discomfort, self-doubt, and the temptation to tie self-worth to results.
Key Takeaways
“Keep your head in the boat” is a powerful Stoic metaphor: focus on what you can control, not the weather, competitors, or external conditions.
Irvine’s practical Stoic advice: “Do what you can with what you’ve got where you are.”
Athletes can reframe setbacks as “Stoic tests” rather than disasters.
Discomfort and pain are not the same; endurance athletes learn to tolerate discomfort as part of growth.
“One more stroke” is a simple mental strategy for surviving hard moments in training, racing, illness, or life.
Failure is valuable when it comes from attempting something difficult and learning from the result.
Competitive athletes can stay healthier mentally by focusing on process goals rather than outcome goals.
Negative visualization helps athletes appreciate what they already have and prepare for what could go wrong.
Last-time meditation can deepen gratitude: every race, ride, row, or run may someday be the last.
Stoicism is not about suppressing emotion; it is about maintaining equanimity when life or sport gets hard.

More Better Thinking | Dr. William B. Irvine
Join the Athletica 5K Virtual Race
Dr. Paul Laursen
Paul Warloski - Simple Endurance Coaching
Marjaana Rakai | Nordic Performance Lab

In this episode of The Athletes Compass Podcast, Paul Warloski, Dr. Paul Laursen, and Marjaana Rakai break down the concept of power and pace profiles — the personalized performance fingerprints hidden inside your training data. They explain how these profiles reveal an athlete’s strengths, weaknesses, critical power, and sustainable race pace without expensive lab testing. The conversation explores how Athletica uses real-world wearable data and AI coaching to prescribe training zones, assess race readiness, and predict event performance. From marathon pacing to hill-specific preparation and anaerobic profiling, the episode offers practical guidance for endurance athletes looking to train smarter and race more effectively.
Key Takeaways
A power or pace profile maps your best efforts across different durations and acts as a “performance fingerprint.”
Critical power and critical pace help determine sustainable race intensity and training zones.
Real-world wearable data may be more valuable than isolated lab testing because it reflects actual training environments.
Athletica uses historical performance data to estimate physiological markers like VO2 max and threshold power.
Accurate profiling requires maximal efforts across multiple durations — “garbage in, garbage out.”
Profiles can reveal whether an athlete is more “twitchy” (explosive) or “diesel” (endurance-focused).
AI coaching can analyze historical workouts and race-specific sessions to estimate realistic race pacing.
Race specificity matters: athletes should train in terrain and conditions similar to their target event.
Weekly training consistency and frequency may matter more than one extremely long workout.
Monitoring threshold trends over time provides insight into long-term fitness progression.

Join the Athletica 5K Virtual Race
Dr. Paul Laursen
Paul Warloski - Simple Endurance Coaching
Marjaana Rakai | Nordic Performance Lab