Myths, Legends and Polarised Training
You may have heard of polarised training. In fact if you’re a competitive cyclist you almost certainly have and it’s held up by many as the holy grail of endurance training, which will result in you almost certainly result in you being recruited into the pro ranks even if you’re fifty two years old, slightly […]
Lies, Damned Lies and the 20 minute test!
Yesterday I subjected myself to the joys of a 20 minute test on my watt bike. I did a good, progressive 20 min warm up so that my body was ready for what was to come. I could see my HR was a bit sluggish during the warm up. So I thought I would look […]
How Setting Limits Can Set You Free!
In the second half of 1941 as Hitler’s Blitzkrieg rolled implacably towards Moscow the Russians dismantled 1,500 armaments factories, stuck them on trains and sent them to Siberia, along with over 10,000,000 people. In a matter of months they rebuilt said factories, rehomed said people and launched a counter attack that would ultimately defeat their […]
Are You A Chicken Or A Pig?
Question: In a bacon-and-egg breakfast, what’s the difference between the Chicken and the Pig? Answer: The Chicken is involved, but the Pig is committed! It’s coming up to the point in the year where I start to get inquries from people wanting to be coached. I’m very selective about the riders I take on and […]
The Great Base Miles Swindle
In the late 17th century the western world was cleansed of its belief of witches, black magic, gnomes and elves and other such mumbo jumbo by the enlightenment. However it failed to sweep away the myth that winter is the time to get in the dreaded BASE MILES! We’re getting to the time of the […]
Train like Napoleon
In training, to perform at a high level you are essentially going to war against your body. The human body is lazy and does not particularly want to be good at riding a crit, an epic 8 hour mountainous sportive or bombing round a time trial course at 30 mph. What your body really wants […]
The Magic of Synergy – When 1 +1 = 3!
Imagine if you took a group of 10 random cyclists (we are going to talk about average club cyclists here, not formerly sedentary individuals) and then subjected them to a cruel and unusual punishment. First you would test their V02 max power and power at threshold – the 2 key markers of aerobic fitness. Now […]
If a job’s worth doing it’s worth doing badly!
This morning I got on the turbo and on my time trial bike I did 2 x 25 minute efforts at 290 watts average each. Effort wise they didn’t really feel all that much easier than a 25 mile TT effort. They were just and I mean just below FTP. To be honest the last […]
John’s commandments of time trialling
I love time trials. Little wonder really as God gave me the short duration power of a yogurt and I’d really would struggle even beat myself in sprint for the line, I’m that bad! He wasn’t all that generous when he handed out aerobic power either. My power to weight at FTP is pretty much […]
The law of ever diminishing returns
My Dad used to work at BAE systems and knew a guy who used to check the noise levels generated by jet engines. One jet engine at full blast in a hanger would create x amount of decibels. If you added another engine and revved that up to full whack you would not double the […]