Welcome to this week's writer sport. This week we're going to show you how you can change your fitness in six months. Anthony, okay, amazing question.
First up, we have Anthony. I've been getting coached by you for coming on six months now, and I just wanted to say how much the last six months have genuinely changed everything for me. Before we started to work together, I thought I had things figures figured out.
I was riding loads, chasing numbers, smashing myself most days and going absolutely nowhere. Since I started working with you, everything shifted. Not just my fitness, but how I ride, recover, and actually enjoy the process.
Again, I've been trying to convince a few club mates that proper coaching isn't just for pros and that what we're doing is way more than getting a training plan. Could you maybe talk through what you've changed for me, why it's worked, because I think a lot of writers would benefit from hearing how simple changes done consistently can completely flip their pro. Maybe don't read out the name on that.
I won't. Okay. And I don't think you'd appreciate it.
Yeah, I've seen that question coming in. So, yeah, I guess the premise is, can we lift the lid a little bit on what we've done differently with Mr. X in the last few months?
It's been a total step change in the types of training. It's something I'm encouraging a lot of my athletes to do. And I think this is a good platform for maybe laying it out and showing people how the training they're doing at the moment is a little bit flawed.
I think we've been lied to subtly but very consistently. Most recreational athletes are training like professional athletes, just less. They train less volume, less recovery, less support infrastructure, but with the same mindset.
Optimize for power. Optimize for critical power, FTP, durability, what insert whatever high performance metric you want there. But here's the problem with that.
You're not a pro cyclist. And that's not an insult. You're you're just not, unless you're a pro listening to this and then totally discard that.
You don't earn your paycheck riding your bike. Training shouldn't be built around performance. It should be built around health.
like long-term resilient robust health because performance is downstream of health, not the other way around. When we start out optimizing for performance, we can miss health. When we start out optimizing for health, we still get performance as the byproduct.
So, it was a total paradigm shift. We went from chasing FTP to chasing health span. So, we reframed the question entirely at the very beginning.
Instead of how do I get faster in the next 6 months, it was how do I build a body that's still going strong 40 years from now? And that's the difference between health span and lifespan. One is just surviving, the other is driving.
Body, brain, bike, everything. Let's say you have, let try and break this down. I'm trying to think of a realistic amount of hours.
Say you have 11 hours a week for training. Now, that's generous by most people's standards, but I'm really bad at math, so you can figure it out for your own hours. Now, we plug in the non-negotiables into our 11-hour training plan.
The things that science is screaming at us that we can't but prioritize. The peer-reviewed data is so strong that you can't ignore it. So, I'm talking strength training.
You need to get three strength training sessions in per week. 45 minutes minimum effective dose, three times a week. We say that's three hours out of that.
I think you should also peel away one hour for meal prep so you don't have that excuse for the days to reach for the takeaway menu. You know, we've all heard the clichés, you're never going to out train a bad diet. That's another era gone.
The research is so good on sauna use as well. It's a maybe a separate podcast on changing white fat to brown fat, all the heat acclamation benefits, mitochondrial development. So, two sauna sessions of 30 minutes each per week.
That's another hour a week. on blue zone research would show us that the connection to your community is really important and I think I have emphasized that over and over again the podcast the group ride community I think it's a good idea to do a group ride three hours per week as well so that means we've three hours left to train that's all we have left we've 11 hours so now the problem we were trying to solve for at the very start wasn't how do I distribute 11 hours of my training the problem is much more concise than that how do use three hours effectively and distribute that time across my training zones to get the associated adaptation in each of those zones. We've largely ticked the zone 2 box with our three-hour group ride and the balance of that we're going to get in between intervals.
So the big question becomes how do I spend those last three hours to get a maximum return on my training investment? That's very much goal dependent and that's when we dug into exactly what the specifics were for him. His were quite time trial focused.
So I was able to reverse engineer the demands of the time trials he was going for. We spent a lot of time doing threshold stuff, sweet spot stuff. But you could be a criterium rider, you could be a grandfondo, a sport rider, a gravel rider.
And how you distribute those three hours training time is going to totally change. Strength training, nutrition, heat exposure, community. These aren't side quests.
These aren't afterthoughts. They are the sole mission. And when you get them right, the performance will take care of itself.
You need to train like a human first and then train like an athlete second. And that's been the step change. Yeah.
It's completely new approach, isn't it? And I'm just thinking about, you know, when you when when these guys come into coaching with you and you're explaining to them, you know, that they have to not turn everything on its head, but this is this is new. This is totally different.
you're not going to be spending those 11 allocated hours on the bike anymore because we have a different game plan. How hard do you find it to convince? Do you know someone comes to you for coaching?
They're maybe at their wits end because look is this is this listener said he was going absolutely nowhere. So he was at his wits end trying to figure it out himself, right? So he comes to you and is there a case where you're like look you have to trust me here.
It's not really because it's like by the time they want coaching like I'm not my job's not to convince you. I'm not a salesman. Like you either want the coaching or you don't.
So it's there's not too much of a buy in. Also maybe to to caveat that like if you're a cat one cat 2 rider or you're on the way up a cat three a cat four rider and you want to prioritize performance short term. There's definitely nothing wrong with that.
But for the bulk of us who are north of 30, I think it that should be the approach rather than performance-driven approach at least in the long term. Amazing. Okay, next question.
Anthony, really simple question for you here. How do we make racing safer? Really simple question.
The most complex answer in the world. The answer is simple. Yeah.
But how do we do that? I think we need to maybe move past exactly what this is likely to become superficial treatment of the topic and it needs to have longer form discussions around it and when I say superficial I don't even mean the length of time we're going to talk around but it's been really a band-aid approach to safety with banning stuff like super tuck or turned in hoods or the puppy paws like that's surface level the real solutions they're a mix cultural shifts, smarter course design, better tech, and actual consequences for recckler reckless rider behavior. Adam Hansen was on the podcast.
Was it last year? Yeah. And we talked about some of this stuff.
CPA president. Yeah. President the CPA stands for uh it's basically their governing body.
They're kind of like their association. Yes. Uh so clist professional association or something.
Uh we're in an AI age. We talk about AI a lot internally and ways we're using it to smooth out workflows and improve innovation and drive product data on races that have the highest crash rates still isn't available. We can surely aggregate that and then off the back of that like a regulatory and penalty system for organizers that are consistently promoting dangerous races or having dangerous finishes.
Inside that then we can start to identify what are the causes of these crashes. Are they course design causes or are they rider causes? If they're rider causes, there needs to be real penalties.
Yellow cards, red cards that hit the rider and that hit the team. Like so we're looking at suspensions and fines, but also maybe deduction of world points as everyone's clattering for this relegation battle because then you have an incentive from management to start saying to riders, be safe. There's real consequences to you not being safe.
we might lose our world tour license. Adam Hansen, I went back because I knew you were going to ask this question and he had a couple of course design things which I think were really good. We seen it last year in Rubet the hot dog turn into the cobble section downhill sprint finishes to palonia grun wagon disaster waiting to happen.
More technical courses like the Valta City Center team time draw are also a disaster because they reduce the rider decision making time and all the data that talks about reduce rider decision-making time, it always leads to bad outcomes. A really simple fix is give riders two and a half to three seconds more decision time. say by repositioning barriers, marshals, warning signs an extra hundred meters down the road rather than someone just waving a flag and then you have to react instant.
I think they actually did get better at that for the church to France um last summer. They did make a point of putting a lot more visual flashing signs as you said way before the obstruction or the bend or you know the descent or whatever. So there has been a a couple of kind of I feel token moves by some of the organizations to improve things.
Yeah. Like I think that's goes a little bit past token for me. There is a bit of substance to that one at least.
But it's just it seems peace meal like it's one race does it. The stuff that's just seems nonsensical. Like when you're out I get you to share on the hammerhead your live location with me so I know where you are.
if you're stuck for too long in one place. I know like we the Swiss junior rider who lost her life tragically and lay in the ditch undiscovered for a large section of time like Garmin has live crash alerts on their devices as does Hammerhead, Wahoo, all the leading bike computers. How have we not got live alerts going into the team cars or medical personnel if there's bad crashes?
Likewise, the barrier design in some of these races is still so archaic. Like the tour to France's like flatter module barriers, like they don't catapult riders as much, but we don't see them everywhere. Some races still have the old skill barriers with the legs hanging out.
And then the RA rider the race radio, which there's, you know, a move to get away from race radios, but there needs to be a safety channel on that that's warning every team of upcoming stuff. Yeah, absolutely. What do you think about the push back that riders get sometimes?
So they will on a day with particularly bad weather or really bad conditions kind of come together as in unity and kind of say okay we're not racing today or we're going to decide that we're going to neutralize a certain area. They do get a lot of backlash don't they from the cycling fans from the organizers all of that kind of stuff. I mean it's not really fair that these decision they feel like they have to take these decisions into their own hands but they're obviously it's self-preservation for them to Catalonia from Rogitch trying to neutralize the stage you're talking about.
Uh yeah, it's probably not ideal that you have writers taking it into their own hands, but it's whatever system is going on internally, it seems like there has to be a massive overwhelming majority of riders before that ever happens or somebody who's really powerful within the palaton as in somebody who's kind of like I don't get to ever act like unilaterally and only six of them want the stage can. But because Rogich wants it can it gets canceled. I haven't seen that happening.
It's always been like Milan San Ramo where it's snowing, but the conditions have to be so so bad for that to happen. It seems way past the threshold of the challenge is we all want to see epic racing entertaining and crashing is entertaining. Bad conditions are entertaining.
But how do you balance that like dichotomy of that's where the entertainment is with the real human side of that? that that's somebody's son, somebody's husband, somebody's father, and they're real people with real consequences. I think now um we've talked about it a lot on the show and I know you have with particular guests that you know as young writers were going into the pro palaton or any palaton that they had this sense of you know I really admire and uh you know look up to this senior rider and there's a hierarchy and you eventually climb that and you go up that and I think you know there has been a change in that whereas you know an older rider will now kind of get shoved out the way by a younger rider just like a little bit of a sea change in in terms of respect, but I think we're also seeing it as well as in the younger riders are becoming quite more a lot more outspoken after races.
Like we do see Ramco agnipul coming out a lot of the time and saying, "Oh man, that was scary. That was shit." The the one of the best.
He's one of the best six, but it is good to see them coming out. Unfortunately, it is half, you know, it's late. It's after the race.
So, I don't know. Look, we'll see what uh what changes the organizers make over this season. It's a good question, though.
M we have three long form podcasts every week. Some of them are 90 minutes or 2 hours long. And I realize you're busy.
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Go sign up. Okay, next question. Anthony and Sarah, what happened to the Goreex Shake Dry cycling jacket?
I can't find it anywhere. What can I get now instead? They were too good.
They got discontinued. Yeah, people weren't buying them enough. Yeah, they were too good.
They They kept getting too dry. They were keeping you too dry. They were too lightweight.
They were too waterproof. They were too breathable. Best jacket maybe.
Yeah. Although it was probably giving you skin cancer. I mean, or not skin cancer, cancer.
and like genuinely changing your DNA internally because those Gortex shake dry was full of this chemical that we now know is very very dangerous to the body. It causes fertility issues to stickler and kidney cancer cancer thyroid diseases. This is the PFAS but it was really really good at repelling water like making sure stains didn't stick made it very very brea breathable.
So they've decided to pull this particular uh this uh piece of technology away from the outdoor apparel market. A lot of states particularly in the US have banned it completely and I think that's essentially the roll out that's happening completely moving away from uh from this kind of Gortex shake dry PF. There are loads of other alternatives out there now because when the cycling industry and outdoor industry knew that this was going to happen, they there was obviously a little bit of a rush to try and create other types of materials, none of them really as yet have stood up to the, you know, durability and performance of that particular kind of coating on the garments.
So, we still have a little bit of a a way to go about. Definitely make sure that you're not buying any products with PFAS because what's happened globally is there is a huge amount of stocks of these garments around. So you can still buy them on the market.
You can still buy them on Amazon, eBay, everywhere. So please please make sure you're not buying them. There's loads of other uh different types of I mean we have the GABA here that's very very safe.
The Castelli Gaba, you love that as well. I mean it's not as breathable, I don't think. race jacket as well.
It's not the exact same, but it's there are loads of uh other uh other garments that you can buy there. When you're going to buy, have make sure that you're looking out for certifications. One to look out for is blue sign.
The other one is OKO text. That's just to make sure that the product is actually uh free from those harmful chemicals. So, yeah, I think uh it's a good thing that these things have been have been uh phased out.
What I will say, if you do have a few of these garments and you're a bit like, "Oh, how do I even dispose of this?" Because if you put this into a landfill or you're trying to get rid of it, all of these chemicals will just seep into the ground. They're very, very harmful.
So, um, contact the company that you bought it from. A lot of them are doing a takeback system at the moment. So, I'm afraid listener, you will not be able to buy Gore Tech shake dry cycling jacket anymore.
So, go have a look elsewhere. Okay, next question. Hi Anthony.
I feel like I get the most out of my sessions if I do them midm morning. Sometimes if I have a hectic day with work or the kids, I have to push my session to either earlier or later. Do you know if this is something that other people experience or if there is anything sciency to back up this little fact I've discovered about myself?
We kind of discovered this in the gym as well that we're stronger at certain times of the day than others unaffected by our consumption of pre-workout caffeinated beverages. Uh the Celsius we're I think we're we're developing a problem for must your body runs on the cicarian rhythm. That's like a 24-hour biological clock that affects everything from your core temperature to your hormone levels to your coordination to your reaction time.
This rhythm tends to take the mid to late morning, roughly 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.
m. as the sweet spot for many athletes. The reasons are core temperature.
As your core temperature rises throughout the morning, so does your neuromuscular efficiency, your reaction time, your muscle elasticity. All of these make training feel a little bit easier and a little bit smoother. Also, your hormonal state.
We all hear this word cortisol thrown around. It's that hormone. It spikes first thing in the morning.
It's useful for getting us to wake up out of bed so we don't feel groggy all morning. That's why people say to delay your morning coffee to allow for that natural cortisol spike first and then have the caffeine hit rather than having the caffeine and the cortisol hit at the same time. By midm morning, it's starting to taper off, meaning you're starting to feel a little bit more balanced and less reactive.
testosterone is still elevated, supporting that strength and performance without over stimulation that cortisol brings as well. And the cognitive clarity is much sharper midm morning. You don't get that mental fog as well.
And there's plenty of scientific studies and there's plenty of anecdotal reports showed athletes across multiple disciplines experience their best results and their best outputs in midm morning or early afternoon. And I think I read somewhere that most world records are actually broken around that time as well. So he's tracking normally.
But there is there are definitely people some people who prefer and feel like they are at their best not in mid-m morning. I think the majority of people I agree are kind of midm morning or if you were to optimize for you know 60 70% of the population they probably agree with this this listener but there are definitely people who will feel better in the evening or training super super early. Apparently that is something lifestyle dependent probably as well.
It's something it's definitely to do with your chronotype. And chronotype is something that kind of it's it's the part of you that makes up whether you're naturally an early riser or you're slow to get going or you're a night owl. And that will have a big kind of impact on what time you get your best training at.
I actually did a full podcast on chronotypes before. And if you can make yourself become a morning person or if you're destined to be you can train your yourself a little bit better, your body will always naturally try and slip back into being a little bit kind of tough to get out of bed. But if you create better habits around getting out of bed earlier, consistently consistent bedtimes, you know, no eating sugar before bed, all of that kind of stuff, you can kind of train your chrono type a little bit.
But yeah, so it is interesting. I think that uh there's we watched a YouTube the other I think it was Mr. Universe or who M what is that huge big bodybuilder and he said that his absolute peak time to train is in the evening.
So that to me would kind of say that he is you know a night owl and that's all down to do with his chronotype. Hey everybody, let's take a quick break to talk about the bike I'll be riding this season. Reap.
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I absolutely love my one and I couldn't recommend it highly enough. Back to the show. Okay, next question.
Anthony, as a parent, how do you know when it's time to start taking your kids cycling seriously? He's just turned 17 and already talking about racing category 4 next season. Should I be looking at coaching or is it too early to go down that rate?
I don't know how the category system works. It's very country dependent. If at 17 you go into junior only ranks or if you don't have enough critical mass maybe you're going into a shared junior cat 4 ranking system which they remove the gear restrictions which makes that easier now before cuz juniors used to be on restricted gear is very difficult for them to compete even with cat fours but all that's aside because it's not really the question he's asked at 17 if your kid is talking about racing cat 4 and setting goals definitely tells you a couple of things he's super motivated for a 17-year-old kid and he's already identifying as a cyclist rather than just somebody who a kid who rides a bike who rides a bike to school or transport or recreation or whatever.
He's given like a tacid green light to start taking things a little bit more seriously. But that doesn't mean he has to go full gas. What it means is starting to introduce some structure, some support around his training and some semblance of consistency without stealing the fun and freedom and the reasons that he has fallen in love with it already.
Like physiologically 16 to 20 it's an important window because it's when athletes begin developing like you develop aerobic capacity, neuromuscular coordination, recovery habits, even racing instincts all start around that age. But emotionally, you're still, think back to 17, like you're figuring out who you are as a person. You're figuring out like what lights you up.
You're starting to see girls for the first time. You're maybe starting to experiment with alcohol for the first time. You're starting to figure out how you respond under pressure for the first time when exams start coming in.
So the approach definitely should balance that structured coaching with the exploration and autonomy of being a growing small person that's trying to find their way to becoming. So I don't think I answered that question really. I don't think you said yes or no.
I think it's very individual isn't it? just depend like taking all that in and like trying to run your kid through that as a lens as a filter to understand who he is and if it's suitable for him for me and look I don't have any kids but you know the way I would look at it is yes do get a coach coaches are very passionate about it make sure it's the correct coach as Anthony said that they're not totally tunnel visioned and this has to become their entire life and they're you know as you used to do bringing spinach instead of popcorn to the the cinema to cut weight. Do you know that the the correct type of coach and that really good coach will make sure that your kid is not getting burned out from this sport that hopefully he's 17 now hopefully he's going to have another 50 years at you know longevity within the sport rather than burning really brightly and then you know that's it his love of cycling is gone.
So that would be my advice. Find a coach or a good group, a good uh you know club spin who he can learn from on like a a more natural level for the next couple of maybe next year or two and then get a coach. What do you think?
I think that's a wrap. Ro men, thank you very much for tuning into the podcast. We've created an amazing community resource.
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