Success Story: Dimopoulos Coaching

Coach John Dimopoulos is an experienced, certified running coach, working with endurance athletes around the world, achieving high-performance results. He and his team of experts in training, nutrition and physical therapy have founded an endurance coaching business, helping athletes reach their goals fast, with high quality coaching services, nutritional advice and personalized training methods.

There are endurance athletes of all walks of life. Knowing that, Dimopoulos Coaching offers training plans for 5K or 10K runs, a semi-marathon, a full Marathon, trail running, ultra running, the Spartathlon and strength training.

A growing business requires increasingly more knowledge, more resources and more experience to ensure unchanging quality of service. It’s a great problem to have; but it still needs to be resolved. Let’s find out how Dimopoulos Coaching managed to do just that, using Endogusto.

We needed to know how much of what has been scheduled is actually executed, with daily notifications alerting the coach of missed or altered workouts; which is vital for the continuation and design of the program. Thus, not eliminating communication but enhancing it…

What coaching looks like for an endurance coach

An endurance coach needs science to assist in their efforts to help athletes excel in their pursuits. Using their knowledge of human physiology and their experience in real conditions, a coach can work wonders in improving performance and fitness levels. They can even improve an athlete’s psychology and add to their motivation.

I placed my trust in Science Training, which boasts the ability to provide algorithms capable of following runners’ progress, throughout the training cycle, giving invaluable information in evaluating an athlete’s physical condition, stress levels, fatigue and readiness for the race day. 
— John Dimopoulos, CEO

Defining the problem

An intricate training program needs close monitoring; for each athlete separately, no less. The whole effort can be thrown off, by the athlete suffering a mild injury or failing to execute a handful of workouts. And, readjusting the entire training program around a problem or missed workout is really a lot harder than it looks. Communication between an athlete and their coach is cardinal to identifying and resolving issues in time, while ensuring continued motivation and scientifically sound training plan readjustments with each change required. This requires time; and if it’s spent entirely on monitoring and readjusting, communication may become nearly non-existent, in some cases.

When athletes improve their personal best they get a feeling of being in peak condition. But, overtraining coincided with an athlete’s feeling of fatigue. And that’s where the coach’s intervention is of paramount importance.
— John Dimopoulos, CEO

Endurance coaching with Endogusto

Even in the first three months, we observed very accurate notifications that identify how the athletes felt after their workouts. That, along with the fact that we no longer needed to calculate each athlete’s weekly mileage and how much time they spent in each zone — it is done automatically — gave us the opportunity to communicate with our athletes and personalize their program even further. We were able to assign the desired stress percentage for each training session separately. And we were able to design their macrocycles based on their goal races, allowing for recovery weeks and weekly mileage progressions, at the same time.

The performance graphs are indicators of an athlete’s general training, allowing us to evaluate each athlete on a weekly basis (microcycle), monthly (mesocycle), or even up to a yearly basis (macrocycle), showing stress, form, fatigue and race readiness.

In fact, we were able to reap quite a few benefits out of using Endogusto.

Results and outcomes

Using Endogusto led us to the starting line of the Spartathlon, immortal race 142km, Olympion Ultra Marathon 180K and the Aethlios Ultra marathon 62K which was met with great success for our runners.

Our runners also had a great first impression of the platform, since they felt we could constantly monitor and help with their progress, with scientific tools under our belt. And, observing their performance graphs instilled them with confidence, sort of like an affirmation of a job well done; and it kept them motivated to the end.

You know, running might seem simple. One might think you only need a good pair of shoes and off you can go, running towards your dream race. But, it’s not all that simple.

Runners really do need their coach to be there for them. They need their training plans tailor made for them. They need reassurance when things get hard. And they need help getting answers and balancing everything out. That’s what Endogusto was able to do for us. It gave us the tools we needed to make everything happen, just as we wanted. Today, we’re able to do most tasks at a fraction of the time we used to need.

But, make no mistake; the coach still remains irreplaceable. Endogusto respects that. Even with the automation available in Endogusto, one can still provide a lot more benefits to their athletes.

We’d like to thank Endogusto for their exceptional cooperation and willingness to add new useful features to the platform, ensuring that both the coach and the athlete can benefit from it.