(whooshing)
- Welcome to Ask GC Anything.
This week I answer your questions
on preventing too much weight loss,
what is half-wheeling and how much kit should you own?
Don't forget, if you have a question you would like answered
use the hashtag torqueback in the comments below
and to be in with a chance of winning a free three-month
subscription to Zwift use the hashtag askgcntraining.
Right then, the first question.
First up this week is a question about weight loss
from Maaike van der Plas.
Hi GCN, I've been cycling for a little over a year now
and I'm starting to take it more seriously,
increasing my training because next year
I'm going to be riding the Marmotte.
Have lost six kilos, female, 27,
1 meter 86, went from 72 down to 66 kilos.
The thing is, though, I'm happy with my weight right now
but training five times a week
is making me lose even more weight.
I can't seem to eat enough calories.
Do you know good foods or ways that can help not
to lose weight while staying healthy?
And I guess it means not reducing my power
but it got cut off there for some reason.
So, hi, Maaike.
We would actually recommend that you keep an accurate
food diary for around five to seven days over the next week,
so after this show goes out,
schedule yourself an honest food diary,
so you're going to have to weigh your food
to know exactly how many calories you're consuming.
It could be that actually you're deceptively
consuming less than you think you are.
If that doesn't throw up any obvious imbalances
in your intake and outtake,
so the amount of calories
that you're burning out on the bike,
you can get this from a heart rate strap
or from a power meter,
or based on an estimate of how much exercise you're doing,
around six to 800 calories an hour on a bicycle.
If that doesn't show up any obvious issue then it could be
that actually your basal metabolic rate is a lot higher
than you originally thought and the fact
that you're doing lots of exercise on top of that means
that you do need to eat to compensate for that.
So do the food diary;
if it comes back that actually things are fairly even
then you need to look elsewhere for the answer to that,
but if in fact you're not eating
as much as you think you are then you need to try
and find some calorie-dense food,
so things like nuts are quite good for that,
using nut spread on bread and things like that will help
really boost the amount of calories that you can consume,
lots of bread, lots of carbohydrates,
so you're going to have to try and stay away from, like,
the leafy vegetables and things like that
because they're fill you up for very little calories,
of course you need the nutrients so you still need
to eat them but you need to then, kind of,
focus on trying to eat a little bit more elsewhere
'cos it does sound, indeed, that you're probably burning
more calories than you realize you are throughout a day.
Good luck with your quest and good luck
with the Marmotte next year.
Next up is a question from Jethro Reading.
It's a question that we've never considered, apparently.
It's a serious question and it is not a mickey-take.
Is road biking just stupid?
Well, that's a good start, isn't it?
I like adventure and I've always BMX'd and mountain biked
but recently I got interested in triathlon.
I signed up for the Leeds Castle Triathlon,
been watching GTN and GCN loads,
bought himself a second hand Giant Defy
and he's had it for two weeks and he's gone out and crashed,
hurting his shoulder.
Luckily, it was a torn ACL and not broken collar bone
so he can still compete.
The crash, however, could've killed me
had a car been nearby.
I ended up on the road unable to sit up straight away
and it's massively put him off riding on the road,
especially when he gets more adrenaline on other bikes,
so why do it on the road
where a tiny oil slick could kill you?
Well, I find that quite extreme
and it's certainly not my experience of cycling.
I think you've just been severely unlucky in
the first couple of weeks of your road cycling career.
Let the dust settle on that crash;
time really does heal all wounds,
and then when you do get back on the bike,
try and have your setup looked over.
Maybe you've set your bike up in a weird way,
maybe your tires are far too hard,
because you really...
It shouldn't be that easy to fall off a bike.
I mean, you don't need to be pushing the limits
and even then, if you were pushing the limits,
your bike shouldn't be set up in a way
that's going to make it skittish.
You want to try and follow the advice that we've already got
on the channel for your bike set-up,
maybe have a more experienced rider check out your technique
'cos it could be that you're doing something small,
believe it or not, that is causing you to feel nervous
and then to have that accident.
And then, finally, if you are after adrenaline,
I don't think the endurance sport of road cycling is
the place that you're going to find it,
short of finding the most unbelievable descent on earth,
and even then, I just don't think riding on the road is
the right place to be looking for adrenaline
so you are better off sticking to other sports for that.
Good luck and we hope that you do find
the love back for road cycling.
(whooshing)
This week's Zwift winning question goes to Kaiserfa.
Don't forget, if you do want to be in with a chance
of winning a free three-month subscription to Zwift,
use the hashtag askgcntraining down in the comments below
or over on Twitter or anywhere else, for that matter.
Right, hey there, guys, great channel.
You have said multiple times that sweet sport training is
the best bang for your bucks
because you can do it day after day,
however, many of us may not be able to ride every day
or even close to that.
Is there a similar simple rule for the best bang
for less bucks if you can only ride every other day
or just four hours per week?
And what percentage of my FTP should I ride
to get the most out of it,
depending on the time that I have available?
As ever, this question gets sent off
to the coaches at Zwift,
they write back and they give us a nice, thorough,
in-depth reply so I'm going to read it off the screen
to make sure that I get all the information there for you.
So the general rule to apply to training is
that as the available volume decreases,
the intensity has to increase.
This is to force our body to change and to gain fitness.
We need to place it under some sort of stress, basically.
It can be achieved by riding for long durations
and depleting the energy sources
or by training with high intensity
and building high amounts of lactate and growth hormone
or hormone release, sorry.
Both methods are placing a stress on your body which will
force it to adapt so that will create fitness gains.
When we've got around four hours a week available
for training it means you're going to have
to include some really high intensity workouts.
With regards to FTP in this case,
you want your work intervals or your interval work
to be consisting of efforts well above your FTP,
so Zwift are going to assume that you're able
to complete four one-hour training rides a week,
you know, space them out throughout the week;
in this case, it would be ideal to complete two
of these sessions as high intensity interval workouts.
Example: high intensity workouts would include simply
performing four to six maximal sprints during one session.
Give yourself plenty of recovery time between each sprint
and that's to ensure
that the effort truly is a maximal effort.
Full gas sprints are highly effective.
It might seem like a simple session
but completing max efforts places a lot
of stress on your body from which it adapts.
In another high intensity session you'd want to build up
the amount of lactate in your system.
This time, you would perform high intensity efforts
with a much shorter recovery,
so an example would be four three-minute efforts
above your threshold with one-minute recovery.
As long as the power is above your threshold,
these sessions will be effective.
It's the short recovery period
that's actually providing the training effect.
You could complete two sets of those in one session;
two high intensity workouts are generally enough
in one training a week for most of us.
Most of us aren't pros after all.
For your other rides, the classic sweet spot workout
would then be really good and it would be the go-to session
so if you've got four rides
that's one with the shorter sprint type efforts,
one with the longer interval efforts
with the shorter recoveries,
and then you've got your two sweet spot efforts as well
because it does still provide great bang for buck,
as you said.
Good luck, they're really happy to have heard from you
and they wish you luck in your quest to get fitter.
Al Francis up next with a saddle height question.
Is it necessary that our feet touch,
the tip of the shoes, this is,
the ground while sitting on the saddle?
Is it the proper saddle height that we should follow?
No is the short advice.
The saddle height should always be based around
the extension of your leg
and the flex you're left in your knee joint
because this determines the power output
and, kind of, the range of motion that
the muscles are going to be in.
So what we would recommend for a quick fix saddle height tip
would be to put the pedal in the six o'clock position
and then place your heel in it with your shoe on.
In this position, you want your leg as good as straight
but without your hips rocking,
so you could put one on each pedal and then back pedal
and then check that your hips don't rock
whilst you're trying to reach for the pedals.
Once you've got that without the rocking hips
that's probably a good baseline saddle height
and then you can adjust it based on comfort from there.
It is always going to be nice to be able to touch the floor,
especially if you're new to cycling,
but this isn't the best way for performance.
Right, next up, Tim Wilson.
Hi GCN team, I've been watching your show for a while now
and it's been a massive help
for bringing the unknown into light.
One thing that still baffles me, though,
is how people manage to put on a gilet while cycling.
I assume it's amazing balancing skills
but is this something you practice
while riding along one day
or something you tried in the car park for the first time?
For me personally, we were taught to do this as kids
on a, like, training camp that we used to go on
with the British Schools Cycling Association,
you may have heard John mention that on the tech show,
actually, last week.
Anyway, we were indeed on a car park away from traffic
and we were taught how to put these garments on and off.
Basically, you always want
what I would call a get out of jail free card,
so you always need to make sure
that one hand's still available to reach for the bar.
There is absolutely no reason to ever have two hands
behind your back because if a gust of wind or a stone
or a wild animal does come out of the hedge
or wherever else you are,
a football, for example,
you've got no way of responding to that,
so if you've always got one hand that's readily available
within the click of fingers to get to your bar,
you're much safer.
Once you've done that, though,
so you want to focus on doing one side first
before the other,
maybe even try with the clothes that you are already wearing
so if you're riding along in a short-sleeve jersey,
practice zipping it up and unzipping it
with your hands off the bars,
that way you're never too far away from them,
and then you can start to think about
putting your hands behind your back,
whipping the gilet out the pocket
and then over the shoulders.
So, trying to picture how I do it right now,
one arm first and then you want to pass it round,
basically keep your hands free will keep you safe.
Practice does make perfect with that sort of thing.
Maybe even a starting point would be learning
to ride no-handed really confidently
in a wide variety of situations.
Next up, Patrick Stoddard.
I live in a very flat area of Texas but have been training
to ride up Pikes Peak and Mount Evans in mid July
which is absolutely going to be brutal.
So, without having any experience of mountains,
what kind of percentage of FTP should I try to ride
in order to get to the top and not blow up before then?
It should also be said that my trip will be climbing
Pikes Peak on one day and Mount Evans the next day.
Oof, that's going to be a brutal two days.
It's going to be an amazing trip, though.
So both of these obviously reach high altitude
so you need to bear that in mind.
I would start with the starting point of 80 to 85% of FTP.
This is quite low and if you do feel good in
the final 20 minutes of each climb
then you can definitely increase that a little bit.
As I said before, altitude could play a part in this
for you personally so you want to make sure
that you're not going towards 100%
of your threshold power too early in the climb
because you've got nowhere to go if you do that.
But if you stay under it,
you can always increase it later in the ride.
Alternatively, if you start out at 80 to 85%
and you realize you're on for a bad day for whatever reason,
these things do happen,
then you can really quickly drop it back down
and then perhaps approach it again later on.
Good luck, it sounds like you're going to have
an absolutely amazing two days.
Jason McGrody has a question about apparel.
I've recently increased my riding
to five to seven hours a week.
What is a reasonable number of helmets,
jerseys, shorts, socks, gloves and shoes to own?
Well, I've got a few questions for you, Jason.
First off, how often do you want to wash your kit?
Next up, how much do you want to spend on your kit?
And then finally, how long do you want your kit to last?
You could easily get away with just owning two sets,
you know, two jerseys, two shorts, two arm warmers,
whatever it is that you want to wear,
depending on the conditions where you are,
but if you're going to be washing them that frequently
they're obviously going to wear out quite quickly
which will mean you're going to have to spend more money
to replace them.
What you could consider doing is using some cheaper kit
a few days a week and then washing that more frequently
and then saving your best riding gear for the weekends.
Something I would recommend would be an extra pair of shorts
perhaps because you can, if you need to,
wear the same jersey again but putting the same chamois
on again is not really something I'd want to be doing.
And then helmets and shoes and glasses and gloves,
these are the sort of item which you would only really want
to have to replace if you had a crash.
You probably don't really need a spare pair of shoes
or helmet if you're not racing.
If you are racing then it's a beneficial thing to have,
that's for sure.
Then you come onto socks and socks,
they're quite a cheap and cost-effective way,
compared to other bits of kit, that is,
to stamp your own style on the image
that you're creating for yourself out on the bike,
so when it comes to socks,
you'd probably get away with having a few more pairs
of socks than any other item of kit,
that way you can keep your look looking fresh and smart
and whatever else it is you like to call it
when you're out on the road.
And finally, Will H has a question about rectifying issues
with the indoor trainer
that he doesn't normally encounter out on the road,
namely numbness in the nether regions,
aches in the knees, etc.
My answer would be simply to move around on the bike more.
Outdoors we're always up out the saddle,
leaning through a corner, that sort of thing,
all this weight transfer is maintaining
good blood flow through the entire body,
and then for your knees you want to make sure you're keeping
on top of your stretching whilst you're off the bike,
making sure everything's nice and nimble
and any adjustments you've got on your shoes and everything
are absolutely bang on and there are no issues there.
You should be absolutely fine.
Good luck.
That is it for this week.
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