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Effective “Off Season” Training – Podcast #46

With the onset of cold and damp weather many cyclists abandon outdoor riding in favor of sitting on the sofa.  Granted, with the NFL season half way done and the drama heating up like an episode of “The League”, it may sound really fun to just kick your heels back for a few months and give in to holiday laziness.  But should you really just back completely off activity for a few months to recover?  Should you spend it doing nothing but 12 ounce curls (I.E. drinking copious amounts of beer?)  Should you throttle your activity back so much that you put on 10 pounds of insulation?  Well, I'm going to say, unequivocally…

NO!

You should be spending your off season (or “not so” off season, as I talked about back in podcast #27) doing something that will ensure your success in the coming months.  This could be cross training, this could be hitting the gym and lifting some big heavy things, or it could mean sitting on the indoor trainer.  But which of those things will help you create an effective off season?

In today's podcast I'll talk about building a solid base of fitness during the cold months.  I'll cover:

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Lost Art of the Group Ride – Podcast #45

Everyone loves a group ride, right?  Group rides are chances to catch up with friends, get in a good workout, chase a  few stronger riders or tear the legs off your riding buddies.  But a group ride is as much a dance as it is a ride, and there are a number of things you SHOULD have learned along your journey as a cyclist. Whether you are a group riding sage or a newly minted rookie, you should observe the rules, the etiquette and the sanctity of the holiest of Sunday cycling practices (aside from watching the pros on Eurosport, of course…)

In today's episode of the Tailwind Coaching Podcast, I'll wax poetic on those things that you need to have learned in order to execute the perfect group ride, and I'll cover a couple of things in the cycling news sphere that caught my attention.

That said, today's podcast will include:

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Setting Tempo

[dc]F[/dc]rom the latin “tempus” meaning time, tempo has come to represent a large number of definitions across different parts of life.  Typically read on a page of music notes, determining how fast or slow a piece should be played, it takes on new meaning when applied to cycling.  We've all heard the ubiquitous phrase of “setting the tempo”, usually at the front of a peloton (note that said phrase is often augmented by specific adjectives denoting suffering, like “infernal” or “blistering”.  And more often than not, someone of the Jens or Fabian stature is the said disher out of epic pain, simply adding to the mystique of the setting of that tempo.  But I digress…)  We've come to realize pace, speed and tempo are almost interchangeably linked, much like the internal tempos we become acutely aware of the deeper we delve into the cave of pain, either of our own volition or that of those sitting in front of us.

Getting back to tempus, we could articulate many different bodily machinations as fitting it's definition.  The pounding of our heart as we grind our way up our favorite climb is a perfect example of the rhythmic undertones of tempus.  Our breathing falls into this category too, as inexorable as the march of the second hand on your wrist watch.  But in cycling, as in the face of a clock, we think of tempo as the metronomic revolutions of our legs upon the pedals, incessantly ticking away a beat to accompany the rhythm section playing throughout our bodies.

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Choosing A Power Meter – Podcast #44

Power: it's the ultimate in training metrics.  Nothing beats the pinpoint accuracy of training with an output measurement such as power.  You can know at each moment of each ride how hard you are working, if you're burning matches and if you're going to be paying for this effort later in the day.  The question most people end up asking themselves is “which power meter should I choose?”  And rightly so.

With the myriad of power meter options on the market, offering tons of different features at different price points, where should you start looking in your quest for technological bliss?  And when it comes time to plunk down your hard earned cash on (arguably) the biggest training tool you'll have (aside from a coach), which one should you choose?

In this episode of the Tailwind Coaching Podcast, I talk about some of the ins and outs of choosing a power meter, from considering how much mechanical ability you have to how much money is in your bank account.  As you listen, you'll hear me discuss:

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Strength Training For Cyclists – Part 2 (Podcast #43)

In part 1 of “Strength Training For Cyclists” I talked about how your body adapts to different kinds of exercise.  We learned about the concept of different pathways that create physiological adaptation and a touched on a couple of ways these pathways interact with one another, turning you into a sharp physical specimen where there used to be couch potato.

But there was a problem: I covered all these concepts about how your body uses some common physiological mechanisms to build fitness in different muscle types, that's true.  But the one thing not talked about was how to put all that sciency stuff together.  I'll tackle that in detail in today's podcast, so click through the break and check out the show notes.

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