Welcome to the Tailwind Coaching podcast archives. You’ll find all the back editions of the Tailwind Coaching Podcast along with show notes and any downloads that accompany them. Feel free to peruse the archives and share the episodes with your friends. You can also subscribe to the Tailwind Coaching Podcast on iTunes, and if you do, leave a review and tell me what you think.
If you have any comments, questions, or have an idea for a future episode of the podcast, contact me and let me know.
Functional Threshold Power is better known as FTP. What is it? What do we do with it? Why is it so important to my cycling?
Athletes almost always have these questions when they begin training with power. When an athlete begins their training plans to prepare for next season's goal races, gran fondos and centuries, they need to address this metric. They're looking for the best and quickest ways to improve their performances, but many seem to be having trouble with the training concepts behind FTP. Questions have predominated about what it is, why we use it and how we calculate it for a long time.
In this latest edition of the Tailwind Coaching Podcast, I attempt to dispel some of the myths behind FTP: how we test it, why we need to know it and how we use it.
After the jump, look into functional threshold power a little more and learn how you can use it to enhance your training.
Some recent commentary on being afraid of “not having the fitness” to participate in group rides (along with some comments that I was a little critical of group rides in my last podcast) has inspired this week's podcast. This week I'll be discussing the skills necessary to succeed in group rides, even if the group happens to be stronger than you.
I'll be discussing some techniques and skills that will help give novice group riders and riders with lesser amounts of fitness a fighting chance of hanging with the group and accomplishing their group ride training goals.
I'll cover the following:
One of the biggest questions that I've faced in the past few weeks has been in relation to structured training plans. I've heard the following enough times to realize that it's a huge concern for many cyclists:
What about group rides? Where do those fit into my training plans?
Well, the short answer is that if you know the group dynamic and what fundamentals your plan is focusing on, you can often integrate group rides successfully. For a more detailed description, listen to the podcast below.
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If you're thinking about racing Tour of the Battenkill this coming season, you'll need to think about training soon (and registering soon: November 15th!) If you want to do more than just finish (or just suffer, as people overwhelmingly chose in a Facebook poll) then you'll need to train a few specific things.
It won't be enough to go out and do 65-mile rides, you'll need to focus on things like core stability, muscular endurance, cadence range, cadence control and VO2 max repeatability. In this podcast, I discuss why you need those facets of fitness in order to survive this monster.
As always, comments are welcome.
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Since a written post on the Lance Armstrong fallout would be far too long to actually read, I've pulled together a podcast to discuss some of my personal thoughts on the fallout from the USADA and UCI reports.
As always, comments and questions are welcome.
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