1.Hello roadmen and welcome back to another A1 Show podcast

Hello roadmen and welcome back to another A1 Show podcast. Today I've got an interesting show, I'm gonna go slightly off topic and I want to talk to you about no human is limited. That's right everyone will have heard last week, it was Elliot Kipchobe broke to our Martin Mark, it's been a milestone in human performance for I suppose, So it's set on this as early as 1991, which will get into a little bit, but it's been that massive milestone ever since then. So I want to talk to you a little bit about how they broke it, and specifically the parallels with cycling performance and what we can learn from this as cyclists who are trying to balance a bunch of things on the go, trying to spend that family play career per late and the cycling play all in one go. So let's dive in and have a think about what actually happened here but before I do where have I been where have I been well it ties nicely into our show sponsor we didn't get our regular cadence of podcasts suppose it's probably 10 days since the last one I like to try and bring it every seven days we're working pretty hard on our new nutrition package so I'm excited to announce it here for the first time our new nutrition plan I'm gonna pop a link below and you can go and check it out So for such a long time I've been just baffled as to what to eat, when to eat us. And I remember like an early indication for me of how important nutrition actually was. I used to be so motivated for races but I get to the race and I'd be on the start line just yawning. I'd be like I've been looking forward to this all week. Why am I yawning? I've had eight and a half hours sleep and rest that I've eaten. of sit my energy during all the way here, I've had my energy bars and there in the problem lies the answer. I've spiced my blood sugar and my blood sugar spiced in the resulting insulation insulin release caused that yawning effect. It was blood sugar was just going off a cliff because I was drinking my sports drink on the car on the way to the race. I was eating bars then I took a pause to get changed for roughly half an hour and I didn't keep eating that sugar and my blood sugar went off a cliff giving me that real fatigue feeling. The exact same way some people experience at 11 o'clock in work where they have to reach for the snacky foods because they've had the porridge and they've had the cereal and toast and orange juice for breakfast. Blood sugar goes off a cliff. What happens when you reach for those convenience sugary traits pings the blood sugar back up that last to launch and we're in this perpetual cycle. So for a long time, I knew the importance of controlling blood sugar, but I didn't, I suppose I didn't have time and I didn't have the knowledge to put it into a coherent system. So that's what I've done. I've put together a nutrition blueprint, a step-by-step video course on how you actually manage your weight, what to eat, when to eat it. Like the stuff in here, regardless of your vegan, if you're Pescatarian, if you're carnivore or whatever, it's all for you. It's all good. It's poetry philosophies. So I'd encourage you to go and check that out because it is top drawer and it's guaranteed to get you into the racin' season in optimum shape. A couple of kilos lighter in the air right now. Possibly more than a couple of kilos. But we're not going to get to that sort of shredded weight that we see, Elliot Kipcho be at 159 for a marathon. I thought it would I guess I didn't give too much thought to the possibility of it, but it wasn't until I started researching this podcast that I realised that it's roughly 20 to 30 seconds. Every time the Martin record is broke, it comes off by. And given that there's been some astronomical leaps in the last couple of years, I'm going to get into now void those leaps have been possible. and also but before I'm gonna dig a little bit into the records and I'm gonna be a little bit critical of the record in point but what I really want to focus on with this is I want to talk about that tagline that no human is limited and that's what I want us to really think about and focus on that what are your goals for the season you know why are your goals like I've said on this podcast before what really saddens me as a coach it's not when someone picks a goal and they don't hit it. It's when someone picks a goal and they hit it and they're still not happy because they just haven't set an ambitious enough goal. I'm talking to clients all the time, I'm like aim bigger, aim bigger, aim bigger. So stuff like this when it comes along, Elliot kept job here. He's figuratively analytally sliding into the history books.

2.He's redefining what we think is possible for sports science and…

He's redefining what we think is possible for sports science and human physiology. This showed for us as cyclists give us this great motivation. And I want to touch now on the parallels between what makes Kipcho be such a special athlete, how we broke two errors and what we can learn from that in cycling. But why is that two errors important? I suppose as much as anything people love round numbers and we've been really looking at this two-hour marathon mark since the record is around 215, I've been hypothesized and is it possible? And there's a study by a guy named Joyner and this came out in 1991 and he theorized that the tree main variables which we know affect the outcome of the marathon or we're talking about the world record in cycling these are the three main variables it's VO2 max it's lactate threshold and economic efficiency and he hypothesized that if you were to absolutely perfect all three it is the absolute limits of human physiology that we could achieve a time of 157-58 now we We obviously haven't hit that yet, but we haven't conquered human physiology, but he thinks that's the absolute maximum. If someone says, why can't we jump three meters in the pole vault? The answer is it's gravity. It's not possible to jump three meters in the pole vault. We don't have tendon strength that are strong enough to overcome the gravitational pull of the earth to get that high. So 157.58 is where he reckons that absolute capacity is given the constraints of the human body, the heart, the muscles, tendons, lungs. So the three variables, they're VO2 max. Most of you guys know what this stuff is, but it's stuff we use all the time for coaching our athletes and optimizing their performance. So VO2 max, how I typically calculate that is, I would get somebody on a warp bike and I would bring them through an incremental ramp test and I would increase the load. So for an elite rider, I might start at 200 watts, I would increase the load by 20 watts at every stage. And we're managing them. What we're looking to do is with the mask over them, we're calculating their maximum oxygen uptake. So it's the total volume we're looking for in this case. So your top top athletes, you know, you're looking at AD, some of the Nordic skiers and some of the top cyclists are into 90s like Rogliches, Proport, have a very high VOTO max. And you're the one that it's efficiency. So efficiency, I suppose, If we're to get a pick up random figure of 350 watts, I'm going to look at rotor A and rotor B. What percentage of VO2 max is it costing them to stay at 350 watts or whatever figure we pick? So if you know it's taken, rotor A has a VO2 max of 70 and rotor B has a VO2 max of 90. If rotor B formed to be at 350 watts, if that's taken 95% of his capacity to be there. He hasn't got the same performance capabilities as a rider who's only taken 60% of his capacity to be there even though he has a lower VO2 max. So although VO2 max is helpful in telling us who's going to perform well and who's not, it's not to be all an end all. It has to be toyed in with efficiency and lactate threshold is one we all know about in cycling. Lactate threshold is an inflection point. the point at which the waste products were produced and become overbearing. If you think about it like I think about it like I don't know why I think of it this way but I think about it like Shovlin at a driveway a snow maybe it's because I used to live in Canada. Shovlin at a driveway a snow. At the point where the snow was falling just as fast as I can shovel that's like our inflection point that's our four millimole to lactate point where the waste product being produced is equal to our clearance mechanism and that defines a lot of performance for us in steady state events. So we're looking at things like time trials, 4k pursuit that defines our performance. So those three variables and how they intersect are how joiner came up with that figure of 157-58 back in the day but interestingly those three variables are the exact same variables we manipulate to build training plans for you guys. They're the exact same variables that we're looking at, clients are pouring in now because it's that time of year. Incidentally, if you are going to get more on board, do pop me an email at info.aonecoaching.net. We're at some point probably, I'll keep you posted on the podcast first before I close the gates, but we are at some point going to cut off clients and just say, enough is enough for the coming season. So, pop us a mail if you're taking a get on board with that. So they're the same variables that we do look to manipulate when we're conditioning an athlete. They're treated key things we really focus on. So what's interesting with the Project 159, I suppose, running it's a lag behind cycling because this is the debate we've been having in cycling for a long time.

3.They've managed to nearly boy-pass the physiological limits of VO2…

They've managed to nearly boy-pass the physiological limits of VO2 max and lactate threshold by really focusing on increasing efficiency. And the way they've been able to massively increase efficiency in running at the moment, its equipment. So there's a set of runners called the Noyc vapor flyer. I think they changed the next version to the next percent, not by Noyc. And they're estimated to be between a two and a four percent increase. Now this is huge, two and a four percent increase is absolutely massive. What worries me a little with this two two to four percent increases. That's actually bigger than the gap between someone replacing. So between first place and second place, second place and third place. So when we look at the events then, are we seeing, not specifically talking about the 150.9 challenge and how about we go to the Boston Marathon? Are we specifically seeing the fastest runner winning the race? Or are we seeing the one with coupled with the fastest runner with the best equipment? It's a debate they're starting to have in running, but it's a debate we've had for years in cycling, like when we watch the World Time Trial Championships and we see, you know, at Tony Martin or whoever it is, winning the World Time Trial title, are we seeing the fastest rider or are we seeing somebody who has the best bike, optimized their position, optimized their equipment. And for me, that's what sport has become. It is this marginal gains, you know, there's no point in saying, you know, the guy with the best engine wins all the time, the guy with the best preparation wins and preparation and goes into all these different areas. You know, as I said last week, I've started to get the head down back trying them for Tokyo 2020 on the front of the tandem. And one of our early events is on the track. So it's a four-way pursuit on the track. So already we're starting to look at things like shoe choice. We're starting to look at things like sock choice, skin suit choice, helmet choice, coming into the wind tunnel, optimized position. What's the frame then? What bars do we use? And what tires do we use? What chain do we use? and was the drive trying to efficiency after. This is what high-level sport is about now, and it's just catching up. Running is just catching up with that. So I don't think it's anything to fight. I think it's something to embrace, and it's up to the running regulatory bodies then. Our cycling has done already to put limits and rules around how we can innovate and what direction innovation can happen. You know, yeah, it results in some stupid rules, like we've got crappy rules around sock length. But boy enlarged is good rules around bike design and it keeps the playing field even Some riders are curtailed because they're with a team whose sponsor isn't as well fun That has you know a servello so they're on a bike that isn't as fast. So do we see the fastest? Best physiological engine always winning the race absolutely not but do we see the rider who's had the most meticulous preparation winning the race. Yeah, absolutely absolutely absurdum lutely. So yeah I think although the shoes aren't making a huge difference they should be embraced wanting to has to happen. The shoes need to be commercially available. Kipchogie wearing shoes that aren't commercially available is not a runner. Apparently he's wearing the shoes, their next percent is the new shoes but the shoes after are they are even released now you have patent pending on them with these weird hovering discs inside. these are what keep joey's wearing, they need to be commercially available in my view, exact same way so eichland stuff is commercially available. So I wanted to touch on that because I wanted to talk about this idea of no human is limited and once we all know this story about, I love that phrase, we all know, yeah, everyone around the camp for a nose. It's a well told story at this time the four minute mile and Roger Vanister and once he broke us it was like a tacit permission for the the rest of humanity to go and break that. It wasn't a physical barrier, it was a mental barrier. Once he broke that mental barrier, other people were able to come through and hammer through this mental barrier, he opened the floodgates. Those keep showing you that and running, maybe. But what I want to talk about is cycling, because that's what I love. So I want to talk to you about when I have a friend of mine and the friend he's in his He's a top performing cyclist. He's an A1. He wins A1 Boyc races every season. He's a multiple time national champion. He's also a successful businessman. He's also a successful family man. He also speaks multiple languages. He also has a very diverse and round his interests and great group of friends. Apparently, he kind of has everything. Now, the common concern I hear when I hear people coming to me is, yeah, you know what, I'm an A4 and you know, my work situation I probably most like a name for is to get around the A4 or ACEs, maybe get promoted to A3 at the end of the season.

4.I'm like, why? It's this idea that somebody's done it before, why…

I'm like, why? It's this idea that somebody's done it before, why can't you? You know, we've bunched as a client now who are doing balancing, work with family, with training, with social life, nothing has to be compromised. We, science is so good and slightly on this at the moment, that we can manipulate intensity instead of duration. And duration is, you know, it's the one commodity we're all fighting for to have more time in the day, more time with our family, more time with our friends, more time for self improvement. And if we can give you back more time with your training, but just a little bit of smart manipulation of training intensity. And so now my question I'll travel back to you is, Because we have clients that are doing this, that are balanced and at all, now what's your excuse? Like the veritable format of M.O.L. has been broken. We have clients who are doing this all the time, or winning races at a 4, 3, 2, 1, into the masters levels, loyal balancing family, loyal get promoted and work, while doing all this stuff, now what's your excuse? You don't have one. If it's been done before you, it can be done again. stop lying to yourself and the best way you can do this and it's a way I whole heartily endorse because it's something I've come true it's surrounding yourself with the right group of people this stuff seems impossible this idea of breaking the the two-hour marathon this idea of balancing it all it seems impossible when you're surrounded with negativity but we start this journey in our heads and we sort of make that decision that we're going to surround ourselves with more positive people like that saying you're the average of the five people you spend most of your time with and it's so true. So but this starts in our mind and there's a great quote I love it's William James one William James is a Harvard psychologist if anyone didn't know but he said the greatest revolution of our generation is the discovering that human beings by changing their attitudes of their minds can change the outer aspects of their lives. So by changing the inner attitudes of your lives, of your mind, you can change the outer aspect of your life. Like that's powerful. And for me, that starts with our core group. Who do we surround ourselves with? And I know when I was getting started in cycling, this was, you know, actually even before I got started in cycling, you know, and it's not even like this. This is a unique parenting to me. You know, my parents would always said to me at an early age, you know, don't go, don't be hanging out with X. He's a bad influence. Don't be hanging out with him. He's, you know, he's trouble. I'll make sure your parents said the exact same thing. So intuitively, our parents knew at an early age that we are who we surround ourselves with. So I tweaked this very early in cycling. I was starting and I was making mistakes in cycling and you know, I just didn't know what it was doing I had no good role models But because I had one foot in I had one foot out I was I came from a soccer background and I still kind of playing soccer and a bunch of my friends were all my friends were all soccer players And I had to make a pretty harsh decision. I had to say, you know what? I'm gonna cut those I've got to cut the time I have like it's a zero-sum game if I spend time with these guys I can't spend time with someone else and I have to make that harsh decision to say, you know what? I'm not spending the time with these people. I'm gonna spend time with someone else because it's kind of facilitate the new direction I want to go on my life and when I cut those people out of my life It opened the way for new friendships Positive friendships, which will bring me in the direction. I wanted to go and you know what emerged here for me in in Clontaar was, I would say one of the best training groups in the country where we just, you know, the only three or four of us in the group, guys went on to get pro-contracts, you know, riding, worlds, you know, challenging for national titles. It was a cool group to be involved where everyone pushed each other and you know, we got to travel the world from somebody who was going racing India, I got to stint in France and America, or I was in Canada, and out of a small group, we achieved quite a lot because everyone pushed each other on. Everybody was, you know, I listened to Roy King, Gary Neville interviewed you today, and he talks about Roy King, the Manchester, ex Manchester, you know, Echapton, how he came back after his crucial ligament injury, and he nearly signaled, he signaled a new era in professional sports in soccer because he said, you know what, I want the long career, I need to provide for my family so I'm going to do everything I can.

5.Then he set the benchmark, he set the standard that everyone else had…

And then he set the benchmark, he set the standard that everyone else had to aspire to. You know, he got 5% body fat, he got the training earlier, he got the best medical care, he got the best sports nutrition care and that was the standard. Now everyone else had to come up to his standard and a good training group will do that for you. And I would include in a good training group a good coach because he spent so much time with that coach doing what the the coach tells you but also interacting with the coaches instructions but interacting with that coach as well. So they were the big things that really propelled me. It was starting to work with a coach and surrounded myself with this group of people. I actually had an interesting story from the just story slash experiment in the real Frankenstein sense of words in the laboratory, poking little needles into somebody and keeping them feeding them fish heads. Now it was like a pretty standard experiment. It was a body of mine and a client, but also a body used a loose terminology. He was using Strava a lot. He was trying on trainer road and Zwift. I'm going to say he was haphazard in his training methods. I don't think he'll mind me saying that. and he'd never had a structure trying to plan. So we had the eight week challenge, if you remember, probably 10 weeks ago, eight weeks ago. And I convinced him to jump on board. The eight week challenge, I said, look, perk your Strava, perk your Zwift, your China Road, your stuff that you do all the time. And jump on and just do eight weeks of structure training sessions. Now, he's six hours a week type of character, sport heave, ton of couple of four races. I was trying to think off the top of my head so I don't miss her. I'll get close enough. So he had a Strava record up our local climb and he was close to 10 minutes up our local climb and out. And he was happy enough with that but that hadn't changed more than he might not get second off or two seconds each year. He'd been riding for years. He might not get second or two off at each year. What he came across done the eight weeks. Didn't do any Strava segments, trainer road workouts, his whiffed workouts, so for a first, I need that shit. Didn't do any of that for eight weeks, and we focused on building a proper training plan for him. Building a plan with a focus on putting some time, thinking about if we have six different buckets. And each one of those buckets represents a zone, and each one of those zones represents an adaptation, so zone one, zone two, we're starting to build my decondry, zone three, we're starting to build muscular endurance. So we know there's a set of adaptations you have in trying in each of these zones. So we focused over the eight weeks and filling each of those buckets. Getting them enough time in each of those buckets that he became a well-developed rider and not just someone who was lashing out. Someone would have planned. We took all the planning from him and he was skeptical. He started anecdotally feeding back to me, no parameter. So he was anecdotally feeding back to me over the eight weeks. You know I'm feeling better, I'm feeling stronger but he wasn't trying to have friends and he was under strict instructions not to go on air strava again. So he went back after eight weeks and tried his record uphout, minutes and a half faster on the same strava section. And bearing in mind, he's been two seconds a year, roughly, for the last four or five years and he's a minute and a half faster off structure, trying to obviously like, boom, you know, that's the power of we haven't done as much testimonials and stuff lately. And I feel like we need to just start talking about, you know, the people that are training without a coach at the moment because it's such a waste of time. Like what are you lads doing? It's, if you have a own a bike, a coach is as essential as, and this isn't the hard pitch for anyone coaching, you know. I think, yeah, we're the best and we're brilliant at what we do and we're an amazing set of coaches, you know, Sean McAna, Great Buddy of mine, amazing coach with John Kenny, who I use probably the best coach in Ireland. You know, we've Dave Brennan, we've, Liam Dole and XR Scharaman, record holder with Steve Clancy, pro and over in order to give a great set of guys there, an amazing set of guys. But if you're trying to win out a coach, really, like it, for me it's essential as having a set of wheels on your bike, it's pointless, without and that little example for me illustrates is quite a lot as to why it's such beneficial thing to have and how you can just make these monumental strides. We started the show talking about Kib-Jow-Y in the 20 seconds a year.

6.20 seconds a year is grand for those elite guys, but when you take…

The 20 seconds a year is grand for those elite guys, but when you take and you put this science and this focus on VO2 Max, lactate threshold and economic efficiency, when you put that onto a four-hour marathon runner, when you put that sports science and that magnifying glass onto the four-hour marathon runner, their time has not changed by 20 seconds, their time has changed by 20 minutes every year. And that's what we do. We're putting this level of pro analysis onto people who haven't typically had access to this pro analysis. And it's powerful. It's powerful. I wonder as a finishing talk to you about something I call a success log. And the idea with a success log, so many of us can vividly recall the chastisements we've had the disappointments we've had around up, the chastisements and the disappointments from anything in school, bad grades, you know, not dealing with your short off, even a bad pass in a football match, a red card. The reason we can so vividly recall this stuff is it's charged with emotion, and when we charge anything with emotion, it ingrades it into our brain. We don't have that same emotional charge to acting back to my football days. I can remember hitting bad passes because I can remember the managers reaction to it immediately. The managers reaction at half time. It was loud, it was visceral, it was, you know, aggressive and it put a stamp on me. I can't remember the manager getting too excited when I hit amazing passes. And that's the problem we have, that when we think back, we recall a lot of negative stuff we've done sure our lives and it's more difficult to recall the really positive things we've done. So I'd encourage you all to start what I call a success log. Just start jotting down each day in your gratitude journal at the end of the day. Five things that you've done today that were success. They don't have a few brilliant things. For me, I'm going to list, get this podcast out as one. I'm going to list this morning, do my red light therapy as another one. I'm going to list, get my session done today as another one. I'm going to list the error of reading and the personal development that I've done as one. hanging out with my parents is one. You know, it's very easy to log them up, but because we don't charge them with emotion typically, we don't remember them and we don't remember the great momentum and progress we're building our lives. But if you get the success log, and especially if you're reviewing this success log, it starts to build this unstoppable momentum in your life that you just think, Oh my God, I actually can't do anything wrong. And when you start building this momentum, targets that you previously taught were on achievable large you hadn't maybe given a lot of mental space to because you thought you know why achievements is for someone else. These targets are coming to focus and you're starting and you know what why not I'm on such a role here. Anyone have that example in any sport we call it inflow or you know you can remember plant pool matches or snook or matches or tennis or whatever it is and you've hit two or three or four or ten good shots in a row. All of a sudden you're playing ridiculous shots you're playing you know backspin shots of four cushions and it's coming off because you're in flow, you're in confidence. So a success log will help you to do that in all aspects of your life, not your sport, it'll build that unstoppable momentum. I'm not saying you can go on due to 159, keep choggy, you are a legend and we tip your hat to you. Guys, I hope you enjoyed this podcast. As much as I enjoyed the coordinate, I'll be back again towards the end of this week just to make, play a little bit of catch up for the the one I missed. I would encourage you in the meantime to check out our nutrition course. As I said, it's your port of cool video together. Explain what it is. That's on the link down below. Check it out because it's going to be pretty transformative and it's another step. Strength and Conditioning Course, bunch of you guys who got that already. That's step one in this process. The Nutrition Course, it's step two. Step three is yet to be revealed, but we're going to put together a system and we're going to build on it week after week, month after month and turn you from the athletes you are into the athletes that you can be. No human is limited. Thanks for listening and catch you next week.