1.Hello you absolutely beautiful cycling fans and welcome to another A1…

Hello you absolutely beautiful cycling fans and welcome to another A1 Show podcast. I've got a busy busy show coming up. I mean, Kinsel County Cork still, it'll be the last episode I have down here before I hit the road for the big smoke back to Dublin. So today I'm going to talk to you about a bunch of stuff that I think is pretty crucial. It's kind of our toward one of this Genesis podcast. I'm going to talk to you about macro planning. Sounds like a complicated economics term, but it's It's just how you plan out your season. I'm going to talk to you about the importance of breaking your season down into little phases, manageable chunks where we exert the body and then we take brief periods of rest. I want to talk to you about that. I want to talk to you about a little escapade that I have gone on at the moment. Escapade the right word or challenge the right word. I'm trying to quit sugar. I'm going to talk to you about why I'm quitting sugar, the type of sugar I'm quitting, and the very loose self-imposed rules I've put around that for myself. I'm going to give you some weird dream analysis that I've had. I'm going to give you a couple of my productivity hacks that are working super well. I'm going to have a special guest on who's going to give us a recipe for sugar-free, sorry, refined sugar-free. I should be clear on that. That'll become obvious why I'm making that distinction when I go to my sugar-free challenge, a recipe for little energy balls to bring which on the bike. So, yes, we do have a busy show. So I'm not gonna push it off any further and I'm gonna jump straight into it. So as I said last day, we don't have a show sponsor at the moment. So the show sponsor for the show is A1 coaching. And what I'd encourage listeners to do is to have a browse. If you have a browse around the site, have a look at the plans. If you have any friends who are, you know, thinking of taking up coaching at the moment, please pass ourselves on as a recommendation. And that's, you know, the, I suppose the payback from you guys for us putting out the free content. I had an email today from a client, which was really touching clients. And it's Patty, I'm gonna have Bloor the surname for obvious reasons. Patty just reached out saying that all too often, people only email to highlight problems. So I wanted to drop a quick email to say, thank you very much. I've bounced around coaching companies in Ireland, the UK and the US for the last 10 years, always looking for something better, always this satisfied. Since coming to yourself six months ago, I've been absolutely amazed at the quality of service, the professionalism and the time you guys have for me as the athlete. I'd like to sincerely thank you for great work you guys are doing. I'll be a client for many years to come. So that was a lovely email to receive. So again, I would totally agree with what Paddy said there as I often only email, I don't even email that often complain, but I definitely rarely have emails to say I had a good experience. I'm not going to lie, we don't get a lot of random emails out of the blue from people saying to have an amazingly good experience. Often if a client is finishing up at the end of a season at the end of a target complete. We'll get a very nice thank you email often but it was nice to get a random email in the middle of the season from this guy who's obviously super happy with a service but guys that's typical you know it's the reason why we've stuck around so long as a coaching company we've back-end systems in place that are just you know far superior to far superior to competitors in the market you know if you look at the back end the system we have we've strengthened condition plans we've cookbooks we've drinks books. We've downloadable mental strength courses, we've webinars in the background with ex-national champions and pro cyclists from Team Sky all recorded in the background. We've to partnership with today's plan and then we've a collective of coaches. So you're not drawn on the experience of one, you're drawn on the experience of many. We've Barry Murray there as the in-house nutritionist who's worked with BMC, we've sports scientists, ex-worlds or coaches like Alan Davis or X world war or order, it's been on the podium in San Remo. So, you know, the coaching company, it's a little bit different what's out there. So, yep, that's the plug and that's the, that's the, that's the shameless shill for today.

2.It's not something that comes naturally to Irish people as that…

It's not something that comes naturally to Irish people as that self-promotion, but definitely working on it as part of this podcasting. And as I say, it is a little bit more acceptable in podcast land. So, I'm going to embrace that. and I'm brainstorming on a fight against my normal instinct to be, reluctant to taking prayers. So the first main thing I want to talk to you guys about today, and it's so central to planning out your training and it's a macro-training plan. So this is the idea of macro, it's we're talking about the bigger picture with macro, micro-looking in close, macro-looking the bigger picture. So we refer to the annual training cycle as a macro-training cycle. And then we look at various blocks within that, as little meso-psychos. And then each meso-psychos in turn contains a micro-psycho. This could be a period of three or four weeks, followed by a recovery period to help you take that training load and for your fitness to fully develop. So think of this like, what are the little wee Chinese dolls where you have one inside the other, inside the other? So having all these phases, it's absolutely vital. And I'm gonna go through white vial because we all know someone who's gone to the gym for two, three days a week for four or five years and they see almost no difference. So what's going on there? Our body gets used to a stress and when our body gets used to a stress, we have to take a period of rest to allow us to absorb that stress, to recover all our training makes us, makes it possible for us to get faster and once we recover, we absorb that training and we realize that possibility. So once we build in that recovery period, then we have a chance of actually realizing those gains and locking in those gains. But then what we need to do is we can't go back to the same type of stress again or we don't grow or our body just gets used to it. Think about the guy who got the job and the building site or something. Speaking from personal experience here, when I was like 16, I got a summer job and a building site and I used to come home from work, knackered, like I'm talking cold and smooth. But guys have been doing the job for a few years. If you don't play Fuyvis, after work, they were drinking my friends after work. no problem at all, they'd normalised that amount of activity and it just became so, their body became so useful, but for me it just wasn't possible. So more often than not what I see in the course of a four-week micro cycle is life pops up for people. You know, this is why I think it was so important that we adapted this stuff when we sat down created because what was out there was you know your Andrew Cogans, your Joe Freels, your you know Chris Carmichael's and they're working with pro athletes, they're working people who it's the center of their lives and while it's the center of you know Muy Loy for them trying and hard and probably yours there's other stuff that has to revolve around that as well which are equally important so it's like a balance in plates and spinning all these plates fast enough and hoping one doesn't fall off and once one loses momentum getting back to the other So it's counterbalance as much as it is balance. So you're going to have to stay late at work. The kids are sick. Give those compulsory social gatherings, especially around Christmas. So whatever the reason is, the training plan, it has to be fluid and it has to be dynamic. You don't want to have just completed a recovery week, only to have an enforce recovery week again, because of some sort of life circumstances. So in other words, you must know the principle and you must have enough knowledge to make wise adjustments as you go along. So this is what I'm gonna talk to you guys about today. So if you get what I'm saying there if you know you have If you go to Joe Freel typical plan that he'd advocate for he says three weeks on and one week off But if you've three weeks on one week off and they were all of a sudden family holiday pops up For a week now you've three weeks on and two weeks off and you're that's completely ruining your form It's completely ruining your own what we call your chronic training load your CTL is your fitness score So a bit of advanced planning and understanding why so this is kind of the goal of today is helping you to understand why advanced planning is necessary. So base period is the first period and this is typically what you would recommend or what you know a traditional standard training book would recommend for a base period of sort of between four and twelve weeks a bill period of six to ten weeks.

3.Specific adaptation period of about eight weeks, then we're looking…

Specific adaptation period of about eight weeks, then we're looking at about one to two week taper, and then we're looking for peaking for your a priority race. So the sort of training philosophies we've traditionally seen have dictated that you'd ride for endless errors during base periods to develop an aerobic base or stuff goes on here like, you know, building aerobic efficiency, increase mitochondria development. The problem I found, and I found with our athletes is, this is very problematic. It's especially problematic for people living in cooler climates with daylight savings because the time we're being asked to ride the longest, the highest volume is the time of year when weather is worst and daylight hours are very, very limited. So in recent years what we've tried to push and advocate, it's a front-loaded periodization. So it's a break from traditional thinking. A lot of the more, you know, newer coaches, the more enlightened coaches are gone with front-loaded periodization or reverse periodization structures. It's basically turning conventional wisdom on its head and it's taxing the upper training zones in the cycle forest. While you're hooked onto this among some of the great data on it, it's brilliant for time-run cyclists because you don't have to ride those endless kilometers in the dark and in the cold. So we're focusing on those physiological systems. If you If you haven't, if you don't want to talk about physiological systems, you need to go back to two podcasts to go and check that one out, where we talk about physiological systems, what zones to try and employ, we're trying to end those zones. So there's a theory of say we want to improve threshold. There's two ways of improving threshold. We can try and just below threshold and push threshold up, or we can try and just above it and pull it up. So that's what this is kind of about, this front load of periodization. focusing on physiological systems on a top-down basis and we're trying to pull each them up. So this has a potential to elicit great training benefits, huge adaptations and the data looks a lot better in the bottom up structure plus for us it has that extra extra benefit of not doing super long hours and really cold and miserable weathers. So it's really what I'm trying to do with this guys I'm trying to challenge those all beliefs all the time. I'm trying to bring you guys the latest research, especially when it's around time crunch and we're trying to balance other stuff. It's a little bit of the ethos of the podcast as well where I think they're so interchangeable to say that you're just a cycling coach, like non-hate-word holistic, so I'm not going to use it. But the cycling doesn't happen in a vacuum around no family, no job. So the goal of the podcast is going to be to bring you productivity hacks, It's going to be to bring yourself development stuff. It's going to be going to bring in that all-encompassent 360 athletes There see where I got around saying holistic 360 athletes, you know, seven years and college weren't wasted a little bit of verbal acrobatics to get around it so Do you guys know where you are in this cycle? Are you in base build? specific taper or race? So you need to be sitting down at the start of the year and like as I said, I'm gonna try and build some, not gonna try, I've started building it so I definitely will launch it. You're gonna have solid details on this eight-week challenge that's coming up on the next podcast episode on Friday and you're gonna have solid details on what the eight-week challenge is then but it's not too late now for us to jump into a specific block, denry taper, denry race and it'll so you guys will start to understand why you were in certain blocks, what the training demands are, what zones we use in this block and you know for an athlete I love the stadium coming in for 12 months getting all this knowledge, taking the knowledge and going to apply in themselves like so like if you look around or in the UK so many of the coaches that are coaching individually now they've come through you know A1 other as athletes or as coaches themselves They're learning this stuff and then they're going off and applying it. I'm brilliant, more prioritized. So that's my goal for you guys. It's come in, learn this stuff as an athlete, learn it as a coach, and then go off and spread the good word because there's a right way to do stuff and there's a wrong way to do stuff. So there you go, rant over on that one. Yeah, as I say, guys, a lot of the stuff I'm trying to do on this, it's the combination of the sport, it's a combination of the productivity and it's the combination of the personal development.

4.Lot of times you're going to hear me talking about, you know, books…

So a A lot of times you're going to hear me talking about, you know, books I've been reading this week, which I've found particularly good or new apps or tools, which I'm finding good. The reason being that when I'm going well off the bike, I'm going well on the bike. They don't happen in a vacuum. For me, when I can nail one part, it has this knock on momentum effect to the rest of my life. I'm not sure if you guys find out the exact same, but it's something I've noticed as a trend between our clients and something I've noticed. You do get, you know, okay, it's it's defined and what you think has gone well. You know, you get the guys who are absolutely go all in, but it's not sustainable. We're looking for sustainable. We're looking, you know, for the guy who can win races all season for season after season, who can also thrive in his career, thrive in his family, thrive at new hobbies and interests, great social circle, it's possible, it's very possible. But a lot of these little tips and tricks and, you know, there's a good quote I think, learn from mistakes, but you should always learn from mistakes, but they don't have to be your mistakes. Like I love that one. So that's essentially what I said up a one to be, it took me ages to figure out what I was doing. I went down so many dark alleys and learned so many lessons. When I got to the end of the lesson or the laneway, I said to myself, shit, if I knew that six months ago would have saved me a lot of time. I've been running down those alleys and so have the other coaches ever since and we've put together those lessons and that's effectively what you guys are getting. I'm reading the book at the moment called the checklist manifesto and it's absolutely brilliant. It's brilliant in its simplicity. It's exactly what it sounds like. It's the power of checklists and why you should use checklists and they talked about, there was an airplane they brought in during the Second World War and the airplane was so complex that when they went to demo it was a Boeing airplane, when they went with demo it their most experienced pilot crashed it and he died and the military US military said you know this isn't it's too complicated there's four engines on it were previously they only had two engines on these plans and There was too many things to remember and the military relegated and said you know what? It could turn the war, but it won't run the war because we're not going to be able to get toilets skilled enough to flood us. Anyway, rogue tree toilets inside the air, of course, said, you know what, even though you're not buying them, they're holding the white, you know, with 10,000 of these things or some crazy number. They only bought three in the end, and these tree toilets went off, and they said, you know what, let us figure them out. What the lad's done was they created a checklist, and it was the first time a checklist had been used in this capacity in aviation. They went through the check list and they were able to teach in complete novice pilots how to fly the team with almost no pilot errors. It's a really good read but based off that I started using an app during the day called TUEXDEUX2DU. Super simple, obviously I have no financial incentive or financial affiliation with that company so go and check them out if you want, don't check them out if you don't want but it's something I found pretty cool. Because they come with the randomness topic. I had a mad dream there, didn't I? I'm not gonna, not in that. It's about an Irish female writer but not in that sort of weird perverted way where your head's after going to. I had a dream that this Irish female pro cyclist came to my old school to give a talk and I'd hooked up this talk so I felt a lot of responsibility and then a lot of used to go to school, you know, dreams don't make any sense, times not linear and shit in them. So a lot of used to go to school went back in the day, it was a bit of a rough diamond, was a student and he was whatever 15 and he punched her in the throat's turn at presentation. He tried punched her, unprovoked throat punch and she died. So yeah, that was a pretty mental dream. I'm not really sure what that means. Not really sure what you you can take out on it or so I'm just gonna leave that one sit and I'm gonna talk to you about a little endeavor I've said for myself.

5.I'm gonna give up sugar for the next 30 days

I'm gonna give up sugar for the next 30 days. 3-0 30 days without sugar. Why am I doing this? You might ask. I haven't fully got the reason to my head why I'm doing this. I know sugar has sort of an addictive hold on me. There's a self-discipline element around that I want to show that I can quit sugar. And it's definitely easy to lose self-discipline around sugar and around snacking. I'm going to talk to exactly what I mean by sugar in a minute because I'm not really dogging on fruit and stuff here. This isn't getting into some more stuff on ketones, controlling blue sugars and stuff in later episodes. But this is more of a self-discipline an exercise for me. There's obviously some health benefits to giving up sugar. Sugar has been proven to things like damage metabolism. It's obviously closely linked to type 2 diabetes. It's very closely linked with liver damage for athletes. It's really bad for inflammation and joint pain. 2 decay is obviously a problem as well with sugar. But for me it's more, As an athlete, it's very easy to justify having some ice cream, having a pizza, having biscuits after training because you said yourself, ah, I don't have a good session today. And you're still in a negative calorie, so weight's not going on. But just because weight's not going on doesn't mean we're not getting those sort of damages I spoke about there, damaging my metabolism, messing up my insulin secretion. Snacks have just become a crutch. I'm back down the A1 stuff pretty full on at the moment and especially trying to build this new 8-week challenge for you guys. There's a lot of time going into it. So you're working some weird long errors and often you're just looking for that little energy kick and you reach for the cookie, you reach for the kind of culk or whatever. Actually not so much a kind of culk, I'd be more of a kind of red ball type one character. But very easy to deal with news that is a crutch. And not to mention, I see a bunch of our clients down this, and they're not getting the calories in, calories out. If you're not using something like Moi Fitness Power to manage the calories in, calories out, it can be easy to kid yourself to do a session today when you're born 900 calories and to take in 1500 calories. And before you know, I end up with that dad bod with the slight little gut. And that's a very easy one to do as well. Like sugar is dict of at its core, you know, the sugar is more addictive than cocaine and so I don't know about that. But the recommendation is that you get under 5% of your daily calorie intake is from sugar. Sugar used to be just inner desserts but now sugar is absolutely everywhere. There's a reason that manufacturers are putting sugar into everything. One, it tastes amazing and too addictive so you're going to buy more of the product. So I'm kind of challenging myself to give it up for the next 30 days, as much for the health benefits as the self-discipline for it. So yesterday was day one and it was a challenge in day one because what I found is I'm not really full after a few. Okay, well maybe I should define the rules for us because what I'm talking about really is added sugar. I'm not talking about if anyone knows the Glasgow comedian Kevin Bridges, I'm not talking about fruit. So if you haven't checked out that clip on YouTube, it's brilliant. Kevin Bridges is talking about he goes to the gym and he's looking for some personal training advice. So to lab the gym, it's a big beefy personal trainer. He said he works part of my car or phone warehouse, but he's trying to put the apocalypse, one of these muscle-bound fuckers. He asks me, you know, what, you have for breakfast? So I was head immediately goes and tries to come up with something that he didn't have for breakfast to tell this personal trainer. So he says to me, I had a bottle of fruit and the personal trainer gets on his case and he's like, fruit, you have fruit, how there's your problem mate, fruit. And Kevin Bridges is like, hold on a second. For all you know, I did have fruit. I should be fucking commended for having fruit. I tear these chocolate orange and I beg her skittles. So Kevin Bridges can rightly confuse as to why you can't have fruit and I'll get deeper into that in other episodes. How the body metabolizes sugars, what happens to sugar, how it's used as an energy source. It's a bit beyond why I'm doing this because it's not really why I'm doing it. I'm very conscious of that stuff and I'm very conscious of research coming from blues on through control and blow chokers and I'm definitely going to get into some tactics around mitigating blow choker controls like how you can up-regulate your glue for transporters and using bitter melan extract and apple cider vinegar and techniques like this.

6.Perandale walks is another cool one

Perandale walks is another cool one. There's loads of techniques around that and blood sugar control but that's not really what this is. This isn't a blood sugar control. I'm not looking for the effect on my blood sugar. When I'm looking for it's just actually minimize the raw sugar to add a sugar. So I'm looking at, you know, not eating things like breads, cakes, sweet snacks. I've set myself the loose rule of eating natural sugars on the bikes so that's why I'm gonna bring Sarah in in a little bit now and I'm gonna get Sarah to talk to you about how to make these energy balls. So Sarah is my girlfriend, Sarah is The cook of the house and Sarah is the one who gives me fuel and fairs and happy so a greater expert in culinary delights are called and find the race tomorrow evening and we've got to muck around with bringing natural alternatives like honey and stuff in little pouches during the races. Bit of an experiment of now a priority targets left for the rest of the season so it may impact performance a little bit but be something interesting to talk to your lads in the podcast around. So as I said, I'm like just a billy conliting again. I've left that story and I'll come back to it. So I found that I haven't been full on meals, you know, typically this morning I had like haloome eggs, mushrooms and tomato for breakfast. I probably would have had that exact same thing with a couple of slices of toast, but I couldn't have the toast. I also had a bit of a headache today. I found myself going for caffeine to try and become a little bit of an extra stimulant which is not a croture I want to rely on going forward too much. Also you've got to be super aware of checking it back to pack it's because sugar is hidden everywhere. You know going to make a curry this evening, kind of the curry paste has sugar in it. It's in everything it's in your yogurt it's in it's in some toothpastes like it's ridiculous it's everywhere so it makes you more aware of where sure is and it really starts getting you think and do we need this much sugar in our diet as I said it used to be just in desserts and now it's everywhere so I'm challenging myself for 30 days to try and give it up this is unrelated to the eight week challenge which is actually going to be trying this off this is just me on a random tangential dietary sort of pilgrimage for the rest of the season boss I'm looking forward to it and I'm going to keep you posted and hopefully the mood swings aren't demonstrating over podcast but that's the sort of chance you take. So without further ado I'm going to pass you across to Sarah and she's going to walk you through exactly how you make these delicious energy balls. Hello beautiful cycling fans so I have been roped into and giving away some of my recipes over the next few weeks and today I just want to run through the quick and tasty no-bake energy balls when you're eating a bite on the bike. These are really, really easy to make. They're delicious and really easy to consume when you're on the go. There's no head and preservatives or any of that nasty stuff that you'll find in your shop wash, energy balls or bars. The recipe will give you well-depending on how big you like your balls. It should give you about 10 portions and each ball will give you 10 or 11 grams of carbs, 2.3 grams of protein and 7 grams of fat. So no no need to scramble for a pen and paper. If you click on the show notes you will get a link, pop your email in there and we will send you the email. So there you go. I wrote my girlfriend in the beautiful Sarah and yes indeed she did say the I don't know how big you like your balls. He did say that live on a podcast. So that was pretty funny. I'm not sure if you mentioned, but yeah, you don't need to scramble for the pen and paper for that one. The link is in the description down below. Do the same as trash all calculator, pin your email into it and it pops you the, it pops you the recipe straight out. So we're not quite finished yet. Just a couple of things that I found interesting at the moment. Sammy B. Sam Bennett Irish Chump. got his first win today in the Barink Bank and it was super sketchy. He had to do a bit of bouncing off people in the final few hundred meters. Sam said it's my first win, the Irish champ, seriously.

7.I'm happy that it's come soon or a lot of delay later

I'm happy that it's come soon or a lot of delay later. It was pretty dangerous so I was just trying to keep up front. The guys did a great job keeping me there and I kept positioning the last two K and just tried to hold the bigger trains and I just tried to stay out of trouble really. To be honest, I was nervous with the the rain on a few skids in the race but it was good, I can't complain. So, big win for Ben, great to see the Irish champs jersey, you know, Connor Donne was obviously a different character in the Irish champs jersey, he wasn't as likely to be getting now winning races and showing himself the front of the biggest races, Ben is for a blessed to have one of the world stars at the moment and yeah, I don't know where he's going to be in XA's and but he's definitely something that'll be somewhere big. He says the decision coming up in his words really soon. So yeah, I think all of our cycling will be staying tuned to that one. Actually, all the world's cycling has been it's not just a Irish interest story anymore. We've David Formalow has made a move to United Arab Emirates. And this is an interesting one because Formalow is going to be there along side Dan Martin. Formalow, obviously second in the age this year and the UAE sports director came out and he said, David will have the full support of the team for his objectives in the Ardennes classics. So where does that leave Dan? I don't know. Dan had a mixed tour. For me, Dan was one of the only rotors that would guarantee a big win each year, but he's had a mixed year with the UAA and there's this weird drama around the drinks this year. So I'd nearly like to see Dan out there and somewhere new. I don't know what the rumors are, I haven't heard any rumors on it if he's gone somewhere, but it just feels like it's a little bit crowded there. We're formula. Formula, I think it's only 26, Dan's 41. You know he's obviously not all for a pro so I close these many good years ahead of him But it just doesn't say my goal as well there. He's one of the biggest stars in the world So I'm from a selfish Irish point of view because Dan's a lovely guy I'd love to say I'm going somewhere and get a fresh start. Okay, lads and last stat is the crack That has been the a one show. Thanks for tuning in next edition. We'll be back on Friday What do you guys think actually about the Friday? Monday Release schedule should I go to choose a tours they would I'm not some to Friday one is especially if I'm because I'm typically getting these out What's like nine o'clock at night? But when you get this? It's typically Almost a weekend where you get as many people listen to podcast on the weekend. I don't know let me know Hashtag us on Twitter anyone show a one podcast and I'll check them And let me figure out what you guys think as the best date for scheduling release for the podcast and As I said at the top and tail of that, as I said at the outset, we don't have a show of sponsor that A1 coaching is the show of sponsor. We're chomping out the results for lads this season. We've had into 90% of it. Things like 92% of clients hitting their culture grade targets this season, which is massive considering the amount of clients we have across all our coaches. So yeah, we have a system that works there guys and you can go to our places and scrap for a few little bit of extra savings there. the race at the bottom on price isn't something. We get into because the quality is there and we stand by the results that we get season after season for our clients and they're just phenomenal. So I hope you'll take some time, check us out on amoncoaching.net and I will be back to you guys on Friday. Thanks for listening and spread the good word.