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.