My name is Phil Skiba. Welcome to PhysFarm.

Chances are that if you have found your way here, you are interested in learning about the best way to train for your favorite sport. Like many of my medical colleagues, you are probably also wondering how I ended up as a coach and performance consultant to weekend warrior and world champion athletes alike. The truth is that there’s no simple answer to that question, and like many such stories, mine is a very personal one.

Growing up, I was never particularly athletic, but I was a strong swimmer from summers spent at the Jersey Shore. I would eventually become a lifeguard, and then coach of a camp swim team. One of my fellow coaches was a triathlete, and convinced me to do more running and cycling as part of my conditioning, which I'd long enjoyed anyway. This conspiracy of events lead me to a secret wish to do the Ironman, which would fall by the wayside due to college, graduate school and, well...life. I was just too busy to worry about it.

A Change of Life
Part of the naivete of youth is that you look at life-changing events as some sort of cliche; that is, until one happens to you. In 1997, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer, and life-changing really doesn't capture the flavor. I will never forget that clinical smell and mausoleum silence of my urologist’s office as he said to me, “From the size of your primary tumor, it is not unreasonable to expect lung and brain metastases.”

“I’m 23 years old,” I thought. My doctor told me I should be prepared to endure surgery, toxic drugs, radiation and whatever other horrors the oncologist might dream up. I realized that after the chemo shredded my lungs, I might never again swim in the ocean, at least not the way I used to. I’d never ride my bike up Mt. Airy Road again and I sure as hell wasn’t doing a triathlon. I walked home in a strange fog of disbelief. Cancer.

When I got to my parents house, the very first thing I did was sit on my childhood bed and make a list of all the things I wanted to do before I died. It included (among other things) getting a hot dog at Nathan’s, getting to know my youngest sister better, and the Ironman.

After suffering through the surgery, I was dealt an impossible stroke of luck. The tumor had grown in such a way that it had eroded an artery and bled out into itself. The pathology report and scans indicated that I was probably cancer-free. I wasn’t going to die, and I wasn’t going to spend months puking up my guts in pursuit of a cure. My father would later say to me, “You just learned that life is not a dress rehearsal, Philster. I’d hang onto that list if I were you.”

I hung onto the list. In fact, I added something that night: Go to medical school.

Finding My Own Path
Some of the things I wanted to do proved easier than others. Medicine would take over my life, but my sporting ambitions would come back around to haunt me in the form of my schoolmates Jim Carothers and Jeff Rasch, both of whom were former professional cyclists who were dabbling in triathlon. As they got me involved, and taught me about training, I felt there had to be something more. One of my professors suggested I get a copy of Astrand’s Textbook of Work Physiology. It is known as the bible of exercise science, and I was hooked immediately. The body responded to exercise according to some very simple principles. All you had to do was follow the rules. I began devising my own training plans, and in 6 months I had knocked more than 10 minutes off of my 5k time.

As I continued through school, and set my sights on Ironman Lake Placid, word got out to my patients that I was the guy to talk to about sports. They began coming to me for advice, and were pleased with the results they saw. Before I knew it, word had spread, and very talented professional athletes were turning up in my clinic not for medical advice, but for training tips! Suddenly, athletes were "accidentally" bumping into me at the pool. "Hey Dr. Phil," they'd say, "Have a look at my stroke, would you?"

Birth of a Coach
Irrespective of desire, the Ironman is a cruel mistress. The 100-hour work week of medical school and my training schedule didn’t jibe, and even at 8% body fat, I was still well over 200 pounds. I dragged myself to the finish line in Lake Placid just before midnight, achieving my goal. However, I also learned something extraordinary. Many of the people who had come to me for advice before that race had set PR’s, some by a fair amount.

I suddenly realized that while I enjoyed (and still enjoy) racing triathlons, my real talent was coaching. As a scientist and doctor, I’d trained my mind to assimilate large volumes of information and cross-reference it with the reality of the person in front of me. It’s exactly the thought process great coaches use; I was simply coming at it from a different direction. I began working on my first book, Scientific Training for Triathletes, and PhysFarm Training Systems was born.

Coaching...and Medicine...and Research
As a scientist, I have an innate interest in probing limits. How far? How fast? How strong? Sports Medicine was a natural specialty for me, because my patients ask those same questions of themselves every time they take the track, or jump in the pool, or look up the side of a mountain from a bicycle seat. “Is this all that I have? Or is there something more?”

Academically, I was pushing limits of my own. It was clear that the athlete’s body responds somewhat predictably to training. It turns out that this relationship between training and performance can be modeled by complex mathematics. I began researching this area, trying to devise a better way to train. After presenting my work at several sports medicine meetings, I filed for a patent on my system in 2007. Since that time, my amateur and professional athletes have gone on to achieve unprecedented results, including World Championship titles. In fact, Joanna Zeiger also set a World-Record in the process of winning her World title in November 2008.

I’m a lucky guy. I get up every day excited about what I do, and how I can help people be their best. I hope you learn something on my website that helps you do something you only imagined previously. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if I can be of assistance in chasing your dream.

Dr. Skiba regularly speaks at conferences in the sporting and medical industries, and delivers keynote lectures for corporate functions. He can be reached at coachphil@physfarm.com.You can read more about his lectures and publications here.