January Sale and Podcast Mission
Today I want to speak about laying the foundation for the season ahead. Let's Cute out of the 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 on this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Roadman Roadman Roadman Roadman It's another roadman, a cycling podcast. Today I want to chat to you about laying the foundation for the season ahead. It's essentially the sort of housekeeping or administrative tasks that we need. I made that sound real sexy, isn't it? It's the stuff that makes success possible later in the season. And trust me, I found this one out the hard way. many of the stories I tell on this podcast. There are lessons I've learned and I've either earned them through Scars, Trial and Error or through Fork and El Cach and just paying experts to find this stuff out. But the sweet thing is because you're a listener you get to find this stuff out the easy way but I don't have to make all those crazy mistakes. So that's what I want to talk about today. Before I dive into it, you know, you know, I like to have my little random segways to start the a little bit of catching up, how you keep and that type of thing. What we have gone on at the moment, which some of you, I'm sure quite a few of you, will be very interested in, is we wanted to do January sales, everyone does January sales. And we wanted to make the January sales such a no-brainer that you'd almost have to sign up for this. So that's what we do. We took our roadman blueprint, which sells for $9.97 for a four month coach. Now it's insane, you'll hear the little bumper at the end is our 9.971, like what's in it? It's four months one-on-one coaching, it's four months strength condition and plans, four months eating plans, four months of momentum and sports, psychology stuff, and four months of biohacks, it's savage, it's 9.9.7. Now we were chatting and I wanted to figure out a price that everybody would sign up to. So I'm like, you know, so you could have no excuse because I know people are dropping money on going to events, you know, you're signing up for me orchatory ones, whole routes or you're planning a full race calendar. I don't want you guys going into that underprepared. So it's like what do we do? So we decided for January to cut the price completely in half. So you're looking at $4.97 for that entire plan for four months of everything and you know go out and price match that around against competitors you know to go to caramelical coaching train right you know you're paying upwards of $300 a month and you're only getting the coaching with this. It's the coaching the nutrition, the strength condition and the boy you're hacking the motivation that's insane. So what you can do on that one, if you want to guess, there's only a limited number of spots on that and a really main limited number of spots. There's less than five spots on that. So expect them to fill up super fast. So as soon as you hear the podcast, if you're interested in head on off, pop us an email to add me in at roadmanascycling.com is the best way to book in your place on that one. Other than that, I wanted to briefly mention the Patreon because I showed out who was our Patreon it's signed up yesterday let me give me his name give him a shout out because he is a legend Thank you to my new patreon Alex moose sorry I might have pronounced that wrong m u s e Thank you for subscribing and supporting the podcast. So we're gonna start shouting out people who? Support the patreon because it's a valuable thing you're doing for me really is it's you know mean and we can I can just focus on creating independent, bias-free content.
Mapping Your Cycling Calendar
And I like to think if you're getting some value out of podcasting. You know, that's all I want to do is I've seen how powerful cycling is folks. I really have. And powerful as a tool for pulling people out of mental health slumps, for transforming your body, for transforming your happiness and making you live longer. If I wasn't so passionate about this, I'd be back working in law, but I'm not, I'm here to own free podcasts every day of the week and trying to give as much value as I can to you guys. you know, like with that January offer, you know, and just to get that small token of appreciation to just buy the price of a point of beer once a month. I know it's not a super amount of cash for you or me. It's not a life change that amount of cash on either side. But what it is is it's validation for me and vindication that I'm actually touching some you guys and I'm making a difference. Okay, I've waffled quite long at the start of this podcast for a roadman boy. So let's dive into this. I wanna talk about laying the foundation. When I start off when I look at a calendar year, whether it's myself or whether I'm working with a client. One of the things which I really like to do is plot out on the calendar compulsory obligations in the calendar. And by this I mean if you go back to any of the old-school textbooks, Joe for Real, Andrew Hogan, any of these, they'll talk to you about periodization being this three weeks on, one week off. But okay, Graham, that works in a textbook but it doesn't work in real life when your coach and athletes with trying to balance family, trying to balance work and social obligations. So what I like to do is I like to get a calendar at the very start. And this is just my cycling calendar. And now I plot events that I can't miss. I plot a buddy's wedding. I plot the ski trip with the girlfriend. I plot the family, you know, tree day break with the family. I plot anything that's going to be a static demand that I can't get around into my calendar. That's the starting point. Then next I come in and I plot a priority races. These are my top priority races for the season. So I'll have two maximum tree of these purses. And this way now, by knowing that I have static demand, some of the a-priority races just won't make sense. If I have an a-priority race the weekend after a ski trip, it doesn't make sense. I'm not gonna be able to build to a crescendo of fitness and taper while also navigating the slopes and it does help. It's not gonna be possible. So now you start seeing, okay, this makes sense to, It's just moving chest pieces around the board. That 10,000 foot overview is invaluable to do. So tree a priority races into a calendar around all your compulsory social obligations. That's step one in lane the foundation. Step two is assessing stuff nailed that can be changed nailed that'll have minimum impact and disruption to your training nailed. But if we try and address it later on, it'll have a huge impact. So one of those is do you have any underlying injuries? It's getting into the physio and just getting a little bit of an assessment and seeing do you have any underlying weaknesses? Do you have a weak hamstring that's likely to flare up as soon as you do two or three stages of a race back to back? And then you'll go to the physio in May and he's gonna say take two weeks off the bike and do this rehab program. And that completely ruins the middle part of your season but now getting out ahead of this, going into the physio and just asking them to do a little bit of an assessment, range of motion assessment, strength assessment of each of the muscles.
Dental, Bike Fit and Prehab
Let's see if there's any injuries we can get out ahead of and now build that prehab program into our training now. That's step two. The next step is, and this sounds crazy, but it's gone to the dentist. Do you have any dental issues that are gonna flare up during the season? Cavendish, famously, I think it was 2014, 2015, lost the early part of the season with a dental issue. And that was a dental issue that should've been addressed in the winter, but he let it go and go and go. And then when La Préma Verra, Milan San Remo came around, and it was time to start really soaking it up and getting going with the season, This dental issue rear the head. I took them out for the early part of the season. So again, getting out ahead of that. Next one similar to that is BoykFit. Are you checking in with the BoykFitter? Do you need adjustments made to your position? They're easy to make now, but they're difficult to make when we get into the season because we're a race recoverer, race recoverer, peeking for events, tapering for events. All that's difficult to execute from a coaching perspective when somebody is struggling with BoykFit. when they need to gradually up their duration and intensity because they're trying to adapt their body to a new bike position. There are my housekeeping tips. There are my rules that I absolutely insist on every one of our clients that come in have this in order. So it's calendar management, it's injury management, it's bike fit and it's dental. And for me, I call those the foundational blocks for a good season next year. If you're taking care of them now, if you're on top of things, if you're neglecting them now, you have a chance that one or more of them are gonna pop up in the season and derail your season. And success and failure never show up like accidents in the middle of the season. Any time that I or any of our clients have a very good season, you can see the breadcrumb trail of success all the way through. Likewise, you're not gonna go to your main event, whether it's, you know, crit nationals in June and get dropped after one lap and go. I never seen this one coming. It left clues all the way along. You were failed to figure out which these foundational pieces early and this manifested itself in bigger problems later in the season. Roadman, thank you for listening and I'll be back again tomorrow. This is my girl that will welcome the daily podcast. I'm loving it. Roadman, I'll chat to you tomorrow. Hey, Roadman, it's Anthony again. Just before you head off real quick, I just want to mention the Roadman blueprint. It's the ultimate coaching package. It's four months long. It's four months of one-on-one coaching sessions with your own professional roadman cycling coach. It's four months of strength and conditioning plans, so you never need to worry about, is this strength and conditioning plan aligned with my cycling goals? It's four months of nutrition plans to fuel all that. It's four months of Boyle Hacks, which you know I love so much, and I'm getting to pick the brain of all these experts, and it's four months of motivation to make sure you never miss a session, and every single session, you hit it with commitment and with purpose. The whole package, it's 997 euro. I have a limited number of places on the Roadman Blueprint. If you're interested in getting started, pop me an email on admin at roadmancycling.com. This is the ultimate coaching package for those looking to take their cycling and their performance to the next level.