TJ EISENHART ON BREATHWORK, PRO CYCLING & GRAVEL | ROADMAN

TJ Eisenhart won the U23 National Time Trial Championship, raced for BMC, finished 12th at the Tour of Croatia in a field where the winner tested positive, and eventually walked away from professional road cycling to paint murals and ride gravel. On the Roadman Cycling podcast, he talks about what actually made him faster, and it wasn't more training.

Key Takeaways

TJ says the single biggest performance tool he missed in his racing career was breath work and cold water therapy, specifically the Wim Hof method. He's holding his breath for four minutes in meditative states now, which he says indicates full body oxygenation. His claim is that the breath work alone, not extra training, is what would have made the difference in his racing. He coaches riders and tells them he'd rather they do 10-15 minutes of meditation before a session than skip it and just ride. The oxygen saturation you get from that kind of breathing, he says, is more valuable than the extra miles.

The other thing he's direct about is the World Tour requiring total life sacrifice, five-plus hours a day at altitude with nothing left over. He tried to make it work with BMC in Belgium, overtrained constantly, and hated the sport by the end. What changed his mind wasn't a coaching conversation. It was Dirty Kanza, where he looked around at thousands of people who showed up purely because they love riding bikes, and realised maybe 10 of them cared about winning. He thinks the cycling industry sells performance metrics and aero equipment to riders who'd be happier on a gravel bike with a bag on the front. He's probably right.

You Might Also Like

If the World Tour side of this interests you, the Pogacar episode covers how that level of dominance actually gets built. And for the gravel side of what TJ is describing, the European Gravel Championship episode goes deep on where that end of the sport is heading.