- It's come around yet again,
another edition of Ask GCN Anything,
and this week, we're focusing on power.
So, let's kick things off with this first question
from Ed Markey, who asks what is the difference
between overall average power and normalised power?
Now, I did know the answer to this,
'cause I asked you this a little while ago.
So, I've kind of forgotten, Dan.
Now you are a bit of an expert on this,
so take it away.
- Well, I'm not an expert,
I just know little bit more than you do.
- Cheers. - So, in very basic terms,
normalised power gives a much better representation
of how hard a ride actually was than average power,
because it takes into account
all the fluctuations in power that you do.
It was developed by Dr. Andy Coggan many years ago.
Now, when you use it in conjunction
with your functional threshold power,
it allows you to score each ride based on how hard it was.
So, to give a real world example,
if you went out on a ride for one hour
and you did two minutes at 100 watts
and then one minute at 400 watts
and repeated that until the 60 minutes were up,
your average power would be 200 watts.
But of course, with those hard minutes during the hour,
it's much harder than had you averaged
200 watts steady state throughout,
and normalised power takes that into account.
It's effectively a physiological representation
of how hard each and every ride was.
At the other end of the scale, a steady state ride,
such as a 40 kilometre individual time trial,
if you've paced that right,
your normalised power will be very, very close
to what your average power was.
And to give you a real world example right now,
Training Piece let us look at the data
from Taylor Phinney's Paris-Roubaix race on Sunday,
which was really interesting.
Six hour race, his average power there
was already very impressive, 287 watts.
- Whoa.
- He is 85 kilogrammes, but still.
- He's a powerful lad, isn't he?
- That is a lot of power.
However, because of all the attacks over the cobbles
and getting into the cobbles in good position,
and those fluctuations of power that I've just talked about,
his normalised power over that six hours was 351.
- That does give you,
well, it just gives you an insight
to how brutal that race is,
and how it kind of ebbs and flows,
the big surges of power on the cobbles and stuff,
and it kinda takes that into account, doesn't it?
Now, for four, or for five in fact, key metrics
in relation to actually analysing your power data,
how about checking out this video.
We hope you'll find it pretty helpful.
- Now the first of these is normalised power.
This was a metric that was devised by Dr. Andy Coggan,
and it takes into account power variance through your ride,
so the difference between a hill interval session
and a longer, steadier ride.
Now, what it does is it gives you
the most accurate indication
of the true physiological cost of your workout.
Yeah, it's much more representative of the real effort
that you've put into a ride versus average power,
which is simply a numerical average.
Our next question comes in from Swirly R.
- Cracking name, isn't it?
- It's a small font, so I'm gonna have to lean in.
I've just begun to use Zwift
and noticed that most of their sweet spot workouts
are actually over-under reps.
Are there any advantages or disadvantages to these
compared to traditional 30 minute workouts
at 90 to 95% of your functional threshold power?
- Yeah, well hi, Swirly.
Under-over reps are great training sessions
for a few reasons, and are regularly used
by pros and amateurs alike
because they are very, very effective.
Now, they're essentially a lactate threshold workout,
but with accelerations or surges,
which kind of help replicate the real world scenario
of riding out on the open road,
especially if you're riding in a breakaway
where you're sat on the wheel, riding at around FTP,
and then you've gotta surge through
to the front and ride hard and then swing off again.
That and a sportive as well,
or simply trying to break away from a group,
to jump across a gap, for example.
- Yeah, as you can imagine,
these are also regularly used by riders
who specialise in something like the team pursuit,
because there they're producing an enormous amount of power
whilst they're on the front of the four man team
and just a little bit less
whilst they're in the wheels behind.
Now, the reason that these are so potent
is because they don't really include much in the way,
or anything in the way of rest, do they?
You're training your body to recover
whilst it's still going really hard,
which is why it's so specific to race scenarios.
As ever though,
you shouldn't solely do this one single session.
It should form part of a well-rounded training programme
which also includes endurance, and sweet spot,
and VO2 Max, and also periodization as well,
but there's no doubt, they really are potent.
If you do do it in a well rounded training programme,
they will work and make you faster.
- Yeah, they'll make you stronger, they'll improve your FTP,
they'll improve your max power, but importantly,
under-over efforts particularly will help you improve,
well, being able to produce repeated hard efforts,
which is essentially the very definition
of getting fitter, isn't it?
- It is, yeah. - Indeed.
Now, we feature under-over training in this video,
as well as four other key training sessions,
to get you race ready.
(upbeat music)
Most races will start and finish
with very hard efforts, at the start,
when you're trying to get into the breakaway,
and at the finish, when you're trying to get a result.
So it makes a lot of sense to try and replicate that
out on the road in training.
- Yeah, and that's what this next session will do for you.
So after a small warmup,
you'll want to go straight into 15 minutes of random effort.
So pick some points that you're going to see
on the side of the road, or on the road itself,
that will trigger a certain response.
So it might be that every time you see a blue car
you do a two minutes easy-effort,
or it might be that every time you see a pedestrian
you do a 10 second sprint.
The idea being that you could be doing any kind of effort
at any point in that 15 minutes,
just as you would do in a race.
- Now tell me this, Dan, it's rapid fire time.
- It is. - Count us in.
- [Man] Three, two, one.
- Here we go, first up is this one, Callum Poole.
Hi GCN, thanks for the advice
on my last comment, it helped a lot.
My question is to do with style.
Why do most people wear their sunglasses
over their helmet straps?
I go for short rides for an hour or less,
and I wear my glasses under my helmet straps.
Is it to do with taking them off and putting them on,
or is it something that the pros do,
therefore everybody does it?
Cheers lads and Emma.
- I think it's what he said at the end there.
I think we look at the pros and what they do,
and they often frown upon people
that put them inside the straps.
'Cause I've done that in the past,
where I haven't really been concentrating
on whether they're outside or inside the straps,
and someone said, "What're you doing?"
- I've got a lot of heat on social media and under,
and in the comments section,
for occasionally wearing the arms underneath the straps.
- Yeah. - Proper heat.
But yeah, I generally do kinda look towards the pros
and make sure I kind of have them like them.
That's a weird one, isn't it? - Yeah.
Maybe there is a reason.
If there is, let us know in the comment section down below.
- Indeed.
- Ad L'Ecluse says,
why do pros put their statistics on Strava?
Don't they give away useful information
to their competitors?
Well, speaking from our point of view,
Chris Froome could put all of his data up.
It wouldn't help us one jot, would it?
- No.
- In terms of his competitors,
do you think it would help them?
- I don't know if it would help them much at all.
I think it's a pretty cool PR exercise,
'cause we know that cycling's been through
a bit of a murky past.
People are calling for riders, teams to be more transparent.
I think it's a healthy thing,
just showing how strong they are.
I think there's kind of a healthy rivalry on Strava as well.
You've been on it a little bit.
One of your records still stands for The Tour of Flanders.
I only think it's a good thing.
But I also respect the right for riders
not to share their data as well,
because it's like trade secrets, isn't it?
- Yeah, well I was kind of joking before.
Obviously it isn't gonna help Matt and I
get anywhere near to pro level again.
Whether or not it would help someone that is close
to being at the top of the Tour de France,
I'm not really sure.
I mean, you're still doing already what you can do,
and just knowing that this is where you've got to get to
might not help you all that much.
Conversely, in the classics,
I don't think you can take too much from the powers there.
- No.
- Anyways, this rapid fire round is quickly turning
into quite an endurance event.
- It's turning into a really, really slow fire round.
It doesn't matter though. - A marathon.
Douglas Pate, as a 24 year old,
I rode the Paris-Roubaix cyclo-tourist event in 1982,
so let's have a think about
the technology that existed back then.
It was a dry day during the event at least, no punctures.
This is also the least rapid fire question
I've ever read out in my life.
I'm halfway through. - I just liked it.
It was off the back of our cobbles one week.
- For about three days afterwards,
my whole skeleton continued vibrating,
and yes, there may only be 54 ks of cobbles from the 260 ks,
yet it is the cobbles that leaves the physical impact
on your body, mainly wrists and shoulders.
It was one of the best cycling experiences I ever had.
Not even a question. - No.
- Just basically read out a statement.
- But thank you very much
for getting in touch, Douglas Pate.
Brendan O'Donoghue asks, this is a quick one,
what's Matt's monthly kit repair/replacement budget?
I'm not even answering that, that's just not--
- Well, we don't want to go into details,
but it has almost sent the entire company under
on some of the worst months.
- Yeah, we're on pot noodles at lunch time,
that's all we can afford.
- Mark Derveeuw,
what about changing your front ring to a lower one,
like a 34 to go on the Hellingen with cobbles?
- Wicked idea, isn't it?
- Yes, I ride that most of the time anyway now.
I've owned 50/34.
50/11, as we talked about many times before,
it's not that far away from 53/11 anyway.
I'd only ever use a 53 tooth these days
if I was still racing.
- I must admit, when we did the cobbles climbs
at the week down, I was in a 39.
I'm not quite as fit as I used to be.
I'd wished I had a 36 or a 34 on some of those climbs,
I must admit, so I think it's definitely fair,
it's a good way to go.
Hessel Glotzbach, is there a trick to stop my water bottles
from dropping out of the cages when riding over the cobbles?
Because this always happens to me
when I ride a race with cobblestones.
Happens to a lot of people, doesn't it?
- But it still happens to the pros, yeah.
This is something that Jon Cannings covered
over on GCN Tech,
on how to adapt your bike for cobbled riding.
There's a couple of things you can do.
You can either put that gripper tape
round your standard cage,
or you could invest in some non carbon, metal cage,
'cause then you're able to physically bend them in,
so they've got a tighter grip on the bottle.
But there's not a surefire solution, is there?
You can just reduce it. - No.
- And actually, Matt's bottles were all over the place
in the Paris Roubaix recon. - I lost two, I lost two.
Actually three, three.
Tim Mayo, controversial sock length question, klaxon.
Is there a variation on optimal sock length
when wearing 3/4 bib short thingies, knickers?
I got given a pair and normal socks,
plus those over the knee jobbies,
plus my hobbit-like short legs,
makes for a rather silly look in my opinion.
What does your head of style, Adam Blythe say?
We tried to get in contact with Adam Blythe.
He's out at a cafe somewhere in Monaco,
so he didn't get back to us,
but what are your thoughts, Dan?
'Cause it is a very good question, isn't it,
from a style perspective.
- Well, you do find some people with shorter legs,
deliberately almost have longer socks
when they've used knee warmers,
almost to create a sort of leg warmer effect.
That way there's no gap at all.
- No, it's just a little gap.
I'm a fan of the small gap, to be perfectly honest with you.
- Yeah?
Well, that's nice to know, Matt.
There we go, finally.
Edward Smith says #torqueback.
Hi GCN, this has been annoying me lately,
but every time I jump on the trainer
my left quad gets so tight I can't ride.
Then on the road, I can do a solid 90 ks
in three hours with no issues, help.
- It's a good question.
We discussed this before we came on.
I've had a little bit of thinking about it.
Now, a couple of times when I've used turbo trainers
over the years, my turbo trainer used to be in the garage,
and one of the rubber bungs came off,
and it meant the turbo trainer
actually tilted for a period of time.
I rode it and I got a bit of a knee twinge.
I kinda went back to the bike, checked it,
and it was because the turbo trainer was out of alignment.
So basically, the first thing I would do,
is check that your floor is level.
And on many turbos and smart trainers now
they have little leg adjusters,
where you can sort of screw them
to adjust the kind of height, check that.
Your bike needs to be plum square, basically.
Because if it's tilted out, and you're riding,
especially giving hard-efforts,
your body could be tilted one way,
and there could be a discrepancy
in the terms of the way you're applying power through.
So I think look at how, that's not really rapid is it,
but basically look at how square your bike is.
- Should we go for lunch?
- Yeah. - I'm hungry.
- (sighs) A little bit exhausted down after that rapid fire.
- Yeah, let's slow it down.
- We just need to knock it down a couple of cogs,
if you don't mind.
Took it out on me, that did.
Okay, it's this question from Michael Macnaughton.
Good day to you.
Good day, Michael.
I'm getting confused with cadence.
I read and hear that one should ride at around 80 plus RPM.
I ride a 52/36 with a 11/32 cassette,
and I ride a 700x23c wheels.
What is the best cadence, and why?
Pretty good question actually,
and a commonly asked question as well, isn't it?
Let's face it.
- Yeah, cadence is a really tricky one,
because I don't think there's any hard and fast rules
as to what really is the best.
Some riders choose to spin a high cadence,
some choose to grind a big gear.
And it also depends on how much power
you're putting out as well, doesn't it?
So if you're not putting out much power,
the optimal cadence is lower,
whereas if you're a track sprinter,
been using an enormous amount of power,
you kind of expect them to grind,
wouldn't you with those huge muscles?
But actually, they're spinning more than anybody else.
You can, of course, work on your cadence.
It might not be that the one that you are choosing yourself
is the best for you, but it might be.
Not a very good answer here.
To give an example, Alexander Kristoff,
who's a really good pro rider,
he tends to grind the gears,
and Chris Froome famously spins it up.
If they try to swap over,
it might work for them, or it might not.
- Yeah, so, regardless of the cadence,
riders can find their own kind of efficiency,
which just works for them.
But conversely, either end of the spectrum,
what you don't want to do,
especially if you're relatively new to cycling,
you're just getting used to the feeling on the bike,
you don't want to be pedalling a really, really low gear,
'cause that can put undue stress through your knees,
and can recipe for disaster in terms of knee injuries.
And also, what you don't want to do,
because it's mechanically inefficient,
and doesn't look great,
and can make you a little bit unstable,
is to pedal a ridiculously high gear as well.
Now, on a climb, you'll naturally,
generally pedal at a lower cadence.
So just find a gear that's comfortable
and try to ride between 70 and 80 RPM.
Then naturally on the flat,
when you're actually going quicker,
you'll pedal a high cadence,
but it's kind of trial and error really, isn't it?
- It is, yeah, I think you're right.
There is a difference between the climbs and the flats,
especially when you're in a group sheltering from the wind.
You tend to then naturally spin a bit more, don't you?
Respond to the small changes in pace.
Anyway, we could go a bit more in depth on this,
to find out whether you can improve your cadence.
- Broadly speaking then,
it seems like cadence is linked to two factors.
Firstly, there's power output,
whereby the fastest and most powerful riders,
tend to pedal with faster cadences,
and we think that it's about an increase
of six RPM per 100 watts.
But, and this is really important,
the cadence is as a result of the power,
and not the other way around.
- And then there's the velocity of the bike itself.
So what you tend to find is that when you're riding fast
on a flat road, almost like we're doing at the moment,
you naturally tend to have a high cadence,
somewhere around about 95 RPM.
But then if you get up to a steep climb,
your natural preferred cadence will drop significantly,
something like 70 to 75 RPM,
even if you've got adequate gears to pedal faster.
This is probably down to the lower inertia experienced
on the steep climb,
to use a different force pattern through the pedal stroke.
Before we get on to the final question actually
for this week's Ask GCN Anything,
a reminder that you should just leave your questions
in the comment section below.
We'll pick up some more for next week,
or if you're away from YouTube and you think of one,
put it on social media with the #torqueback.
- Now finally, as you just alluded to,
the question coming from Mark O'Donnell is this:
Is the 60 grammes of carbohydrate that the body can digest
while cycling that is regularly referenced
fixed for everybody, or does it depend on person
and the intensity of the ride?
- It's a good starting point.
Let's put it that way.
I think you're not going to go too far wrong
if you aim for 60 grammes per hour
when you're doing endurance rides.
But of course, it is once again an individual thing.
You'll also see some companies and nutritionists
recommending one gramme per kilogramme of body weight per hour,
so for us that would be more like 75 grammes in an hour,
and that makes sense as well, doesn't it?
Because a 40 kilo rider, taking things to the extreme,
is probably not going to need or even be able to absorb
as much carbohydrates and glycogen
as a 120 kilogramme rider, for example.
So you do need to tailor it for you,
but you can also train that absorbing, can't you?
If you're not used to it,
you're not gonna be able to absorb as much.
- Yeah, the more riding that you do,
the more fueling you do on the bike,
the more efficient you'll become.
And it's also worth mentioning as well,
it's worth considering upping
the carbohydrate intake per hour.
If it's a particularly long ride
and the intensity is quite high as well,
that's when you need to tweak your fueling strategy.
Now, an important thing to think about as well
is a variety of ways of getting
that carbohydrate in the body.
So clearly, you need to be hydrated,
so you need an energy drink
with some electrolytes in it as well
to really help it being absorbed by the body,
and then something like a banana, a gel, some fruitcake,
even a sandwich of some sort.
Variety is good for the head,
and also it helps the body to digest it,
'cause the last thing you wanna do,
I've been through this myself,
is just to use entirely glucose drinks for example,
or just exclusively gels.
It is, I guarantee, a recipe for disaster.
And it's also worth experimenting
with your fueling strategy when training as well.
- This is another thing where we had a real world example
a few years back here at GCN.
Si was with the nutritionist from the Balkan team,
which now lots of you know Yumber previously was Rammerbang,
and he was explaining to us that Oscar Freire,
three time world champion,
barely needed to eat anything on a six hour race,
whereas somebody like Bauke Mollema,
who's obviously still racing for Trek Segafredo,
needs to eat a hell of a lot so that he doesn't blow up.
So it very much is individual.
You just need to experiment yourself.
Find out what you need.
- Now, for another exploration of this very subject,
high carb versus low carb, watch this.
- When your body is burning fat for fuel,
it isn't an easy ticket to weight loss either.
As appealing as the image is
of your stomach gradually reducing in size
as you ride along, sadly, it just isn't true.
Now, when you're exercising on a low carb diet,
your body doesn't just burn the carbs,
actually can burn protein as well as fat.
And exercising in the so-called fat burning zone means,
because you're riding at a far lower intensity,
you're actually gonna use far less calories.
- Well thanks, as ever, for all your questions.
As Dan mentioned before,
get in contact in the comment section below
using the #torqueback, or on social media as well.
- Yes, and if you haven't seen the recent video
that Matt and Si did exploring the differences
between a mid range bike and a super bike,
why not check that out by clicking down here.