Rowman today, I want to give you some tips about something a lot of…
Rowman today, I want to give you some tips about something a lot of people struggle with. That's climbing a hill on your bicycle. 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 long changes? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Rowman Podcast. Roadman welcome back to the Roadman podcast it's another short form one it's Friday it means it's our last podcast of the week and it possibly means you've listened to me five days this week you definitely need a medal for that I'm not sure how many people my girlfriends are included they can listen to me for five days in a row before I jump in and talk about today's topic which is climbing and a couple of sessions with a bit of twist on them. It's not sessions you've probably heard of before. So before I jump in and tell you about those I want to tell you briefly about patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore Walsh. That is how we fund the podcast. That is how they like to stay on in podcast land, roadman podcast. If you like having the podcast around please exercise that both by by me a coffee by me a beer you know you have a euro sports subscription you have a Spotify subscription you have a Sky subscription you have a virgin subscription it's the price of a point of beer hook me up and help us keep this podcast gone okay my DMS are floated always with a question that comes up time and time and time again I I struggle on the hills. What can I do to help myself? There's two variables when it comes to climbing a hill. There's power and there's weight. So it's a completely different topic. It's a completely different podcast. How we lose weight. We're going to park that one and we're going to leave it for another day. I'm going to focus on the power side of the equation. And there's some sessions that I will recommend today that's a twist on normal sessions that that I think you're gonna get a lot out of. If you were to add each of these sessions in, I'm gonna give you two sessions. If you're to add one in on a Tuesday, one on a Thursday, and repeat it for like four weeks, you're definitely gonna see an improvement. So I challenge you to get out, check your Strava section, like a 15, 20 minute climb. Throw the session, or these two sessions, I'm recommending them once a week for the next four weeks. Go back out, do that Strava section again. I almost guarantee it, you're going faster. If you're not, there's something wrong. So to understand what I'm talking about in this, if you're not familiar with this sort of cycling specific vocabulary we have, you're gonna need to go back and you're gonna listen to the podcast on how to set your threshold and the one after that. We've a very specific terminology we talk about, and if you're unsure and you've heard people talking about zones, this is what they're talking about. It's just a more nuanced way for us to say, go easy, go medium, go hard. where we talk about zone 1s on 2s on 3s on 4s on 5s and hopefully you will have followed my recommendation on threshold testing and how to set your threshold completed the threshold test with the protocol I suggested, download our zone calculator, set your zones and if you have you're sitting in a pretty good spot for this podcast.
If you haven't sure listen to the end anyway but go back and listen…
If you haven't sure listen to the end anyway but go back and listen to those podcasts and everything will make a lot more sense. So typically to improve our climbing, when I talk about climbing, I'm talking hills in excess of 10 minutes and less than kind of 30 minutes, which is the typical climbs we're getting across Ireland, the UK, most of the US. I'm not talking about the big alpina perinine, this ascents that go on for, you know, two hours, three hours. Treshold Training Zone 4 is predominantly what we're focused on and that is just our ability to suffer on those climbs and generate that power for a sustained period of time. That's going to feel like an 8 out of 10 effort so you're going to be struggling to hold any sort of conversation if a buddy was right beside you. Now the two climbs I want to give you today are a little twist as I said on a regular climb. A real standard session for improving your threshold would be get out and do two by 20 minutes at threshold at zone four. But I actually don't find it that effective. Underlying it is quite effective. It works the zone brilliantly, but it doesn't replicate the demands of what we do. The fourth session I want to give you aims to replicate those demands a little bit better. Think about anytime you ride into a climb, whether it's in a race or a sporty for out with your body. You hit the bottom of the climb super hard and then you settle into threshold. Like if you're to look at any of the world's or races, they ride into the bottom of the climb super hard and then they settle into threshold. So instead of going 20 minutes steady, what I recommend is you hit it one minute, pretty much as hard as you can like 95% for the fourth minute and then you do 90 minutes settling into threshold. It's going to have the effect of almost getting punched in the face and you're winded and you're out of breath before you start to climb. Your body has to learn to deal with that lactate, it has to deal with the waste product, it has to clear it all out of there, then it has to settle back into threshold. It's a much more effective way to carry out those threshold sessions. So a typical session that I'd prescribe to a client would be like a 90 minute session with zone two riding except for two 20 minute efforts that are broken down as one minute full gas, 19 minutes zone four. So I'll put that little annotation in the or a little description in the show notes down below so you have that. That session one I would recommend. The second session I would recommend, it's two by 24 minutes. And what this session is, it's three minutes, sorry, two minutes, 30 watts above your threshold, one minute 30 watts below your threshold. And that's repeated for the duration to 24 minutes so it's repeated eight times. So it's two minutes 30 watts above your threshold, one minutes 30 watts below your threshold, repeated. What this does is it allows us to go with accelerations on the climb. It allows us to dictate pace on the climb. Like if you're with a buddy and he's looking across at you, you're giving your two minutes 30 watts above threshold, he's almost kind of assumed that's your threshold and he's going to pop and that lights are going to go out for them and once the lights go out for them, you know, that's when you'll take it back down.
You're one minute and you go again
So you're one minute and you go again. So it's an on-off style effort. So I would build up maybe week one. I would end to get one of those 24-minute efforts in. But week two, week three, I would definitely be trying to get two of 24-minute efforts in. Now you don't have to do these on a climb. Neither four-session or second-session that I'm recommending has to be done on a climb. If you're around, like I know we've a big climb base and Qatar and Doha, shout out to Doha in the house. Doha have some logistical problems coming up for the World Cup, let me tell you, a client of mine at the moment is over there and he's working on logistics for the World Cup and yeah it's gonna be a mess. But yeah, if you're in a place like Doha completely flat, aim to get sessions like this done into a headwind, you know, because that's gonna replicate that torque, higher torque lower cadence, style stuff but you know if that's not always possible you flat-rilled perfect you're still getting the power out so just big ring down the block keep that cadence slightly lower like don't be spinning at 110 120 it's not realistic no matter how many Armstrong videos you think you've watched you won't be able to spin up the hill at 110 120 rpm without a lot a lot of practice so there's your two sessions and those two sessions if you include them One on a Tuesday one on a Thursday for the next four weeks. I'm gonna call this our little Strava challenge So I want to see a Strava segment then I want to see your two sessions for the next four weeks and then your other Strava segment Guaranteed or or I don't know you'll get a roadmap cap if you don't beat your time on the Strava segment after you do it It's a gentleman's agreement So you don't have to show me your training files for the next four weeks in fact I would strongly encourage you not to send me your training files But I'm looking forward to seeing the progress on it. Guys, it's been another fun week. We've definitely settled into our rhythm with this roadman podcast and I'm joining a lot. Hopefully you guys are getting a lot out of it. Guys the way we spread the world on this roadman podcast, the way we keep it grown, I'm not going to rattle on about the Patreon again, but it's Patreon is key, but also what's key is, it's that growth. Most people find the podcast because they're made told about it. And I know for me, there's one podcast, a pativly podcast and a mate of mine, most of Tommy about four times, he's like, if you listen to pativly, have you listened to pativly, have you listened to pativly on the four to fifth occasion that he told me about it, I actually went and downloaded it. And now I listen to it every week. So please, if you're enjoying the podcast, be an advocate for the podcast, share it into your WhatsApp groups, share it into your club. If it's somebody who you think something is particularly relevant to, you know, we talk with the group writing last week and people halfway on if you know somebody like that send it to them tag them helps bread the good words guys enjoy your week and starting tomorrow get out group right practice some good group writing principles be an advocate for what we're talking about and I'm gonna see you all back on how to say if we can