Cycling coaching mixed with other sports...?

Nickodemus

HI,

i know there have been some threads on here about coaching, and a lot of people have said that it can make really significant gains to performance, and am wondering if it is worth me spending money on a cycling coach and am hoping for a bit of advice.

Basically, i used to cycle a lot, did the odd race, did the Etape a few times, did quite a few TTs, and I've got a few triathlons under belt (hate running though!).

For some idea of performance, i guess you could say i'm a bit above average, but nothing to shout home about. In the road races i'm tactically inept and tend to spend way too much time on the front and then get blown out the back in the last mile or so. In last year's Etape i did it in 7:23 (can't find the results for 2005). My PB on a 10TT is 22:38, and 55:56 on a 25TT.

After last years Etape i stopped riding for a while, and then joined a rowing club to re-visit an old hobby that i used to do at Uni, and haven't been on the bike at all since last summer.

Really enjoyed the rowing, but it's so hard on the marriage when you have to get up at 4:45am a few times a week to go rowing, and the days you're not doing that you're rowing until 9pm in the evening, having to organise yourself around the rest of the crew. Also, weekends are totally taken up on the water.
For this reason i'm going to have to learn to scull if i want to continue rowing, so that i can go out on my own, and try to keep the mrs happy. I obviously have a coach for rowing, and am keen to race in a single scull next season.

I got on my bike again on Thurs last week, for the first time since last summer, to go and do a local club 10TT, just for a laugh, and to see if i still enjoyed it....that's when i got my PB and i loved it!!!

Since then, i've been out a few times on progressively longer rides, and other than a sore ass, I'm hooked again.

What i'm wondering is whether i could successfully do both sports, assuming I have the time to train?

I work from home, so can easily jump on the bike or go sculling in the middle of the day and not have it effect my wife at all, so hours shouldn't be a problem as i wouldn't be organising myself around 3/4/8 other guys.

Let's say my initial target would be 10 and 25TT's; to get faster over those shorter distances (I'm assuming this would mean i wouldn't have to do silly, long hours the whole time), and the rowing and TT physiological systems should be fairly similar (that's a guess...please correct me if i'm wrong!).

I was thinking that a cycling coach would be able to help me focus my time on the bike to get the absolute best use of the time given that i would be splitting my time between the bike and the boat. Do you think this makes sense and would be a good use of money? I do really want to see just how fast i can go on a bike (just a shame i sold my TT bike 6 months ago, so for now it's going to have to be all on a road bike with aero bars!), but don't want to waste money.

If any coaches or anyone with experience of this out there has any advice i'd really appreciate it!

markjohnson-coaching

Hi,

I specialize in nutrition & corrective/performance coaching, I'm a C.H.E.K HLC & PT, with over 10 years experience, a keen cyclist, workout in the gym & row indoors (or try too ).

Without going in to lots of details:

Training quality verses quantity will be of paramount importance if you want to perform well in both rowing & TT's/cycling.

Correct nutrition is absolutely critical both for performance & recovery, get this wrong & you'll go backwards for sure, your times/performance will get worse, you'll start picking up viruses & start to show all the many other signs of over stressing (over training) your body.


Regards the similarities with rowing & TT's:
I rode in Mallorca a few years ago with 4 elite rowers & bases on a weeks cycling with them, rowing does cross over well to TT type efforts, one of the guys was on a nail of a bike & was awesome on the flat, left us all for dead from Alcudia & didn't see him again until 1919 bar in Pollenca! I also do 3km intervals on the indoor rower & my climbing has improved this year.

Without doing a full physiological assessment on you I can't say for sure but the key thing for you to sustain what you want to do is;

A. individual specific nutrition (food = a life giving force)
B. Quality recovery, active, passive & total
C. Quality sleep
D. Good hydration
E. Time, type & intensity specific training sessions bases around your key events

Hope that gives you a little to go on with, as I say I can't comment fully as I know no details about your nutrition, lifestyle, exercise, total stress load etc etc

You'll find the videos & articles on my website helpful, there also a fantastic book on my community page by Paul Chek HOW TO EAT MOVE & BE HEALTHY which is well worth buying, it alone is worth lots of £££££ worth of coaching advice.

Hope you find my website useful, please pass on my website to others

Kind regards

Mark
C.H.E.K HLC & PT
http://www.markjohnson-coaching.350.com/home_page.htm

Alex_Simmons/RST

Nickodemus wrote:

i know there have been some threads on here about coaching, and a lot of people have said that it can make really significant gains to performance, and am wondering if it is worth me spending money on a cycling coach and am hoping for a bit of advice.

It can (good coaching anyway) as to whether it's worth it, is really a question for you.

At the end of the day it is good training in the right doses that will elicit good performance (along with looking after yourself).

Whether you know (or can work out) how to do that yourself, or would better benefit from a coach guiding you is hard to say. But a good coach already knows how to assess you and what training will best work for you and represents a faster path to achieve goals.

Nickodemus wrote:

What i'm wondering is whether i could successfully do both sports, assuming I have the time to train?

Multi-sport athletes, by their nature, have to compromise to some extent the potential performance attainable in each individual sport.

Having said that, rowing and cycling do have good cross over in that they are fundamentally aerobic endurance sports using large muscle groups, especially the legs. The closest parallel to rowing would be track pursuit and short TTs, due to the high end aerobic demands plus some contribution from utilising one's anaerobic work capacity. Plenty of rowers have moved across to become excellent cyclists.

I would say you can do well in both with focussed training but if you were looking to excel in either (to your personal performance potential) then you'd want to focus on one event most of the time.

Nickodemus wrote:

I was thinking that a cycling coach would be able to help me focus my time on the bike to get the absolute best use of the time given that i would be splitting my time between the bike and the boat. Do you think this makes sense and would be a good use of money?

Yes, but I am biased since I am a cycling coach - and it's our profession to get the best out of people. I also coach multi-sport athletes who are focussing on their cycling performance. There are other professional coaches as well that contribute here (e.g. Ric Stern, Ruth Eyles).

Certainly an experienced coach with solid understanding of the science of training can help you make the most of your training time. As has been said, it's more about quality than quantity, or more to the point the quantity of quality.

Apart from coaching, we also offer custom training plans which might be a budget solution to consider. These are a lower cost option, with training tailored to your goals, fitness, training time availabilty etc but without the ongoing contact (and cost) that goes with coaching. Just click the link in my signature line below for more on that or coaching information.

Nickodemus

Thanks guys.

I'm pretty sure i will sort myself out with some coaching. With the goal to be 10s and 25TTs.

Alex- I would LOVE to do track pursuit, but the nearest velodrome to me is in Hayling Island, and even that's almost 1.5hours away from me, so it's not particularly practical, unless you can just do races at the track and do your training on roads/turbo....?

I have a HR monitor which i never use (normally just use perceived effort), but don't have a power meter (apart from on the turbo trainer). Is it possible to have good coaching sessions/plans drawn up without this equipment or is it completely essential? Power meters obviously aren't cheap!!

Cheers.

Puzzler

I must say that I improved greatly after getting a coach.
A structured training plan that you can follow in the full knowledge that you're training correctly is invaluable. If you're commited to training then it makes sense to do it correctly.

I know its different for everyone and it does depend on your starting point, but I improved by 2mins15sec for a 10tt and over 6mins for a 25tt after following a personalised training plan for one season.

It wasn't with Alex but I've heard only good things about him and RST.

Nickodemus

Puzzler wrote:

I must say that I improved greatly after getting a coach.
A structured training plan that you can follow in the full knowledge that you're training correctly is invaluable. If you're commited to training then it makes sense to do it correctly.

I know its different for everyone and it does depend on your starting point, but I improved by 2mins15sec for a 10tt and over 6mins for a 25tt after following a personalised training plan for one season.

It wasn't with Alex but I've heard only good things about him and RST.

Thanks Puzzler. Always good to get someone's experiences from the client side.

Do you mind me asking who you did use for your coaching?

Puzzler

No problem

I used John Morgan
www.cycling-coach.co.uk

Alex_Simmons/RST

Nickodemus wrote:

Alex- I would LOVE to do track pursuit, but the nearest velodrome to me is in Hayling Island, and even that's almost 1.5hours away from me, so it's not particularly practical, unless you can just do races at the track and do your training on roads/turbo....?

I wasn't suggesting you do pursuits, merely pointing out the physiological equivalent event to rowing (sort of like 1500m running as well).

Nickodemus wrote:

I have a HR monitor which i never use (normally just use perceived effort), but don't have a power meter (apart from on the turbo trainer). Is it possible to have good coaching sessions/plans drawn up without this equipment or is it completely essential? Power meters obviously aren't cheap!!

Of course but knowing you are executing relies on having a good inbuilt/tuned PE meter.

Nickodemus

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

Nickodemus wrote:

Alex- I would LOVE to do track pursuit, but the nearest velodrome to me is in Hayling Island, and even that's almost 1.5hours away from me, so it's not particularly practical, unless you can just do races at the track and do your training on roads/turbo....?

I wasn't suggesting you do pursuits, merely pointing out the physiological equivalent event to rowing (sort of like 1500m running as well).

Yeah it's cool, i was just pointing out that, in an ideal world, I would be setting my sights on the pursuit.