Do you want to use your training time effectively, be more comfortable on the bike, be safer by improving your braking and cornering techniques, or learn how to ride in groups or multi-day events? Reasons for investing to coaching vary, and racing strategy and techniques are only two of many.

Here are just 10 reasons people benefit from coaching. How many of these would help you be a happier cyclist?

Motivation
Achieving a defined goal
Efficient and effective training sessions
A structured and customised training plan (based on your current fitness, goals, time available, etc.)
Basic techniques, such as using clipless pedals, climbing seated versus standing, optimal gear selection
Advanced techniques, such as descending and cornering quick and safe, group riding, pacing
Nutrition on and off the bike
Bike set-up and comfort versus speed
Planning multi-day rides (recovery, bike set-up, training modifications, nutrition, clothing, etc.)
Using and analysing data, such as training zones, power and heart rate monitors, Strava/Garmin

In subsequent blog posts, we will look at each of these 10 reasons in more detail. After all, might improving YOU be a better way to invest in your cycling than spending more money on your bike?

At Velocity, we take a integrated approach by combing Fitness Testing and Bike Fit with Coaching. This gives you complete package to improve YOU and help you go further, faster and achieve your cycling goals. There no point following a training program unsuited to your current level of fitness, and it’s vital your position on the bike helps you ride powerfully and comfortably while avoiding repetitive strain injury.

How will a professional Bike Fit improve my cycling?

18/03/2014

Coach Murphy

Bike Fit, KOPS, Bike Fitting — Knee over Pedal Spindle

When you’re comfortable on the bike, you’ll ride with more power and confidence, but the top benefit of a quality bike fit is avoiding injury.

You turn you legs over around 10,000 times every time you ride two hours, so cycling can be a recipe for repetitive strain injuries. All three contact points (pedals, saddle and handlebars) can be adjusted to find YOUR ideal fit and avoid the most common cycling injuries.

Knees, lower back, feet/ankles wrists, shoulders and hips are the most common areas for injury. Pre-existing problems, such as poor flexibility, previous injuries, leg length imbalance, collapsed arches, can be accommodated through your bike fit if they are correctly diagnosed and understood.

Andy Pruitt wrote the definitive book on bike fit, “Complete Medical Guide to Cyclists”, and here are his top three rules.

Make the bike fit the body, don’t make the body fit the bike: While improvements can be made in flexibility over time, it’s vital to make the bike fit you and not the other way around. Importantly, it’s not just the bike, the angle of your cleats and the arch support provided by your shoe affect the tracking of your knee, and the top injury among cyclists is patellar tendinitis, the inflammation of the tendon structure supporting the knee cap.
Dynamic bike fit is better than static bike fit: When you are pedaling, your are constantly moving on the bike. As you pedal the angle of your foot changes throughout your pedal stroke. Can you replicate the exact angle at the bottom of your pedal stroke when you static on the bike? Angle measurements taken while your sitting motionless can vary dramatically with those taken while you’re pedaling.
Remember the fit window. What works for a svelte 25 year old professional cyclist with a physio and masseuse may not work for you. Systems that fit you to a prescribed set of angles do not take into account critical variables, such as previous injuries, flexibility and the natural orientation of your feet (straight ahead, toe in or toe out). As a result, their recommendations are not sufficiently customised for you.

We can also you find the ideal balance between aerodynamics and comfort. Michael Hutchinson, author of Faster and winner of over 50 national titles explains, “Most of the drag comes from the rider, not the bike, and just because were fashioned by evolution for every purpose other than aerodynamics, doesn’t mean you don’t have to make the best of it”

There is little point putting you into your most aerodynamic position, however, if you are unable to breathe properly and lose 20% of your power and endurance. By adjusting your position and simultaneously measuring your power output and heart rate, we can objectively determine a balance point.

If aerodynamics are particularly important to reach your goals, we can experiment with more aggressive positions and give you body a chance to adapt to a new position over a period of weeks before measuring your power output again.

Why are Functional Thresholds (FTP & FTHR) so important?

18/03/2014

Coach Murphy

Cycle Coaching Fitness testing No Comments

Cycling is an endurance sport supported by your body’s ability to burn carbohydrates and fats in your muscles and generate energy. There are two primary energy systems, Aerobic and Anaerobic. One of those is sustainable for hours and the other can only be sustained for minutes before the build up of waste products in your muscles forces you to stop. Understanding where YOUR threshold is between these systems and being able to work with it and improve it to increase you power and endurance is the primary goal of training.

The aerobic systems burns fats and carbohydrates efficiently, and the by-products are energy, water and CO2. You can use this system for hours with only gradual build up of fatigue, but there is a limit on how much power you can generate in a given period of time. The anaerobic system burns only carbohydrates, and it does so very quickly to generate a sharp increase is energy, but it does it inefficiently. It generates lactic acid as a by-product, which builds up in your muscles causing a burning sensation and rapid fatigue, so you can only use it for a very limited period before your body shuts down.

The Functional Threshold is the point at which you body moves from using the aerobic system as the primary source of energy and the anaerobic system takes over. This happens when the demands of your muscles exceed what your aerobic system can supply, such as when you’re sprinting or climbing hard. This threshold can be measured by your heart rate (Functional Threshold Heart Rate – FTHR) or power (Functional Threshold Power – FTP).

So, why is know the thresholds so important? Firstly, you can use these to pace your efforts to go as fast as possible without causing extreme fatigue. For example, if you’re climbing a long hill and you know your FTHR is 150 beats/minute, you can limit your effort to keep your heart rate at that level. In that way you go as fast as possible without generating excess lactic acid. Secondly, if you’re racing, you can decide when you’re going to go “into the red zone” and learn how long you need to drop back down below threshold to recover before making another surge. Most importantly, by understanding where your threshold is, we can develop training programs to both improve your endurance and raise your threshold, so you generate more power before you reach the threshold and Go Further, Faster.