Do core stability exercises improve your cycling performance? 🚀

@SitkoSebastian et al recently published a trial comparing 3 training strategies:

1. Cycling only
2. Cycling + core training
3. Cycling + strength training

The results were quite interesting… 2/ They included 36 well-trained riders. All with racing licences at various levels (from pros to amateurs).

To give you an idea, the group mean W for 20 minutes were 5 W/kg.

12 riders in each group trained with the respective strategies for 12 weeks.

After 12 weeks…

Your durability can make or break a race result.

Here are 5100 words on how durability impacts your performance, summarised in 12 tweets.

Along with 3 exciting new studies that deepens your understanding of the concept.

Importantly...

wattkg.com/science-of-dur… 2/ durability can be explained as:

The TIME until you fatigue & the MAGNITUDE of drop in performance.

Interestingly...

Age group cyclists, keep it simple, stupid.

Spend some time in each intensity zone:

1. LIT
2. MIT
3. HIT

With most of the time in 1, least in 3. Works for elite as well as recreational riders. (some references below..) 2/ Recreational riders training 5 sessions per week:

1 high intensity interval, 1 threshold interval per week, rest low intensity work (predominantly).

18% improvement in power at 4 mmol/L in 16 weeks. (Granted, off of a low training status).

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38251291/

Why do training plans work? (opinion piece)

I often wonder if a big part of the reason training plans work is because it helps you override the emotional aspect of decision making.

In the book Descartes' Error, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio demonstrates the impact of...🧵 2/ emotions on decision making with a peculiar example:

Damasio describes a patient who had recently undertaken surgery for a brain tumor. The surgery was successful, leaving the patient with only minute structural brain damage.

The injured athlete can adopt either 2 mentalities:

🤒The "someone-fix-me" mentality
🫡 The "I'll-fix-me" mentality

The difference is dramatic. Best display of the latter I've ever seen was an 88 year old patient of mine.

(Shared with consent)...-> 2/ Imagine being 88 yrs old and feeling like you did a 5 minute all-out TT when walking 300 meter. That was the case for my patient.

My patient had a totally occluded superficial femoral artery. His main route of blood supply to the leg, completely blocked.

These patients get..

Another favorite training anecdote from the Seiler & Tønnesen 2009 gold mine of a paper: 🚴‍♂️🏆

Knut Anders Fostervold, the Champions League footballer who turned cyclist.

Quite a few interesting points in his n=1. Already at 12 years of age, he ran 5K in 17:24 🫡

After...->🧵 2/ retiring from soccer 30 yrs old, Fostervold picked up cycling.

He relatively quickly reached a VO2 max of 81 ml/kg/min and a W at anaerobic threshold of 4.5 W/kg 🫀

This with training heavily focused around interval sessions close to VO2 max and around AT.

Typically...

"This CONTRADICTS what the best do!"

Great Q from athlete after my post on decreasing intervals:

"The 🇳🇴 X-country skiing team prefers longer intervals. Very little training above anaerobic threshold.

World Champ HC Holund claims he's too old to ⬆️ his VO2 max. Instead... 2/ he must train to increase his ability to work close to VO2 max for longer duration. His coach Nossum says the same.

I'm older than Holund. Surely it's even less useful for me to pursue VO2 max gains?"

My response:

"Well, yes. But also, no. And here is why..." 🤔

5 ways to improve your VO2 max 🫀

Working at close to VO2 max is commonly considered a hallmark of effective training to increase maximal oxygen consumption.

So how do you maximize the time spent at high VO2 values? Let’s look at 5 possible ways -> 🧵 2/ 2:1 WORK & RECOVERY 🌴

Rozenek et al found that a 2:1 ratio of work & recovery resulted in a greater % of VO2 max than did 1:1 or 4:1 ratios (1).

Rønnestad et al later demonstrated good results with the 2:1 ratio in cyclists doing 30/15 HIIT (2).

wattkg.com/short-interval…

🩺 Sports medicine

You're attending an athlete (triathlete) with acute onset of:

🌬️heavy breathing
😷productive cough
🩸 blood stained sputum.

Upon auscultation you hear crackles over both lung fields, and SpO2 is 92%.

What is your diagnosis? What do you do? A thread -> 🧵 2/ The above is a classic presentation of swimming induced pulmonary edema (SIPE). Also described as "immersion pulmonary edema".

SIPE is a relatively frequent presentation in athletes involved in swimming events (long-distance swim, triathlon, diving)

A brief summary of SIPE..

⚡️ Are you strong where it matters? 🚴‍♂️

Durability emerges as a predictor of success in cycling races.

Kind of makes you wonder why athletes keep testing performance in a rested state only.

A thread on the emerging research on durability since 2020 -> 🧵 2/ DEFINITION

@maunder_ed @StephenSeiler and colleagues defined durability as a physiological entity w. 2 components:

1. TIME of onset of physiology changes
2. MAGNITUDE of deterioration

The point being to identify phys. changes taking place during prolonged exercise. Why?

⚡️For cyclists, durability appears an important element of real-life performance 🚴‍♂️

Yet, it receives surprisingly little attention.

Here is a summary on the rapidly emerging knowledge on durability, what it is & how it matters to your race performance.

wattkg.com/science-of-dur… 2/ @maunder_ed @StephenSeiler et al wrote a review in 2021 Sports Medicine, suggesting current profiling of endurance athletes does not take into account the shifts in physiological attributes during prolonged exercise.

A wave of interesting research would follow in their wake..

You’re attending a triathon when you encounter an athlete by his bike. He’s complaining of:

🥵feeling unwell
💥no leg power
🌬out of breath

He’s been resting for 30 min and you count his respiratory rate to 40/min. He’s coughing.

What do you do? 2/ We’ve had several athletes with the above presentation over the years at NXTRI. This presentation is quite typical for swimming induced pulmonary edema (SIPE).

A few selected slides from my presentation at a conference for Norwegian doctors and sports scientists yesterday.

💥The heart rate formula 220 minus age is a holy cow with sour milk.

If people knew its origin it would probably be less commonly cited.

In 2002, Robergs and Landwehr did an interesting review of this formula...🧵-> 2/ Textbooks in which the [HRmax = 220-age] formula appears indirectly affirms a connection to Karvonen, says Robergs & Landwehr.

However, Karvonen did not study maximal HR. Upon contacting Karvonen it became clear he never published original work on this formula. So he...

If you think adaptation is out the window because you've passed the age of 50, think again.

The human body is ingenious by design.

Imagine being 88 and feeling like you did a 5 minute all-out TT when walking 300 meter. That was the case for my patient (shared w. consent) -> 2/ My patient had a totally occluded superficial femoral artery. His main route of blood supply to the leg, completely blocked.

These patients get hypoxia on exertion, and typically severe leg pain (think all-out TT) upon light walking.

His maximal walking distance was 300 m.

⚡️ Higher power outputs with uphill vs level cycling 🚴‍♂️

A recent study by @pl_valenzuela @mmateo_march @xabimu @ZabalaMikel, A Lucia, @PallaresJG and @david_barranco examined the interaction between terrain and power output.

🧵With some interesting findings -> 2/ What did they do?

They examined power data of 98 professional cyclists from training and racing. 1074 files from each cyclists. They analysed for power records across 1, 5, 10 and 20 min duration.

They only wanted to look at true maximal efforts...

💥 When Rønnestad & Hansen applied a scientific approach to train an amateur cyclist, his VO2 max increased from 73 to 87 ml/kg/min in 1 year (58 weeks).

🧵 Here is a thread on their approach... ->

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28657821/ 2/ Who was he?

The rider was a 37 year old male amateur cyclist.

He had trained regularly since youth, and had been tested at their lab over several years. His prior VO2 max results ranged 65-76 ml/kg/min.

Power at 3 mmol/L [La] ranged 3.4 to 4.1 W/kg prior to the study.

⚡️ Optimising HIT intervals for cyclists 🚴

High intensity intervals performed with fast-start or variable power seem to increase time spent at above 90% of VO2 max.

The backdrop... 🧵 ->

wattkg.com/fast-start-int… 2/ Time above VO2 max

..the backdrop being that spending time at workloads over 90% of VO2 max is typically described as a sign of effective high intensity interval workouts.

⚠️ Don't use your indoor FTP test for outdoor intensity control (or vice versa) 🚴‍♂️

Research by @EllLipski @DajoSanders et al suggests indoor & outdoor test W differs considerably.

🧵A thread → 2/ What did they do?

They had 14 rider from World Tour and UCI Continental level perform 4 maximal effort tests of 1 min, 3 min, 5 min and 14 min. All tests were repeated indoor and outdoor.

Hi! If you’re among my 1142 new followers the last 8 weeks:

I..
-> am a medical doctor with passion for cycling 🚴
-> make training resources for cyclists⏱️

..to aid comprehension & promote knowledge-based training 🎓

Here’s some resources I’ve created: wattkg.com/cycling-scienc… 2/ One ambition is to introduce athletes to the existing base of (scientific) knowledge. And to highlight principles & methods that will yield a big bang for your buck.

Here is one such discussion on strength training. wattkg.com/strength-train…

⚡ Sprint training is a Swiss army knife for cyclists. Even modest amounts of sprints in low intensity rides may benefit several traits in elite riders 🧵 A thread → 2/ Work by @AlmquistNicki et al suggests off-season sprinting may carry over to progress in the following base training. Elite riders who sprinted in off-season reduced drop in 20 min W from 3% to 1%. Which in itself is a positive result. However..pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33041839/

🦾 Strength training for cyclists cause many positive ripple effects. But how do you know if it’s a good fit for you? A pragmatic algorithm with rationales presented below 🧵 A thread → 2/ Who should pass on lifting for now? If you're new to cycling, you’ll get faster from simply riding more. If you’re pressed for time, your bike may bring more joy than an indoor gym. If struggling with recovery, strength training may complicate matters.