Coachinginterview

WINTER CYCLING TRAINING: INTENSITY, FREQUENCY & DURATION | ROADMAN CYCLING PODCAST

51:21·13 January 2026

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Most amateur cyclists default to intensity when they should be thinking about frequency and duration. Daryl Fitzgerald from Science to Sport joined the Roadman Cycling podcast to go through how the best riders actually structure their winters, why zone one is the most underused tool in amateur training, and how to stop one bad day turning into a bad block.

Key Takeaways

Fitzgerald's main point is that all coaching comes down to three variables: how hard, how often, and how long. Most time-crunched riders can't control frequency or duration, so they pile on intensity instead. That's where the wheels come off. He coaches his athletes to keep 80% of sessions genuinely easy and reserve the hard work for two sessions a week, targeting whatever the testing data shows as the weak point, whether that's fat oxidation, lactate clearance, or threshold. Zone one specifically, two to three hours fasted or with protein only, gives aerobic adaptation with almost no residual fatigue. You can do a hard session the following day without the snap being gone.

Fitzgerald handles readiness with a composite wellness score out of 100 built from five or six questions covering sleep, nutrition, work life, and social life. If the score tanks, the interval session gets converted to an easy day. He's seen resting heart rate elevate by five to ten beats under high stress, and athletes in that state typically can't hit their numbers anyway. They either bail two intervals in or they grind through at 20 to 30 watts under and call it done. His compliance target is 85 to 90 percent of sessions completed. Miss more than that and the training block isn't doing what it's supposed to. Get the compliance right first, then worry about whether the sessions are optimal.

Daryl Fitzgerald, coach at Science to Sport, structures training around an 80/20 polarized split as described by Professor Stephen Seiler, with 80% of sessions at low intensity and 20% at high intensity. Zone 1 rides of two to three hours, performed fasted or with protein only and 30 to 40 grams of carbohydrates for zone 1 to 2 efforts, are used to build aerobic capacity with minimal residual fatigue. Fitzgerald uses a composite wellness score out of 100, derived from five to six questions on sleep, nutrition, work, and social stress, to determine whether scheduled interval sessions proceed or convert to easy days. Elevated resting heart rate of five to ten beats above baseline is cited as a physiological marker of excess stress load. A compliance target of 85 to 90 percent of planned sessions is set as the primary process goal for athletes in structured training blocks.

If you want the science behind why easy riding actually works, the 80/20 episode goes deeper on Seiler's research. And if you're self-coached and not sure where you're going wrong with your training structure, the five fixable mistakes episode is worth an hour of your time.

KEY QUOTES

“It gives you so much aerobic benefit with almost zero residual fatigue. It's like it feels like you had a rest day.”
Daryl Fitzgerald — Coach at Science to Sport

“I think nine times out of 10 people always ride too hard. They'll do intervals today, then they go do a coffee ride with their mates and then it becomes a race.”
Daryl Fitzgerald — Coach at Science to Sport

“We're time crunch, so we need to ride more work. Because back to the very start of that conversation, we talked about you have those three levers to pull. So I'm fixed on duration. I'm fixed on frequency because of family and work commitments of only one lever to pull. So I just yank on intensity.”
Anthony Walsh — Roadman Cycling podcast host

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT10 SECTIONS

The Three Levers of Training

How do pros actually train? Intensity, frequency, duration. What actually matters? Getting your winter training right can make or break your summer. Do it well and you'll build the engine that carries you through the season. Get it wrong and you'll be absolutely flying in January, but you'll be burnt out before the real season even begins. Today I'm joined by Daryl Fitzgerald from Science to Sport to strip training back to the three levers that matter: intensity, frequency, duration, and reveal what the best riders do behind the scenes, how they build base, where intensity really gets applied, and why zone one is a secret weapon. Welcome, Daryl. We're back in Science of Sport at the man Daryl Fitzgerald. He's going to talk us through winter training. Yep. the best in the world, how their winter training and the lessons that us mere mortals can take from them. That's the kind of grandiose plan zooming out before we even talk about the structure of winter. I remember having a conversation with Professor Steven Syler and his beautiful way of just simplifying things and he gave me this idea of whenever we talk about training we're actually only really talking about three levers that we can pull. Intensity, how hard we train, frequency, how often we train, and duration, how long we train. And no matter what coach it is, from the worst coach in the world to the best coach in the world, they're the only three levers we can really pull around training. I think that that that was a really interesting because coaching can start to get and I'm sure we will get into stuff that starts sounding complicated but no matter how complicated it gets it all comes back actually to that quite simple principle 100%. Yeah. When you think about winter overall structure if we're to zoom out like a board and float above the calendar and look at the whole structure. How do you think about the structure of the winter? Is it traditional periodization, reverse periodization, random allocated intensity, or is it case dependent? Uh, yeah, it's very case dependent. You got to take the athletes who it is. Is it a under 19 or under 23 guy trying to make it is still going to school? Is it an age grouper that's still working a 9 to5? or have you got a club rider or a conte rider that has the ability to train all day every day. So that's yeah that you got you got to work it off individualize each person how you going to prescribe it. Do you have a preference if somebody comes in and they're like unlimited training time the the lad moving to your own had the exit from the company or the you know the kid who's gone fulltime. Do you have a preference on structure you'll bring them through? Um, if they've coming through and they got all the time in the world to ride, the weather's amazing in Spain. Not too many rainy days. If you got good good winter gear, you can pretty much do four or five hours a day if you would like, but you definitely don't don't do five hours every single day. You [snorts] get your ownus. It's called everyone wants to peak by January because of of track or something like Santa in February. Everyone wants to be flying, but then they forget that they got another eight months of racing to do. So if all things no constraints, you go in traditional periodization with a big slow 100%. Like we're obviously we we do a general preparation first where we focus on on low cadence talk work um with a with a mix which you guys have really led the pack on. Yeah, we were out here two years ago and we're playing around. You were knocking bits out me inside in the studio. next door and was that wasn't two years ago. It was last year. Yeah, it was last year. And even then it was like anecdotally we kind of knew that locadence work worked. All the pros were doing loc but there wasn't a lot of peer reviewed data on low cadence work and I'm seeing throughout the years more and more studies just starting to drop on efficacy of locadence work. basically just validate what yeah you're just creating neuromuscular pathways that that the systems haven't been trained and especially I find if people haven't done it or done a little bit of it they have a really good response from it. So that kind of sets you up pretty well once you move into your base and endurance uh blocks. Um and then you then it's purely periodizing the training structure going into what their race calendar looks like for the following year. You don't want to have the guy flying in February when he's only racing in in May because you're not going to hold a peak up until May. So, you kind of want to give him his off season in October, November, and then slowly build him into get his strength up. Um, then slowly build into endurance his endurance miles. I've always been I've seen a couple of meta studies on if you look at the three different types of ways of interspersing intensity into a winter or a macro training plan. So one is we're talking about there is like a all skill standard periodization where we go base build tempo thresh all the way up. The other obviously being reversed where we're starting with sprint and we're working our way down or the third being randomly allocated intensity where it doesn't really follow either of those two structures.

Testing Strengths and Weaknesses

And the meta analysis I've seen of all of them is there's actually very little outcome difference between all three of them. It's more like you said what suits the athlete. Correct. Also, if they've done testing like we obviously do some testing on our athletes as well. We try and identify where the weaker points are and then emphasize on that a little bit. If we improve that, then everything improves for them from whether it's low cadence or whether it's their metabolic flexibility or even up into their threshold. So we can identify where their weaker areas and then spend a little bit more time specifying how to get that better. That's interesting. So what's what's a testing protocol for identifying? Obviously, like you've power profile tests and stuff which are going to give us key markers which we can pair like you know I can go well I'm a cat four 10 second power but I'm a cat 2 one minute per hour. I can start to target races around that. Yeah 100%. So obviously we do our standard lactate and fat max um protocol um which you experienced a little over a year ago with with our PO. I'm sure Wes is going to edit that in right here. He's suffering and you shouting at me. Um but then also from that depending on the what the rider is whether he's a sprinter a climber we'll do some out field testing and see what he's 3 minute power one minute power is and then we we correlate it to see which path he wants to go in. So but we can use the the lab testing with the outdoor testing to really specify what what we how we want to progress for. How do you determine if it's uh improve the strengths, improve the weaknesses protocol or ignore the weaknesses and double down on the strengths protocol? Yeah, I wouldn't ignore the weaknesses completely because then you start falling behind on that. So if you if we like we work off the off the 8020 split on 20% hard, 80% easy polarization. Um, if you're doing two sessions a week, you do one on the on the weaker area and you keep a little bit more of what he's good at as well, so he doesn't lose too much of that. And then maybe the second week, we do both sessions of the weaker aerobic or his energy system. Then on the third week, we go back to what he was he's good at. So he just it doesn't lose touch. What I loved when John was coaching me was it the first time I've ever had zone one, right? Yeah. Like so easy. I was able to go training with my misses and she was riding away from me. It's the most overlooked zone I think on anyone's training training plan. It gives you so much aerobic benefit with almost zero residual fatigue. It's like it feels like you had a rest day. Correct. So my experience with it and you know you can speak to the actual theory and science behind it was I was really able to commit to the hard session the following day when I had a zone one ride the previous day as opposed to a zone two ride where I felt like a bit of the snap was gone out of my sprint the next day. So obviously you're utilizing fat as a fuel source. So you're not really tucking into touching the carbohydrates too much. And then also you're building mitochondria which is a your powerhouse cell to [clears throat] creating getting you fit and strong. So and then I'm sure John gave you a good two three days recovery after doing that hard session so you could go hard again. What's the thinking on fueling for zone one rise? Because as you say, like the the fat carbohydrate debate was actually best explained to me by is it Sam Imper or David Don from Hexus that I had on the podcast. They were saying think about them more as a dimmer switch rather than a switch that you flick on and off. You're not using 0% carbs, no 100% or 100% carbs. It's always a mix of the two and sliding up and down. How do you think about fueling them [snorts] those zone one rights? So we we do have a a a intramuscular triglyceride rod that we that we implement but we do have someone still ingest proteins interuscular triglyceride ride. Slow down. Unpack that one for me. So it's just the the fat between the muscle that your body would use as a as a fuel source. Okay. Um, but obviously with studies and research showing that you you can still use protein as a as a fuel source. Well, not as a fuel to eat something just to keep your stomach a bit full and you're not doing a fully fasted. So when you get home from that ride, you're eating the fridge plus everything inside of it. So you So you're doing some of the zone one rides in a carb fasted state. Yeah, carb fast. glycogen depleted, but you still got some proteins. Um, but for zone one, zone two ride, you can still use carbs, 30, 40 grams of carbs. All depends on the athletes how well they can handle little carbs or no carbs. When you say glycogen depleted on the zone one rides, is there because I guess our muscles and our liver are holding 90 minutes of glycogen.

Fasted Rides and Pro Infrastructure

Are we actively depleting that going into the ride? So, some people wake up and do it in the morning. So, they've been fasted for eight, nine hours, get up, have a coffee, and then go and ride 2, three hours. Um, but then if some athletes can't deal with that, then we say eat a protein meal, but then make sure you eat a high glycemic glycemic carbohydrate meal to recover. Interesting. to get you. I hadn't heard much of they those pre-re fasted riots were pretty big. Yeah, they were a little bit too big at one stage. I think everyone was doing like six six hours fasted and then eating uh the bakery when they when they went past it after the ride. Yeah. And you know, I think there was a period there around I'm chatting to Froomi about this one around Sky when they were you know posting pictures all the lads oh out for seven hours and they post a picture of scrambled egg and you know salmon or something and an avocado. But like what you didn't see in that photo was like the 240 grams of oats that they had for breakfast that morning as well. Yeah. Um, like I think with any media today, things get lost in translation. And I think that's where a lot of amateurs go wrong as well. They're like pros are doing 30, 40 hours. That's what I need to do as well. Yeah. I you know what it's when I've done bigger mileage. I realize it's not even the the bigger mileage that the the pros obviously ride bigger mileage, but it's it's the infrastructure that allows them to ride that bigger mileage. Everything from meal prep to living a low stress lifestyle to going to bed on time to having a family that's supportive of it. Like we were talking about this idea of, you know, wake up, to-do list, just one thing on the to-do list, ride the bike. Yeah. And that's what the pros have where most of us have multiple sources of cortisol, like multiple sources of stress coming in. Y that's actually an interesting one because I haven't heard much on the idea of like how would you change someone's training plan? Or maybe the answer is you wouldn't because we just don't have good data on this. Someone that's like super what's what's a stressful job? I don't know, Wall Street trader or something. 100%. So as a company and and that's where I'm like always grateful that how I got into the company is we've come up with a questionnaire and and anyone can do the questionnaire. You get a composite score. How well did you sleep? How's your social life? How's work life? Um did you train? like we got I think it's five or six questions and when we do a weekly feedback and they come back and their stress score is through the roof we say not don't do the interval session today have an easy day take the day off have an easy day then see how you're feeling in 2 three days then we do your interval because if they've had worked 12 13 hours then only had 4 hours sleep and if they have to do a V2 max session or peak session of 8 by1 one minute all out, they're not going to complete that session. How do you think about wearable data here? Like, is it useful but incomplete and you're trying to pair that with training data and subjective feedback or would you ever change someone's training because you're seeing a seven day like I'm Are you on ultra human? No, no, no. I'm not. Um, that's just a wedding ring. Yeah, [snorts] that's my wedding ring. Everyone's like, "Oh, you got an aura ring." I know. Just I got the ultra human now. And it's interesting because they have a home monitor. It's getting more invasive, but they have a home monitor as well. So the home monitor shows like I'm not sure how much you follow these. They're working in UAE uh with the team now. So the home monitor monitors air quality in the house. So they're looking to figure out the training obviously gives the space to get better and then that ad adaptation happens through the recovery. So they're trying to monitor that recovery piece. So they're looking at decibel levels around sleep, darkness of the room, air quality, and then your usual wearable stuff, HV trends%. But I still haven't heard a good answer on what are we doing with this data and how is it change. So it's it's a it's a bit of a tricky one. I think yes, there's HRV and there's there's so many different apps and wearables. Um we there's actually a talk at science and cycling last year. Well, this year at the tour of to France and some of the things didn't make sense because they're wearing the wearables and when they should have been going well, HRV dropped instead of going up. So, it's so we asked the question why. And I don't think anyone can really pinpoint it. And for us, I think the most honest the best feedback you'll get is if you ask somebody, how are you actually feeling? I'm tired. clock wearable the boss will do you think that's uh that quality of that answer is predicated on the writer's experience like is there a naivity that comes with inexperience or youth where you always say I'm fine yeah yes and no but if once you build a relationship with your client you pick up the phone and the minute he says hello you go like you need a rest day because you've understood you speak to him so often when the minute he answers the phone you know straight away there's something not right and you say you sound tired how are you feeling and he's like yeah I'm pretty shattered yeah know I have a new app I want to bring out instead of all the wearable data because no one coach doesn't really know what to do with all this wearable data and make sense of it [clears throat] that your Spotify playlist hooks up on the coach's end and you can go mate why you listen to so many sad songs you're listening a lot of Johnny Cash there late in the evening are you okay if the problem is if you got kids like I do at home.

Reverse Periodization for Working Athletes

All you hear is maybe blip because they're algorithm doesn't know what's going on cuz my nephew comes over and he's watching you know whatever kids cartoon he's watching Baby Shark and you know then I'm watching motorbike crashes or something doesn't know what to make of it this kid who's into motorbike crashes and parachute accidents. Yeah. So the reverse periodization I've always found quite interesting for working athletes and it's when I've looked across lads that I've coached or myself when I'm busy it just it makes a lot of sense because if you're living in this part of the world evenings are short. Yeah. You're in work for all the daylight hours. You're either getting your session done before or after work and it's normally on the trainer for 60 minutes to two hours if you're motivated. reverse periodization, still following that 8020 distribution of easy to hard principle seems to work quite nicely because you can throw in, you know, sprint session Tuesday, sprint session Thursday, you know, a cadence type session to pass the time on a Wednesday, but keeping it quite aerobic. Have you played around with that type? I have a little bit. Um, and also now with the the evolving or more focus on strength and conditioning, it also can break it up a little bit. once or twice a week [clears throat] so yes a reverse periodization especially if they're working at 9 to5 give them that hour and also maybe spread out maybe they can only do a Monday and Thursday or Monday and Friday interval session then you can fill it with either a gym session or an easy ride on Wednesday and then you let him just go and ride his bike on a Saturday let him enjoy Where would you think about the placement of the gym session in that week? Uh, it doesn't matter. Yeah, it doesn't matter. But you also don't want to give him a gym session after he's had four by six minute talk. If it's the next day, it depends how he how well he recovers. So, if he recovers well, sure, give it to him the next day. If he doesn't, let him do a recovery day on the bike and then give him the strength session on the on the third day. So if if you were running the athlete through that reverse periodization, do you look at that as you still use a four-week block for amateur athletes or is there Yes. Like a it's it's it's so individualized. That's Yeah, that's exactly what I coaching. It's it's when I first started coaching, you think, oh, you've got your block paradization. That's what you do. But now that I've spent so much time with so many experts in the industry, it's not just a plugandplay. Um, if the guys really struggles to recover from sessions, sometimes only give him one session a week and not not two. Let him ride hard on Tuesday and then go and ride hard with his mates on a Saturday. Since getting back into training, the biggest thing that's hit me isn't fitness, it's fueling. I used to finish rides totally wrecked. I'd come through the door, collapse on the couch, scroll through Instagram, and call it recovery. But now that I'm actually fueling properly, and that's anywhere from 80 to 120 grams of carbs an hour, depending on the session, it's a completely different story. I'm coming home from training feeling fresh, and my power data throughout the ride supports this. I can actually function when I get off the bike. It's honestly blown me away how big a difference that proper fueling makes. When I started fueling right, I realized just how good I could actually feel on the bike. a daily staple in my training now. It's for endurance because I know exactly what I'm putting into my body. Every product is designed for performance. It's tested in real racing and it's used by the very best from Olympians to tour to France riders. It's the same science just without the luxury brand markup. Seriously, jump over to their site and check out the prices. You'll be absolutely blown away. It's real fuel, unbeatable price, great taste, no gut issues. Like, that's a winning combo for me. For endurance, built on science, proven in sweat. Check them out at for endurance.com and start fueling smarter. I'm going to put the link in the description down below. This one of the biggest traps that amateurs fall into. Yeah, we're time crunch, so we need to ride more work. Because back to the very start of that conversation, we talked about you have those three levers to pull. So I'm fixed on duration. I'm fixed on frequency because of family and work commitments of only one lever to pull. So I just yank on intensity. Yeah. I think nine times out of 10 people always ride too hard. They'll do intervals today, then they go do a coffee ride with their mates and then it becomes a race. Yeah. [clears throat] then they go to gym and then Thursday they got intervals again and then Saturday it's a club race or they go and do Jirona worlds or trial or something. So it's always like when are you recovering and when are you trying to adapt or change what you've tested where you're weak at how do we you're not going to get better at that. So you're not going to improve your fat oxidation. You're not going to improve your lactate curve. Like that's when as a coach you need to be a little bit strict and stop them from going to Wednesday worlds or and and that's where communication and I think that's what makes John and even our company so good is our communication with our with athletes.

Finding an Athlete's Maximum Dose

How do you figure out the more dose you can give an athlete dose response, they're going to theoretically improve if they're able to absorb that dose? Absorption rates are going to differ wildly based on, you know, so many different things from genetics to environment. How do you figure out or maybe there's not an answer to this as an industry? Have we figured out the maximum dose we can give an athlete? It is a tough one. I've actually got a client from America. He's the [clears throat] minute he gets a little bit of volume, he gets sick, but he's got some issue with his with his sinuses. So, he needs to go for an operation. It's like now we're just trying to juggle. It's like where's the limit where he can still continue to train and not get sick until he has the operation and not cross that limit. Yeah, it's a like it's it's a very fine line and that's where you need to go back in history and see when he got sick, how many hours he did, what intensity was was implemented. So, yeah, it's not it's not just plug and play, it's just trying to put the pieces together. Yeah, because I remember back home when I was racing, you know, week in week out, we used to have an Easter stage race, then a May bank holiday stage race and then our big race to tour of Ireland was the 20th May. Yeah. And whenever I if Easter was close to, you know, Easter falls a different time every year. Easter was close to the May bank holiday weekend, I was always sick for the main race tour of Ireland. Yeah. If I skip the May one, I was always flying. Yeah. But it takes you four or five times messing up to figure this out. There's still not a better way. So, like I think then you need to go one step further and go back and see what training you did previous to that and why you got sick. What was your volume? What was intensity? Um especially with people with kids now. How do you manage that? Kids are always bringing home germs. Like that's why I got massive respect for world tour guys that do have kids. um is how they stay healthy training without getting sick from the kids bringing germs from from school. We were chatting a little bit about just new software platforms are coming along and we were mentioning Vector and why this is interesting for me some of the stuff they're doing. I think it just gives us a little bit of an extra deeper layer in understanding that. Like if you think TSS was a brilliant tool for a long time, but if I go out and I ride 4 hours steady zone 2 and you go out and you ride two and a half hours with a bunch of tempo or fat max intervals and we both come back with, I don't know, 160 TSS points, it me saying to you at 160 TSS points, it doesn't tell a very granular story of what happened. When we go back looking at times when you're getting sick, just seeing that TSS load actually doesn't tell much. No. What I really like what Vector have done is they've separated intensity and volume as two different metrics. So now the same way you would explain to somebody like if someone asked me what's Angel's climb like there's no point me just giving the distance of it because the distance without the gradient gives no context. Distance and gradient together now give me a context of the climb. volume and intensity together. I just think it's cool to see really smart people now and figuring out these problems. Yeah, there's so many more engineers and and more and more information coming in. Um, and also AI. So, it's it's a competition. AI coaches, some people will leave a coach and go to AI. But I think have you seen that? Yeah, I've seen it. Some guys are coming here for bike said they've left their coach. they're doing AI coaching. Um I think they've asked Chat GBT to help them. But that's where like I'm a very firm believer in that still having that human interaction when you pick up the phone and you say how are you doing that that reply alone tells you a lot. Coaching isn't a training plan. No, it's what happens after anyone can write a training plan. But I can't remember, you know, you have so many podcasts these blend together. I think it was one of the hexus boys again on nutrition and we were talking about the problem with the chat GPT culture partial amount of information is a really dangerous thing the example I think it was Sam Impia I don't want to misquote him uh the example he was given was around magnesium an athlete comes in to chat GPT and says I I cramped in the race I think I was low on salts and now you chat to this lad 10 iterations back and forth with Chach GPT. He knows everything about magnesium levels, sodium levels, temperature, salt rates, get bought a core temperature monitor. If you actually sat with him, you'd just be going, "No, you got no problem there, mate. You were just pinned for the race. You were operating at a capacity. You weren't clearing the lactate. That's why you're cramping." But because he had a partial idea that maybe I'm cramping because of salts, it brings him further and further down this wrong rabbit hole.

Consistency Beats Secret Sauce

Yeah. And now you can't get out of it. Yeah. There's way too much information accessible to people, I think, without context. Without context, and they take it in the wrong way. Um, and then for me, simple is easy. Like, if you've got metrics to to fall back on and measurable metrics, you can start to see patterns. You know, I'm fascinated with the tread that links all the best riders and coaches. And again, I think you just touched on something I just hear time and time again when I chat with, you know, world-class operators like you where was chatting with Bling Matthews a couple of weeks ago and the question we had coming in was something along the lines of what's the secret sauce. Yeah. And you know, you know, there's no secret sauce. He knows there's no secret sauce. His answer was, "Yeah, there is a secret sauce." I've gone to bed at the exact same time, woke up at the exact same time, had the same meal for breakfast, had the same meal for lunch for like seven years. Yeah. never missed a day. Like that's not sexy. That's not a sexy answer. No, not at all. But how powerful is that? Like you're talking about metrics for optimizing the HRV. Like go to bed at the same time, wake up the same time for a decade and see how that affects your train. Yeah. Exactly. So, but it's the actual answer. No, no, 100%. And we we're not machines. We're humans as well. Like for me AI and stuff can't read emotions and that's where for me like the human element and that communication factor is super important and then that's when you get the most out of the coach and the athlete. What what mechanisms do you put in place to build that communication pathway? Do you leave it really informal or have you got something that's [clears throat] a weekly check in a daily check in? In the beginning, it's obviously a little bit more formal on email. Then as you start to get to know each other and become more friendly, it's WhatsApp. Then it's calls sometimes only once a week, but then sometimes at least two, three times a week. It all all depends on on the coach that you the the athlete that you you're coaching. But it does start formal like where we've got a weekly or submaximal fatigue test that we do and weekly and give feedback and we take their their answers and change your training the following week to what they've what they've given us and what their composite score and stuff is their wellness score. So we um when you say composite score, what's going into making that composite score? So sleep, nutrition, work life, social life. And am I rating these on a scale of 1 to 10 or Yeah, out of the five questions that you you get a score out of 100. So obviously if your wellness scores right up there at close to 100, things are looking good, you've had good sleep, your mood's good, social life, everything's going well. But when it starts getting a bit messy and that composite score, the wellness score drops, then you need to try and figure out is it too much load or intensity? Is it coming from home life? And and the same would apply for for professionals. How stressed is he leading up to a race and or how stressed is he that he's not losing the weight that he should? Like can you see data on this on stress impacting performance? Yeah, 100%. What what's the impact? Obviously cortisol levels increase. So we can't measure that, can we? No, that's that I don't know. So maybe someone you're measuring rest of heart rate or HRV or mood or whatever. Um but normally we see change in elevation of of heart rate either high or normally lower if they're super stressed. Um and we can go the other way. It depends on the person. Could be five 10 beats higher. And then when they go and do an interval session, you they say straight, I felt like I couldn't push 20 watts harder. I had to back off. Yeah. Or they try and go complete it. They do two intervals and they can it and just go go straight home. And that's probably the smart athlete that's canning it. That Yeah. Canning it. Non-s smart athletes probably just flogging themselves. the the smartphone would actually be dropping 10 20 watts completing the session but still getting the same stimulus but being okay with not pushing it 20 watts and then discuss it afterwards. Would you have a rule at home for when do you reduce the intensity versus when do you kind of Yeah, like that becomes being a little bit honest with yourself as an athlete like and telling your coaches I was completely cooked. I went 20 30 watts lower. That's all I could produce. If that's what he does, it's fine. But he can't continue that same habit for the next three four weeks. I had a session. So I had a toughish day on so I'm back in the train at the moment. I had a toughish day on Saturday with a group ride and then an evening session with some uh TT efforts. Yeah. On it like six or seven minute TT efforts. And then I went out for a club Christmas party that night.

When RPE Beats the Data

I didn't drink a lot, but that reluctant four or five beers had h not much sleep was the thing and you know on your feet. Yeah. All night dancing general Burger King on the way home type thing. Didn't get up the next morning for meeting the lads for the group ride. I was like I'll do it on the indoor a three-hour ride to do. I was like three hours is a bit on the long side on the indoor but weather [ __ ] anyway. So I two 30 minute fat max efforts at 300 to 340 to do 300 to 330 maybe and I ended up just doing them at 280. Yeah. Sacking off the session two and a half hours in and I was kind of left with that going did I do the right thing reducing the intensity and cutting it short? Should I push through and flog? Like I felt terrible. My resting heart rate went from 34 to 43. Like I was in a bad way. Yeah. But it's hard to know for a motivated athlete if you're better just not training that day. Yeah. Um that's what's also super important to when you when you do wake up, if you've got a close relationship with your coach, just tell them I don't think it's going to work today. Like not feeling great. But if you do still do the session, [clears throat] use an RP scale. Yeah. Put your put your computer or close your cover your screen and go off how you actually feel because heart rate doesn't even work. I found that my heart rate super suppressed. Yeah. 100%. I was top of zone two heart rate. Yeah. You know, and probably, you know, should have been 15 beats, 10 15 beats higher. Oh yeah. Yeah. 100%. So it's RP is always the for me the most accurate. Doesn't matter metric power, heart rate, the way you're feeling. It's pretty accurate. Yeah, it's a good one to bring in because [clears throat] you could almost as a coach without context to that session look at it and go, he's flying. He's producing the power off a much lower heart rate. You don't have that context of oh his RP to be a seven but it was a 12. And you looked at time wear the respiratory uh I have seen we saw them and spoke to him a little bit at science and cycling. Um I haven't dived into it too much to see the the research and everything. Obviously being here trying to run this family, John's traveling so much. So I think next year when I get a bit of free time, we will start playing. Obviously reading Ramco is he big time now. He's still hanging out with us. He's somewhere with with the cool kids. H I wonder you heard what sort of impact that's had on the whole team. Remco coming in. Obviously is there two stars in the sport bigger than them? Maybe you could say Yonas and Tad. Yes. I actually to be honest I don't know like everyone's like oh you work with John every day. It's like yeah I see him every day doesn't mean that we speak cuz he's on the phone all the time. Um so he's a super busy guy and he's in and out. So we don't actually get to sit down. I think well I saw John last week and I'm only going to see him in in the new year. So every rider chases that feeling. The one where the bike just disappears where the pedals turn easy and the road hums beneath you. And for a few fleeting seconds, everything just clicks. No effort, no noise, just flow. That moment isn't luck. It's engineering. The coin that only comes from obsession. For over 20 years, Parley has refined the art of carbon. Every layer placed by hand. Every angle tuned by feel and data until response, balance, and speed exist in perfect harmony. You don't notice a parley because it's flashy. You notice it because it feels right. Because every input, every climb, every corner happens exactly how you imagined it would. Customer production, every frame goes through the same uncompromising process. Traceable, tested, and finished by people who still believe craftsmanship matters. Parley doesn't chase trends. They chase that moment every rider lives for when the bike and the body move as one. parley cycles engineered for that feeling that keeps us coming back. Like I think from the outside we all think when these big stars come in you know back to a football analogy like a you know if a Roy Keane came into a dressing room that it just suddenly the standards go up across the board. I'd be curious I must try and get with John and we'll do a podcast on it and see has that actually happened? Do does a writer like that just command different standards across the board? You see I've I've never got to that level so I don't really know. So, but coming from a motocross perspective, and I think it's the same in a lot of individual team sports is when a high-profile athlete does join, everyone wants to up their game. So, whether it's from riders through to staff, everyone [snorts] wants to be better and try and get better to get obviously the end result and and not mess up. It's such a different environment that most amateurs find themselves in because even though you're in a club or a team, there's not much.

Process Goals to Beat Winter

It could be quite a lonely sport if I'm honest. And I've even found this myself at times coming from a team sport setting where you have all the lads around you. You have a dressing room. There's a lot of lonely errors on the bike. It's a selfish sport. Lonely isn't alone. Maybe lone lonely sounds a little bit sad. Like I'm not going out and listening, you know, my Spotify playlist. But yeah, it's a lot of alone time. It's it's not a lot of fun. A lot of time you're kind of thinking, well, this will be fun down the line when I get with the lads, I get with the girls this summer and we race together. But for someone that's kind of at winter time struggling to to see like the point of it, struggling to see how am I going to get through this winter sit in the shed doing these efforts on my own. Why am I doing this session today? Yeah, I think like that's where before you join a coach or or get or if when you do get a coach, you have short-term goals, medium goals, and then your long-term goal. [snorts] Short-term goal could be make sure that you hit every training session or at least 85 90% of them. That's a nice like a process goal. A process. So like we let get the first really cold month out the way. we get all green in training peaks, tick those little boxes, then when we start getting outdoors, join Wednesday Worlds or something like that. So have your small goals in place and then when you if anyone's like that, if you get a goal, you feel good about yourself, it uplifts you and you stay motivated to get the next one. So it's trying to create almost an early win. Yeah. In it. Correct. And you think the easy not the easiest but the the most common sense early win you think is to create a process goal around compliance on sessions 100%. Because if you're not finishing a sess three sessions in a fiveday block, how you going to get to a race? Yeah. And I think as well like you I never like to see people dropping out of races. No. I think it builds a habit. It builds a offramp that when you're in a line out in Belgium in a crosswind and it's pissing rain, you have an offramp to go, oh, I can just pull up and I'll be 100% on the couch in 20 minutes. It's not a good mentality. No, it's an I think maybe this is quite an old school opinion on it, but I think it's a better mentality to go hang on here because if you get dropped, you're riding the distance on your own. You're doing [clears throat] 220k on your own like a lemon going around getting lapped on the finishing circuit. And it's that shame almost gets you an extra 10 watts 100%. But like it's when I was growing up racing motocross, my dad always said, like I said to my dad, I'm done racing. I don't want to do this anymore. cuz my dad put a lot of pressure on me as as a kid. And he's like, "You know what? Finish a season. You don't just quit now. I'll stop shouting. If you want to race, we go race. If you don't, that's fine with me." Pulled up his deck chair, drank beers at the racing, and I finish a season and end up winning the season. So, my dad always taught me, if you start something, don't finish it. So, it's the same same principle when it comes to training. Yeah. If you start something, see it through. If you don't like it, then step away or or change your direction or then you sit with your coach and you you look for the juncture to step away. It's not just I'm [clears throat] having a bad day. Yeah. It's almost like how do you stop of a buddy of mine, he said something recently around instead of all or nothing, do all or something. I can't do four hours. I didn't just do zero and ate ice cream all day. I got two going. Like that's why John and I will say to a client like if we give you six days of training, if you do 85% of it, you're going to go somewhere. But if you're only doing 25%, you're not going anywhere. So like at least have a small goal in place. Be like, "Okay, this is my work schedule. I can only do 85% of the work." That's fine. Next week you do 100% of it. And that's an honest communication feedback loop where they're saying to you, look, that training load with the availability I gave you was maybe a bit ambitious. Yeah. And then you're iterating the following week and building out something. 100%. How do you stop a bad day becoming a bad week, becoming a bad block, becoming a bad season, like one bad thing cascade? Yeah, [clears throat] that's a that's a tough one. And it's also case by case. Um, sometimes then you just delete all the training that you've had that week and you tell them, "Go ride your bike, mate. Go ride it." Why you started riding a bike? Honestly, just go and pedal. Go and ride with mates. Take a couple days and then we reook. Start easy the following week and then build back into it.

Avoiding the Self-Destruct Spiral

Yeah. Because you do see that self-destruct mode in some people. I don't know if it's a a gene they have or what, but it's like when it slightly comes off the rails, it fully goes off the rails 100%. And it it is difficult to to course correct that with sort of saying, "Oh, we agreed this process goal that you're going to do 85%." It feels like it needs a [snorts] you know, you'd hear the the motivational guru say, "Oh, ask why three times." And like I'm not sure if that has ever got me there. [clears throat] Um it's it's so tough. Everyone's fighting their their own battles throughout the week. So yeah, I if if I find the guys struggling week on week and week and I just say let's take a step back. Don't do anything this week. Go and ride with your mates. Go drink coffee. Be a human. You we're not machines. You can't do this day in day out. Work, train, and also can't just train all the time. Sometimes you still have to be a human being no matter how high up you are or where you starting. I I fall into this uh trap as well where you're looking at your available free time and you're just mapping out every single hour on your Google calendar. I'll do this podcast here. I'll do this here. I can travel here. I can get this session in here. I have a two-hour window. I can definitely write for 90 minutes there. And it's like you haven't logged into Netflix in a month. It's like you know when you chilling out like when you go for a walk when do you like when I give when people ask for off season I put in their train offseason I don't load anything and they're like what must I do whatever you want like I don't want you to wake up and go I have to look at training peaks. Yeah nice mental break. You need to refresh mentally just as much physically. I think more mentally than anything else, especially the way the racing is going today. It's hard all the time. There's so much racing now and this is dripping down into amateurs though as well because [clears throat] speeds are going up in amateur races across the board. It's a function of I think fueling, you know, we're chronically underfueled for decades now. Everyone's figuring out that if I fuel and 90 to 120 grams an hour, it's going maybe I spoke to Tim Podar on two there are some really interesting ideas around actually there's the law of diminishing marginal returns there on fueling and actually there is you can I think he explained to me like a toll bridge like if you have 12 boots on the tow bridge merging into two lanes just backs up the whole system. Yeah. And that can actually happen if you're you know your body can only take 90 and you're taking 120. Yeah. You would better maybe taking 70. Yeah. Uh because it's more bioavailable then. But amateurs are seem to be on the [snorts] gas with diet and this is trickle down from the pros now are like there's no offseason. There's no the Irish club is empty. Like you could go into the Irish club 5 years ago. There'll be monument spinners in there like on the beer. No one's in there on the beer. So, so but that's trickling down and all the amateurs now are [clears throat] full gas on arrow, full gas on diet, full gas on I I wonder is that kind of advice you're given there on take get off the pedals, get off the training peaks, back the calendars for months. Like I literally do not put anything depend on that two to three weeks I don't put anything at all and then they're like what must I do? Go hike a mountain. Go pedal. Like just don't worry about don't look at training peaks. Phone me when you want to ride again. How do you look at the approach into an event? This is one of the most common questions we get. If you're a week out from target event, what does taper look like? Is there a standard taper length or would you taper based on the freshness they need for uh it also depends on the length of the race. Like say amateurs doing Cape Epic like if you're doing eight hard days like that you say 10 to two week taper leading up to it. You don't want to be too like you don't want to be too fatigued going into epic because by day four you're going to run into a world of trouble. But if you're going into a one day a race you also don't want to be too fresh. Yeah. um being too fresh, you'll feel lethargic, a little bit slow, feels like you've lost your fits. Yeah. That you like that high-end engine is is not there. So like closer to like a one day race, that's your a race. Yeah, I give it like a four or five day taper. Interesting. Yeah, it's it all depends on duration of the race and how many races you got afterwards. And just to close the loop on the idea of periodization, maybe we finish it here. Yeah, periodization is this idea of moving from the general to the specific. And when I think about periodization, I think about when I think about getting to the specific, I'm more dialed with my training.

Periodizing Life Around Racing

The training demands mimic the demands of the event closer and closer, but I'm more dialed in my prep. Like mentally, I'm thinking about the race more. I'm thinking about my equipment. Um, my nutrition has got gradually tighter. Yeah. I don't like the being tight with everything all year round. Like I'm as [snorts] I can't have one beer tonight because I have a race in June. How do you see this balance between that idea of periodizing not just training but periodizing your life moving towards an event versus the just full high octane world we're in? Yeah, that's a tricky one. I think if the guy's been super strict and sometimes he's like listen I just need to go and have a couple of beers like I say let's wait just for an easier block don't do it now just wait 3 4 days go on a Saturday have a couple of pints with the mates sleep Sunday and then slowly get back into to where you're going [clears throat] that's an age group or something like that yeah look when it comes to professional that's a little bit more tricky you. They're just knocking off now, aren't they? Yeah. Like I think if you let give them a little bit of of your hand, they're going to take the arm and take take too much advantage. Uh you don't you don't know. Like cuz I think some athletes don't always tell you the whole truth what they're doing. Even with training, like tell them do three hours, they do three and sit your computer off and do another hour. Yeah. So you look at the GPX for she's still at the road. You're like, "How'd you get home?" Yeah, now I got a punch out. Got a bulk to fetch me. Excuse the short interruption because I think you're going to want to hear about this. If you've ever had a quiet thought in the back of your head, something to kind of just whisper to you, "I'm not done yet." Then listen closely. For a lot of us, life has taken priority in recent years. Career, family, responsibility, they've all come first. And maybe now, if you're like me, you're at the point where you want to put some focus back onto your health, onto your performance, onto yourself. And that's exactly why I'm opening a limited number of one-on-one coaching spots in a new project I'm launching called Not Done Yet. And this is for athletes who feel like there's another chapter still to be written in their cycling journey. They're not ready to just quit, roll over, and quit cycling already. So, whatever level you're at right now, whatever that next chapter looks like for you, if this sounds like you, click on the link, which I'm going to leave in the description or the show notes down below. You're going to land on a short application form. It'll generally only take you like 60 seconds to 90 seconds to fill this out. That application is going to help me understand where you're at and see if you're a good fit to work together on this not done yet program. Once you submit it, you'll personally hear from me within 24 hours. Now, just be aware that this is a small cohort of coaching spots. I'm limiting it to 100 athletes, but I'm super excited. So, no matter where you're at in your cycling journey, click on the link and we're going to chat real soon. No, that's brutal. H D super interesting peak into what the best in the world are doing behind the scenes. Uh thanks for showing us around this cool office and being so generous for your time. Thank you. Yeah. Sorry. uh catching me so off guard. Definitely wasn't prepared for it, but uh yeah, it was good. Good to be on a show. Enjoyed it.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How should amateur cyclists structure their winter training?+

Daryl Fitzgerald from Science to Sport recommends starting winter with low-cadence strength work to build a neuromuscular base, then progressing into endurance and threshold blocks as the season approaches. The three variables that matter most are intensity, frequency, and duration, and most amateurs make the mistake of defaulting to intensity when they should first be maximising frequency and duration at lower effort levels.

What is an 80/20 polarised training split in cycling?+

An 80/20 polarised split means roughly 80% of training is done at low intensity and 20% at high intensity, with very little time spent in the moderate middle zones. Daryl Fitzgerald favours this approach and recommends rotating sessions between an athlete's weaknesses and strengths rather than neglecting either end of the spectrum.

Is zone 1 cycling actually worth doing or is it too easy?+

Zone 1 delivers genuine aerobic adaptation while producing almost no residual fatigue, making it one of the most efficient tools in a training programme. Daryl Fitzgerald describes it as the most underused zone among amateur cyclists, who typically skip it because it feels insufficiently hard rather than evaluating it by the adaptation it produces.

What is low-cadence work in cycling and when should you do it?+

Low-cadence work involves pedalling at a deliberately slow cadence, typically under 60 rpm, against a high resistance to develop neuromuscular strength and force production. Daryl Fitzgerald places it at the start of a traditional periodised winter block so that a solid strength base is in place before endurance and threshold sessions begin later in the off-season.

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Key Takeaways

KEY QUOTES

“It gives you so much aerobic benefit with almost zero residual fatigue. It's like it feels like you had a rest day.”
Daryl Fitzgerald — Coach at Science to Sport

“I think nine times out of 10 people always ride too hard. They'll do intervals today, then they go do a coffee ride with their mates and then it becomes a race.”
Daryl Fitzgerald — Coach at Science to Sport

“We're time crunch, so we need to ride more work. Because back to the very start of that conversation, we talked about you have those three levers to pull. So I'm fixed on duration. I'm fixed on frequency because of family and work commitments of only one lever to pull. So I just yank on intensity.”
Anthony Walsh — Roadman Cycling podcast host

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How should amateur cyclists structure their winter training?+

What is an 80/20 polarised training split in cycling?+

Is zone 1 cycling actually worth doing or is it too easy?+

What is low-cadence work in cycling and when should you do it?+

WINTER CYCLING TRAINING: INTENSITY, FREQUENCY & DURATION | ROADMAN CYCLING PODCAST

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