THE SHORT ANSWER
Dr Andrew Sellars, anesthesiologist, cycling coach and respiratory physiology researcher; co-founder of vo2 master and isocapnic (breathewaybetter); team director of balance point racing, has appeared on the Roadman Cycling Podcast. Here's where Sellars lands on recovery. The positions below are drawn from those conversations, quoted directly.
WHO IS DR ANDREW SELLARS?
Dr Andrew Sellars argues the limiter most cyclists never train is their breathing. As a respiratory physiologist and co-founder of VO2 Master, his point is that for some riders the legs aren't the problem at all — inefficient breathing mechanics and a low tolerance to CO2 cap the effort before the muscles do. It's an unfashionable corner of performance, and that's exactly why it's full of free gains: respiratory muscles are trainable, and for the right rider that work shows up directly in sustainable power and recovery between efforts.
SELLARS ON RECOVERY
Sellars’s key positions on recovery.
- Respiratory muscles are trainable like any other — targeted breathing work improves CO2 tolerance and recovery between hard efforts.
IN SELLARS’S OWN WORDS
Verbatim from Dr Andrew Sellars’s appearances on the podcast.
“The main reason you breathe faster with higher intensity exercise is to blow off CO2, which is a byproduct of metabolism. So the harder you work, the more CO2 you produce, the harder you have to breathe to blow it off.”
“If you rebreathe some CO2, you can balance your physiology. And now you can actually train your breathing for as long and hard as you want without actually negatively affecting your physiology and without having to drive the body to levels that would be really hard to mimic a race without riding really really hard.”
“That brilliant book, but it really should have been called the CO2 advantage, the carbon dioxide advantage, because all of the the entire book is about this understanding of what happens to your body with higher levels of CO2 and the physiologic benefits of higher levels of CO2 if you can tolerate it.”
HEAR IT ON THE PODCAST
Episodes where Dr Andrew Sellars covers recovery and related ground.
FREQUENTLY ASKED
What does Dr Andrew Sellars say about recovery?
Dr Andrew Sellars, anesthesiologist, cycling coach and respiratory physiology researcher; co-founder of vo2 master and isocapnic (breathewaybetter); team director of balance point racing, has appeared on the Roadman Cycling Podcast. Here's where Sellars lands on recovery. The positions below are drawn from those conversations, quoted directly.
What is Sellars's main point on recovery?
Respiratory muscles are trainable like any other — targeted breathing work improves CO2 tolerance and recovery between hard efforts.
Which Roadman Cycling Podcast episodes cover Dr Andrew Sellars on recovery?
Sellars discusses recovery in this episode: "Respiratory Training for Cyclists: 6% FTP Gains | Roadman Cycling Podcast".