Claim OwnershipEmpirical Cycling Podcast
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Do you want to know how training makes you faster? Listen in. Kolie is a leading expert in endurance, sprint, and strength training for cyclists. Kyle is a NASA scientist and national champion sprinter on the track.
Empirical Cycling is a coaching company specializing in individualized training plans for all cycling disciplines. If you like the podcast, please consider a donation at http://www.empiricalcycling.com/donate.html
Empirical Cycling is a coaching company specializing in individualized training plans for all cycling disciplines. If you like the podcast, please consider a donation at http://www.empiricalcycling.com/donate.html
178 Episodes
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Our coaches address the common question of why your friend may be faster when doing less training than you, as well as why your experience level or race category probably doesn't indicate how much you should train. We look at the different returns on investment with training volume vs intensity, selection and survivor bias in cycling, a survey of power and training volume with racing cyclists in the US, and why comparison can be the thief of joy, but when it can be a useful tool for goal setting. We also answer your listener questions on genetics, time in zone progression, training time as a limiter, and more.
This episode is one of our deepest dives ever, into the literature on creatine's effects and tradeoffs with cycling performance, and how the results fare against Kolie's standard for being meaningful, noticeable, or measurable. Because individual studies report such varied results, we instead look at a meta analysis on creatine supplementation in aerobic performance, another on repeated sprints, plus a bonus study with a simulated road race. There's also a brief and explicitly non-expert look at a popular paper on creatine and cognition. Instead of recommending whether cyclists take creatine or not as a binary, we discuss the pros and cons, realistic expectations of effects, and in what cases we would consider supplementation. Plus your listener questions!
1This episode we start with the old cycling adage "train your weaknesses, race your strengths" as the jumping off point to discuss strategies for diagnosing and training weaknesses in the off season. We decide for whom this would make sense as a strategy, the opportunity cost of training a weakness, low opportunity cost things to train, how race selection factors in, and much more.
This episode we look into the published literature on the surprisingly tight agreement between FTP and RPE and a couple different lab-derived measures of threshold like MLSS and critical power, along with the concept of anchoring. But first we get philosophical about how measurements often become definitions that can lose sight of our valid observations and experience. We wrap up by discussing FTP testing with RPE, plus answer your listener questions on RPE scales and anchors, RPE drift, common mistakes when using RPE, Borg's 6-20 vs 10 point scale, and much more.
This is a deep dive into four papers on hypertrophy and strength training, and use them to find guidelines around how cyclists can improve strength without gaining weight. We evaluate the stimulus and overall impact of eccentric vs concentric contractions, sets and reps, minimum dose for strength improvements, progressive overload, and nutrition.
We take a deep look at ten commonly used ways to test or estimate FTP, and dissect how and why each method does (or is supposed to) work, how often we might expect accurate result and who it'd be accurate for, and the Empirical Cycling standards for test accuracy. We also dig into some data on ramp test accuracy and bias, plus how anaerobic capacity, RPE, and daily fluctuations in performance can play a role in test results. Plus time in zone, %FTP, normalized power, lactate tests, the "Kolie Moore" test, and your listener questions on DFA-alpha1, eFTP, and more.
Our coaches sit down to discuss the downsides of using FTP as an anchor for many types of intervals, how your individual physiology can make those targets suboptimal for the best stimulus, and the many alternative approaches that we use instead. We dig into VO2max, anaerobic and sprint efforts, plus first threshold and endurance riding. Then we answer your questions on minimum effective dose, breaking out of a rut, assessing realistic targets, and more.
Dr. Eric Trexler joins the podcast for a nuanced discussion on energy expenditure and endurance sports. He explains measurement methods, the constrained energy expenditure model and its interpretations, the difficulty of calculating your total energy expenditure and needs and practical solutions, some curious results from papers on energy expenditure in cycling grand tours, and much more.
Our coaches answer your questions on identifying limiters, how to take a rest week on a low volume plan, resuming training after a break, training for fitness vs racing, total time in zone vs structured intervals, the things that cyclists under-optimize, making the most of unusually large training weeks, the benefits of ice cream, and much more.
This is a critical look at our previous podcast episodes on VO2max training, and with hindsight provide new and additional context on those training recommendations, plus other effective ways to do VO2max training, with their coaching and contextual aspects. We investigate some instances of "VO2max blocks" in the scientific literature, reexamine the 30/15s paper, and discuss additional factors that confound the interpretation of those and other published results before considering how we can use that information to our advantage when training.
This is a practical guide to FTP training, through three lenses: where you are in your season, where you are in your training journey, and opportunity cost. In each instance we think about reasonable expectations for improvement, if you should add more power or interval time, when to switch to VO2max training, periodization strategies, and how to prioritize your training. We also answer listener questions on over unders, progressing longer or shorter intervals, block training, in-season maintenance, and more.
This is a dive into research showing increased AMPK activation with low glycogen stores. We break down a paper discerning how AMPK does this, subsequent changes to AMPK's activity levels, and then come to some logical training conclusions. Along the way are some takeaways on interpreting and applying mechanistic research.
Our coaches Will and Giancarlo join the podcast to talk through their experience with cramps, and what's been done to attenuate them. We briefly discuss predictors of exercise associated muscle cramps as well as current theories about why they do occur, while most of the episode is spent on practical considerations, and the long list of potential solutions.
Taking enough rest can be intimidating if it's unfamiliar territory. Our resident philosophers of rest Rory and Maeghan join to take a deep dive into the most common reasons we see people being scared of sufficient recovery. We include plenty of practical takeaways for what to expect when resting, how much is too much, building new habits, knowing when you can get back into training, what not to do, and more.
Six of our Empirical Cycling coaches put their heads together to answer your questions on whether mid season breaks will set your fitness back to the dark ages, managing burnout and disappointment, if younger athletes can still overtrain, balancing intensity and volume, work and family stress, being a "good student" as a coached athlete, training habits, and things cyclists put an emphasis on that they shouldn't.
Today we use Rory's recent post event slump to discuss strategies for refocusing and finding motivation again. This is mostly through the lens of goal setting and how to incorporate season planning, fun and unstructured riding, new disciplines, time with friends and family, being flexible, as well as listener questions on realistic goal setting, coping with not meeting goals, training vs racing motivation, and more.
Our very own coach James Mckay sits down to talk about the road to achieving his cycling career goal, a victory at the Lincoln Grand Prix. As this was his last race being coached by Kolie, they take a retrospective look at all the challenges and hard work that went into the last four years of training that made this such an incredible moment: volume, race specific intensity, cramps, heat training, race weight, pressure for results, and the unanticipated way it all came together.
After walking through the general structure and purpose of rest weeks, we break down the decision trees we use to plan rest weeks ahead of time, or what we look for to add them reactively. We also discuss using subjective metrics in rest week planning, plus if and when we wouldn't trust those metrics. Then we answer your listener questions, including mental fatigue, HRV and RHR, skipping rest weeks, accounting for soreness, and more.
We go deep into a couple papers that measure the relative contributions to early VO2max improvements, and the evidence about whether they're more are muscular or cardiac in nature, and what physiological differences there are with more well trained people. Moderate and high intensity training are contrasted, as well as the obvious shortcuts, plus a first-principles approach to alternative mechanisms. We also answer your listener questions on if you can screw up newbie gains, how much is just mental toughness, and more.
While the definition of a junk mile is still debated, we do our best to come up with a definition, analyze it in relation to training adaptations, and what should be done. We touch on volume, intensity, group rides, mental health, fatigue and security blankets, training camps, recovery, hyper-optimization, and lots more.
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8:14. 6 x 90 min zone 3?
there's no podcast to download????