Welcome and tapering intro
Roadman today I want to talk to you about the easiest way to get a performance gain. No, I'm not talking about EPO, it's a concept called tapering. Let's cue that intro! The big question is this, how do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our longevity? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Roadman welcome back to another roadman cyclone podcast thanks for joining me today. It's another week Dublin is glorious the moment lockdown is easing the sun is shining outdoor down and it's happening everybody's happy it's just a it's a beautiful place to be at the moment and I got out at the weekend and I've done a long ride my longest ride in quite a while on Sunday. I went exploring on the gravel bike off-road and the guts of five hours, 45 minutes, door to door. I don't know what the distance is, but the distance never flatters when you're talking about gravel. It was realistically probably 100km or so. But beautiful, Roy, and it's such an amazing time of year. And we're only a week away from the Tour de France. And that's kind of what prompt is today's discussion that I want to talk a little bit about tapering. And it's a roadman boy's podcast. So I'm not going to dive into the deep science on it, but I definitely want to guide you and educate you to what it is. And some do's and don'ts around how you can effectively execute a taper because it's free speed. It's the easiest way to go fast on a bike. So with that said, folks, Patreon is really what fuels this podcast. We're heading into another tour of France. I'm not 100% sure if I'll do the daily yet. It's such a big commitment. It took me like a week off after the shooter or last time. But we'll see, I'll make that call a little bit later in the week. But the Patreon is the community that fuels the podcast. It's honestly without the Patreon guys, this isn't possible. The podcast is a social enterprise and you guys, you're the people to tank for, if you're the podcast totally runs off this model that we're employing of reciprocity and soundness. And if you can forward to make a small contribution to the podcast, I ask you to make that small contribution. If you can't, don't worry because the other listeners are making that small contribution and that's why what keeps going on. So if you're unemployed at the moment and you're down on your look, don't worry about making a contribution to the podcast. But if you can't afford it, I say just buy me the price of a point. If I was out and about when I was in town, would you buy me a beer and say, I've got a lot of value out of podcast. Would you buy me a beer? If you would, I'd encourage you to please subscribe to the podcast because each little donation really matters in the health of the podcast. That means I don't have to take on that big toil sponsor anytime soon. So that's on patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore Walsh. So tapering, what is it? It's this kind of mysterious notion and it's almost, it's it's shrouded in a little bit of secrecy because it's half science, half a little bit of intuition. It's a blend of a few different things. I think everybody has an idea of what it is and everybody knows that it should be part of their peak performance because there's a general belief that it can make that peak performance even better. It can make that mountain even higher. But the idea of tapering, it is one of the most challenging protocols to implement in training. It's mainly because trying to find that perfect balance between fitness and freshness. It's a very individualistic process. So what's right for me may not be right for later on the week.
What tapering actually means
In Wednesday's episode I speak with Roman client Colin Griffin and Colin is somebody with a brilliant story because Colin is an A4 writer. He's just starting his journey in cycling and he's balancing all the stuff that normal folks are balancing relationships, work, family commitments, but he managed to pull an Everest out of the bag. And for me, this is so much more impressive than watching the pros and the X-Pro's attempt this stuff because it's an ordinary person and we can all relate to that. But such an important aspect of his preparation for that, it's the taper. And it's especially challenging because it's the first time he's executed this type of taper. So if you don't know what a taper is, at this point, you're probably wondering, you know, should I keep listening to this podcast, but a taper is actually, it's pretty easy to explain. A taper is the principle that once we can get a high level of fitness, if we can follow that big level of fitness and training by a short period of reduced effort to allow the athlete to recover from all that accumulated fatigue, we're going to get a higher level of performance. And it works super well when we execute this properly. We're executing it properly for me, that's diving into the analytics. It's really looking on today's plan account. It's seen form, it's seen freshness, it's seen training stress balances. It's known that for some writers, you're training stress balance of negative zero might be peak. For others, it might be negative 20. For others, it might be negative 40. If you get it wrong, well, first of all, I thought it was the wrong way to do it. The wrong way to do a taper. I see this so often is it's to reduce the training load by reducing the intensity. All that happens here is you get an athlete who ends up coming into their target event stale and they're not ready to perform. You need to loiten the training load during the week but also maintain that intensity because that's going to ensure he or she is race ready. So for me I've played around with different protocols but it's about a protocol is one that I've used over and over again where it's about 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off. So that's a 30 second effort and you repeat that for duration of 4 minutes. So you go 20 seconds full gas, 10 seconds recovery, 20 seconds full gas, 10 seconds recovery, you do that for 4 minutes. So what I would do is 3 days out from the event on the on 3 days efforts, 2 days out from the event on the 2 days efforts, 1 day out from the event on the 1 days efforts and that's a reduced load for me. And that Tabata protocol works really well inside of a taper week for me because it maintains that real high intensity and it makes sure I'm race ready. Now to trick us timing, for most cycling events I would say that a 7-14 day tapering period is enough. Anything longer, it's too much fitness loss to be worth the gain in freshness. But the protocol really depends on the event you're targeting. The protocol for a taper, for a criterium is vastly different for the protocol for a taper from a 200 mile gravel race. So remember, the taper, it's a super individualistic thing. The real key to a successful taper is learning what works each time. So like you'll hear from Colin on Wednesday, his taper, it's the first time he's tried the taper. So taking a record of what we tried on the taper this time, and now next time we execute a taper, incorporating the parts of that that worked, but adding in some different stuff next time, until you nail it down. with the Tabata Taper is a great place to start out. If you haven't looked at the Taper at all at the moment, you're just giving away so much free speed. It's such an easy way to go faster.
Form: where fitness meets freshness
It's, I try and explain it to people, like if we had to bet on the outcome of two riders in a race, and the race is the week after the Tour de France, who would you want to represent you in the race? Atleast A, who's just finished the Tour de France, so he's raced for three weeks, So this is the events the day after the Tour de France will say. He's raced for three weeks, so he's undoubtedly very, very fit. Or, athlete B, who's been sitting at home on the couch because he didn't get picked for the Tour de France and he hasn't trained in three weeks. He's undoubtedly very fresh. The answer really is, it's a bit of a trick question because the answer is you don't really want either of those. You want the athlete C. You want the athlete who's maybe trained for the first or race the first two weeks of the tour and then taking a break and tapered to come into the event. Because that's what form is. Form is where fitness meets freshness. There's no point in being super fit, without being fresh. There's no point in being super fresh, without being fit. The intersection, it's called form. And that's when we knock down and have those super good performances. Roman, that's what I wanted to explain today. Hopefully you're executing the taper. Hopefully this helped a little bit. Do me a solid and share this around with clubmates, share it into WhatsApp groups. If somebody's not currently executing a tape or this could be the spark that just gets them thinking, I need to do that. And as always, you can follow me over on roadman. That's all I cling on posting loads of stuff on Instagram, every day, gravel rides, I'm doing, sharing, strava stuff, trying to find some fun competitions from time to time. So word follow me over there. And if you're listening to the podcast and you're enjoying the podcast, a way you can support it, as I mentioned, the start, it's a Patreon, but also the simple things. It's liking the stuff I'm putting up. It's sharing around, it's saying it's a club mate. It's commenting and leaving reviews. All of that really matters as we're building out this roadman community. Roadman, thank you for listening and I'm gonna chat to you again tomorrow. Okay, stop what you're doing. It's Anthony again. I wanna talk to you for one second about the next step in the roadman journey. I'm laying down a challenge for you. It's called the eight week challenge. So for eight weeks, I'm challenging you to be the very best version of yourself. whatever that is. For eight weeks, I want to take you under my wing, and I want to personally build for you the customized training plan on our analytics platform. This plan, it's going to be laser focused on your goal, and I'm going to navigate around your life, your work, your social commitments, so don't worry about what your circumstances are right now. I remember after I took some time out of cycling, I went off and thought I was a really big businessman. I came back and I realized I wanted to get into cycling, But I knew after a bit, to try it on a loan, it actually wasn't making me any fitter. I needed an entire system. It needed a 360 overhaul. So for the first time ever, I wanna share with you this exact system I used to get back in shape. I'm talking stuff like, I'm gonna give you my morning routines, the cold therapy I used, the cookbooks and recipes I used, and even the motivational audios I listened to get back on track. So right now, what I want you to do is pause this audio, Go to www.roadmancycling.com forward slash eight week. Or check out the link in the bio, click that. So one more time, it's roadmancycling.com forward slash eight week. Chatty all soon.