- Welcome to Ask GC Anything.
Coming up this week, I answer your questions
on the multi-discipline training,
one minute peak power rapid,
and the elusive tail winds.
If you do have a question
that you would like answered on the show,
use the hashtag #tarqueback
and drop that in the comments below.
And if you would like to be in
with a chance of winning a free
three month subscription to Zwift,
use the hastag #askgcntraining.
Right then, the questions.
First up, we have a question from Ron Byers.
"In my part of the world, Kansas City, Missouri, USA
which borders Kansas, home of the Dirty Kansa,
gravel grinding is very popular.
So is trial riding on our nearby extensive
"rails to trails" paths.
Of course, road riding is also very popular.
Mountain biking has a great following.
My question isn't which bike or bikes should I buy.
My question is how should an enthusiast train
for all the different cycling related disciplines."
He goes on to say
"Are different training programs recommended for each
or is just one regular training discipline
going to fit them all?"
Well my answer would be that
I would absolutely honestly target
all-round fitness that aims towards
your aerobic capacity.
Cycling, no matter what the discipline,
is an all-round aerobic sport,
and you'll found that many mountain bikers,
or cyclo-cross riders
actually spend a lot of time training on the road
to boost their aerobic capacity.
If we look at the all-train hero at the moment,
Mathieu van der Poel,
he spends a lot of his time training on the road,
and then starts to build towards specific events,
with then technique training,
and intervals that are more tailored
towards the demands of that event,
so as I said,
enjoy your all-round riding,
try and build your fitness on the road,
and then you can use that in the other disciplines
with a little bit more specificity
as you head towards the event.
Good luck with your training,
and make sure you enjoy all of those disciplines,
I know I would be.
Up next is a question about commuting, from Coco Shepherd.
Coco has commuted 60 miles a week near enough every week
for the last 5 years.
However, recently, has changed jobs,
which is now a 24 mile trip each way.
Very similar to my commute in fact.
What can I do to improve my fitness, stamina
and recovery times to build up
to doing the 24 miles each way
5 days a week?
Well Coco,
this is going to be actually quite a demanding task for you,
but you will get there.
What I would do to start with is consider
a day on, day off approach,
so you ride Monday, Wednesday, Friday, for example,
on the other days, no matter what your motor transport is,
you could then consider using your bike for half the ride.
So if the bus near you allows you take your bike half way,
that's something that can work really really well, or train.
If you don't have access to either of those,
but you do have a car,
you could consider driving a third of the way,
or two thirds of the way into where you work,
and then riding the final bit,
that's something that I personally do,
when the weather isn't so good.
It saves some fuel, save some parking,
but you still get to do a little bit of a bike ride.
Consider the week is broken down
into 10 individual bike rides,
target five to start with,
so ride number five is actually a half ride,
so two half rides, if that makes sense.
And then slowly build from there,
don't go out aiming for all 10 at once.
My commute, as I said before,
is almost identical in length of yours,
and I haven't yet reach the holy grail of
doing five in a week,
just because I personally find it quite tiring,
when I get on my bike in the evening,
I'm never as fresh as I was in the morning,
which brings me on to my next point actually,
its really important considering
this is quite a large load to place on your body,
it's really important that
you conduct your commute at quite a low intensity,
at least 80% of the time I would say,
so if you do manage to do the full 10 ride week,
8 of those rides should be done
right at the bottom of an endurant zone,
so just above zone one,
and into zone two,
really nice and gentle,
that way it'll build up all of those
endurance mechanisms in your body
that we talk about on the shows,
and it'll your recovery times in-between the rides,
that gives you then still two rides
where you can really let yourself loose,
and really what sort of record you can set
on that ride into work,
good luck,
let me know if you beat the holy grail before I do,
I put all of my rides online,
I'm sure if you have a little look around,
you can find them.
Good luck with this quest,
I think it's quite an exciting one.
This week's Zwift winning question goes to Nico de Graaf,
who writes in with
"I am a truck driver
and although I take my bike with me in the truck,
I do not not usually get the time to ride it,
my question is
is there any sort of specific training
on bike on the weekends that you can do,
and is there any sort of exercise you can do
off the bike whilst he is out on the road
that's going to be advantageous to his fitness?"
Well Nico, you know the drill by now,
every week I send these questions off to coaches at Zwift,
and they reply with very very in-depth reply,
so I leave it up on the screen,
that way I can read out
all the correct information for you.
So with limited time to train,
it's really important that
any exercises that you do manage to fit in,
is of a high intensity.
So, starting by looking at your weekend rides first,
there have been several studies that have identified
the positive effects of just six to eight minutes
of high intensity, maximum exercise,
this amount can be reached
over a period of one to two hours,
so imagine if an easy ride,
the interval section of your ride
will total six to eight minutes.
This style of training on the bike
requires you to perform repeated maximal effort
of 10 to 30 seconds, with a good recovery in-between them,
so an example session would be something like
12 30 seconds maximal sprints,
and that does sound absolutely brutal to me,
with a five minute recovery in-between them.
This is very high intensity training,
which has the effect of
engaging a high amount of fast twitched muscle fibers,
as well as releasing a high amount of growth hormone
into the body,
and this is where your fitness adaptation
is going to come from.
A second session that you could do,
again on the same weekend,
would be targeting your VO2 max area.
These are again very very high intensity effort,
but this time there are little more control,
so they're not the same maximal effort.
VO2 max efforts generally range between
three and eight minutes,
with a recovery period being identical to the work load,
so if you rode for four minutes,
you'd have four minutes recovery.
Five minutes on, five minutes off.
You want to aim to achieve 20 to 30 minutes of work load,
so that would be six five minutes efforts for example,
for the 30 minutes.
To add another element to your VO2 session,
complete this workout on a climb.
In terms of what you can access during the week,
whilst sat in a truck,
they want to provide you with
some sort of strength and power exercise,
so they suggest actually using some sort of kettle bell,
if you can take one kettle bell with you in the truck,
you'll have the tool there
to create a wide range of workouts,
which would really help your flexibility on the bike,
your functional movement, range of functional movement,
so, kettle bell swings is something
that they suggest for cyclists,
Russian twists and Bulgarian squats,
and a single deadlift,
you're going to have to google though,
to look how they're done effectively,
but there's definitely videos up on YouTube,
which would show you the correct way to do these exercises,
cause I cannot do them in the studio myself.
Two high intensity blocks like this over the weekend,
followed by two of these kettle bell sessions
in the middle of the week,
will definitely force enough adaptation upon your body,
as you try and overcome and recover from these efforts,
this will definitely maintain your fitness,
and in fact in certain areas,
increase your fitness over the period,
whilst your in the truck,
and you also now have that free subscription
that you can at some point include in your training routine.
Good luck with it all,
and let's know how you get on.
It's now time for what was once known as
the quick fire-around,
you know James and I, its never necessarily fast,
anyway, pastafari Fsm, is out with the first question.
"I always ride way to hard on my recovery ride,
I just can't go slow. How do I change it?"
My reply would be to actually trying going for a walk,
walk for 35, 45 minutes, and then stop and stretch,
and then walk back.
If you're really struggling to keep the intensity low
on your recovery rides on the bike,
it's probably best to avoid them completely.
The idea of them is to help your body recover faster
than it would have otherwise,
and to be really honest,
going for a walk is going to do just that as well.
Warm your muscles up enough to a little bit of stretching,
and you should be fine.
Next up, Kathy Williams.
And this is an interesting question about tailwind.
"Does a tailwind actually make a measurable difference
on a climb?
I know there are may variables but this may call
for some GCN science?"
Well definitely,
and indeed there are many variables.
The gradient of the climb, for start,
is going to affect the speed your going,
and therefore alter the effect of the wind on you,
but I think we should indeed do an experiment on this.
I'm not quite sure how we're going to do it,
we just going to have to find the same climb,
with two different days,
and then we go out and ride it,
we'll let you know how we get on,
if you see a video testing
headwind versus tailwind in the climb,
you know its worked out.
Will Thomas,
"Hey guys, I often find that
whenever I descend/ride fast/race,
my eyes always sting and become bloodshot.
Do you have any idea why this would happen,
I am always wearing glasses when I ride,
could it be the brand or shape?"
Well yes, possible,
that maybe your glasses don't quite follow
the shape of your cheek,
and create a bit of seal or a shield from the wind.
It's also possible that you have sensitive eyes,
that are predisposed to watering
when this sort of thing happens,
and becoming more bloodshot.
If you are worried about it, though,
you should absolutely try and seek advice
from some sort of specialist, or your family doctor,
as they'll be able to advise you on this sort of condition
much more than I can,
I know that cyclists and many other sports people
suffer from something called surface eye,
which can be a bit of a yellowing
and a slight bloodshot eye,
this is from all the elements
that are constantly impacting on your eye,
if you don't know what that is,
it's worth having a little search,
and maybe try to find out what you can do
to prevent that happening.
Gareth Bertolani, next.
"As a heavy rider, who is slowly losing weight,
would it make more sense
to get an Aero bike or a lightweight bike?"
Well, to me,
that personally depends on the terrain where you live.
If you live somewhere where its really hilly,
you may still benefit better from having a lighter bike.
It also actually depends a little bit on your flexibility,
because traditionally, more aero, race geometry style bikes,
are a little bit lower at the front,
so if you're not particularly flexible,
you may struggle to reach down low,
on the front end of some of these aero bikes.
If it's my personal choice,
I would consider myself a slightly heavier cyclist,
towards 80 kilos, certainly in the winter,
I'd always go for an aero bike.
I personally prefer the way they ride,
the way they handle and everything,
they feel a little more robust on the whole,
but they are definitely heavier,
so again, if you do live somewhere where it's hilly,
then I would consider a lighter weight bike.
The best thing to do though, is go to your bike shop,
or wherever you go to buy your bikes,
and try and test ride a couple
and try and test them,
maybe borrow a couple off a few friends, if you can,
just to get an idea of what it is you're riding,
cause ultimately,
you want to ride something you enjoy the feel of,
no matter what type of bike it is.
Then we have a question from steve yankou.
"Is it rude while riding alone
to hop on another cyclist's wheel?
I'm not talking about a race situation of course.
It comes up often in my 30 mile daily commute.
It's a huge relief in terms of drag
when I get a chance to jump behind the stronger rider,
and it gives me a rabbit to chase.
But is it annoying or inconsiderate to the other rider?
No one's ever complained,
but I can't shake the feeling he's being a nuisance. "
I would actually say to the rider in front of you,
"Hi there, I am just going to sit behind you,
I am not strong enough to come through,
is that okay?"
To which I would be surprised if anyone ever said no,
if you let them know your there,
and the rider in front all of the sudden
have the swerve to avoid a pothole,
they can, before that happens,
they can point it out to you as well,
so it would make it ride safer
for you are sat on their wheel.
But also there's some interesting research in this,
actually sitting on the wheel of a rider in front of you
can boost or reduce their drag by up to four percent,
so if you're riding along at 45 kilometer an hour,
the studies we've done,
in wind turbine of course as these things are,
the rider in front had four percent lower effort
because there's a rider sat on their wheel,
so actually,
you're helping the rider in front
just by sitting on their wheel as well.
You can tell them that if they don't like it.
Next up, Randy Poor.
"I promise this is a legit question,
even if it's just for the fellas"
This is an interesting one.
"What's the proper position for the scrotum on the saddle?
Left side? Right side?
Or split on both sides?"
Well, without being crude,
I pull it in the front,
put your shorts on,
pull it to the front,
sit on your saddle,
and just put it wherever it's comfortable,
there's no set rule here now,
like everyone's a different shape,
everyone's a different size,
you have to put your bit where you bits are comfortable.
It's not for us to decide for you.
Good luck with that.
Jan Kroken up next, a name I've seen before on the channel.
"Hi, I'm in my 40s, 75 kilos with a 20 minute power of 300w,
but with my minute power is only 460.
According to the commonly used power chart,
that would make him a cat two or three rider,
but with a sprint power below the averaged untrained person.
I find this a bit strange,
when I look at Strava,
this seems to be the case for most of the riders.
Is the chart off, am I really in bad shape,
or do I need to just fix my technique
and work on my cadence? "
It was a really good question,
and in fact, you'll find it's actually quite common
for many riders to suffer from the same issue
that you're describing here.
We'll often spend so much time focusing on
our sustainable power,
because we all know that aerobic power
is what's going to make us the fastest cyclist
that we'll neglect the more intense
and more painful efforts
so the shorter duration under three minutes,
generally speaking,
don't forgot though,
these graphs, the graph that you're relating to,
the power profile graph,
is based off information and data
from every single elite cyclists in the world,
so that's BMX, that's track sprinters, and everything,
and those guys have serious high power outputs,
double what most road riders can ever dream of,
and because of that,
it's really going to be skewing those charts,
and a track sprinter,
that has also done the one kilometer standing time trial,
those one minutes powers, 11w per kilo or whatever,
are generally speaking out of reach many many road riders,
so don't let that graph dictate
your cycling performance to you,
but you still can work on your sub one minute power.
The final question comes in from Samuel Mundula.
"Campenaerts dropped his chain on his TT bike switching
from large to small chainring
and it quite possibly cost him the stage"
In fact, I think it did.
"why, when using the top level equipment
and serviced by top level mechanics,
do we always see so many mechanicals,
often at critical parts of a stage?
I've written bikes for years, 105, Ultegra,
changed gears etc countless times
and I've not dropped the chain
over tens of thousands of miles of riding.
Am I just lucky?
I can't imagine mechanicals
having any place in the world tour,
yet it seems like everyone's attitude towards is
"oh well, it happens""
Well for start, there are definitely consequences
to things like that happening,
I can guarantee it was no "oh well, it just happens" .
Someone that evening would've a bit of talking to,
it looked like an absolutely botched change,
if you watch, the mechanic pushes Campenaerts
whilst he's running,
and then when Campenaerts gets on his bike,
the mechanic is then heading the other direction.
So for start, something wasn't quite right there,
it looked like a planned bike change,
but in operation it didn't go quite as so smoothly at all.
The next thing is,
professional cyclists have very little mechanical sympathy,
something that on our own personal bikes,
we probably have quite a lot of at home,
and I imagine you do as well,
which is why you've not dropped your chain.
These riders are under intense pressure,
and when you're exercising at that sort of intensity,
there's something like four percent of the oxygen supply
going to the brain,
so your decision making is no longer as good
as it should've been,
so you'll probably be like
a 55 big ring, 28 on the back, for example,
I can't remember the gear ratios you used,
but that's going to upset the chain quite dramatically,
and if you ease off the pedals or you hit a bump,
where your chinge,
you shift to conscended too far,
just the spring effect of that chain wanting to go down
further in towards the frame,
it's not that the mechanic is not doing their job,
it's just that there's a lot going on in these moments,
in these things, ya, they do happen,
but they really shouldn't happen,
and someone will have been spoken to
quite heavily I would imagine after that,
because indeed, it did cost him the stage.
That is it for this week,
if you do have a question that you would like answered
on ask GCN anything,
use the hashtag #torqueback in the comments below.
And if you would like to be in for a chance
to winning free three month subscription to Zwift,
use the hashtag #askgcntraining
in the comments below as well.
Right now, if you want to check out another video,
I would be clicking on that one,
just down there.