Tag: Masters Rowing

  • The Great Watts Lie

    The Great Watts Lie

    There is a specific type of man in every rowing club car park, and you will recognise him instantly. He has just done a café ride on the bike instead of the erg, he owns at least one item of clothing with the word “aero” printed on it, and he has started saying “watts” the way other men say “reps.” I know this man well. For about three weeks a year, I become him.

    This year those three weeks coincided with the Tour de France, and my club’s WhatsApp group did what it always does when the Tour is on: it turned into a shrine to Tadej Pogačar and a small crime scene for rowing’s reputation.

    The provocation was a number. On stage 19, up Alpe d’Huez, Pogačar held roughly 440 watts for thirty-five minutes and change, on his way to a fifth Tour title that puts him level with Merckx, Hinault, Anquetil and Indurain — a club so exclusive it makes the Leander members’ bar look like a Wetherspoons. Tibbett posted the number to the group with the caption “and rowers think 2k is hard.” Tibbett is fifty-four, has been threatening to do a proper winter of erging since roughly 2019, and owns more cycling kit than any man who has never raced a bicycle should.

    I did what any self-respecting oarsman does when his tribe is insulted. I got defensive, then I got the calculator out. Our sport’s crown jewel — the 2000m erg world record — currently sits at 5:33.4, set by Simon van Dorp back in March, edging out Oliver Zeidler’s mark from just weeks earlier. That works out to around 600 watts. Six hundred! I sent it into the group with the smugness of a man who has just won an argument he doesn’t fully understand.

    Which, as it turned out, I hadn’t.

    Because somebody — there is always somebody — pointed out that comparing a 35-minute effort to a five-and-a-half-minute one is not a comparison. It’s asking why Usain Bolt can’t hold his 100m pace for a marathon. Every engine produces less power the longer you ask it to run. Big number, short time. Smaller number, long time. This is the entire point of a power-duration curve, and it is taught to teenagers. I have been rowing for twenty years and had apparently decided it didn’t apply to me.

    That stung rather more than losing the WhatsApp argument.

    So I went looking for a fairer fight, and found one in Filippo Ganna, an Italian shaped like a filing cabinet who holds cycling’s Hour Record: 56.792 kilometres in sixty minutes, at an estimated 440 to 460 watts. Now put an oarsman next to him. Eric Murray, two Olympic golds and no discernible pain receptors, once sat on an erg and rowed for a full hour: 18,728 metres, about 394 watts, with his heart rate above 190 for fifty of those sixty minutes. Same duration. Same clock. No gravity for one to blame, no drag for the other to hide behind. And the cyclist still wins. I had gone looking for the comparison that would vindicate us, found the only clean one available, and lost that too.

    The difference isn’t toughness. It’s what each sport is fighting. Cycling up a mountain is a war against your own bodyweight, which is why the best climbers look like they’ve been assembled from spare tent poles. Rowing barely punishes mass at all, which is why the best rowers look like they were grown deliberately. Pogačar is 63 kilograms. Van Dorp is closer to 95. Both numbers are correct. Neither proves the other man is soft.

    Which brings me back to Tibbett. Because while I was busy being wrong about watts, he was busy being wrong about something more expensive. He has bought a Colnago Y1Rs — the one Colnago’s own white paper says needs 20 fewer watts than its predecessor to hold 50kph — and rides it almost exclusively on a Sunday café loop at a heart rate that wouldn’t trouble a nap, a good twenty kilometres an hour short of anywhere that aero saving does anything at all. He also has, by his own cheerful admission, around nine kilograms he could lose before his next birthday, and a standing talent for discovering that the erg session doesn’t quite fit this week whenever the weather is nice enough for the bike. He bought the machinery of a Grand Tour winner and declined the two things that are actually free: the training and the weight. Pogačar didn’t get to 6.99 watts per kilo by owning the right frame. He got there by doing the unglamorous sessions and weighing 63 kilograms. The Y1Rs is the paint job. The missed erg piece is the whole number.

    There is one place where the cyclists genuinely have us beaten, and I’ll concede it before somebody makes me. The Tour ran 21 stages and about 3,300 kilometres in three weeks, several days over 180km, back to back, uphill, surrounded by 180 nervous men who occasionally fall off. A regatta asks for two races in a day and then lets you go and lie down. Being good on day nineteen is a different sport to being good once.

    I’m not thrilled about any of this, if I’m honest. I much preferred believing that rowers were simply the hardest people in endurance sport and cyclists were gifted amateurs with better tans and worse haircuts. What I’ve actually learned is that I spent a fortnight sneering at a man for buying performance instead of doing the work, while I was doing precisely the same thing with numbers — grabbing the one figure that flattered me and waving it about instead of reading the thing properly.

    Faster Membership

    The training plans are the version of this where I stopped collecting numbers and started doing the work: sessions that earn their place, in an order that makes sense, with watts used as a measurement rather than a personality. They come with Faster Membership, CHF 129 for the year, along with the lactate and supplement protocols. Tibbett’s frameset cost considerably more and did not come with a plan.

  • Exclusive interview with Vincent Galliard, Executive Director World Rowing

    Exclusive interview with Vincent Galliard, Executive Director World Rowing

    Join me as I speak exclusively with Vincent Galliard, Executive Director of World Rowing about the future direction of Rowing. In this episode, Vincent shares World Rowing’s 15 year plan to transform the reach, the image and revenues of the sport. We discuss the expansion into coastal rowing, indoor rowing, plans to drive awareness and boost audience engagement. Vincent also talks about what we can expect after the 1,500m racing format at the LA Games. World Rowing’s new partnership with Concept2 and the future of rowing in e-sports Games.

  • Polarised Training Case Study – Olaf Tufte

    Polarised Training Case Study – Olaf Tufte

    Faster Membership

    The rest of this one is for members.

    This article, both twelve-week training plans, and the full library of protocols and calculators are part of Faster Membership. CHF 129 for the year.

    See what’s inside Members log in

  • I’m trying to lose weight and eat healthily. Why do I feel so hungry all the time? What can I do about it?

    I’m trying to lose weight and eat healthily. Why do I feel so hungry all the time? What can I do about it?

    Several hormones play an essential role in regulating our feelings of hunger and fullness.

    Sharing original article posted by Nick Fuller, Sat 16 Dec 2023 Australian Broadcasting Corporation

    Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States, famously said nothing is certain except death and taxes. But I think we can include “you’ll feel hungry when you’re trying to lose weight” as another certainty.

    The reason is basic biology. So how does this work — and what can you do about it?

    Hormones control our feelings of hunger

    Several hormones play an essential role in regulating our feelings of hunger and fullness. The most important are ghrelin — often called the hunger hormone — and leptin.

    When we’re hungry, ghrelin is released by our stomach, lighting up a part of our brain called the hypothalamus to tell us to eat.

    When it’s time to stop eating, hormones, including leptin, are released from different organs, such as our gut and fat tissue, to signal to the brain that we’re full.

    Dieting disrupts the process

    But when we change our diet and start losing weight, we disrupt how these appetite hormones function. This triggers a process that stems from our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Their bodies developed this mechanism as a survival response to adapt to periods of deprivation and protect against starvation.

    The levels of hormones managing our hunger increase, making us feel hungrier to tell us to eat more, while the ones responsible for signalling we’re full decrease their levels, intensifying our feelings of hunger.

    We end up increasing our calorie consumption so we eat more to regain the weight we lost. But worse, even after the kilos creep back on, our appetite hormones don’t restore to their normal levels — they keep telling us to eat more so we put on a little extra fat. This is our body’s way of preparing for the next bout of starvation we will impose through dieting.

    Fortunately, there are things we can do to manage our appetite, including:

    1. Eating a large, healthy breakfast every day

    One of the easiest ways to manage our feelings of hunger throughout the day is to eat most of our food earlier in the day and taper our meal sizes so dinner is the smallest meal.

    Research shows a low-calorie or small breakfast leads to increased feelings of hunger, specifically appetite for sweets, across the course of the day.

    Another study found the same effect. Participants went on a calorie-controlled diet for two months, where they ate 45 per cent of their calories for breakfast, 35 per cent at lunch and 20 per cent at dinner for the first month, before switching to eat their largest meal in the evening and their smallest in the morning. Eating the largest meal at breakfast resulted in decreased hunger throughout the day.

    Research also shows we burn the calories from a meal 2.5-times more efficiently in the morning than the evening. So emphasising breakfast over dinner is good not just for hunger control, but also weight management.

    boiled egg and toast
    Protein-rich foods, such as eggs, leave us feeling fuller for longer.(ABC Rural: Meg Powell)

    2. Prioritising protein

    Protein helps contain feelings of hunger. This is because protein-rich foods such as lean meats, tofu and beans suppress the appetite-stimulating ghrelin and stimulate another hormone called peptide YY that makes you feel full.

    And just as eating a breakfast is vital to managing our hunger, what we eat is important too, with research confirming a breakfast containing protein-rich foods, such as eggs, will leave us feeling fuller for longer.

    But this doesn’t mean just eating foods with protein. Meals need to be balanced and include a source of protein, wholegrain carb and healthy fat to meet our dietary needs. For example, eggs on wholegrain toast with avocado.

    3. Filling up with nuts and foods high in good fats and fibre

    Nuts often get a bad rap — thanks to the misconception they cause weight gain — but nuts can help us manage our hunger and weight. The filling fibre and good fats found in nuts take longer to digest, meaning our hunger is satisfied for longer.

    Studies suggest you can include up to 68 grams per day of nuts without affecting your weight.

    Avocados are also high in fibre and heart-healthy monounsaturated fats, making them another excellent food for managing feelings of fullness. This is backed by a study confirming participants who ate a breakfast incorporating avocado felt more satisfied and less hungry than participants who ate a meal containing the same calories but with lower fat and fibre content.

    Similarly, eating foods that are high in soluble fibre — such as beans and vegetables — make us feel fuller. This type of fibre attracts water from our gut, forming a gel that slows digestion.

    A bowl filled with brightly coloured salad vegetables and a metal fork

    4. Eating mindfully

    When we take time to really be aware of and enjoy the food we’re eating, we slow down and eat far less. A review of 68 studies found eating mindfully helps us better recognise feelings of fullness. Mindful eating provides our brain enough time to recognise and adapt to the signals from our stomach telling us we’re full.

    Slow down your food consumption by sitting at the dinner table and use smaller utensils to reduce the volume of food you eat with each mouthful.

    5. Getting enough sleep

    Sleep deprivation disturbs our appetite hormones, increasing our feelings of hunger and triggering cravings. So aim to get at least seven hours of uninterrupted sleep a night.

    Try switching off your devices two hours before bed to boost your body’s secretion of sleep-inducing hormones like melatonin.

    6. Managing stress

    Stress increases our body’s production of cortisol and triggers food cravings.

    So take time out when you need it and set aside time for stress-relieving activities. This can be as simple as getting outdoors. A 2019 study found sitting or walking outdoors at least three times a week could reduce cortisol levels by 21 per cent.

    7. Avoiding depriving ourselves

    When we change our diet to lose weight or eat healthier, we typically restrict certain foods or food groups. However, this heightens activity in our mesocorticolimbic circuit — the reward system part of the brain — often resulting in us craving the foods we’re trying to avoid. Foods that give us pleasure release feel-good chemicals called endorphins and learning chemicals called dopamine, which enable us to remember — and give in to — that feel-good response.

    When we change our diet, activity in our hypothalamus — the clever part of the brain that regulates emotions and food intake — also reduces, decreasing our control and judgement. It often triggers a psychological response dubbed the “what-the-hell effect”, when we indulge in something we think we shouldn’t feel guilty about and then go back for even more.

    Don’t completely cut out your favourite foods when you go on a diet or deprive yourself if you’re hungry. It will take the pleasure out of eating and eventually you’ll give into your cravings.

    Nick Fuller is the Charles Perkins Centre Research Program Leader at University of Sydney. 

  • How to stay hydrated during ergo training

    How to stay hydrated during ergo training

    Many of us will be doing a lot of training on the rowing machine in these coming weeks, and it’s important to understand the impact of sweat and proper hydration. This article by Andy Blow, provides good insights and tips for all of us using the Concept2 to train indoors.

    Gavirate Rowing Club 2020. Photo WH Chambers.

    Original article by Andy Blow, BSc Honours degree in Sports and Exercise Science from the University of Bath, Precision Hydration (2020). Precision Hydration support our newsletter subscribers with 10% off all purchases, when you use the discount code; Faster10 at checkout. www.precisionhydration.com

    Indoor training can be viewed as an unfortunate but necessary evil by some athletes, while others relish the opportunity to get in the ‘Pain Cave’ and log those hours on the turbo trainer or treadmill.

    There’s often an impressive (and slightly dangerous) pool of sweat on the floor whenever I’ve finished an indoor training session. So, does that puddle mean I sweat more when training indoors than outdoors? Let’s find out…

    The effects of heat on sweat rate 

    The body controls core body temperature (CBT) to keep us alive and functioning, and we sweat when our CBT rises above a certain point.

    The heat given off by working muscles has the greatest influence on CBT when exercising, so how hard you’re working has a massive impact on your sweat rate and more so than body fat, weight and overall size. This was emphasised by the findings of a recent study.

    So, the average indoor workout is probably more intense than an outdoor session because we generally go for ‘quality’ over ‘quantity’ (unless you really enjoy being in your ‘pain cave’ for hours and hours on end). Therefore, this results in a higher sweat loss per unit of time.

    Air Flow and Temperature

    Two other important factors which will impact on how sweaty you get when training indoors are Air Flow and Temperature:

    Air Flow

    When outdoors, you’re moving through air so you get some airflow past the skin. Air movement causes heat to be drawn away from the body’s surface more effectively (via convection and sweat evaporation) and this cools you.

    On a static bike or treadmill, you lose this airflow and the sweat tends to drip off you, making you more aware of it. And as there’s no natural cooling effect, you probably actually do sweat a little more to compensate too (unless you attempt to mitigate the lack of air flow by adding a fan to your indoor ‘Pain Cave’…).

    Temperature

    Your body tries to offload heat to the environment when you’re training. The bigger the gradient between the air temperature, and the lower the humidity, the easier it is for heat to be evaporated away. As many places we train indoors are already quite warm and humid, the gradients for heat loss and evaporation are less pronounced than outside, and this further hinders thermoregulation and drives sweat rate up.

    So, whilst you don’t necessarily sweat significantly more indoors than outdoors, there are reasons why total sweat loss might be higher some of the time.

    Tips for staying hydrated during indoor training

    There are five simple steps you can take to ensure that you are well hydrated for your daily indoor training session…

    Before: Arrive well hydrated

    As we mentioned earlier, most people’s indoor training sessions are short and intense as we go for the old ‘quality over quantity’ approach. So, it’s important to make sure you start hydrated by doing some form of preload as this will maximise your ability to thermoregulate by sweating.

    Aim to drink around 500-750ml (16-25oz) of plain water mixed with a strong electrolyte drink (we recommend PH 1500) a few hours before you start your session. Use a bit of trial and error over the course of a few sessions to refine this approach.

    Before: Don’t overdo your fluid intake

    Having said that, there’s no need to go overboard on fluid intake in the immediate build-up to your session. Just try to stick to good hydration practices on a day-to-day basis.

    Before: Add sodium

    If you do find yourself low on fluid leading up to a session, it’s a good idea to add additional sodium to your drinks in the preceding hours as this maximises absorption of the fluids you do consume.

    During: Drink to thirst during the session

    This comes back to the ‘don’t overdo it’ point. Ultimately, don’t interfere with what you’re actually there to do (i.e. get sweaty on the turbo or treadmill) by trying to taking on unnecessary amounts of fluid.

    Don’t forget to stay on top of your hydration when training indoors and following these simple steps will help keep you hydrated correctly and able to perform at your best.

  • It takes patience to build the aerobic base, yet the investment is worth it.

    It takes patience to build the aerobic base, yet the investment is worth it.

    As the winter start to bite here in Switzerland, our crews are doing what they think think they need to do to prepare for the racing season that starts in May. Many are taking the approach of ‘no pain no gain’ yet I have always questioned this approach. At this time of year, I believe one should be focussing on building the aerobic foundation to leverage in the coming months when the bodies systems can leverage off this large base.

    When I talk to some of the most successful and healthy athletes around the world, most actually spend these preparatory months patiently building their aerobic base and working at heart rates of <75% of max. By developing the aerobic system first, they are getting faster and developing a more efficient aerobic system and network of mitochondria without the wear and tear – and injury – that often accompanies anaerobic training. Seiler underscores this in his paper that presents numerous gold medalists spending 80-85% of their training time at <75% of max.

    Nothing new here, think of Emile Zatopek, the famous trainer Arthur Lydiard or the published and proven science from Sephen Seiler on training intensities and distribution, they all followed the same methodology. Perhaps in our digital age we have overlooked what has already been proven?

    My thoughts today are, how to help my athletes to inform themselves, to challenge the no pain no gain dogma and investing in the aerobic base .

  • Strength Training For Masters Rowers

    Strength Training For Masters Rowers

    Interview with James Goodwin, Head of physical performance and science for the Swiss Rowing Federation. James is responsible for ensuring the Swiss Team are strong and fit, to train and race. In this episode, James shares his expertise towards Masters Rowing. James and I discuss strength and condition strategies for Masters, and answer questions from the Masters Rowing Facebook Group.

    James holds a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Sports and Exercise Science, from Sheffield Hallam University and worked as the Strength and Conditioning Coach (GB Rowing) through the Rio Olympic cycle.

    This episode is supported by Precision Hydration. You can take Precision Hydration’s free online sweat test at www.precisionhydration.com and save 10% on purchases when you use the code FASTER10 at check-out.

    To listen to the podcast, click on the link to the Faster Podcast below or find the Faster Podcast in your favourite podcast player.

  • Monitoring HRV to understand how you are responding to stress.

    Monitoring HRV to understand how you are responding to stress.

    I have in the past experimented with monitoring HRV to understand both how I’m responding to training (stress) and recovery (rest) to optimise my training response and avoid overtraining. So far, I’m still learning and building up a baseline. I’m researching different sources of information and will share these with you.

    Sharing original article found at the Oura website. Author: Oura Team  February 12, 2020

    Stress vs. Rest

    When stressful thoughts consume your day, it can feel as though stress is strictly a mental problem. The reality is that stress materializes as both emotional and physiological symptoms—your brain and body are inseparable.

    Whether you are running from a lion or preparing for a presentation at work, your brain and body share a single response system for all stressors—the autonomic nervous system (ANS).

    Knowing how your body uses the ANS to react to different situations can help you build awareness and identify practices that transform your stress reaction into a reasoned response.

    The ANS functions like a tug-of-war game between two subsystems: your activation (sympathetic nervous) system and your rest (parasympathetic nervous) system. Both regulate essential body functions like heart rate, respiratory rate, and digestion.

    Your sympathetic nervous system is well known as the driver of your activating, fight-or-flight response, while the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in during calmer moments as your rest-and-digest network.

    Both systems dial their activity up or down based on messages from your brain and spinal cord. These systems can be active at the same time, or one can take over and dominate the other.

    When activated, they trigger a cascade of changes in your body:

    If your fight-or-flight system starts to dominate, there are some rest-and-digest functions that stop altogether, while others simply scale back.

    Your rest-and-digest system has multiple players (e.g., your heart, lungs, liver). If your fight-or-flight system dominates, some parasympathetic players quit (e.g., digestion pauses while you’re running). Others may use a different tactic; for example, as you warm up for a jog, your body will shift its temperature-regulating strategy and reroute blood from your internal organs to your skin in an effort to shed heat.

    Finding Balance

    Life’s stress levels naturally fluctuate. When your body remains in a stressed-out, fight-or-flight mode, it can take a serious toll on your health by slowing your recovery time, weakening your immune system, and impacting your mental state.

    Our ANS was designed to help us deal with brief episodes of high-intensity stress (e.g., running from a predator), but our modern lifestyle contains multiple chronic stressors that rarely shut off (e.g., job pressure, balancing childcare and work, sleep deprivation, and constant device stimulation).

    It’s all about balance. You don’t want your fight-or-flight system to be in a constant state of activation, but you also don’t want it to remain inactive—it is essential for your survival ability to respond to stress as well as maintain your body’s equilibrium.

    Managing Your Stress

    We are often unaware of the tug-of-war inside our ANS because it functions involuntarily and reflexively. Becoming more in tune with the physiological effects of stress can help you regulate your response or deploy strategies to bring you back into balance.

    Check out these tips to identify and reverse imbalances sooner:

    • Become more self-aware: Techniques like meditation can help you become more in touch with how activated or relaxed your body is. Taking a moment during the day also offers an opportunity to reset imbalances when you sense them and may even improve your sleep.
    • Sense imbalances sooner: Consider how wearables, like Oura, can give you the opportunity to follow patterns of stress within your body and measure their impact more objectively. You can even see your body’s ANS balance and reduce stress by monitoring your heart rate variability.
    • Improve your resilience: Increasing your fitness level and improving your sleep both boost your body’s ability to bounce back from stressful periods. If you’re looking for ways to rest and restore, consider these ideas.

    References

    • Stults-Kolehmainen, Matthew A., and John B. Bartholomew. “Psychological stress impairs short-term muscular recovery from resistance exercise.” Medicine and science in sports and exercise 44, no. 11 (2012): 2220-2227. (link)
    • Morey, Jennifer N., Ian A. Boggero, April B. Scott, and Suzanne C. Segerstrom. “Current directions in stress and human immune function.” Current opinion in psychology 5 (2015): 13-17. (link)
    • Slavich, George M. “Life stress and health: A review of conceptual issues and recent findings.” Teaching of Psychology 43, no. 4 (2016): 346-355. (link)
  • Tour de France training takeaways, from the coaches of Vingegaard, Pogačar

    Tour de France training takeaways, from the coaches of Vingegaard, Pogačar

    Some big lessons for rowers from the world’s top cyclists and cycling teams. Why is this important for us I hear you ask? Because like cycling, rowing is an endurance sport, and although we rowers have a big dependence on power, and our races are shorter in duration, fundamental endurance training principles cannot be ignored.

    Original article by Jim Cotton, Velo News 22 July 2023.

    Coaches of Tour’s ‘big two’ lift the lid on how fundamental training principles still rule in the biggest race in the world. Turns out the training principles you were taught as a junior still apply if you want to win the Tour de France.

    The head coaches of Jumbo-Visma and UAE Emirates separately lifted the lid this week on the fundamental strengths and weaknesses of Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar‘s pre-Tour training plans.

    And the takeaways were as obvious as they were old school. Consistency, base miles, and accumulated load are the foundation of any aspiring maillot jaune.

    Consistency is key to GC success

    Vingegaard reaped the rewards of consistent ‘availability’ to train. Jumbo-Visma performance director Mathieu Heijboer told Velo that the consistent layering of load was the bedrock of Vingegaard’s 2023 training program.

    “One of the key things we worked on with Jonas this year was ‘availability.’ We wanted to make sure he was always healthy and fit,” Heijboer said on a call this week. “We were so focused on it that we even cut some races from the calendar.

    “What we call ‘availability’ of a rider is them being prepared every day to train, making sure they’re not losing days because of injury or sickness. In my opinion, the biggest difference from last year is there was a lot more consistency in Jonas’ training.”

    One of the most taut GC battles in recent memory came to a likely end at the start of the Tour’s third week.

    Pogačar flamed fast in a double-stage slam that saw Vingegaard squeeze both shoulders square into the leader’s yellow jersey. Pogačar’s trainer Iñigo San Millán conceded the obvious this week.

    The weeks the Slovenian lost in training after his Liège-Bastogne-Liège crash were the first nails in his 2023 Tour de France coffin.

    When Vingegaard was “available” and training on Sierra Nevada through early summer, Pogačar was cross-training or stuck on the turbo.

    “I don’t know yet if [the crash] is the only reason, but it’s the main reason, that’s for sure,” San Millán told l’Equipe of Pogačar’s week-three implosion.

    “Pogi” was losing endurance horsepower with every day he was on the home trainer.

    “Tadej always does two big training blocks before the Tour: one at the start of the season, one in the spring,” San Millán said. “This year, his fall at Liège prevented him from doing this second block.”

    Last year, Pogačar prepared to defend his second Tour title with a three-week boot camp in the thin air of the Italian Alps before he raced to victory at the Tour of Slovenia. This year, he managed just a percentage of that while he nursed a still-healing scaphoid fracture through a sticking-plaster training schedule.

    “The home trainer is good, but it’s not enough,” San Millán said.

    “He lost three weeks of training in May. And he was only able to do three good weeks of work in June. If we take into account the rest days, Tadej only trained properly for a fortnight before this summer.”

    Base miles bake in the foundations of big wins

    Pogačar’s 2022 and 2023 collapses highlight how base training and proper fuelling can’t be ignored. Even a fifth-year WorldTour pro like Pogačar can’t cut corners in training.

    Slow burn “base training” builds the day-by-day, week-by-week endurance and recoverability that’s crucial to a grand tour rider. No-frills zone two miles can’t be neglected, even for racers who have been at the top of their sport for a half-decade.

    UAE Emirates performance co-ordinator Jerome Swart told Velo before the grand départ that the ideal final block of Tour training would be as much focussed on hours of aerobic tapping as it was lung-burning intervals.

    Pogačar just needed more miles before this Tour de France.

    “I was talking about a very difficult mission before the Tour, but in truth, I don’t think any rider has ever won the Tour with less than a month of training in their legs,” Swart’s colleague San Millán said.

    Vingegaard’s final weeks of Tour de France training couldn’t look any more different from those of his maillot foe.

    Strava spying suggests Vingegaard and his Tour de France teammates accumulated around 80 hours and 2,400km of base-focussed training on the Sierra Nevada through May before a week of intensity at the Critérium du Dauphiné.

    Heijboer said a consistent, uninterrupted layering of milage has been the cornerstone of Vingegaard’s rise.

    The Dane broke out when he blasted to second in the 2021 grand boucle and charted an uninterrupted training curve ever since.

    “Jonas used to have problems with his tendons and was missing training, and in 2021, he suffered badly with COVID and lost a lot of time,” Heijboer told Velo.

    “We wanted to rule out all those factors so he could be totally consistent this year, and we managed that very well. We paid a lot of attention to his physical preparedness so that he was always doing his exercises, his recovery, his nutrition, all of it 100 percent right.”

    Overtraining, undertraining, and getting the loading right

    San Millan asserts that Pogačar didn’t do too much in spring. (Photo: Gruber Images / Velo)

    Vingegaard and Pogačar’s early season in some ways reflect their personalities and racing style.

    Vingegaard saw few race days in favor of structured training.

    Meanwhile, his Slovenian nemesis threw it down to Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel in the classics, and harvested victories at the Tour of Flanders, Amstel Gold, and La Flèche Wallonne along the way.

    UAE trainer San Millán pushed back at suggestions that Pogačar tries to take on too much.

    “We understood how Tadej’s body works and how it responds to different types of efforts. It is not because he reached his peak at the Tour of Flanders in April that he mortgaged his chances of winning the Tour in July,” he said.

    Even a small dip into “overtraining” can ripple hard through the rest of the season.

    Whether a junior racer or a WorldTour pro, doing “more” isn’t always “more.” Physiological load only beds-in with time off and adaption.

    San Millán explained that he monitored Pogačar’s training load through controlled testing and a long understanding of his athlete’s data.

    “After the Flandrien classics, he produced the best figures of his life,” Millan said. “Frankly, I had a hard time believing it. I even thought he had slipped into a form of overtraining.

    “I spent a week with him to take lactate tests, which confirmed his progress and erased my fears. He didn’t train too much, he had simply taken an extra step, which he proved during the Ardennes.”

    Simply put, an increase in training load needs careful planning and regulation.

    The takeaway? Do the basics, and do them well

    It doesn’t take a pro physiologist to point to Pogačar’s crash at Liège as the moment his Tour de France hopes cracked.

    But insights from San Millán and Heijboer do illustrate that even the best bike racers in the world can’t avoid the sometimes boring principles of consistency, base miles, and steady progress.

  • Cracking the Athlete’s Brain

    Cracking the Athlete’s Brain

    Researchers are showing everyday athletes how to train their brains to perform like the pros

    Original article by Alex Hutchison, Outside magazine, Dec 30, 2013

    It goes without saying that Olympic athletes need to be strong, fit, and tough. But none of that matters if they aren’t capable of adapting quickly to unexpected circum-stances. Take former Slovenian swimmer Sara Isakovic. During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, with one length remaining in the 200-meter freestyle final, disaster struck. Isakovic misjudged her final flip turn, and as she uncoiled her legs to explode off the wall, she could feel her toes just barely graze it.

    “I remember thinking, This is not happening! Why now?” Isakovic, 25, recalls. “Then, in a split second, I was able to refocus.” Riding on a surge of adrenaline, she tore down the last length to nab a silver medal, breaking the previous world record and missing gold by just 0.15 seconds.

    Isakovic is now a research assistant in psychiatry at the University of California at San Diego, where she works with Martin Paulus, a leading player in the search for brain–training techniques that will enable the rest of us to develop elite-level mental agility. Says Isakovic, “What we’re interested in is how you build resilience, how you train your brain to be as tough as your body.”

    For the past five years, Paulus and his team have employed advanced imaging tools to understand the difference between normal and ultra-resilient brains. They’ve discovered that the distinction often resides in the interplay between two areas: the insular cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex, or MPC. The insular cortex monitors data from the outside world and from within the body—muscle tension, glucose levels, blood pressure, blood-oxygen levels. The MPC, meanwhile, decides how strongly to respond to those signals.

    The goal, then, is to train your brain to anticipate, and not overreact, to unexpected stress. For a whitewater kayaker, that means staying calm and making the right strokes after getting caught in a hole; for a runner, it means pushing through the pain to stay on pace late in a race.

    In a series of studies starting in 2009, Paulus and his colleagues put hardened Marines, elite adventure racers, and regular Joes through various cognitive tasks while monitoring their brain activity in real time with an fMRI scanner. To provide an “aversive stimulus”—a scaled-down version of the stress they’d experience when coming under enemy fire or taking a wrong turn during a multi-day race—the researchers occasionally interfered with subjects’ breathing, restricting airflow to masks they were wearing.

    The subjects knew the sensation was coming but not always when. Some members of the control group panicked and had to be removed from the scanner, but the Marines and the adventure racers handled the scenario with ease. In the fMRI scanner, they showed higher activation in the insular cortex immediately before the restricted breathing started. They had, essentially, prepared themselves for the unpleasant sensation. Then, while it was happening, the same region of the brain showed lower activ-ity and carried on with business as usual. “That kind of anticipation and preparation is critical,” Paulus says.

    The goal, then, is to train your brain to anticipate, and not overreact, to unexpected stress. For a whitewater kayaker, that means staying calm and making the right strokes after getting caught in a hole; for a runner, it means pushing through the pain to stay on pace late in a race. Paulus believes that neurofeedback training, in which subjects try to alter their resiliency-related brain patterns based on real-time data from an fMRI scanner, is not far off.

    For now, the most promising technique is one that’s already familiar to many professional athletes: meditation. Paulus’s latest study put 30 Marine recruits through a program in mindfulness, an approach to self-awareness with roots in Buddhist teachings. “You learn to monitor how your body actually feels while suspending judgment about it,” Paulus explains.

    In the study, subjects followed an eight-week course that taught simple breathing exercises, sitting and walking meditation, yoga, and techniques like “body scans,” in which they focused awareness on each part of their bodies, progressing from head to toe.

    Brain scans before and after revealed that the trainees acquired some of the same brain patterns that the Marines and adventure racers had shown in the earlier experiments. More surprising, the changes persisted a year later. The biggest effects were in the MPC, which moderates knee-jerk responses to external stimuli.

    Of course, there are many routes to the same goal. “There are similarities between mindfulness and the state of focus that athletes achieve through long hours of repetitive training,” says Christopher Bergland, a triple-Ironman champion who covered 153.8 miles to set a 24-hour treadmill world record in 2004. That state of mindfulness helped him push his endurance to new levels, he says.

    Isakovic, too, certainly honed her ability to listen closely and dispassionately to her body’s feedback during the many years and countless hours spent staring at the bottom of a practice pool. But with the tools of neuro-science, the process can be made more efficient and accessible, Paulus believes. “We can’t all be Olympic athletes, that’s clear,” he acknowledges. “But if our brains are trained properly, we can do amazing things beyond what most people imagine.”

    You may want to try out the Head Space or Calm apps to get an easy introduction to meditation.

    https://www.calm.com

    https://www.headspace.com