(dramatic music)
- Welcome to Ask GCN-ything.
- Coming up this week, why do pros downsize their bikes?
How to get faster on the flat and how do you
stop your shoes from smelling?
(sniffing)
- Is that your feet mate?
- It's not me, I washed.
- Yes and don't forget, if you'd like to get involved
on next weeks show then to use the hashtag TORQUEBACK
and if you wanna win three months free subscription
from our mates over at Zwift, then to use the hashtag
ASKGCNTRAINING for all those training specific questions.
Right mate, you ready? - Right.
Yeah, get your laptop out, come on.
- Do you know what the first question is buddy?
- I do, it's in from SAF1981, any tips or recommendations
for cleaning and making your cycling shoes fresh
after a sweaty session on the Turbo?
- I'm gonna be honest, I haven't really had an issue
with smelly shoes. - Nope, nor have I.
- But if I did, there's been a few things that you can do
and that's putting baking soda in your shoe,
there's another one, do you know another one?
- Wash them, I would imagine.
- Wash them and you can even put them in one of those
zip lock bags and put them in the freezer,
I've been told that works an absolute treat.
So why don't you give those a try and let us know
which one worked in the comment section below.
- You know funnily enough shoes, it depends on
the brand which ones smell, I think it's to do
with the materials they use.
- Really, that's quite interesting.
- Some smell worse than others.
- Right we got a question in from Terance Hore
question about cramps, during training I don't ever cramp,
even if I'm doing a six to a seven hour ride
however on those two hour really hard race efforts,
I cramp up really badly, what are
some possible reasons for this?
- Well you didn't give us a lot of info,
we don't know where you're cramping for a start.
Is it one of the little tiny stabilising muscles
that you're all of a sudden using in a weird way in a race,
there's a few basics to cover though, first make sure
you are hydrated and well fueled because
empty dead legs can lead to cramp eventually.
- Yes that's very true.
- So make sure you've got hydro tabs, that sort of thing
and that you are actually eating enough carbohydrate
because depleted muscles will cramp sooner.
Cramp is actually coming from conditioning
more than dehydration they say.
- Oh really.
- So maybe you wanna look at including some more
race-style efforts in your training, dunno.
- Yeah, there's lots of things about cramp isn't there
out there but there's no real evidence
of how cramp really occurs.
- No it's a little bit vague isn't it?
- It is.
It's quite difficult - One thing that might help
actually-- - To really hone down on.
- Yeah, another thing that might help
though would be a massage.
- Yeah.
- Try and get some of those, you know
the lingering after effects of the cramp that you've had
if it's occurring in the same place,
maybe a good flush through with massage could help.
- Yeah and it sounds like when you're doing
those really hard short efforts,
that's when you're getting the cramp
so when you're doing really exerting
and really intense sessions so make sure
you're kinda ticking all those boxes,
hydration, get some salts back in using hydro tabs
as Opie says, get a nice massage to flush out--
- Not a nice massage, a brutal massage.
- Brutal massage, yeah and stretch
and then yeah, try and see if that helps.
Right it's that time of the show where
we announce the winner of the three months free subscription
from our mates over at Zwift.
And the winner is Defredius,
I hope I pronounced your name right,
I probably haven't so I do apologise
but do get in touch on Facebook
and you'll get that code over to you.
And your question is, I'm half decent at climbs
but I've really struggled on the flat,
please kindly let me know about any workouts
that can help me out, an Aero bike and weights
are just not helping.
- Well I hope you're not adding weights to your bike
'cause that's not gonna help you on the flat, is it?
- It's not, no.
- But the Aero bike, even if you can't feel it,
it will be helping you a little bit.
Anyway, so when it comes to training to be fast on the flat
there's quite a lot that you can do
and one of the first things you wanna think of
is high speed cadence drills and long efforts
at high cadence on a good aero position,
so you don't want to get extreme,
you're not riding a time trial bike
but something around 20 to 40 minutes of 80 percent
of your max heart rate for example,
so if your max heart rate is 200
then somewhere around 160 will help, you know,
build up that prolonged effort on a flat road
because it is gonna be a prolonged effort
so 95 to 105 cadence, try and keep your cadence
within that range and you really want to have
an average cadence, you don't want to drop down below,
you can go up a little bit, because it is all about speed
and then ride at a continual heart rate
for around 20 to 40 minutes, if you want to do
20 minutes, you can do two blocks for example.
And then something else that you can do
which I always personally found worked really really well
was three minute really high cadence efforts
so I've put down here 120 revs per minute and above
but actually, you know 130 to 140 really
wouldn't do you any harm at all so max efforts these are
so you wanna find a road that is completely flat
and then for three minutes on, three minutes off
really rev your legs right up to that high cadence
and then hold it there at max effort,
it's gonna be really hard but over the weeks
you really will notice the progression.
- I might actually try some of that Opie,
I could do with some help on the flat.
- Yeah well we're quite lucky,
it's quite flat where we live actually.
- Yeah exactly and as always we've sent this question
off to Zwift and they came back with this session
that we think you should give a go.
Right we got a question in from Simon Spinzyk,
hi GCN, I'm currently training for a criteria style
junior race, only is 20 kilometres and it's in six weeks,
my power output should be enough to stay in the main pack
but I'm currently not confident in my technical group
riding skills, how can I improve this with only
one other person at a similar level to train with?
- Oh that's a good question and one that's actually
quite a popular issue for riders out there.
Something that we thought the other day when we were riding
was as a little challenge, how long can you ride,
pretend you're on your bike, how long can you ride
before you have to break the contact?
So start off maybe you can do 200 metres
then 500 metres, and challenge yourself,
can you do a whole kilometre without separating
and this is a good thing to practise in a car park,
on a grassy field at slow speeds
but then the same principles apply when you're
doing 30, 40 or even 50 kilometres an hour,
it's all about being relaxed and calm
and understanding what your inputs to the bike
are doing and not stressing.
- Yeah, the more relaxed you are, the better you are
actually on the bike and feeling how the bike moves
and you can do that by even practising off road.
- Yeah.
- Maybe with a cross bike or a mountain bike,
through the woods, on a muddy woody track
and you'll feel the bike and you'll get more and more
comfortable and then you'll find it easier
to ride in a bunch really 'cause you won't be tense
and you won't be stressing as Opie says.
- Exactly. - So you could give that a go.
I guess. - Yep.
- Question in from David Dwyer, one for the future,
do pro riders ride smaller frames than they would
normally use, I see photos of people like Will Clarke
that are riding bikes that are just quite small under them.
- It's a good question that,
well yes and no, I mean they don't ride bikes
smaller than they normally would
because they're normally riding the smaller bikes
if that makes sense.
They handle a little bit better,
a little bit sharper handling,
they're generally a little bit lighter.
- And they're stiffer as well.
Smaller geometry. - I suppose they can be
a little bit stiffer, depending on the brand.
- They look better. - I personally,
yeah I personally ride a smaller frame.
- Yeah, longer stem, smaller frame, it's more stable.
- And you can get lower on the front end
because that head tube isn't so, you know
wide, you can actually get lower.
- Yeah modern bike design has really seen head tubes
grow and grow and grow and I think that's
probably the driving force in why riders choose to ride
a smaller frame than is perhaps suggested for their height.
- Yeah and if you were wondering what Will Clarke
looks like on a bike we've actually
put a picture up here now.
(upbeat music)
- Tommy Van Santa up next, I'm a 12 year old boy
and got into cycling for almost a year now,
I am struggling to combine cycling and school,
how did you combine cycling and school in your youth?
- Yeah, good question, I actually kind of struggled
a bit with it, it is difficult to put in the hours
that I wanted to when, 'cause I didn't get into cycling
'til I was 16, 17, so I was quite late to the party
but you're 12 years old, you're super young,
you've got loads and loads of time
so just kind of work on school and if you do have
a bit of spare time then you know,
go out and ride your bike but do it for enjoyment,
don't stress over training because we all need school
at the end of the day, we all need to get a education.
- Yeah we do, not that we did.
- Don't tell him that!
- Yeah you're right, sorry.
What you do want to focus on is building up your skills
and how good you are at handling your bike
and those sorts of things because that will really help you
later in your cycling career.
- It will indeed.
- Question from Steve H, hi guys, nice show as always.
Glad you're enjoying it, with training on Zwift,
which is better for fat burning,
interval work or longer rides?
- Oo, good question Steve.
Well it depends how much time you've got basically.
If you've got all the hours in the day
and you can do long endurance rides on little fuel,
then that's gonna be great but if you haven't
got loads of time then really short, high intensity
interval sessions will really boost your metabolism
and keep it higher for longer after the intervals
are finished and that's kind of recognised as
a really good way of burning fat these days
so you could do like two or three really high intensity
sessions each week and that will continue
to burn more fat as a percentage of your training time
throughout the day afterwards.
- Yeah that's a good point actually.
And there's another way of doing it because
you tend to burn fat also when you're doing
low intensity work for a longer period of time
so if you maybe put in a two hour ride on the Turbo,
it's quite a long ride but two hour ride before breakfast
quite at an easy state, so low heart rate
then you do tend to burn some fat that way as well.
So why don't you give them both a go
and just, yeah, feel which ones better I guess.
- Next up we've got a question from Kristian Hede,
hi guys I'm riding two 100 kilometre races
within three days, I'm not in perfect shape and I need
the best possible way to recover in the day in between.
Any recommendations?
- We would say maybe doing an hour ride, nice and easy
on that middle day, even the pros on the Tour
tend to ride around three hours
when they've got their rest day during those
big grand tours so you don't really have to go that far
but maybe an hour spin will really really help.
- Yeah, definitely, it will stop your legs
from seizing up and it will help pay for the next day.
Also make sure you catch up on your sleep,
you fuel well and you have a good meal the night before
the second race and also the night after the first race.
- Yeah we've actually got a video here
which shows you how to recover faster from training.
- You have two options when it comes to said rest,
you can either take the word literally
and sit on your backside for a day
or you can do what's called active recovery,
or a recovery ride, always one of my favourite days at a pro.
- We got a question in from DJ Ashish,
I hope I got that one right, sorry if I haven't.
Hey big fan sirs, please give some tips
for increasing the amount of sprint time.
Well you're in luck because we have got
our very special resident sprinter in with us,
haven't we Chris?
- Yeah we have, he'll be along anytime soon.
- Ha yeah.
- I'm guessing what you want to do is try and make
your sprint longer, your body's natural tendency
is to sprint for five to seven seconds roughly
give or take and it is hard to start pushing past that
and it does take quite a bit of training
so I would start with six times 12 seconds
on the first two weeks and then you wanna progress
then to six times 15 seconds and you wanna have
a good 10 minutes in between those sprints as well.
Then when you get to week three, four, five,
you can up them to around 20 seconds
and then once you get really ambitious with it
and you really wanna have some,
it's kinda becoming and anaerobic VO2 workout
but 30 second sprints and then to really help boost
the shorter, your ability to sprint off high speed,
you can start doing one minute efforts
on the back of that as well.
- Chris these sound really tough.
- Yeah they are, they're not easy, they're not fun
and it's gonna ruin the rest of your day
if you do them properly but it will really really help.
So 12 seconds, then push them out to 15,
then 20 and then 30.
- Well good luck mate because I'd rather you than me.
- Yeah, you want to think about your gearing
and your position on the bike.
We've actually got a good sprint video on the channel
that we'll put on the screen on a second
and all of those things will really help you.
- [Narrator] Really explode down through your core muscles
into the bike, moving the bike side to side
with your legs and arms in a continual smooth motion.
It is a complete maximum effort so really push down
hard on the peddles and pull back up
through the bottom of the peddle stroke.
- Right, that's the end of this weeks
Ask GCN-ything, I've enjoyed it, have you Chris?
- It's been good, if you wanna have your questions answered
use the hashtag TORQUEBACK in the comments below
and to be in with a chance of winning a free
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use the hashtag ASKGCNTRAINING.
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because they've go these Cobble Classic
T shirts in over there.
- Are the Cobble Classics coming up, are they?
- They are mate, I'm super excited,
best time of the year for me.
- I quite like Flanders.
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