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THE SECRET TO EXPERIENCING MOTIVATION LIKE NEVER BEFORE

14:41·7 October 2021

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

Uncertainty about whether your training is working is the main thing draining your motivation — fix the plan first.
Riding alone isn't a complete training plan; you need on-bike work, strength and conditioning, and nutrition running together.
Build your training schedule around your actual cortisol load — work deadlines, family demands, and life stress all count.
Before planning anything, get an honest baseline of your current fitness and pick one specific, concrete goal to aim at.
Add stress-reduction habits one at a time until each feels automatic, then layer in the next — don't overhaul everything at once.

TOPICS

CYCLING RECOVERY

Without motivation it's impossible to achieve your cycling goals. I recently chatted with a bunch of clients around reasons they lose motivation and came away with an interesting observation - which could hold the secret to you always staying motivated.

Check out our Girona Training Camp www.roadmancycling.com/girona

For coaching inquiries email admin@roadmancycling.com

KEY QUOTES

“The primary reason that I've found that athletes are struggling with motivation, it's uncertainty. And there's a large opportunity cost to every single session that we do. When we're only sure if that time investment is actually moving our fitness forward and towards our goals, that kills motivation like nothing else.”
Anthony Walsh — Cycling coach and Roadman Cycling podcast host

“If you're only doing on the bike training at the moment, I hate to break to you. You have fucking no chance of success. Zero. Because training needs to have tree prongs: on the bike training, strength condition and training and nutrition. If you don't have all of those working in tandem, you're wasting your time.”
Anthony Walsh — Cycling coach and Roadman Cycling podcast host

“It took me a decade in the coaching business to figure that out, to figure out those steps, and honestly they are gold.”
Anthony Walsh — Cycling coach and Roadman Cycling podcast host

READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT4 SECTIONS

The Number One Motivation Killer

Today I want to talk about the number one motivation killer for cyclists. Let's cue that intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our long-chevages? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Welcome back to another Roman Cycling Podcast. Thanks for joining me, Roman. I hope you're all keeping well, getting some training in, getting those winter vibes. I love winter training and it kind of cracks me a little bit when anyone says they don't like winter training because essentially if you don't like winter training you just don't like riding your bike because all we do is ride our bike with no focus on racing and it's just such a nice stress free time of year to build fitness. And linking into that, I talked to a bunch of my clients in the last week and I was just trying to figure out what causes some people to be on motivation. What's the number one cause of lack of motivation? And one thing just popped up and that's what I want to talk about today really briefly and give you the solutions for this problem. Before I dive into that, just to the public service announcements, patreon, it's patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore Walsh. That's the beer phones. That's what supports the podcast. If you can afford it, if you're in a decent financial position and you can afford to boy me a beer once a month and you're getting some value out of the podcast, please head on over there because that is super important for the longevity of this podcast. Secondly, there's two spots left on the Jourona training camp that roemansouliculum.com forward slash Jourona. Flights are balls cheap from anywhere in the world into Jourona at the moment. That's a little perk of the pandemic for you. So we are heading out from the 17th to the 22nd of October and I've just been planning out the routes today and I absolutely can't wait to get cracking. Right, let's dive into this one because I think if you can crack this, you basically have a lot of your motivation problems fixed for the winter. And I know we've all struggled motivation from time to time. But the primary reason that I've found that athletes are struggling with motivation, it's uncertainty. And there's a large opportunity cost to every single session that we do. And by opportunity cost, I mean the cost of what you could have been doing if you if you decided not to go on the bike that day. So you could have hung out with friends, you could have worked later, you could have taken up a different hobby or pastime. So we find ourselves making a time investment to train. But when we're only sure if that time investment is actually moving our fitness forward and towards our goals, that kills motivation like nothing else. And when our client said that to me today, I actually talked back and I thought, this actually used to happen to me. because back in the day when I was starting out cycling and I was super keen to try and get that world tour contract. You know, I had my bike coach, but a coach is coming out from me from every angle because this is what you need to be successful in cycling. I had a bike coach. I had a coach in the GM for strength and conditioning. I was working with nutritionist, I was working with a sports psychologist, and I didn't know what Boyle Hacking was at the time, but I was getting advice from people with some of these type strategies, and it was very early days of me trying to piece this together. But this sort of mixed match of cultures was absolutely horrible and miserable because each culture had their own agenda and they were all pulling in their own direction. Each one was completely unaware what the other culture was doing. For example, I'd have a Stranding Edition in session and this would leave me so miserably tired that at my sprint session the next morning or later on that afternoon, I wouldn't be able to hit any of the numbers.

Assess Your Starting Point

None of my cultures paid any attention to my stress in order areas in my life, like approaching college exams, home stresses, relationship stresses. I was never sure if the session that I was doing was moving me forward or was making me weaker and as a result my motivation slumped. And that's really the crux of why I'm still in coaching and why I'm taking all this time to put together the Roman blueprints which I'm hoping will be out October 15th. I don't want to pin that day to the mast in case I miss it but it's going to be give take a few days either so into that. The long-wasted roadman blueprint will be finally out. But I'm getting this stuff and I'm putting this time in because I really care. Like honestly, I could just be back fucking working in law and I'm putting out podcasts for zero cash except the good people buying me a beer over on Patreon. But I'm doing this because I genuinely care about your progress and I care about your growth. I've seen the transformative power of cycling on people on their physical health and their mental health and their fitness and how it just touches every other area of your life. And that's why I'm fucking obsessed about building this framework and getting this infrastructure for you guys to succeed. Because you really don't have to struggle, not known if each session is moving the dial forward anymore. Those days are gone. So here are the steps that you need to follow. So it's a five step process. First out, you need to assess where you're at. So when any athlete comes in the door, I treat them similar to the way a GPS treats you when you get into your car. Your GPS needs to know two things, where you're at and where you're going. For us in the cycling world, where you're at, it's an honest appraisal of your corn fitness levels. So I need to break down the raw numbers. I need to take the emotion and the judgment down with it. Your starting point is your starting point. Like I've been coaching athletes for the years and I've seen all of, seeing guys and girls who literally struggle to throw in the pedals in their initial assessment. That's that point is unique to them, and they've gone on to achieve great things. It's the first step in your journey. So step one, assess where you're at. Step two, sticking with that GPS analogy. The second crucial piece of information is where are we going? What's the destination? Are we looking to complete our fourth sporty? Are we looking to win the CAF4 crit nationals? Are we looking to secure a professional contract? Or are we looking to just be able to feel good in our kit and go running with our friends? These are all equally valid goals. Toward step, we need to build a plan which is built around family, work, social life. Everyone's circumstances are completely different. Some people work 9am to 5pm. Others are shift workers. Some are single parents. Some are carers. We wear so many different hats and these demands are never static. You could have a predictable schedule for weeks on end but then you enter a busy period with work or family. So you need to have a training plan that takes account of all this. It needs to be unique. It needs to be personalized off that starting point that we talked about. And it needs to be designed to navigate around those unique circumstances. And then it'll ultimately bring you to your goal. But this plan, it needs to balance cortisol levels. As an excess cortisol level, it's going to lean to burnout and it's going to lead to a deficit and no progress. So when I'm talking about building a plan around family, work, life, social commitments, I'm not just talking about a training plan. Training plan has three elements to it. It's tree prongs and this is for a long time what I was missing. So if you're only doing on the bike training at the moment, I hate to break to you.

Reducing Cortisol With Biohacks

You have fucking no chance of success. Zero. You might stumble upon the odd result, but it's not going to be replicatable and you're definitely not doing everything you can to move yourself forward. Because training needs to have tree prongs. on the bike training, strength condition and training and nutrition. If you don't have all of those working in tandem, you're wasting your time. So, fourth step, so, right, to recap, our fourth step, where we are. Step two, where we're gone. Step three, build a plan around work and family commitments. Now, plan includes S&C, nutrition and the bike training. The fourth step, and this one is just so key, if unless you're a pro bike rider, this one is so key. And even, you know, obviously you guys know the podcast, I get to chat with world tour writers all the time and I have some whoop I guess coming up in the next week or two. But this is so key even for them at times we travel. This is reducing cortisol, training, work, family, these are at the cortisol. If we don't, cortisol is the stress hormone in case you don't know. But if we don't have strategies in place to reduce cortisol as well as at the cortisol, we're doomed to fail. So reducing cortisol, this is how we're able to balance work, family and social commitments and smash it out of the park on the bike. Stress reduction through these biohacks, this is the key to having it all. These biohacks need to be integrated in a graded manner. I've referenced this book loads of times, it's called Hinking Fast and Slow and I believe the author is Daniel Keenan, a woman Nobel, a memorial prize a few years back. When you're learning to drive, that's difficult. It's the deliberate, it needs intention. That's the type one type decision pathway. And you know what it's so automated, it's the start and the fields are awkward. But after a while, when that habit becomes automated, that's easy to do. You can do it with your eyes closed. Then we can all drive and text and listen to the radio and you know, swig a beer and look at the window and do smoke a cigarette and roll a do-be all at the same time. You can do multiple things. Because we've changed that pathway from deliberate type one to a difficult action to automate and that's a type two and then it's just automate and we don't have to think about it anymore. So this is what needs to happen with your biohacks. Biohacks are as complicated as you want them to be and people get so overwhelmed. So what you need to do with the biohacks is introduce them in a graded adaptive manner, introduce them little by little. They'll feel super awkward at the start, but after a few weeks they'll be automatic and they're performed unconsciously and at this point we now add the next week. We change habits slowly, but stress reduction strategies are key. And in the fifth step, it's accountability. Because success is never a straight line. If it was a straight line, every single person that joined the gym will be ripped. We know that's not true. Every single person who started a diet will be skinny. single person who read a book or went to a seminar would be smarter but they're not. They're still dumb as fuck. This isn't the reality. We hit bumps along the way. You might crash, you might get sick, you might have a project thrown at you and work. What defines our success is moving forward in spite of these bumps and having an accountability partner, a coach in your corner works super well for all that. So that's it Roman. There's five steps to this game and if you're not the only five steps you're leaving gains on the table. Step one, assessing where you're at. Step two, where are we going? Step three, build that plan, training plan around family work life. And that's bike, nutrition, S and C. Step four, it's reduction of cortisol. Step five, it's the accountability and have someone in your corner.

The Roadman Blueprint Reveal

Have you ever seen that accountability pyramid? It's really cool. It's like the level of success you can get when you're accountable to yourself, and it's gonna butt me to pyramid. Level of success you can have when you're accountable to like a peer or a friend someone else, level of success you can have when you're accountable to a professional, much higher, it's the highest level you can get. That's what I'm trying to do with the Real Man Blueprint and I know I've been dragging the heels on this but that's why I wanted to be perfect, I wanted to be right and it's the first product I've brought out since the 8-week challenge which is almost 2 years ago and we're not accompanying brings our product after product after product. The Real Man Blueprint, you know that might be my mic drop in culture, that might be it Because I don't this is everything I wish I ever had when I was cycling so it could be roadman blueprint is the last product You ever see me bringing out because this isn't about you know redefining and bringing out 10,000 new products We've an eight-week challenge to get people find their feet and really experience and what coaching is and then with the blueprint So that's it I started out and I wanted to create what I called the roadman journey and And for me, this is the roadman journey. It's the 14 day challenge. It's the eight week challenge. And then it's the roadman blueprint. So I feel like this could be the roadman journey complete. I'm working my balls off at the moment, honest. And I'm gonna work real hard to get it to you guys for October 15th. Roadman, those steps, they're gold. Go back, listen to this podcast again, write it down because that's the steps you need for success. It took me a decade in the coaching business to figure that out, to figure out those steps, and honestly they are gold. Get them tattooed on your forehead, look in the mirror every day. Row men, I love you, you're beautiful. Right safe, chat to you tomorrow. Okay, stop what you're doing, it's Anthony again. I want to talk to you for one second about the next step in the roadman journey. I'm laying down a challenge for you, it's called the eight-week challenge. So for eight weeks, I'm challenging you to be the very best version of yourself, whatever that is. For eight weeks I want to take you under my wing and I want to personally build for you the customized training plan on our analytics platform. This plan is going to be laser focused on your goal and I'm going to navigate around your life, your work, your social commitments so don't worry about what your circumstances are right now. I remember after I took some time out of cycling and I went off and taught I was a really big businessman. I came back and I realized I wanted to get into cycling, but I knew after a bit, to try it on a loan, it actually wasn't making me any thinner. I needed an entire system, it needed a 360 overhaul. So for the first time ever, I want to share with you this exact system I used to get back in shape. I'm talking stuff like I'm going to give you my morning routines, the cold therapy I used, the cookbooks and recipes I used, and even the motivational audios I listen to get back on track. So right now what I want you to do is pause this audio, go to www.roadmancycling.com forward slash eight week. Or check out the link in the bio, click that. So one more time, it's roadmancycling.com forward slash eight week. Chatty also.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Why do cyclists lose motivation to train?+

The primary reason cyclists lose motivation is uncertainty about whether their training is actually improving their fitness. When each session feels like a guess, the opportunity cost of time away from work, family, and recovery starts to outweigh the perceived benefit of riding. Removing that uncertainty is the most direct fix.

How do I stay motivated for cycling training?+

Anthony Walsh recommends starting with an honest assessment of your current fitness, then defining a specific goal and building a personalised programme around your real-life commitments, including work demands and family schedule. A structured plan removes doubt, and doubt is the main thing that kills motivation. When you know why you are doing each session, turning up becomes far easier.

What should a cycling training programme include besides riding?+

Effective cycling training has three prongs: on-bike work, strength and conditioning, and nutrition. Focusing on riding alone leaves significant fitness gains on the table and increases the risk of stagnation or injury. All three components need to be addressed in a properly periodised plan.

How does cortisol affect cycling training and motivation?+

High cortisol load from work stress, poor sleep, or life pressure directly reduces your capacity to absorb training and recover between sessions. Anthony Walsh factors cortisol load into programme design because ignoring it leads to under-recovery, declining performance, and eventually a loss of motivation to train at all. Managing total stress, not just training stress, is essential for consistent progress.

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THE SECRET TO EXPERIENCING MOTIVATION LIKE NEVER BEFORE

KEY QUOTES

The Number One Motivation Killer

Assess Your Starting Point

Reducing Cortisol With Biohacks

The Roadman Blueprint Reveal

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

NEVER MISS AN EPISODE

READ THE GUIDE

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THE SECRET TO EXPERIENCING MOTIVATION LIKE NEVER BEFORE

KEY QUOTES

The Number One Motivation Killer

Assess Your Starting Point

Reducing Cortisol With Biohacks

The Roadman Blueprint Reveal

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

NEVER MISS AN EPISODE

READ THE GUIDE

RELATED EPISODES

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN POWER FIGURES LIKE THIS?

DID CAVENDISH'S COACH REVEAL THE SECRET TO WINNING? | VASILIS ANASTOPOULOS

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