- For today's video we've enlisted the help of Emma Pooley.
A name that will no doubt be familiar to many of you.
If you don't know who she is,
she has been a world champion in the Time Trial,
she's won four stages of the Giro d'Italia,
and she's won La Flèche Wallonne.
We won't focus on those too much though,
because I've no doubt that her biggest achievement
was that she too used to ride for the Cervélo TestTeam.
She's not actually said that too me,
it's just one of my assumptions.
Anyway, she has helped us with today's video
which is entitled, How to Climb Nasty.
(intense techno music)
The physics of cycling uphill are clear,
it's about the ratio of power to weight.
Now, that doesn't mean that you have to be super skinny
in order to climb well.
There are plenty of super strong climbers
that are on the bigger side.
They just put out lots of power.
But that can be especially effective on shorter climbs.
- But when it comes to racing, or dare I say it,
even just training competitively with your mates,
there are a few nuances to climbing
beyond simple power to weight ratio.
Because riding with other people
is different than solo riding.
Partly psychologically, but also
you can do a lot of physiological damage
if you work it right.
- You can be nice on climb, of course you can.
You could not surge,
or not half-wheel the riders next to you,
keep a nice steady power,
or even ride at the front of the group
to shelter others from the wind.
But cycling is not always nice.
In a race for example, you don't really wanna be nice.
You wanna hurt your opponents.
You wanna wear them down,
and ultimately, you wanna drop them.
- Back in the day when I was racing seriously,
I'd have to do that on the climbs,
so today I'm just gonna show you a few of the ways
that I used to use to turn on the hurt on the uphill.
You could call it, how to climb like a (bleep),
or how to climb nasty.
(intense techno music)
- The most straight forward approach first,
full gas up a climb.
Now this one does rely on you knowing
that you have a better sustainable
power to weight ratio than your opponent.
Because remember, anyone sat in your wheel
is gonna be benefiting from your draught.
Unless of course, it is an extremely steep climb.
(groans)
There is always the slim hope
that you could trick your opponents
into thinking that you're stronger than them.
(gasping)
- Secondly, the technique I like to call armpit stalking.
This was taught to me by a team director at the Tour de Lou.
So basically it consists of riding
just behind and to the side of your rivals,
sort of in their armpit.
So this is good because it gives you a bit of sliding space
if you're struggling to hold a pace.
But it also, more importantly,
is really off putting to them,
to have you in their peripheral vision,
just when they think they're going really well.
From this position, you can listen to their breathing
and observe their body language
so you know exactly when the best moment is to attack.
(intense techno music)
My personal favourite was the fartlek technique.
Which is a word from Swedish used in running training,
where you mix up continuous running with intervals.
So I started using it in cycling training
to make long climbs more interesting.
And I found out my accident
that it can really destroy other people.
Because a lot of cyclists
can ride at a steady power for a long time,
but when you add in surges, they really struggle.
So what I do is ride uphill steady.
Not slowly, just maybe 10 to 20 watts below threshold,
and every one to two minutes,
I'd add in a 30 to 60 second surge.
And I try to stay seated for the surge,
so it'd only be 10 to 20 watts over threshold.
And I do my absolute best
to make it look like I wasn't trying.
So the idea was, that to the person on my wheel,
it wouldn't look like much had changed in my riding,
but it would just suddenly feel a bit harder.
Now most people can cope with a few surges,
but if you can do it for a whole hour long climb,
there won't be many people who can stay with you.
A word of caution though, you should definitely
try to practise this in training before you implement it,
because it's physically challenging
in a different way to riding steady.
So, if you're not careful,
you're can end up dropping yourself,
which is not really the aim.
(gasping)
- Slow and steady wins the race.
Similar to that,
but more like traditional attacking riding,
you want to do your short attack, so 15 seconds for example,
followed by one to two minutes of steady riding.
Then repeated for the duration of the whole climb.
Now, the attacks need to be short and really hard.
- So I used to do the 15 second surges,
at really the maximum power
I could sustain for 15 seconds.
But the important thing was that the recovery in between
was steady and not really recovery at all.
So one season, I trained this pretty specifically,
and I learned to do the attack seated,
and it was a really effective technique in races.
- At the very least,
if you work on this in your training sessions,
you should see an improvement in your lactate tolerance.
(intense techno music)
- My last climbing tip
is more of a tool for psychological warfare.
This comes down to observing your rivals
and listening to their breathing.
When you can hear them getting really short of breath,
and struggling,
implement the chat.
This is just a seemingly trivial comment
about the view, or what a nice day it is,
or how much you're looking forward to coffee,
or how much you like their fancy new bar tape.
It doesn't really matter.
How far did you have to drive this morning?
Oh really?
That's annoying, especially as you forgot your pedals.
Oh well.
What a lovely day.
It is actually really beautiful here at this time of year.
If it weren't so cold, I think it'd be alright.
Don't you like riding in winter?
Winter, I mean, how long does it even last in the UK?
It's (bleep) freezing.
I could really do with it warming up
because my hands are little ice cubes.
And frankly I get chilblains these days,
it's really painful.
Have you ever had--
(record scratches)
- Can you please stop chatting!
- The point is, you have to sound really relaxed,
and as though you have all the energy
and breath in the world for chatting.
This is soul destroying for someone
who's struggling on your wheel.
And it can be really effective
if you want to drop someone on a long climb.
So just a word of warning
is that you can make yourself a bit unpopular
with your training buddies, if you do that too much.
- [Dan] You can, I'm starting to get off of you already
to be perfectly honest.
- To be fair, you can bring it back quite quickly
by getting a round of coffees.
So thank you, Emma, for that.
- In all seriousness, thank you for the tips today.
I've learned a lot and I'm starting to think
maybe we weren't nasty enough so when we were racing.
- [Man] Possibly that Dan,
or possibly we just were underpowered.
- [Dan] Yeah, that's right.
- [Emma] No, no, too nice.
- Seriously though, which of these techniques, Emma,
have you used most frequently
with devastating effects during your career?
Is is just brute force, number one?
- Well I don't think frequently
would describe my victory, sadly,
but yeah, some of them
are definitely more like training techniques.
I think maybe the seated 15 second attacks,
that was a pretty good one.
Because when you stay seated,
people don't expect you to be attacking,
so you could really use it as a sort of surprise attack.
Yeah so, the year I trained, that was 2010,
and it was my best year definitely,
and I managed to use it.
I think I used it for a way to
get away from the group at the end,
which was good for me tactically.
Very astute by my standards.
(Emma chuckles)
- Well yeah, that's one to practise then,
way to keep people away.
- Emma being quite modest there,
because we heard previous to filming this
that not only did you drop the group,
but the group contained Marianne Vos.
I actually can't remember if she was seated or not
when she actually did that,
but nonetheless very impressive indeed.
One of the biggest one day races in the world.
- It's probably the only time I dropped her, but you know.
(chuckles)
- Well we've certainly learned plenty today,
we hope you have at home as well.
Whether or not we can actually implement it
at any point in the future remains to be seen.
- We can always try, Dan, we can always try.
- We can always try, yeah.
Right, we've got another video
which you might well be interested in right now,
because if you want to take things
one step further than nasty,
you might actually just want to sabotage
your competitors bikes or just be very devious indeed.
You can find that video by clicking just down here.
- Yeah, do also make sure
you give this video a big thumbs up.
Thank you to Emma again.