Most cyclists think getting faster is complicated. It's not. Every elite cycling coach Anthony has spoken to on the podcast, Dan Lorang, John Wakefield, Steven Seiler, Dan Plews, Joe Friel, they all agree on the same things. And most amateurs are ignoring every one of them.
Key Takeaways
The first thing they all agree on is the split between easy and hard training. 80/20 at minimum, some coaches push it to 90/10. That means if you have five hours a week, four of them should feel almost too easy. The reason most people don't do this is because they feel like they're wasting the limited time they have. But Seiler's data and Lorang's results with Pogacar both point the same direction. Zone 3 all week is the worst of both worlds. You're too tired to do quality work and not stressed enough to build real aerobic capacity.
The second thing they all agree on is that your worst weeks matter more than your best. Dr David Litman made this point on the podcast: zoom out over a career and long-term outcomes are defined by the floor, not the ceiling. John Wakefield runs a sub-maximum fatigue test every 7-10 days, a 3-minute effort at 85% of threshold, specifically to check whether the body is actually ready to absorb hard training. The point Alan Lim made about the most successful athletes he's coached, Mike Woods being his example, is that they operate at 8 out of 10 for a long time. You go 10 out of 10 for a week and you're cooked for a fortnight. That's not training, that's just random suffering.
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The John Wakefield episode goes much deeper on the fatigue test protocol, including exactly what numbers he's looking for and when he pulls a session. Go listen to the Dan Lorang episode too, he breaks down how Bora-Hansgrohe reverse-engineers race demands back into daily training. And if you want the science behind 80/20, the Steven Seiler zone 2 episode covers all of it.
KEY QUOTES
“Matt Botro said it took him 10 years to realize that the purpose of training is to get faster that seems like such a simple comment on a Surface but if you unpack it it's actually not because it's not about just getting green boxes on our training Peaks we're all kind of addicted to that it's about the response we get to the training so the train is the stimulus the responses how we get better after the training.”
“John Wakefield from Bor hrove has a test called a sub maximum fatigue test that he gets his athletes to do every 7 to 10 days the idea of this is well there's no point doing a hard session if your body's not ready to absorb a hard session so he tests your fatigue before the training session starts to make sure you're going to absorb that training session.”
“Dr David Litman said if you'd zoom out and you look at long-term trends are long-term outcomes when you look back on someone's career they're more defined by the height of the floor than the height of the ceiling so we're more defined by our worst weeks than we are our best weeks.”
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Welcome to this week's Rider support this week we're going to talk about what do you do if you get your handlebars caught with the rider beside you on a group ride we're going to talk about what it was like to watch the Tour of France from the very best seats in the house inside a helicopter myself and Sarah were there and spoiler alert that was phenomenal finally I'm going to talk about what do the world's best coaches agree upon I've chatted with some of the world's best coaches and they definitely have difference in training principles and philosophies but they also agree on much more than you'd realize I'm going to talk to you about how they all agree you should get faster on the bike let's get into it Sarah Anthony how are you let's get straight into the questions as per usual we've so much to get through this one comes in from Ross this is a great question hi Anthony I'm a huge fan of the podcast I particularly love the episodes specifically on training and was wondering if there's a few common things you've noticed that these coaches to the elite athletes all agree on and have and have as core guidelines for their athletes yeah that's a really cool question and that's what probably the aspect of the podcast I love the most because when I was getting started I had I was kind of trying to shuffle around and find books to peace together training principles and philosophy and then you're getting a lot of hearsay from guys in the car park someone to tell you oh I found this amazing session that's like a threshold session that's totally gone now you can with a podcast like this get access to Primos rug's coach and you can figure out exactly how Dan laang is coaching Primos rug it's absolutely insane it blows my mind so yeah we've been lucky enough to kind of go deep on that training aspect and what makes writers faster specifically time crunched writers because that's what I try and focus on so I'm thinking about like who we had like Dan laang and John Wakefield both from Bora hrove we've had Steven Syer who's just a legend in sports physiology H Dan PL who's coached Yan forino and some of the best triathletes in the world Joe fril who's just an absolute Legend Matt botro one of the best time TR coaches in the world and if I think about commonalities there's definitely a few to bring to mind firstly it's the distribution of your hard training to your easy training I think a lot of athletes we'll call them you know time crunched our age group athletes people balancing you know multiple stuff like a job a family by and large is trying too hard all the all these great coaches agree we should be training easy most of the time and that's hard a stomach when you don't have much available training time you know Sirah if you've like five hours to train the week and then you look and you have five easy rides it's like oh am I progressing at all but they all agree on at least an 8020 distribution of low intensity to high intensity training some of them even further like 9010 that's kind of the thing that people do the mo we most often see people doing wrong isn't it that spread of the en heard all the time yeah or ride kind of heard all the time I certainly did at the beginning kind of rolling around zone three all of the time it just is not going to get you where you want to be yeah another one which I thought was brilliant and this was from John Wakefield and it tied into a comment that mat M made on the podcast and mor said it took him 10 years to realize that the purpose of training is to get faster that seems like such a simple comment on a Surface but if you unpack it it's actually not because it's not about just getting green boxes on our training Peaks we're all kind of addicted to that it's about the response we get to the training so the train is the stimulus the responses how we get better after the training so John Wakefield from Bor hrove has a test called a sub maximum fatigue test that he gets his athletes to do every 7 to 10 days the idea of this is well there's no point doing a hard session if your body's not ready to absorb a hard session so he tests your fatigue before the training session starts to make sure you're going to absorb that training session so it's not just going out the door and going I have 2 by 20 threshold to do I need to get them done there's no point in getting them done if they're not going to make you faster on the back end so his sub maximum fatigue test and you can go back and watch that episode with John Wakefield it's up on the YouTube channel or search it on the podcast but his protocol for that it's a three minute effort at 85% of threshold and J that so that's threshold
Power during that he's observing heart rate and he's gone looking at other subjective measurements like the athletes mood their perceived exertion their stress levels their Sleep Quality and even their weight he breaks down the exact protocol for that sub maximum fatigue test in the podcast I thought that was brilliant as well and another commonality it's the reverse engineering of success and we try to do this with the podcast a little bit and some of us if you're a high performer and maybe your job you'll do this in your job but they look at what the Finishing Line looks like so if you take H Dan laang and Bor HOV they want to win the Tour of France this year with primas r how likly or not that is we could debate that maybe later on the podcast but he looks at what are demands of the event and then he breaks those down into its constituent parts and he works on training those qualities throughout the training plan so it's there's nothing random every training session he's doing today is calibrated for that end goal you've broke down what success looks like figured out the constituent parts of success and then started drip feeding them into your macro plan over the months and weeks before you get to the Target event I think there are three really key things that basically all those amazing coaches agree on so yeah I think that's absolutely brilliant and there's some goal there there's some gold there like there really is I know that I have a little bit of recency uh by is because I watched Dr Lim quite recently and that Al Lim Alan Lim his oh my God his podcast was absolutely amazing and in the podcast you actually asked him who was his favorite cyclist to coach or the best person to coach and he asked him what's this kind of thread that all those athletes have you know to make it very easy for a coach and I think I'm pretty sure he said Mike Woods was you know the hardest worker the one one of one of them and the other thing that he said that made a successful athlete was that they actually have fun that fun that they enjoy it that they love it that they're actually having fun this isn't a SLO yeah and you know what was brilliant in that as well and actually that might even squeeze its way into something that everybody agrees on you don't want to be the 10 out of 10 he said whenever he sees someone that's 10 out of 10 and when you think about 10 out of 10 that applies to so many different areas you don't want to be 10 out of 10 with your nutrition you don't want to be 10 out of 10 with your training with your sleep because when you see a 10 out of 10 what he actually observes is a 2 out of 10 waiting to happen that nobody stays a 10 out of 10 level all the time so a 10 out of 10 is just waiting to break he said the most successful writers he's worked with are the likes of Mike wards where they're eight out of 10 but over a massively long time period that's really sustainable so that's another huge takeaway that if you're building a training plan I would start with well what's the amount of training stimulus that you will get done on your worst week and let's start start building a training plan from there yeah another thing that kind of works for me as well since I've started working with a coach a couple of years ago you're coaching me now and I think you've noticed this too is you need to answer me yes coach yes coach yes sir so at the beginning um we were saying I would Co you know train six days a week I do a double session on a Wednesday and as your coach is watching the trends we've realize that I always miss a day so I can't I can't train six days a week either I'm too tired I'm too busy so now we do five days a week that's my eight out of 10 that's my base that's going to give me success so kind of having a coach if you're watching your Trends and sticking to actually what works for you and not you know you're the guy that you rided in the club with on a Saturday so I think that's really really important too yeah Dr David Litman another our brilliant guest on the podcast he said if you'd zoom out and you look at long-term trends are long-term outcomes when you look back on someone's career they're more defined by the height of their ceiling than the the they're more defined by the height of the floor than the height of the ceiling so we're more defined by our worst weeks than we are our best weeks so there's no point in going off the lanero or ten and doing a 40-hour week if you're doing the two-hour week you're better off working on getting that two-hour week to a six hour week and that becomes your base yeah amazing okay next
Question hi Anthony and Sarah I'm newish to watching racing and trying to figure out the ins and outs of the whole thing what happens if a rider gets gets in a breakaway and has a mechanical are their support cars close by are their team support cars close by sorry what if the their team support car is way back do they just have to wait or would another team car help them and that's from Sonia that's a really good question yes so we had front row seats to this in s of France this week you see some of our new swag I got a name tag now which in Cas same very important we have name tags in case Sarah tries to steal my seat I now have my name on my seat and Sarah managed to as someone who probably has a top end Sprint of maybe 600 watts you've done well to snag a Podium Teddy from the Sprint Jersey 600 watts I I don't even think I could do 600 watts for for 30 seconds or 40 seconds you definitely could do 600 watts for 30 seconds cuz you for two will be a question maybe perhaps but yeah we had an amazing time at the tur of France during the week we were a guest of scoda we got when I say the VIP treatment my S Anthony reflect on going over to the tour in 2018 and we we we didn't have a lot of money we were camping we I remember we camped inoke pet Sushi from the petol station I remember buying a t-shirt in the uh the the official shop and I think that was probably our last 25 quid I was like I have to have this and we were camping on a roundabout H at the base of ab so this trip was completely different we were spoiled rotten we we were following the way the race in helicopters we were behind Team cars we were in and out of the race we were just we were at the Finish Line we were in the Riders Paddock we got to see all of the Riders getting out of the bus and we got to meet loads of the older riders or previous generation of Riders oh who's that I like oh it's Michael Rasmus King of the mountains like who's that that's Yen V who's that jio Grady it's Christian veld everyone was there was brilliant yeah it was absolutely incredible ible so we were actually in the helicopter looking down on the race so we could kind of see what was happening in Technicolor with regards to the patons up front and then you've got the director of the race his car is behind it you've got all the motorbikes and then you've got huge big long stream of support car so can you explain to Sonia what happens if a rider we didn't see a breakaway but what happens if a breakaway goes away and let's say there's two or three people in a breakaway one of them gets a mechanical if the break goes and this isn't really exclusive Tour of France it's like any race even probably down to your National level if the break goes and say it has 20 seconds you can't and there's five guys in the break you can't bring and they're five different teams let's assume you can't bring five cars around the break around the bunch and onto the back of the break because that's going to close the 20 second Gap so then the bunch will just come back up through the cars and it' be very dangerous and also it's you know the pelons now in the draft of the cars and they've closed that 20 second Gap and neutral I the efforts of the Breakaway Riders so there's a rule that exists of one minute so the bunch needs to be one minute behind the Breakaway before the start cars can start to come around now it does vary slightly on terrain the director will use his discretion and say look it needs to go out a bit forer also if there 25 guys in the break from nine different teams and the Gap is only a minute nine cars behind is going to close a large part of that minute so it might go out to a minute and 30 but largely the Gap needs to be a minute before cars start coming around if you puncture when it's over a minute you'll have your own team carer if you puncture or you need mechanical assistance when it's under a minute you'll have neutral service from Shimano but the reality is RO man I know how serious you take your goal setting whether they're Fitness or life related goals if you're looking for a powerful alloy to support you on this journey look now further than hu hu has become my secret weapon for when I don't have time to prepare a balanced meal it ensures I get the nutrition I need without sacrificing time or taste plus it stops me from reaching for that takeaway menu I always throw a bottle into my backpack when I'm heading into the city to work and it stops me eating junk convenience food snacking
On crossons and bars of chocolate because I know they don't support my training goals it's a handy nutritious meal on the go and it's got over 22 gram of protein hule is perfect for athletes that don't have time to cook or prepare food before a training session it's convenient nutritious fuel at your fingertips ensuring you hit your daily fueling needs for that session Hu ready to drink has 26 essential vitamins and minerals in every single bottle you're getting a whopping 175 health benefits plus it's made from natural ingredients like Topeka Sunfire seed coconut and more the best part is the flavors there's eight crazy beautiful flavors iced coffee is what's in my backpack right at the moment you can get youu directly to your home all you got to do is head on over to the hu website hu.com for SL Roan like I always wonder how that works I mean does that Shimano car everyone will notice it on tell it's the blue the blue car it's very emblazed with Shimano does can that caser for everybody does that have all it's different well there's not that many different pedal choices like you know there's two or three main pedal choice you could be on Speed play look Shimano like I think it's the main ones I think they're the only tree CLE types maybe I miss them have you ever seen anyone get on on a full Shimano bike I mean I've seen wheel CH oh was the Shimano the tiny the tiny clown bike that they gave yeah it happens all the time but that's the most high profile one but you do see it quite a bit but it's you don't want a neutral service bike if you can avoid it the problem is if the Gap is only a minute and you need a neutral service bike change like the reality is by the time you get down and get changed onto the bike you're probably absorbed by the pelaton anyway so it's day over so unless it's a key Point like a Mountain Stage like Von 2 we seen with f there's not that much use for it more use is getting bottles off the neutral support you'll see motorbikes coming over like neutral motorbikes from like you know I don't know who the the mineral water sponsors is for t or something and so uh so I think just to explain to Sonia as well that the cars every morning the team cars go through a lottery basically and get assigned uh number it's based off GC so it's only lottery for day one and then so UAE car will be team one from Pacha in yellow y bisma will be team car to so it's not random but then if I car is called up the the order kind of changes so a we're in the lead car we had access to what's called radio tour so that's the communal Channel where the director of the race will say estana needs service so the estana car then comes up from position 14 in the caval Cade up to position one in the cavalcade stays behind the director's car the EST rer will drop back get his bottles and then the EST car will drop back into its position okay okay and have you ever seen another team help a rider that's not on their team that would happen would it so like a mechanic might hop out and help a rider like it depends on the situation as well like if it's quite a you'll see teams helping each other out all the time like if someone's punctured you know another car might draft the rider back and like there the race is on at times and the race is quite benign at times so it depends on the actual race situation you're not going to see UAE mechanic getting out and changing yonas as well at a pivotal time in the race you know when t tends to or benefits at the time but yeah it will happen they they will give each other dig out okay okay amazing next question Anthony and Sarah something really scary happened last week on the group spin I got my handlebars Tangled with the rider beside me not pointing the finger I think he is pointing the finger but he wasn't paying attention came too close and his bars got wrapped in mine absolute moment of sheer Panic ensued and out of luck we managed to disentangle from each other any advice for listeners that this might happen to in the future Dan I think the main thing is just watching for the overlap and wheels and if you're not overlapping you got the bars Tangled but you know your bars don't your bars are connected to the rest of your bike so you're overlapping Wheels with the rider on front of you which is a bit of a dodgy place to be in anyway like CU if you're overlapping wheels and the in front of you now Twitches you're in a bad situation and people twitch all the time in a group ride and you know maybe he's going to come back and say it's a crosswind or something but if it's a crosswind you weren't overlapping Wheels
Enough because you needed to bring your bars up to the RO and front of his hips so if he does twitch then his AR is just going to hit your bars and there's going to be no overlap so it's just poor situational awareness and positional awareness it's not the rer bid's sole responsibility that's your like your responsibility to stay on your bike and you put yourself in a dangerous position so I suppose the first thing is just definitely that situational awareness don't let let that overlap happen and don't let the potential for those handlebars to tangle happen well it does happen the odd time for me people are kind of weird at communicating in both the pelaton and groups and often like people say to me how do you move to a bunch so easy I was like well I just talk to people I'll just be like oh hey Paul do you mind if I get into that little spot there I'll point exactly where I want to go and you know rather than being aggressive and trying to force into it or I'll talk you know hey Luke how are you how are you getting on doing much try at the moment can get in there actually I need to move up and chat to my teammates and you can kind of move around the bunch like that you often see on group rides where uh and this you this happen to you as well s on the group rout where there's you're normally two by two by two on the group rout but the person riding beside you is chosen to ride in the middle for some reason which has pushed you out into the wind on the right hand side and now you're not lined up anymore so you're not benefiting from that shelter like an easy fix there it's like you don't have to be that aggressive like pushing and leaning on someone you can just say to the guy beside you or the girl beside you hey you're kind of sticking me in the wind there so you're mind moving in a bit and so communication I suppose is key there as well and then just been calm like the whole pelaton and groupoids like kind of erratic behavior isn't appreciated if you see a hole you don't swerve around it if you see something slippy you don't swerve around it's all steady predictable movements and just wo trink be water yeah so this is this has actually happened me twice twice where I've been on the group ride and my handlebars have gotten Tangled in another person so I was you know anybody else with a bit more self-reflection would think that they were the problem but I did on both occasions the other person actually apologized to me to say that they weren't paying attention you know you're kind of chatting and they kind of come in kind of closer to you next thing before you know it you're in this entanglement one is has to be overlapping for that to happen exactly yeah because so um the most recent one was with one of the writers one of the RO men Damian and we were coming home on the can't name him can you yeah name and shame he's going to be excommunicated now from all the cycling groups in Ireland but so we were riding along the sea front we got entangled and he looked at me I looked at him and I could see this kind of you know wide eyed we're both the hospital we're both g into the sea here so you kind of almost one of you at least has to remain quite calm and even though this moment only lasts probably for N5 of a second it feels like an eternity so as long as you remain calm and nobody panics nobody swerves nobody does anything stupid you kind of keep the bikes pointing forward no shouting no Roaring but both kind of I guess acknowledge that you you're in this situation and that you calmly have to get out of it I don't know how we've gotten out of it um I think look but I know on the previous occasion uh with another riter he was really Tangled Up In Me and started leaning on my shoulder totally panicking you might be the problem here yeah so he was like leaning on me and I just started had to kind of lean back or else he was going to push me back over so try not actually get your am I right try not put your body on the other person's body you know stay stay going forward trying to remain calm and like work it out calmly have you any other advice no okay next question Anthony watching caraz going into yellow during the week made me think of what a sneaky Rider he is okay okay I know it's a race and you've got to win no matter what but last year he really irked me when during the final stages of a race he sat on the other Rider's Wheels he pretended he was really tired and then he attacked to win what do you think of this kind of Rider I hate these type
Of questions like I hate this idea like caraz is paid not just caraz every Rider is paid to win bike races it's their job it's not a hobby it's not the club ride there's no honor it's you win bike races so you should do it in the club ride you should do it in if you're trying to win a bike race your goal is to win the bike race you tactically you play the hand you feel is going to make it most likely for you to win the bike race every Rider has their unique set of talents and skills and Carib baz is is faking that he's tired and then coming around and sprinting for the finish that seems to be his unique unique scale no I wouldn't say That's kaz's Unique scale like yeah he'll definitely play a bit of rope do he's not a rider but he's also like a I don't know exactly what weight he is but I'm going to say he's a sub 65 kilogram Rider there's certain parkour that's just not going to suit him if it's windy he's just not going to do well if it's false plateaus he's just not going to do well he's going to excel probably above 2,000 M cuz he comes from altitude on steep gradients so it's like there you're going to see more quote unquote honor from chirath but it's win races like it's there's no like oh we all have to ride through together it's not there not triatlon it's not make friends it's win races yeah I I'm not sure that caraz is the most look maybe everyone will probably correct me in the comments but I don't know from research after we got this question I was kind of looking it up and there is a lot of negative chatter around caraz he doesn't seem to be the most you know he's not like the most most popular Rider he's very very professional I because again I always feel that when the guys from Ecuador from you know the countries that don't have English as the first language it's very difficult for us to really get a grasp of their personalities you know how much they actually loved in their own home countries how much they do in their own home countries you know how much they support cycling and then they kind of sometimes do get like a little bit of a well we don't know them and we're not we don't understand them so we don't kind of you know get them and we don't support them as much as we would somebody from a European nation I am not a huge fan of carasi yeah I think you're you're an you're a winner Anthony maybe I'm more of a softly softly and I'm kind of like oh I just hate that but it's what B Grayson is it's what by Grayson is you're totally right you're you're totally right when when we saw yonas and pagat remember last year when was a yonus waited for Pacha remember they were doing some there was something happening and one of them waited for the other one is that tour yeah two years ago I think on the downhill and they were shaking hands on the downhill like that kind of fair play warms my fair play at a time when there's really no Jeopardy though it's on a downhill where he could commit and he ends up looking like a bit of an if he commits and then gets caught it's like there's times you can kind of Fain that you're the gentleman like you do see I'm not saying there should be no honor in it there's times where there is a little bit of tradition respected and the yellow Jersey crashes and the bunch weights there is Unwritten rules in cand but theide that we all have to share an equal workload and there's some sort of honor and R and true and the nobility of losing a race there's no such thing is that it's win bike races not win friends okay okay hey Ro man excuse the short Interruption I love riding the bike but on account of being so busy with the podcast at the moment I'm now what's called a time crunch Rider I never thought I'd see to day but I have a tool I'm using what bike to keep myself sharp and on point with specific s to maximize that available training time I have a what bike atam right here in the recording studio beside me and when I have an eror in between interviews I jump on it's removing all the friction points from me there's no more 10 minute setup unfolding legs banging my knees off stuff getting my hands dirty usual connection issues it just works every single time the atom's perfect for virtual racing as well because it has crisp gear changes it has 1% accuracy and it has Max gradient capability of up 25% if you're looking for an indoor trainer I honestly couldn't recommend this any higher I've been using a w bike since 2013 honestly it's the last indoor trainer that you're ever going to need if you head on over to what bike.com now and use code roadman 10 that's
R o a d m n t n and that's going to get you 10% off your W bike okay next question hi guys each year the tourist seems to throw up new tech I need new sunglasses a new helmet to see anything I should consider or Avo avoid and that's from Brian you've been watching this stuff a little closer than I have cuz I know you're walking around the P at the tour and you were I was just kind of you were blown away by I was F bikes and helmets and glasses big shout out my favorite bike that I saw the entire time that we were there was the canyon mat vander's Canyon that he has spray painted for World Champs quite understated as well really understated not really kind of rainbow bands with the rainbow colors is in more of a kind of pastel color it actually just blew my mind I've never seen a bike like it it was non World Champ okay so there has been a couple of things two things that uh really stood out for me were the the helmet that intermet are wearing Beanie beanie yeah who won the the day that we were there it's it's more of a style thing for me it's really really cool the way they have it painted up yeah it's nice paint job it's really cool and I'd love to see more people doing paint jobs on their helmets I think that could be a really cool thing to add a bit of individuality now that we seeing all of the Kish that we wear everyone's very natur uh it is yeah uvex helmets so basically what actually happened very interestingly with this helmet is uvex created this helmet uh it's got all of the ventilation in it but you can get the separate panels to make it either more ventilated or more Arrow so this happened they brought this to the the tour and then of course UCI who are the biggest buzz kill killers in the world banned the helmet because you can't it breaks one of the rules where you can't have add-ons or cover your helmet anyway so Nei they're using the same helmet they've got helmet a for Mountain stages with the ventilation open and they've superglued these panels onto a different high tech for days where they're not going to be in the mountains it's kind of more flat stages so that's what they're doing but but aren't the paint jobs really really cool there's so many cool helmets as well I remember like back Armstrong days almost that zurro had such a foothold almost across the entire Bunch like 80% of the pellaton were using Juro everyone looked like they the same helmet but now like we're seeing smaller Brands like uvex H another one ecoy have a huge presence I think they have two or three teams at the moment mes are doing the UAE helmets J there for yumbo H I think Cas are still doing the inos helmets so there's such a now yeah love poac um the other thing that I noticed and I think that if you we this on your group SP you're going to be it's it's going to be no by now and there were the Dylan grona wagens beak sunglasses did you see these they an absolute Abomination funy so even though he was wearing them in the paddock we were all looking at them going what the hell they look like you know like sunglasses that are like fake you have a fake and a mustache the they look like they oh it's just absolutely ridiculous but anyway he wasn't wearing them over the last couple of stages again the UCI kind of we're adding we're you know asking a few questions about the shape of them and if they were we're not a stylish Bunch so there's one to get one to avoid I think making your helmet individual uh no matter what brand it is get a paint job on it add your own uh twister I think that's a really good way of looking kind of cool on the bike and then avoiding these sunglasses like the plague yeah the custom paint jobs on the helmet are really cool that's something I never thought i' consider but yeah know want they're because people have been getting custom paint on their Road shoes for a long long time there's some really cool companies that individual artists that do lovely stuff now onti stuff yeah I think that's a wrap for us for this week sir is it folks thank you for tuning in for another edition of reuter support if you want to check out some of the conversations I talked about with the very start with the likes of Dan laang and John Wakefield you can click up here and you can check out that video and also don't forget to click down here to subscribe to the channel it matters more than you know see you next week
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What do elite cycling coaches agree on for getting faster?+
Coaches including Dan Lorang, Steven Seiler, Joe Friel, and Iñigo San Millán all point to the same core principles: ride easy 80 to 90 percent of the time, treat training as a stimulus-and-response process rather than box-ticking, and design sessions around the specific demands of your target event. Most amateur cyclists ignore all three.
What is the 80 20 rule in cycling training?+
The 80/20 rule means spending roughly 80 to 90 percent of your training time at low intensity and only 10 to 20 percent at high intensity. Steven Seiler's research and the practical experience of coaches like Dan Lorang confirm this distribution produces better long-term adaptation than training hard most of the time. Amateurs consistently invert this ratio and stall their progress as a result.
How hard should I train to improve at cycling?+
Allen Lim's principle, cited in this episode, states that an athlete operating at ten out of ten in training, nutrition, or sleep is a two out of ten waiting to happen. Sustainable performance comes from consistent eights across all areas, not repeated maximal efforts. Elite coaches universally prioritise manageability and recovery over short-term intensity.
How do cycling coaches structure training around events?+
The consensus among coaches including Matt Bottrill and Joe Friel is to reverse-engineer every training session from the demands of the target event. That means identifying the physiological requirements of race day first, then building sessions that specifically address those requirements. Generic training programmes that ignore event demands produce far slower improvement.
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