#5 The 5 Pillars of Performance
Racing News
Last weekend was the Aerologic RT 56-mile road race on the Swynnerton circuit near Stoke. The race was 5.5 laps of what is described as a ‘lumpy’ 11-mile course. The main climb on the circuit is just after the finishing area through the village of Swynnerton and this is where the race split on its 3rd ascent. Six of us managed to distance the peloton in pursuit of a lone leader. He must have been strong as the six of us were rotating well and we only caught him with about a lap and a half to go. Despite the numerous last-lap attacks we were all together coming into the finish. The 7 riders in the break consisted of 4 ‘C’ cats and 3 ‘D’s - Karl Smith, Gareth McGuinness and myself, so the worst I could do was 3rd in my category, and that was what I got - 6th over the line. But happy enough with the result for this time of year from a strong break, with Tony Greenalgh (Tactic UK RT) taking the win. It was also great to see coached rider Ray Bell back racing after his recent crash in the Fleche Waltonne RR.
Ray will be in action again in a couple of weeks in the Tour of the Abberleys 3-day stage race in the Malvern hills, a favourite race of Ray’s after wearing Yellow and winning the King of the Mountains jersey last year.
This weekend I will be returning to Time Trials after a few years absence in the Mersey-Tri 10 miler on the Rainford course. The last few years have seen the inclusion in TT events of a road bike category to encourage participation. So this year I will be filling a few gaps in the calendar with some shorter TT’s on the road bike.
The Story behind the Picture
In this new feature, I will be choosing a photo from my 35 years of cycling and racing and giving the background to that moment in time.
As mentioned I will be doing a few Road Bike Time Trials again this year, so I thought it would be apt to start this series with this shot of me in my first-ever open race. I still have the exercise book that I used to keep a record of all my races, so I can tell you that this photo was taken on 16th April 1990 in the Weaver Valley 25 mile TT. For those Time Trial anoraks out there, the course was the J3/7 based around Middlewich.
I had joined the Liverpool Century RC the year before (of which I am still a proud life member) and was told that this would be a good race for my first one as there would be other riders from the club also competing. I am wearing a woollen club jersey that was given to me by an older club member which I still have hanging in GloboGym. For some reason, this iconic black and white jersey has the World Champion Rainbow stripes on the collar and sleeves, maybe this was an omen for the future? The shorts in those days were plain black but with a leathery chamois pad that you had to keep supple with moisturising cream, otherwise, it would have the texture of a dehydrated Rhinoceros’ skin on a particularly hot day. As you can see, helmets weren’t a thing back in the early 90s in Time Trialing (or training rides for that matter). You did have to wear a hairnet-type helmet in road races, although how much protection they provided in the event of a crash is debatable.
The bike was a Paganini steel frame made of Columbus SLX tubing. I loved that bike and spent many a happy hour polishing the shiny bits with autosol. Downtube gear levers were the only option back in those days. I remember a rider in the club who was renowned for sprinting showing me how to change up a gear whilst sprinting out of the saddle using your knee!! And of course, toe-clips & straps (Binda). Clipless pedals had hit the streets by then but I was a late adopter. I’m pretty sure that Tri-bars were not allowed in TT’s at that point, even though Greg Lemond had used them the previous year to win the Tour de France from Laurent Fignon by 8 seconds in that legendary final Time Trial on the Champs Ellysees.
That bright green Avocet wired computer on the handlebars was state of the art though, and as I monitored the clock and my speed during the race, it was clear that I had no idea what I was doing in regards to pacing. I had been told that ‘beating the hour’ for 25 miles was the touchstone of a quality Time Trialist so I spent the first mile or so trying to hold 25 mph. This average speed soon faded, along with my unbridled optimism and I eventually finished with a time of 1 hour, 8 minutes and 32 seconds. Undeterred, I now had a ‘Personal Best’ time and a lifelong addiction to improving and getting faster. For those of you wondering, the winner’s time that day was 55 minutes by a young and upcoming rider, recorded in my book as C.Boardman.
5 Pillars of Performance
In this newsletter, I have grouped all the ingredients that go towards creating a winning performance on the bike. I’ve split them into the 5 Pillars and broken down each pillar into several components. Let me know which elements you would like to see covered in more depth in subsequent newsletters and make sure you have hit that subscribe button. So have a look and see if there are any gaps or areas that could do with more attention in your program.
Endurance Training. This basically covers all aspects of ‘on-the-bike’ training. As I’ve mentioned previously, unless your goal or event is <10 seconds, then your primary training objective should be to build the biggest aerobic engine that you can. A high VO2max is by no means a guarantee of success in competition, but it will be a pretty good performance indicator in most cycling endurance events, all other things being equal. Most racing cyclists use power meters now to help with developing their fitness but some make the mistake of focusing solely on Functional Threshold Power (FTP). At fit360, we use power profiling that develops your maximal wattage at a range of durations including 5secs, 1 minute, 5 minutes, 20 minutes right up to several hours depending on your event. If your goals are in Road Racing, this pillar would also include sprinting and neuromuscular development.
Nutrition. Sports nutrition is a massive area of interest and also a multi-million-pound industry. Get it right and it can make all the difference. Endurance sports such as Cycling, Running and Triathlon have a problem in that nutrition is inextricably linked to body composition. It is a fact that the top endurance athletes in the world reduce their body fat to very low numbers in order to peak for their main events. Tour de France GC riders over the last decade have reduced their body fat to unhealthy levels in order to be competitive for just a few weeks in the high mountains of the Alps, Pyrenees and Dolomites. With platforms such as Zwift using watts/Kilogram as a metric of performance, it has now become common for some amateur cyclists to try and emulate the professionals and become obsessive over body weight and underfuel their training with very low calories. We’ll cover the subject of Relative Energy Deficiency in Sports (RED-S) in a later newsletter. When it comes to nutrition for sport and health/weight loss clients I have a whole food-first approach emphasizing the importance of a healthy, whole-food diet that supplies enough energy and nutrients for both health and training. The primary purpose of good nutrition is to promote good health. Without your health, you are going nowhere. Other elements of nutrition that require consistent focus include Hydration, Recovery and Repair, sufficient Fuel, and optimal Body Composition. Only once your diet is spot-on, should you be looking at supplements and sports drinks as the icing on the cake (Mmmm cake!).
Recovery. The importance of good recovery habits tends to get overlooked but are just as crucial as the other Pillars as far as performance is concerned. The better your recovery, the more volume and quality of training you can do leading to better fitness and performance. That sounds obvious but not everyone makes that connection. Everyone has a different individual constitution and capacity to absorb and recover from training. Some riders require a lot more rest than others and this increases with age (as I am finding out!). That is why it is important to prescribe the appropriate training dose and rest periods for an individual rider. Something a coach will learn as they get to know a rider. The term over-training is often used as a reason for diminishing performance but more often than not it is a case of under-recovering due to sub-optimal nutrition, sleep or other forms of stress that life tends to throw at us. So it is critical to pay attention to good recovery habits and plan easier rest periods before the symptoms of physical and mental overload such as illness, chronic fatigue or motivational decline do the job for us and enforce time off the bike. Technology has trickled down for everyday use to help measure recovery using metrics such as HRV and apps such as Whoop and Garmin’s Body Battery.
Strength & Conditioning. As you are probably starting to gather by now, I’m a big advocate of strength training for endurance athletes. Strength Training is still a relatively new concept for cyclists. There are several good reasons to include some S&C, even though you just want to be out on your bike. Cyclists measure power in watts and Power is defined as Force x Speed. In this context, Force is how hard you are pressing on the pedals and speed is how fast you are turning the pedals (Cadence). As we know, there is an optimal cadence range for riding fast and efficiently, once your cadence gets too high (or too low) it becomes inefficient. But there is no limit to how much force you can exert on the pedals. Being able to push a higher gear at an optimal cadence will result in going faster. As we’ve discussed, supplying as much Oxygen to the muscles helps riders to produce and sustain power but improving maximal strength and muscular endurance with appropriate and specific strength exercises is now recognised as an important piece of the puzzle. S&C training also covers developing strong core stability to help transfer that strength through the pedals and resist the forces that are coming back at you (something to do with Isaac Newton). A good S&C program would also cover mobility, flexibility and strengthening the parts of the body that don’t contribute to cycling in order to maintain a good balance of strength. Strength Training should be periodised so that the maximal strength component is developed during the non-competition season (winter for most of us) and then maintained during the season with less frequent maintenance gym sessions and transferred onto the bike with Torque training (Specific High power / Low cadence efforts).
Everything Else. Ok so I could have called this article the 10 or 11 Pillars of Performance, but 5 Pillars has a nicer ring to it so I’ve lumped everything else into this one. These are things which probably don’t constitute a ‘Pillar’ but can make a small difference and as we know by now, the aggregation of marginal gains is what makes the difference once you have nailed the basics.
• Measure, record & progress - once you have structure to your program and something to measure, you can see your development whether it is higher watts for a given duration, faster Time Trial times or just quicker over your favourite Strava segments.
• Get your bike position right - Your optimal position should be a balance of Power, Aero and Comfort. You won’t reach your potential unless this is right. You may be putting out impressive watts on the Turbo Trainer, but if you are as aero as a bus out on the road, it is like putting the heating on and leaving all the windows open. Dont waste those hard-earned watts!
• Optimise body composition - Lean and strong should be the goal if performance is the goal, this isn’t the same as being as light and skinny as possible which usually results in lack of muscle and power. But if you are carrying too many extra Kilo’s then obviously your performance will decline exponentially as the road or trail heads upwards.
• Equipment and Kit. Buy the best you are willing to pay for. Like it or not, equipment makes a difference. Spend your budget on the things that will make the biggest difference to performance. (maybe even invest in some coaching !!)
• Finally, the X-factor. Cycling is hard and when the going gets tough you will need that mental grit. That may be 50 miles from home with nothing left in the legs on a club run, or lined out in the gutter during a race, just focusing on not losing the wheel in front for a few more seconds. Do you have that ability to suffer, the competitive edge and the ambition to achieve what you set out to do?
In the words of Greg Lemond - “It never gets easier you just get faster."
So if you are serious about maximising your potential on the bike, write down each of the elements listed above and give yourself a score out of 10 for each one. Where were your lowest scores? These are the areas that you need to focus on improving.
Golden Nuggets
Book - Redemption: From Iron Bars to Ironman by John McAvoy - The fascinating story of how an armed robber, sentenced to life in prison, started using the prison indoor rowing machine and discovered a love for fitness and endurance competition.
X Account - Lukáš Ronald Lukács Cycling is possibly the most photogenic sport in the world, and this guy gathers the best pictures from the greatest races by the finest cycling photographers in one place.
YouTube Channel - Dylan Johnson American Cycling Coach and Gravel Racer from USA with a science-based approach to training and racing advice.
Coaching
Thanks again for all the positive feedback and comments about the newsletter and for the shares and forwards.
If you are interested in finding out about Coaching, we start with a ‘No Obligation’ chat for you to find out how the coaching works and for me to learn what your history, goals and ambitions are. This can be wherever suits you - at home, on a cafe ride or over video call.
Contact details-
Email - Andy@fit360.co.uk
Website Contact Form - www.fit360.co.uk
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AB