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

Hello you beautiful cycling fans and welcome back to another A1 show podcast. Today we got a busy show ahead. I'm going to talk to you about threshold. It's a number we hear thrown around all the time but I want to talk to you guys about exactly how to set your threshold. I think this is going to be important because as the show rolls on you're going to hear me reference every now and then somebody's watts per kilogram, whether it's a pro-roader that was in the breakaway or whether it was a local race winner. You'll hear me say, oh he put out four watts per kilogram for the last 60 minutes or wherever it is. So today I'm just gonna draw a sand in the line, a line in the sand, sand in the line, what's that? I'm gonna draw a line in the sand and just say this is the beginning of our understanding of what this term is. There's a small bit of buoyant, super easy to understand, once you understand it, it'll be compared to your vocabulary and it'll be a new way that we just communicate going forward. So that's going to be pretty cool. I'm going to bring you the sad news about debt and pro cycling. I'm going to talk a little bit about Eddie Dunbar. I don't give you some fake news about Frume's Crash. Maybe it never happened. I'm going to talk to you about a little strategy you can use to make your week a little bit more productive called batching. I'm going to bring you some news. I mentioned the last podcast that I had something that was going to get you guys motivated for the end of the season so I'm going to give you the first announcement of what that potentially could be and I'm going to bring you all the transfer now so it's a busy one so let's not put it off any further and jump right into it. As we get started today I'm just going to mention briefly as is tradition in podcast land it's pretty cool to be able to say I am now one of the podcasters in this fabled mythical place called podcast land. It doesn't really exist. It just exists sort of as an abstract place podcast land. Sounds cool. In podcast land, it's quite acceptable to shill your show sponsor at the start. But since I haven't gone looking for a show sponsor and no short sponsor has come to kick down my door, we are still without a show sponsor. So our show sponsor is the brilliant, beautiful, majestic A1 coaching. A1 coaching, it's obviously my coaching company. We found it back in 2012, still gone strong. I like to think at one point we were the biggest coaching company in Europe. I don't know where we stand now, have them keep track of that nor do I know how you track that metric anymore. But what I do know is that we've had an amazing season for our clients, getting some clients promoted, winning races, PBs, we get the best out of guys who are time-crunched. We're bringing the latest science because we're investing in it. And I like to think we lead the way. You know, I think there's a big copycat culture in cycling and cycling coaching. And I see that as a big reason why there's a lack of innovation in the space. So it's, I feel, a little bored on us to innovate and you're going to see a lot of us innovating in the common months so yeah I think if you're looking for a company that's at the golden edge of performance you need to look now for it. Also for the next week until this day next week if you're to drop me an email on info at a1coaching.net with the subject line podcast 50 I'm gonna give you 50% off your first month of coaching so there you go it's perfect time to start thinking about next season. It's the perfect time to finish this season strong and lay the foundation for next season. So right let's crack right into it. I'm not in my usual studio in Clontarth. I'm down in my home away from home, can sail at the moment. So I don't have the luxury of my new podcast Boom which I got so excited about last week. I've got a little travel podcast set up going on. I'm sitting here my poly down water. Actually did you see that crazy if anyone's listening in Ireland we're getting poisoned. There was arsenic in non-branded waters like your generic Aldi little, I probably am the famous one place that didn't have this arsenic water but you looked up the way we roll. It was Aldi little sparrow centra in their generic waters and there's traces of arsenic so I think it's it's something we're going to get a lot more aware about in the coming years it's toxins and pollutants and the effect that's having on performance I'm amazed when I see you know pro athletes or chat to pro athletes and just how little attention they give to stuff like skin care products shampoo is you know skin is a melt, there's so much emphasis on nutrition yet so little emphasis on what people are putting onto their bodies and also how we're surrounding ourselves with Wi-Fi, EMFs, Bluetooth, that stuff fucks up your calcium gated channels, promotes inflammation, it's some really bad toxic shit. It's not the subject of today's podcast, it probably does merit. There's a good book, the non-tinfoil hat wearing goi to EMF, which is very good if anyone's interested in some further reading on that subject.

2.Probably merits a podcast all on its own, but it's not subject for…

Probably merits a podcast all on its own, but it's not subject for today's podcast. Today I want to talk to you a lot at the start about knowing your numbers. So you've probably heard people talking about knowing your numbers. You've probably heard everyone from the local club rider to Bradley Wiggins in EuroSport commentary, if he's reflecting back on his error record or Eigenbrennals performances in Tour de France. When people say that, what exactly are they talking about? Because it can be very confusing. So what we're talking about is a standardized objective way to measure performance. So I'm going to explain to you today what your threshold is. I'm going to describe a performance test you can use to find that number. I'm going to explain to you how to set up your unique training zones and I've also put together a little giveaway for today. So stay at least until the end of this section and you'll find out how to get that giveaway. One of the overriding goals in this whole podcast, I want to give you guys the tools to go a little bit faster. It's great having a podcast to listen to and pass the time when you're out trying or when you're commuting. But I hate listening to stuff for the sake of listening to stuff. I want to give you guys a tangible benefit from listening to this podcast. So I am going to make you guys faster. So our listeners are going to be a little bit faster from listening to this podcast. And today it's one of those building blocks that we're going to build on in the future, but our understanding this concept is key to our development as an athlete. It's key to being time efficient and it's key to smart training. So what is threshold? This is metric that we use. A lot of people you'll hear them using average speed and that's a horrible metric for measuring stuff because average speed, it's you know, you're talking about average speed on uphill, downhill, what was the training like you say? I've done a two-hour odd loop yesterday around Kinsale. I think the average speed was only maybe 25, 26k an hour. I wrote it quite hard. Ungliding little loop and it was very windy. I wrote that quite hard close to full for the two hours. And it's such a low average speed. Can I compare that and say, I'm going worse than I was when I was riding at home. Going full two weeks, going on Marvajin 36, 37 kind of. No, it's not a like for a like comparison. So we use something called threshold as the variable. So you'll hear people using all sorts of different terms, FTP, that just stands for functional threshold power. we just say threshold for shorthand. And what it is, it's a maximum effort that you can sustain over one error. So any effort beyond that, the body is no longer able to process the lactate and the body just starts to slow down. So threshold, it's a key indicator of our fitness levels. So just as I go through this, I just wanna say to you, some of the stuff I'm saying, it may sound a little daunting. But you will get to grips with this and the amount of time that it's gonna take you to get to grips with this, it's absolutely minimal. You listen to this once, you'll probably have it. If I make a ball of explaining it to you in a very clear fashion, maybe you'll need to listen to this twice and you will have the concept down. And that's a very small investment of time compared to how much time this is gonna save you trying to voice. So it's really worth sticking with it. In my experience, the biggest boost that I see riders getting, it's adherence to this zone of training. So with a little perseverance and a little bit of doginess, you're gonna be talking this new language. And when I'm talking about Bernal's, what's per kilos up the finishing climb, you're gonna know exactly what I was talking about. Okay, so there's a load of different ways that you can get threshold on. We used to offer lactate threshold in the A1 office. We discontinued it and we don't offer anymore. We go out to a lot of clubs around Ireland in the winter and we do lactate testing. You can also go into some of the universities, Trinity I think do it and you see the also do it. I don't advocate getting lab testing done to air clients. I just think it's quite expensive and I've just found that athletes perform different under lab conditions And I know personally I always perform very different under lab conditions, you know day-to-day out trying to your used to put your kid on Getting out in the wind feel at a road all that type of thing and then you're going into a lab kind of smells like a hospital. You put the mask on, you're using a bike that isn't yours. Maybe you don't like needles like me and you're getting kind of prodded with needles and pricked your heart rate elevated. And for me, like they're saying it's more accurate because it's a controlled environment. But all those variables, it becomes a not a controlled environment. And if any hook in here, they all angeles bells in the torturing in the background. So I I think it's not a controlling environment. So for that reason, I advocate, Reuters getting out on the road and self-testing. So I'm gonna go through what that protocol is in a moment. By protocol, I just mean the way of doing things.

3.Because the way we do things when we're doing this, it's like a…

Because the way we do things when we're doing this, it's like a science experiment. Consistency is important. So we want to try and replicate the same conditions each time we do this test. We're gonna repeat this test over periodically. So I'll talk to you in a moment about that. Potentially every six weeks, depending on where you're at in your training block. But we wanna try and keep it consistent. So if you do it on a Saturday, normally try and do it on a Saturday. And if you do it in the morning versus the evening, the type of meal you have before, trying to control as many of those variables as you can, and you're gonna get the best results out of. So, when and where. So as I said, when you test is very important. But what I mean by that is not when in the day, which I just covered, that it also is important. But also where in your block. So I normally say, if you test at the end of a heavy trying to block, you're going to be quite fatigued. But what a heavy trying to block is very subjective. is a heavy trying to block a load of sprint training, is a load of threshold training, hard to know. And consistency in that's gonna be difficult to repeat. So what we normally do is we do it after a recovery period. So we normally have a tree week block a one week recovery and then we'll do it at the end of the recovery period. And again, that's just so you're fresh and you can get the best effort out possible. So you wanna pick a roof for this where you have no interruptions, no traffic lights, around about and ideally a slight uphill gradient like I have my climb anyone that's listening in Dublin or Wicklow I do it up stocking line and there's a car park up and about it's a bit more than half well depending on how well you're going it's a bit more than halfway I think if you're going well it's like 12 to 30 minutes or something to the car park and but you can push past the car park on to more of a false flat section but it's possible to keep the power down all the way for that 20 minute effort. If you can't, if you're down the country somewhere and you don't have access to mountains or you're abroad in the flatlands, so it's based in Toronto for a long time, I didn't have access to a hill. I know we coach a lot of clients own Qatar and in Doha and also clients in Dubois and there's not a lot of climbs that are long enough. So you're You're picking basically a time trial route where you can have even application of power or without any interruptions for a 20 minute period if you're doing it with power and a 30 minute period if you're doing it with heart rate and I'll talk to you about that now. So what you'd be test for these 20 and 30 minute periods, threshold is a one hour effort. But a one hour effort, we wanted to be repeatable and one hour effort would just be toxically hard to motivate yourself to get that full hour done. So what we came up with when I say weed is scientific training. Can I class myself as part of that? The coaching fraternity. I'm not sure who forced came up with it. I've forced read about it in Joe Freil's Sightless Training Boy about back in the day and it seems it's still industry standard. It's very difficult to motivate yourself to get that full hour done. So if you're using heart rate, what we've done was a 25 minute test. Some people say, 30, I've been pushing for 25. And what you do is you get out, you do your 25 minute test. We discount the first five minutes of that test because heart rate has a little inherent lag built into it. So I know somebody ought or say it's you discount the first 10 minutes for the lag, but for that's a bit much. And then what always happened with clients was because they knew they were discounting the forced 10 minutes, they wouldn't go quite hard enough. And then you'd still get that lag. So by telling them to do 25 minutes full out, I think it's a more accurate result. So you're gonna do that 24 minutes full out, you're gonna discount the forced 40 minutes of the test and you're gonna get the last 20 minutes and we're gonna analyze that on a software called Training Peaks. That's a free download, go and download a pin your foil up there. get your last 20 minutes, get an average of your last 20 minutes and that is going to be the figure that you're going to use. I'm going to tell you how you're going to use that in one moment and if you're doing a power meter, you're going to do 20 minutes and you're going to take an average of the 20 minutes and that's your figure you're going to use. You don't need to discount the Force Five minutes if you're on power. The reason being heart rate has that lag built onto it. So think about if you have a heart rate monitor on, get up, sprint across the room. Your heart rate's like 60 or whatever when you're sitting here. Sprint across the room, you get to the fire side. It's probably still gonna be 60. Then when you stop, it's gonna go 70, 80, 90. So effort takes a little bit to catch up.

4.It's just that little bit of a lag built into heart rate

It's just that little bit of a lag built into heart rate. So before you get out and do that test, what we try and get clients to do, you get to do about a 15 minute warm up and then I try and get them to do a three minute TT style effort. So three minutes, you know, as if you're doing a tree kilometer pursuit as hard as you can and that's just to open you out and then you're going to do five minutes easy and then you do your actual test. So a 15 minute normal warm up then you're going to do three minutes like a three minute pursuit and then you're going to do five minutes easy and then into your test and that way if you standardize that protocol and you do it every single time, the results are going to be that bit more accurate. So once you have that figure, if it's your 20 minutes, power figure or your 25 minutes discounting your force five, what you're going to do is you're going to take 5% off that. And this deduction estimates exactly what we would have been able to do if we went for the full hour. So for example, if you've got 270 watts, that's all right, let me see, that's 270 watts, multiply about 0.95 to 0.256. They're about 0.256. It's giving you a threshold as, or if you hit like 170 beats, you're gonna multiply that by 95%. So you have 161 odd beats is gonna be your threshold. Okay, so you're gonna get that number and that's your new threshold number. Okay, that's important. So that's the new threshold number we talk about. And when we talk about what's per kilogram for a threshold, we talk about your 270 threshold number that we've given you, divided by your watts and kilograms, and that's your watts per kilograms, watts per kilo's ratio. So in future episodes, you're gonna hear me talking about Bernal-Donex, watts per kilogram, upper climb, and you're gonna be able to reference that, multiply by your weight and go, holy shit, I would have needed to hold 790 watts for an hour to hold Bernal up that last climb. It gets depressing. So once you have that threshold number, what you need to do is, in the show now, down below, I have a link, click on that link, that's going to ask you to put in your email and your name, pop that in and I'm going to email you automatically over a little auto response or thing set up, it's going to automatically email you a threshold calculator. This is my gift to you. Well I'm down here in Kinsale, everyone thinks I'm why I'm not training, it's because I'm building you a threshold calculator all day, that's why I wasn't training. So I've built a little trash haul calculator in Excel spreadsheet, so get your number, ping it in there and that's going to spit you out a bunch of zones and now we're starting to try and mindfully. So now we know why we're trying and each one of these zones has an associative physiological benefit. So for example, if we're trying at less than 55% of our trash haul figure, we're in recovery pace. So recovery pace, it should feel very easy. It should feel like difficulty is very low. It should almost feel like you're wasting time in that zone. But the benefits in that zone then are, we're recovering from previous heart exertions, we're priming our body for sessions to come, we're getting blood flowing, we're clearing waste products, there's a host of benefits. And only in that zone will we get those benefits. So if we go to 55 to 74%, This is all in spreadsheets, you don't need to take it down. If we got a 55 to 74% of that threshold figure, we're moving into aerobic endurance zone. So that's a steady pace that you'd be able to ride off between two and four hours without putting yourself under pressure. So in that zone, we're starting to build Moira Conjia. That's the powerhouse for endurance and so on and so forth, like all the way up to our zone six, which is our VO2 max. It's extremely short, maximum efforts that you can only hold for a few seconds. And that's about 120% of your functional trash haul power. So once you start understanding how the body works, and you'll start to understand how we get fitter, how we can target events. If we're targeting a criterium, we start figuring out going, okay, well now we're not just gonna go out the door and randomly train and hope to do well in our criterium, we're gonna break down the demands of our criterium, we're gonna say, okay, well we've got 110 seconds sprints to do. Okay, so if I want to improve my sprint, what zone do I need to be in? And you can look across your calculator and you can say, okay, I need to spend time in this zone. So this is the force build and block of build and success while trying to plan. When we have clients coming in the door, this is our start and point. I like to use that analogy of a GPS with clients. When you jump into the car with your GPS, it wants to know two things. Where are you right now and where are you going? Where are you right now is your threshold test and where you're going is your goals. So we'll cover goals in a later podcast. We actually, you know what, we'll do it in the next podcast. We'll cover goals in and these, this podcast and the next podcast then will form two real foundational podcasts that we're going to reference back to.

5.Podcast, it's, it's going to give you a tool

And you know, this podcast, it's, it's going to give you a tool. It's going to equip you with those tools to understand your body more. It's going to equip you with the tools to really excel. And every minute, like I muck about and I tried crypto currencies, I have been for a few years. And one of the things that we're always looking at, it's return on investment. If I'm risking X amount, what's my potential upside? So if your risk here is six hours a week, seven hours a week that you're putting into training, You need to be getting an ROI on that. You need to be getting a return on that training investment. And that return on your training investment is progress. And progress isn't random. Progress isn't hoped for progress. It's definite. It's measured. That's why when someone comes to us and they ask about the progress of our clients, it's not me just vaguely going, your clients are progressing. I have heard that. I know exactly. We had client X came in and he had two. This is an actual real case. He came in and he had a threshold of 220 watts. We work with him for six months and he has a threshold of 290 watts. He's made a 70 watt gain over the course of that six month period. That's tangible progress. We can see that that's the difference between a client gone from kind of a 4 up to a 2 type thing at his weight. So it's huge. So this stuff is really important. I know I drew a lot, a lot at you guys there. might seem like oh my god this podcast was really low and it's all of a sudden become science class so take a deep deep exhale woosarachin that was heavy that was heavy yeah it doesn't come easy it didn't come easy to me to start and it still doesn't come easy to me i i love performance and i love the science of cycling and that's why I dive deep into it. But it's not something that intuitively comes too easy for me. I had to work at it when I got started. I really did. And especially when someone's explaining stuff to me now, I just keep asking the questions that the dumb question, it's the real lawyer taking me like you're trying to explain something to the person on the jury who has the slowest comprehension skills. So you want to keep asking the question. Can you clarify exactly what you mean by that? And that's what I'm doing. I'm talking to our sports scientists all the time and I'm having interviews and podcast interviews with people. I'm just constantly asking the questions to break it down. Okay, hopefully you guys will take the plunge, know your numbers. Comment underneath on any of the show if it's up on Facebook or YouTube. Feel free to comment on it. Hopefully you guys are downloading on podcast if you are listening on YouTube or Facebook I would encourage you to download on podcast and take a witch on your outriana because that's really where it's meant to be enjoyed Outriana and that's that's the real goal with this. It's meant to be passive entertainment Okay, we're gonna switch gear for a second guys Very sad event yesterday in the tour of Polanyi We have 22 year old Belgian cyclist Björg, Lambrecht, and he looked destined for a fabulous career and he sadly passed away yesterday, following a crash in the Tour of Holland, tragic news and when I see stuff like this or Walter Weil in a couple of years ago, the Jörg, it highlights me just how dangerous our sport is and how transient our existence can be. I never take it for granted that I can get out and ride my bike. I've had good friends who have been hit by cars out trying them. Thankfully there are a ride but they can no longer ride their bike and it's such a blessing and it's a privilege to be able to get out and ride our bike. I definitely don't take it for granted but when stuff like this comes along it just highlights all the more how dangerous our sport is. I don't think it's the time for a blame game or quite yet or the post mortem as to how the crash happened or why it happened there are medical treatments, more just the time for the cycling community to come together and celebrate what was an amazing career for Björg and also just collectively grieve together. He was a young talent, he's 22, he's a kid, he's an absolute kid and he's already showed massive promise, he was 6th in Amsterdam Gold this year, he was 4th in flesh well on. He was 12th in the Critterium, the Dauphane, winning the Young Roder classification. He was second in the U23 World Road Race Championships last year. He won the under 23 years, Baston Liège. He was second behind Bernal in the Tour of Lavaneur. He had a glistening career ahead of him and no doubt, you know, along with Evan Paul and Bernal and Vanderpolly was gonna be one of the bright stars for our sports in the future. So when you're riding next ride or if you're out riding now you know just pause this for a second then just think about how lucky we are to enjoy this sport but also be aware of how dangerous it is and yeah take a second to remember Björg rest Instant piece lad, instant piece. Erm, okay, that was a shocker. News yesterday, we're gonna park it there and we're gonna move on.

6.Erm, I wanna talk to you about Eddie Dunbar

Erm, I wanna talk to you about Eddie Dunbar. Eddie Dunbar is, we all know Eddie, he's a crazy mercurial talent and one of the nicest guys in our site and I'd love to get Adiana's a guest one the times. He dropped his chain apparently to the other day so I was wondering where he went when Evan Paul was rained into glory but Eddy dropped his chain and you know it robbed him but Eddy so far this season. He's been sixth in the tour alone. He's been second in the National TT Enrolled Race. He's It's been fifth in the Louroutok town, 22nd in the Azure Natalia and toward Datori Yorkshire. The big one, you have to say the big one is coming for Eddie soon. He seems to be putting together a lot of the pieces and Innyos seem to be backing them. So it's pretty exciting times for Irish fans. With Dan Hasam in Elle the piece they gathered his season, he's got the weird energy during crisis thing going on at UAE. they get to the bottom of that because he still has some great years ahead. Brochee had a good giro out out or a good tour out out. I'm not sure if he's down to ride the Vuelta but Dunbar along with Benus looks our best chance as a big results at the moment. Speaking of Benus I was gonna cover this one at the end but sure we'll cover it now. Viviani looks like it's confirmed that he is on the move from Quickstep. So that's opening the door for Benus. I would love to see Sam there into the Wolfpack. You know, Sam in a team with Alafilippe. That lead out trying looks pretty good. Vivian, he just couldn't really, I don't know, he won a stage in the but he just couldn't really pull it together. He had a disappointing 0. Sam does he love the underdog tag at Bora and I'm not sure can he step up to being the top dog. He has anchorman and sagan and obviously at Bora. I would think Sam's a guy who's always stepped up and who's always responded well to pressure so yeah I would love to see him get the chance and I'd love to see him smashing on a quick step. quick step so fingers crossed that happens. Frillm. I talked in the last show about Frillm and his crash but I was noticing a lot of stuff knocking around social media about Frillm and people are saying the crash is faked. Now that's like I love a conspiracy theory as much as the next man but for me that's conspiracy theory too far. I just don't see the point. I don't see it just seems way way way left field of bizarre. I know there's a lot of Inyos haters out there. I'm not one of Inyos haters. I generally deal with the underdog and that's why at times I've been critical of Inyos and cheering Alif Leibon especially during the tour but I like for whom I like Thomas. I like a lot of the guys any of us. I just don't see this story having any legs that the frame crashes fake. People are posting pictures of previous crashes and showing the wounds that he has now. I heard actually new wounds that they're the same wounds as he always had. I don't buy it. I'm partial to a good conspiracy theory myself from time to time. I'm actually reading a good book at the moment, Confessions of a New Economic Hitman. It's a good old read if you're looking for something to get your teeth into. It's about a God's idea that there's kind of a, well not an idea, it's this God's claim, it's a factual story where he's a US operative who goes around to developing countries and true combinations of bribery, extortion, you know, placing industry in the country, he gets together, you know, countries who He's trying to group together countries to back US interests and if a country gets on board and is politically friendly to the US, he has power to bring industry there to bring jobs. If he doesn't succeed in that, the next step up from him is he calls it a Jackal, a CIA backed assassination dude who goes in and he takes out politicians and leaders until the Gator regime that is friendly and if that doesn't work, the turret and final prong at our tree prong attack is military action. Well, we've read an interesting account that the last 20 years and a lot of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and a lot of good evidence that he's presented as well in his vote now. So it's an interesting one if you're looking for something that you know audible download for the bike. It's an interesting one. I want to talk to you guys about a concept called batching. But I can't say batch without thinking batch bread. You can't beat an old batch bread. Freudic, few rashers on a batch bread. Tell you that's a solid recovery meal for you. Anyone who's not Irish won't know what I'm talking about there. The idea of batching or organizing a bunch of tasks into one. We're constantly trying to get the best out of our athletes. Our athletes are time-crunched and as anyone who rides the bike competitively knows or even leisure events with any consistency, it's super super important to be organized. And we've all known that athletes are friends who has low to potential but just can't get organized and it becomes almost a reason why they walk away from the sport. So there's certain things we need to do with cycling, you know, washing, case, maintaining the bike, you know, planning train and planning events, planning travel around events, these type of things.

7.If we let them task creep, they will occupy like what's the whole…

And if we let them task creep, they will occupy like what's the whole saying, a task will expand to the time allocated to this sort of stuff will creep, creep and creep. And eventually we'll just start kind of thinking, you know, there's too much time going into this cycling. It's it's too time consuming. But if we were just a little bit smarter and a little bit more forward planning. So this is something we try and talk to our clients at the outset and we try and get them to look at their weekly schedule and make adjustments about it. Think about it this way. So if you had a bunch of dirty laundry, every time you had a dirty pair of socks, a dirty t-shirt, you wouldn't put a wash on. You have an efficiency cost there. It's an allocation of time. You know, it's the time it takes you to bring the clothes down, put them into the washing machine, get the detergent, throw it in. Instead you wait until you have a bunch of clothes ready to wash. That's more efficient to wash a full bunch of clothes and one go. The exact same way if you had to go to the post office because you'd have letters post. You wouldn't go one letter because you have to drive to the post office, you have to take time out to get there. You would wait until you had a bunch of letters to post and then you'll drive to the post office. It's efficient and effective allocation of you know where our most precious resource time. So So it's that cost of task switching. If you're at home and you're working on your novel, you're working on your music, your send and emails, whatever you do for work, it's the cost of you stopping that task, getting into your car, driving to the post office, getting the stamps, posting them, getting back in your car, getting back home and getting back onto your task and getting refocused on that task. That task switching costs us energy. So what we want to do is we want to batch activities. So we wait until we have that bunch of letters and then we go to the post office and that's a much more efficient way to do it. So just two things we try to add to clients, two ways this can be effective for them. Just the two, like you've got, right Tom, just trying to think of the best way because is a number of ways it applies because it applies to the practicality day today. If you train, like we're going to take for this example, we're going to take a normal dude who works Monday to Friday weekends of family kids because I think that's our typical client that represents a lot of our listeners here and you can substitute working for college if you're not a work guy or family for a girlfriend. But typically we're seeing clients trying and we're prescribing China. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday with Monday, Friday, rest days. Now Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. It could be short sessions. Some days it could be active recovery sessions. We're not going to get into that right now. But it's important is you're in your kid and you're doing something Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday. So on a Monday, you're on the day off. So we need to batch some of our cycling activities. We've got a lot of mental energy going into trying to enjoy the week. We've monday off, let's batch a shit to one of our cycling activities on a monday. Let's get all our kit for the week washed on a monday. Likewise, if we bike maintenance to do, bike washing to do, fixing all tubulars to do, bike to be dropped off, the bike shop, get it done on a Friday. And batch all those tasks so you don't find yourself every night of the week washing, cycling kit. If you don't find yourself every night of the pulling out the bike and working on the bike, that's one way you can batch it. Another way you can batch things which I like to recommend to clients who are commuting to work. You drive to work or you get the bus to work or you take your electric scooter to work or whatever you do on a Monday and you bring in as much as possible your lunch at your healthy lunches for the week you know if you're bringing in tin foods and the like you bring in your clean clothes for the week you bring in your towels for for the week, you bring in your share or gels, whatever you need to all that stuff for the week needs to be transported, goes on a Monday, then you can roll it into work, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, on the Friday, you bring home all the dirty shit and it's just, it's a beautiful way of segmenting the week. Also if we're looking at productivity, when we're off on the weekend or for self-employed, you know, for me on this A1 gig, you know, you can very easily find yourself all day, refreshing emails, all day, checking social media stuff, all day on the phone, talking to clients. So what I try and do is I batch things. So I know that my most productive errors are open till lunchtime. So from the moment I wake up until lunchtime, I like to think of this as my creation period. So if I have blogs to write, if I have podcasts to record, this is the time when my brain is most active. This is the time when the neural pathways are really foreign and my creative pathways are really foreign so I try and get my creative stuff done until lunch becomes a very natural breakdown for me then my you know my enthusiasm my motivation it's dwindled a little bit I can still perform menial tasks which don't require as much brain power after lunch that's like phone calls that's emails that social media stuff but I don't need to be on social media every 15 or 20 minutes.

8.Same with text messages phone calls emails

Like and also the same with text messages phone calls emails. There's no expectation that you're deployed to that stuff immediately. You don't need to check your phone every 15 minutes. The internet will still be working if you leave it for six hours and you come back to it later. You can reply to 20 text messages and one go. You can reply to 20 emails and one go. You don't need to reply to them all day. I'm thinking about what how your work day is, you know, what's required of you in work and batching those tasks accordingly, putting them into buckets. And for me as well, I'll even subdivide and I'll put in different buckets. I'll say, okay, podcasts from now on today's Tuesday because it's a bank holiday, but now podcasts from now on are going to drop on Monday and Friday. YouTube is going to drop on Wednesday. You can start easily putting stuff into buckets. And it breaks up your work week a lot nicer and it also maximizes your creative potential and it gets the best out of you and helps you just operate in a more efficient and effective manner. If you step back and you look at the type of sessions you have planned for the week and we're gonna dive into what types of sessions we talked about with your threshold calculator and know exactly what you're doing so we're gonna start talking going forward in zones and if you've a zone four or zone for obsession to be doing. That's not the best day to be looking at getting creative stuff done after that. Or if you have a super busy day, say you're in construction and you know you're putting up scaffolding or something really labor intensive and you're planning the session after work, that's the day to start saying I'm going to do an active recovery, I'm going to do an endurance day, I'm going to do a core day. That's not the day to start saying I'm going to get my 12 by 1 minute full gas efforts done that day. You just won't have the two aspects to the mental motivation and then just the fueling of it and there are two different challenges but it's just not the best way to do it. So hopefully you can get something out of that batching because it's a super powerful concept that I use. I talk to you, this podcast has fallen, isn't it? It's a full gas on this one. I thought it was going to be a nice, loyal podcast when I sat down to write this sort of show outline. There's a lot goes into these podcasts like Committing to getting you guys to two podcasts a week The Monday and Friday going forward so that this week's obviously the bank holiday So I'm dropping on Tuesday to be another one this Friday And then we'll get back to the Monday Friday schedule. It takes the guts of a day research and recording and I'd say almost on a tree four hours editing to get this stuff out So it's a day and a half nearly to get one of these podcasts. So it's quite the ordeal. A lot more than I anticipated is when I started down the boat. I really enjoyed them and the feedback's been absolutely amazing. And you know, it's so much noted and it's appreciated when I see you sharing stuff around Facebook and, you know, giving positive encouragement on it. Because as I say, when you're doing this stuff, you know, I'm sitting down here in CanSail at the moment recording this podcast. I'm very much in a vacuum. I was in a cafe earlier on researching the podcast and a couple of guys were in so I came in and who knows maybe our podcast listeners of the show. I don't know but I'm sure they had no idea who I was and I was sitting in the corner researching the A1 show. So quite a lot goes into it. So at the moment, you know, it's not something for monetary gain at the moment. Hopefully it grows and we get show sponsors and patrons and all that thing down the line to keep me doing it. But at the moment I'm just, I'm, I'm trying and I'm living off that positive feedback. I'm getting off you guys. Actually, I'm going to go through a couple of the, a couple of the comments from last week's show we talked about the group ride last week. So I want to read out some of the comments. Actually, you can start, if you're on Twitter or Facebook, you can start hashtag the A1 podcast and we'll keep it as a searchable thread for your comments on the various podcasts, especially on the threshold on the main topic of the day. I suppose it's the main one I want to hear about but anything really. Last day we talked about the group right. So Sean Lally came in a legend that a sports Sean Lally Jr. but both of them are kind of legends in sport, father and junior in Ireland anyway. So Sean Lally said, podcast, Anto. Regarding group writing, there's some absolute madness that appears to be creeping into the sport. Some new clubs for whatever reason, decide that you are allowed to ride in inverted commas, to ride with them for tree spins, but after that you have to join the club. What the fuck? Have they got some great training secrets you only get with special handshake after tree rods? Are they worried strangers might elute their gene pill? What's wrong with welcoming members from other clubs? I've actually have no idea.

9.Don't know what what that rule is about

I don't know what what that rule is about. It's a crazy rule. Like why can I rock up in any other country to a group ride and I get in the ride with them weekend and weekend or start? Why can't two clubs marriage together for a ride? It seems a completely artificial barrier. I don't know why I always accepted that was the way. I know Clontarrif's my local club and I don't ride with them because yeah, that's the reason I think I went up once or twice and they're like, oh yeah, tree spins and you need to join the club. And which is weird. Like, I know myself, Sean McKenna and Colin Cassidy, like we did China Group, which was going out of Clontaar for every day for years. We wrote it out of there. And, you know, we're trading more prominent sites in the country at the time. And Clontaar Cycling Club was meeting around the corner and we never voted them and they never asked us to write them. It's a weird kind of us and them mentality that's on blouse as foster. So I'm not sure what that's about. I would assume it's an insurance tank. But again, I don't know, I'm just kind of guessing. It seems like a barrier that's gone up there with no good reason if I was to guess. Yeah, good question. Yeah, some other comments or some other comments that are coming in. So Shay Daven just said, good podcast. Kurt Rogers, great content, really enjoyed that. Keet Lawler said, I joined swords in March this year it's been excellent and I've learned something new on every club spin and never once been left behind a great group of four different spins at all levels on a Saturday. That's great stuff, because I know that was the club I was talking about when I said I got started and I had an amazing experience. Swords was brilliant to me when I was getting started. So they were all comments on Facebook, there's a bunch more there and there's also a load on YouTube as well so I'm gonna just go through a few of them, Froome Dog is the man, the couture of the France. It was never the same without him. That's Chris. JD said, what makes victory in Sansa Vastian for Evan Paul even more remarkable. He's just started bike racing in April 2017, up with the men who's playing football, PSV ontove, and that's pretty sensational. Chris, Chris, he dolens his Armstrong podcast. It's very good. Even better was Yohambru Nils. I didn't listen to Yohambru Nils. I must check it out. slave to the system said the group road is dying and every second lad has a coach and is on a program. That is true. That is true my friend and I think that's just where smart coaching comes in. It's where there's a lot of cowboys out there as well, West and coaching country. Yeah, the group ride as I said, it's maybe I'm a romantic and I love the history at a sport and I really appreciate that role group, role it plays in sport. So I think it's so important that you can't work on the physiology of an athlete through a training plan and completely discount the technique, tactics, everything you learn from a group, right? I think there are two sides to the same kind, boat need to be nurtured. So you know coaches need to be understanding of this and a coach is failing to appreciate that. I think is a coach who needs the question is philosophy. I think you need to set aside and protect time for a group ride. It doesn't have to be every week but from time to time it's important to dip in and when you're at the group ride you should be at the group ride. Yeah people just need, sometimes they just find it hard to put down the numbers and the strava and the segments and you know I don't know, coach he said, if you're sprinting for an imaginary finish line, for a non-existent prize in the middle of nowhere, against yourself, you need your fucking head examined. I think that kind of sums travel up well. I mentioned on the last podcast and the one before that I was gonna start racking my brains about a way to try and galvanize us as a community and try and finish the season strong, because we don't like that, oh, winter is common brigade and it's a fucking game of My trauma meme is knocking around winter here for you know it's still like it's August Bank holiday weekend is just gone. We've still amazing weather like here in CanSail the sun is beating down at the moment. So I'm gonna put together I'm gonna pull my finger out and I'm trying to get it done this week for a launch early next week and eight week challenge. So an eight week challenge is gonna challenge us to stay on point for eight weeks. goal at the end of the eight weeks could be an event that you pick for yourself at the end of the eight weeks it could be a performance target like you test threshold now you retest in and you're hoping for ex-improvement but I'm going to build in something as well because the daily ritual section that we talked about last day it's very powerful for creating momentum so I'm going to build in some daily rituals around movements around noise and a bunch of this stuff, I'm gonna build in a little bit of weight because over eight weeks, you know, you'll feel so much better if you're a kilo or two kilos down, you know, just how we metabolize energy is very different as well.

10.When we start shedding a little bit of weight and where acceleration…

When we start shedding a little bit of weight and where acceleration improves, everything improves when we start shedding a little bit of weight. So I'm gonna put together some sort of eight week challenge and I'm really looking forward to it because I'm looking forward to it, as I said, because a lot of this stuff I'm creating for me as much as I'm creating it for you. So an eight week challenge, I'm gonna pull together. I'm gonna get the head down and I'm gonna try and work on it this week. I've no internet down here. I've no internet in the house and can say, I don't come down that often, so we don't have internet down here. Yeah, so I normally have it on my phone and I'm with Virgin unlimited, excuse me, unlimited data with Virgin and I got a text off them saying, my unlimited data has exceeded my fair usage amount on my data. So the unlimited isn't unlimited, it's unlimited with an asterisk from Verge and I've exceeded my fair usage. So I chat with two good people at Verge and good people, he was very loosely there. And I'm like, yeah, I need my data back. So I'm willing to pay, just let me know what I need to do to get extra data here. And they're like, you can't get extra data until the 19th of the month when it resets. I'm like, no, like I'm happy to pay here, just let me know what I need to pay because name my data back because I can't even send a WhatsApp or whatever and they're like, no, nothing you can do. So I was saying, okay, the summer is I'm a customer who wants to give you money and you're a business who's refusing to take my money. So it absolutely bizarre. So yeah, I'm dataless at the moment. I'm not sure how I went on that rant, but it's just something that's annoying me at the moment. So this will be my little soapbox for things to annoy me at the moment. I think it was a family yard. I had to walk grinds my gear section. Yeah, That could be my walk around my gear section. Drop me podcast recommendations that you guys are listening to as well. It doesn't even have to be cycling podcasts. Some good podcasts I'm listening to at the moment. I like some hearts to waking up podcast. Obviously, Joe Rogan experiences a classic blind boys one isn't bad. What else? Cyclomones is the cycling podcast. The cyclone niche is poor on podcasts. have to say that's why I'm I'm pretty sure we're gonna absolutely dominate with your help. We're gonna blast into that category because there's just not a lot there at the moment. When you contrast it to YouTube and how many YouTube bloggers are just killing it. Like it's hard to make a mark in the YouTube vlogging section if you're in that cycle and the useful podcasts. Pretty poor selection out there at the moment. So yeah whatever podcast you listen to the moment definitely ping me somewhere Instagram we're in all the We're in all the cool places, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Facebook groups, all that type of good stuff. Guys, I hope you enjoyed the show today. We had a fairly action-packed show. Sorry if the first bit was a little bit confusing. It's something that doesn't naturally flow that well and it doesn't naturally flow that well off my tongue. I know if it's the first time you're hearing a lot of these concepts, it probably wasn't that will receive to your ear ear either. So if that's the case and it sounded a little bit waffly, trust me if you go back and you listen to it a second time, the concepts that sound foreign will start to make sense. And this sort of new vocabulary, like once you listen to it a few times, it will become normalized. And next time you hear me talking about what's per kilogram threshold, you'll understand what's going on and you'll be able to communicate in this language with your friends. So guys, that has been the A1 Show podcast from Kinsel County Cork. It's Tuesday and I will be back to you on Friday for the next one. So as I said, at the moment, we don't have a show sponsor, but what I would do, and I would appreciate in lieu of me shilling, someone is, if you can tell friends, subscribe to the show, rate the show, leave reviews on iTunes, and just generally start to lay the floor up under this bitch. Okay guys, catch you later, it's been a pleasure.