- I've been wondering, Si.
- Wondering what, mate?
- I've been wondering whether I got the most
out of myself with my training as a pro.
Like, was there stuff that I could have worked more on
or stuff that I could have worked less on?
I mean, could I have got more out of myself, full stop.
Did I work too hard, or did I not work enough?
- I think, Dan, it's probably a bit late for that now.
If I'm completely honest.
- It's never too late to get your training right.
I give you five myth busting questions.
He's a genius.
- Matt, do I really have to wear this beard?
- Oh, you can swap it for the lab coat.
- Deal.
- Right, what an opportunity.
- If you don't mind, Si, I'm gonna take the first question.
- Alright mate.
- Because this is something
that I've always wanted to know the answer to.
Is it true that we, as endurance road cyclists,
wouldn't get any benefit from strength training in the gym?
- Good one.
It looks like you've been working out a little bit.
- No. We used to think for a long time
that strength training wouldn't be of benefit
because you don't need to be very strong to be a cyclist.
So for example, the hour record,
to produce the forces required to sustain that you just need
to be strong enough to lift yourself out of a chair.
Most bike riders can do that.
So that's why we didn't think strength training was useful
for a long time.
But now we're seeing that it's got other benefits
and in particular what we're finding
is that you can recruit more muscles
which is always helpful when you're riding a bike.
And perhaps it comes in handy
towards the end of a long bike ride too.
So we're seeing a wide range of riders now,
both road riders and especially track riders,
and not just the sprinters but also the two-pursuiters
and that kind of thing, doing leg squats,
leg presses, that kind of thing.
The key thing is that they tend to do
reasonably light weights and fast movements,
not big, heavy weightlifting.
So it's not about how much you can do
but it's about moving quickly in the gym.
- Okay Louis, my turn next.
Is it true that cyclists have to use training zones
to get the best out of themselves?
Is that really the best way to train?
- Okay, you're really testing me this time.
It's not a straight forward answer.
You can use training zones and they really help
but equally they're not essential
to effective training either.
So where they really come in useful is in communication.
If we talk about a zone two, zone three training session
we all tend to understand what's implied by that
and that really helps.
But there's nothing special
about the underlying physiology there.
What we're trying to do is get fitter
and it's not the training zones themselves
that guarantee that, it's the work that you do
and training zones help us to describe that
much more effectively than using, for example,
complicated underlying physiology.
So, for example, my research at the University of Kent
is about trying to optimise training.
And the way that I hope we'll be able to achieve that
in the future is we'll change our GPS devices,
our power metres so that rather than record our training
they actually tell us what to do next.
So we'll be out training with a device
maybe sunglasses that have a headset display on them
that show us what our next target session should look like
and we won't be using zones then,
we'll simply be riding to the target
that the computer is calculating for us.
- Oh, I'm loving this. Really interesting stuff.
Ah, okay. I've got another one.
This time, I would like to know,
do you need to do as many hours to maintain fitness
as you did when you we're trying to gain fitness
and on top of that, how quickly do you lose fitness
when you completely stop training?
- Nice double-barrel question there, Dan. Sneaky.
He's not going to notice that at all.
- Hmm, you're being rather sneaky there aren't you
because that's two questions but I'll treat it as one.
So the short answer is that is much harder to gain fitness
than it is to keep it.
And the research on that is reasonably clear cut.
The second part is about losing fitness
so I'll tackle these separately.
To gain fitness you really have to work quite hard
and you have to build your training over a period of time.
Increase the load progressively.
To keep hold of fitness requires an awful lot less training.
And that's why the high intensity interval training
has become really popular.
So for people that aren't very fit,
or are just looking to keep hold of what they've got,
really short, hard workouts can be a very effective way
of holding on to what you already have.
So even just a few minutes a day done at a high quality,
high intensity, help you really hold on to what you have.
But if you're really well trained
you're probably not gonna gain much fitness that way.
So in that way we can see, yeah, it's much harder to build
than it is to get it in the first place.
In terms of detraining once you stop,
I think we're always worried that we're gonna lose fitness
a lot faster than we actually do.
We know we've worked really hard over a long period of time
to build that fitness
and then we're worried that if we stop
it's just gonna disappear in a flash.
Of course, it doesn't quite make sense, does it?
Because if it's hard to gain,
it's gonna be hard to lose, too.
Classic detraining studies work over a couple of months
and that's the kind of time course
where you see substantial changes in fitness.
And then typically that fitness that's lost
over a couple of months might be 10, 20, 30 percent.
That will come back over a similar period of time,
if not a bit quicker
because you're restoring fitness back to where it was.
So, a week off, two weeks off,
really shouldn't be something to worry about too much
unless you're going in to a major competition
and you're worried about losing that really fine edge,
you're probably not gonna lose
a huge amount of fitness at all.
- Okay, I've got a burning question, right.
Have I been peddling correctly?
Like, should I have worked on my technique more?
Should I have pulled up as I was pushing down?
Should I have been ankling?
Should I have been peddling in circles?
- Si, can you just get on with the actual question?
It's gonna be dark in a minute.
- Okay, alright, sorry mate.
Professor Passefield, should I practise peddling technique?
- No. You'll get quite a lot of practise anyway
and certainly I think it's a good idea to keep a low gear
and learn to spin the peddles so you're quite comfortable
peddling at 90 to 100 revs per minute.
But actually deliberately trying to pull up on the peddles
the research is quite clear on this actually.
The best cyclists don't have
more efficient peddling strokes.
In fact, they're the opposite, they tend to push down more
and they don't really pull up a lot.
The easiest way to think about it is,
if you're pulling up and you're doing work on the peddles
that's it's not a particularly effective way
of putting work into the bike
because you're fighting against gravity.
Much better to work with gravity
and push down on the peddles
and as I said, with the best cyclists what we see
is they generate more forces in that downward stroke.
They don't pull up as well.
So just keep practising using low gears,
that will give you all the technique work you need.
Okay lads, you've got one more question
because my car pet parking expires soon.
- That's a bit weird. - Oh, um.
- Well let's have a, just get one more question.
- Uh.
- Oh, I've got it, I've got it. Power.
- Ooh, what about it?
- Well, is it really the be all and end all?
Should everybody be training with a power metre
to get the best out of themselves?
- Good one.
- Ah, that's better. Yes.
But we're a long way from being able to tell people
how to do that at the moment.
So, for example, the University of Calgary,
we've just done a study where we've monitored the training
of riders over a period of time
and we've regularly brought them into the lab
to test their fitness as well.
So what we're trying to do is to link
the training they've done to the changes in fitness
in order to work out what's the most effective training.
But we don't have the answers yet and actually,
if I'm honest, I don't think we'll ever fully
have the answers because the picture is so complicated.
So, although power would be a great tool,
and I think in the future what we'll see
is people increasingly using computers
to analyse their training data
and inform the training they do,
it will never give us everything.
Training's far too complicated for that,
you've got differences in peoples genetic potential,
differences in your nutrition, your health, sleep,
all sorts of factors we can't possibly control.
So you'd never be able to build an algorithm,
for example, that would tell you
exactly what power to ride at on a given day.
But I think it can help.
So, for sure, if you can train to power
and you can start the process of learning about your body
and what training works for you personally,
then by all means do that.
But if you're without that measurement
then I really don't think it's a big issue either
because we don't have the full answers
and we probably never will.
- Well, thank you very much, Louis.
That has been thoroughly enlightening
for all of us, I think.
- Absolutely, hopefully you have found
these training myths being busted as useful as we have.
It is funny, isn't it, when you think about
the kind of history in cycling and all these, sort of,
training methods that we've been told as fact
for years and years and years, and actually
when you shed the scientific light on them
that maybe they don't hold up to be the truths
that we thought they were.
- And things are continually developing, aren't they,
from a training perspective.
A little bit like the bikes that we're using, really.
Wasn't that long ago where we thought that
riding 19 millimetre tyres at a 130 psi
was the fastest because it felt fast.
You were bouncing all over the place.
But actually it was more like being in a go-kart.
Low to the ground, 40 miles an hour feels like 80.
- That's it.
So, it's gonna be interesting, isn't it,
as we find out more and more, I'm sure,
about certain training techniques
and certain training sessions actually aren't as effective
as we thought they were, even if they really, really hurt.
- Yeah, and I'm gonna be fascinated to see
how things develop from a training point of view
whether or not they are like the development of bikes
in that we, as non-professional cyclists, have now realised
that actually using a pro road bike might not be
the most comfortable for us, or the fastest.
And I wonder whether training
might go in the same direction.
So, if we're not full-time riders anymore
perhaps we could be doing different training to get
more out of ourselves than what we see the pros doing.
- Yeah, well, on a personal note,
I now ride maybe five to nine hours per week
because of commitments, work and family and stuff
and I'm still in reasonable shape.
Not quite the same but, you know, it's a quarter
of what I used to do, which is kind of nuts, isn't it?
- You've got a tough job, Si, it has to be said.
Right, well, we hope you've enjoyed this
as much as we have today.
Let us know your thoughts on what Professor Louis Passfield
has said in the comments section just down below.
- That's right.
If you want any more myths tackled and busted
then we will put them to the genius
and hopefully he can tell us again at some point.
And actually we have done a previous video
with Louis Passfield and you can find that just down here.