Welcome to that Traflon show, the podcast presented by Scientific Traflon and hosted by me, Michael

Erikson. Today's guest is Dr. David Lipman, who is returning to the podcast after first

appearing on the show back in October of 2023.

David has a background spanning exercise, physiology, podiatry and medicine,

and has worked in healthcare, coaching, both in team sports and endurance settings,

academia and in the sports industry.

And David's main work these days is in consulting with companies in the sports and fitness

industries alongside that.

He's also a prolific writer on Substack for Nexus Health and Performance and a podcaster.

He's the co-host of 1% Better Hidden Stories in Sport and the host of the Norwegian Method

podcast.

Outside of his professional work, David has always been an athlete himself with the background in middle distance running, strength training and powerlifting, and in recent years, a lot of road running and marathons. David, it's a pleasure to have you back on the show. How are you doing? I'm well, thanks, mate. It's a pleasure to be back. Appreciate the invite and always enjoy our podcast. So very excited for this one.

Yeah, same. Absolutely. And I think we've got just the topic for the two of us to discuss today.

I think it's really, it will fit us both very well. We will discuss as listeners we'll have seen from the title, I assume, of this

episode, Innovations in Endurance Sports. Let's start with a bit of a broader overview in terms

of common denominators of innovations that succeed and how that sets them apart from those that

fail. What are your thoughts on that?

I think there's a few things and there will be commonalities, right? These will be called out. We're going to talk about some ones that we think of succeeded and failed and then some postulating about what's coming. And I think using an innovation and a design sort of framework, you've got to kind of be solving a problem, is the first thing, right? Like, on some level, endurance athletes,

particularly triathletes, just enjoy tech and gadgets and playing around with it, right? But I don't know how durable that is. And it kind of depends, right? If your model, and it's not because I believe, you know, I'll use some companies that people would be familiar with just because they're familiar with them rather than, you know, specific examples, but something like core, body temperature sensors, regardless of whether they're good, bad, or indifferent, because of their model, which is a single price, single cost, once you bought it, they kind of don't care and they don't have to care. So in something like that, it's pretty easy to get broad adoption from people who are tinkering as the triathletes are. But if you have a more subscription-based model, then you have to be solving a problem, otherwise people are just going to cancel their subscription, right? So they have to see some utility in it. There can't be too much friction. And I think being able to really notice a difference, and it's hard to quantify, but we'll give some examples where I think it'll become apparent. But being able to see a

difference very quickly and noticeably, I think is helpful as well. So there's no question about,

oh, is this helping or not? Is it placebo or not? Like a very stark, oh, this is helping and it's

solving that problem or it's creating this benefit. Friction is obviously one of them. It can't be

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