Two British national titles. Forty-fifth at the 1992 Worlds in the same front group as Sean Kelly. First African team at the Tour de France as sports director. And the line he keeps coming back to is the simplest one in the sport.
Nobody who finishes a race floats through it.
That sentence tells you most of what you need to know about Brian Smith.
Listen to the full conversation on the Roadman Cycling Podcast →
Anthony sat down with Brian to pull apart something the modern audience has half-forgotten. Brian raced as a clean rider through the EPO years. He coached himself. He picked up the phone and rang Robert Millar when he had a question. He took an unfancied African team to the Tour de France and watched a young Eritrean ride into a polka-dot jersey. There is a thread that runs through all of it. He calls it suffering. The science calls it something else. It is the same thing.
The Bit Nobody Wants to Hear
Here is the thing nobody really mentions when an amateur asks how to get faster. The riders at the top of the sport are not separated by FTP. They are not separated by lactate clearance. They are not separated by chain wax.
They are separated by how long they can hold themselves in a place that hurts.
Brian is blunt about it. "If you can suffer more than others, you'll win more." Not a slogan. A philosophy he watched up close from Sean Kelly, who at sixty-three could still drop him on a tempo run because Kelly's whole career was built on switching the pain off and continuing.
Both of Brian's national titles were hard. The first came from doing what he was told — go on the attack — when he wanted to wait. The second was a couple of weeks after the Giro, on tired legs, with no float and no cruise. He hears modern riders talk about good legs and bad legs and he calls it for what it is. A bit of bollocks, in his exact words. You don't win because you felt good. You win because the other rider stopped suffering before you did.
That is the framing Brian wants amateur cyclists to take from his career. Not the watts. Not the kit. The willingness.
The 53x12 Session That Actually Built Him
The training that produced two national titles and a 45th at the Worlds is so old-school it sounds invented. It wasn't. Robert Millar was doing it at Panasonic, and Brian rang him and asked. This is what came back.
One hour on flat roads. 53x12. Fifty to sixty revs per minute. That is it. Pure muscular load on the bike, the way a gym programme would build strength but specific to the seated position cyclists actually race in.
For hillier terrain you bumped it to seventy-five minutes and used the gears a little more, but the cadence still hovered around 50–60 rpm. The same low-cadence principle that the low cadence training research finally validated decades later. Brian wasn't waiting for a study. He was already doing it.
The other piece of the Millar method was the finisher. After a four or five-hour endurance ride, the last ten minutes went into the biggest gear available and you held it there. Not at threshold. Not by power. Just absolute load on a body that was already cooked.
If you log to TrainingPeaks today, you can see what that session does to the numbers. Normalised power tells you the average is unimpressive. Variability tells you the cost. The tired-legs power session at the back end of a long ride is the workout the front of the peloton has been quietly doing for forty years and the rest of the sport keeps re-discovering.
For amateur cyclists, the same principle scales. You don't need an hour at 53x12. You need a finishing block that asks the legs to produce force after they've already done the work. That is where the adaptation lives.
Heart Rate During. Power Afterwards.
The power meter conversation Brian has on the episode is one of the most useful things any age-group cyclist will hear this year.
Brian rode his entire pro career without a power meter. He built MTN-Qhubeka into a Tour de France team with riders who used them but didn't worship them. And the version he has settled on — picked up from Steve Cummings — is to look at heart rate during the session and the power file at home.
There is a reason. Power moves around with conditions. Wind, fatigue, terrain, temperature — they all push the number up or down regardless of the actual effort. Heart rate doesn't lie about the effort. If you're working hard, the cardiac response says so. The power file is a record. It belongs at the kitchen table after the ride, not on the head unit during it.
Smith goes further. He has told mechanics on race teams to tape over the power meter on training days when a rider can't stop chasing the number. The fix sounds dramatic. It works because the rider is forced back into reading their own body, which is what they need to do in a race anyway. The head unit lies. The legs don't.
If you are a self-coached amateur whose whole training rhythm is built around hitting a power target, this is the self-coached cyclist mistakes trap in one neat package. The power target is the goal. The adaptation is the goal. They are not the same thing.
MTN-Qhubeka and the Confidence Intervention
Brian's most quoted line as a sports director is about coaching. His most useful one is about confidence.
When he took over at MTN-Qhubeka, the African riders on the squad were not short of fitness. They were short of the mental certainty that comes from being raised inside the European peloton. He didn't fix that with a training block. He fixed it with a roster.
He brought in Steve Cummings. He brought in Boštjan Hagen. He brought in Serge Pauwels. Established WorldTour pros. He put them on the same bus, in the same hotel rooms, eating the same food, doing the same training, racing the same calendar.
That's it. That's the intervention.
Once a young African rider was watching Steve Cummings climb out of bed, drink the same coffee, ride the same intervals, finish the same races, the gap collapsed. Two arms, two legs, same training. Why not the same result? Daniel Teklehaimanot riding into the polka-dot jersey at the 2015 Tour de France is what that confidence looked like in front of the cameras. The work behind it was a roster decision.
The amateur version is uncomfortable but real. Most riders who plateau are not under-trained. They are under-companied. They are training on Zwift on their own, racing in groups they're already comfortable in, comparing themselves to riders who match their current level. The fastest fix is often to put yourself in a group where you're not the strongest. Watch what they do. Eat what they eat. Train how they train. The mental gap closes faster than the physical one.
Coaching Is a Relationship Before It Is a Plan
The story that pinned Brian's whole coaching philosophy down is short and worth keeping.
He was coaching a domestic British rider through a TV show. The rider was hungry, talented, and wanted to invest in a power meter. He used the word "invest." Brian heard the word and went to visit the rider's house — a small two-up two-down with two young kids — and decided on the spot that a thousand-pound power meter was the wrong intervention.
The plan instead was the old method. Heart rate. Phone calls. Asking for the work the rider had actually done that week and adjusting based on what the legs were saying.
That story is the whole argument. Coaching, for Brian, is not a programme. It's a relationship that has earned the right to ask uncomfortable questions about sleep, stress, and what's actually happening in a rider's life. There are riders he could coach. There are riders he wouldn't coach, because the relationship isn't there to support the work.
If you have ever paid a coach who never asked about your day job, your kids' bedtime, or the week your business was on fire, you have paid for a training plan, not a coach. The two are not the same.
Going into the Red Is a Choice
Tactically, Brian's view of racing is built on a single moment that repeats itself in every race. Two hundred metres before the top of a climb, your power meter tells you you've done enough. Your tactical position tells you you haven't.
The choice is binary. Ease off and lose the wheel. Or hang on, take the descent to recover, and find yourself in front when the chasers start riding negatively behind you.
He says it plainly. The riders who consistently take the second option win more races than the riders who manage their numbers. The numbers don't make the choice. You do.
This is where the Healy episode and the Brian Smith episode meet. Ben Healy's tactical reset at the 2025 Tour was built on exactly this principle — go where the bunch isn't expecting it, take the small rise with momentum, accept the cost. Different generation, identical instinct. The numbers describe the choice. They never make it.
"Stop Thinking, Start Attacking"
The line Brian leaves the episode with is the one he gives to every rider he works with now.
Asked what he'd tell a younger Brian, he doesn't talk about training blocks or technology. He says he overthought his racing. He looked at the numbers, planned the optimal moment, tried to engineer the win. The races he actually won came from being told to attack and doing it without thinking.
He calls it brute strength and ignorance. Anthony's framing is gentler. The point is the same. The riders who win consistently at every level are usually the ones who are willing to lose loudly. The riders who never win are often the ones who never put themselves in a position to.
The fixable framing matters here. Overthinking is a habit. It is a habit that can be broken. Most amateur cyclists are not held back by their FTP. They are held back by the ten seconds before they should have gone.
What Amateur Cyclists Can Actually Take From This
You are not going to win a national title. Neither am I. But the principles in Brian's career carry across.
1. Train for the back end of the ride, not the front. The Millar finisher — ten minutes in the biggest gear after a four-hour endurance ride — is the session most amateurs skip and most pros do. Tired legs are where the adaptation lives. Pair it with the cycling rest week guide so the load is real but recoverable.
2. Ride to heart rate. Look at power at home. Use the head unit as a mirror after the fact, not a coach during the work. The version of you that chases a number on a windy descent is the version that under-recovers and over-rates the session. The zone 2 cycling guide covers when each metric actually earns its place.
3. Put yourself next to people who win. Not internet riders. Real ones. The MTN-Qhubeka effect scales — train with riders who are slightly above your level, watch what they do off the bike, and the mental gap closes before the physical one does.
4. Coaching is a relationship before it is a plan. If you're paying for one, ask whether your coach knows what time your kids go to bed. If they don't, you are paying for a template. The self-coached cyclist mistakes piece covers the alternative.
5. The choice to suffer is what wins races. Two hundred metres before the top, the question is the same whether you're contesting a national title or hanging on to a Saturday club ride. The riders who say yes to the red zone consistently win more than the ones who don't. That is fixable. It is also unglamorous.
Listen to the Full Conversation
The full Brian Smith episode is on the podcast. It is one of the most direct interviews on what actually wins races we have done with a former pro this year.
If you want more of this, the André Greipel interview on sprint captaincy and our Pogacar training breakdown are the natural next reads. For the tactical side, the cycling race tactics guide translates the same principles into something amateur racers can use this weekend.
Frequently Asked Questions
What training method did Brian Smith use at the top of his career?
Brian Smith trained the way Robert Millar trained at Panasonic in the late 1980s. The headline session was an hour on flat roads in a 53x12 gear at 50 to 60 rpm — pure muscular load. He'd extend it on hillier terrain to 75 minutes, using gears slightly more, but the cadence was always low. After a four-or-five-hour endurance ride he'd finish with ten minutes in the biggest gear, training pure power on tired legs. It was unscientific by today's standards. It also produced two national titles and a 45th at the World Championships.
What does Brian Smith think about power meters?
He thinks they're useful, but only after the ride. His preferred approach — picked up from Steve Cummings — is to ride to heart rate during sessions and look at power files at home. Conditions change. Wind, fatigue, terrain, and temperature all move power numbers around, but the heart rate response to genuine effort is consistent. Smith has even told mechanics to tape over the head unit on training days so the rider stops chasing a number that doesn't reflect the work.
How did MTN-Qhubeka become the first African team at the Tour de France?
Smith argues the breakthrough wasn't a new training programme. It was confidence. He brought in established European pros — Steve Cummings, Boštjan Hagen, Serge Pauwels — and embedded them with the African riders. Same bus, same rooms, same food, same training, same races. Once a young African rider was doing everything identically to a WorldTour-level European, the mental gap collapsed. Daniel Teklehaimanot riding into the polka-dot jersey at the 2015 Tour de France was the result.
What does Brian Smith mean by "going into the red"?
He means the moment in a race where your power meter tells you you've done enough and your tactical position tells you you haven't. Two hundred metres before the top of a climb, you're at max. The choice is to ease off and lose the wheel, or hold on and recover on the descent. Smith says the riders who consistently take the second choice win more races than the ones who manage their numbers. Tactics live in that decision.
What advice would Brian Smith give his younger self?
Stop thinking. Start attacking. He says his career was held back by overthinking, not by a lack of ability. He looks back at races where he tried to work out the optimal moment to go and wishes he'd just gone. His first British title came from being told to attack, and he wins now by telling riders the same thing — go out, try, and bear the consequences if it doesn't work.
