Do I need a coach

okgo

markhewitt1978 wrote:

NUFCrichard wrote:

I think very few people really reach a plateau where they simply can't improve anymore. .

Quite often even professional cyclists make that change and breakthrough from being ok to excellent; Wiggins comes to mind.

Nah, he just lost more weight.

napoleond

Just happened upon this. 'Defining and developing aerobic capacity'...

https://attachment.fbsbx.com/file_downl ... EzDirVqOXZ

BenderRodriguez

okgo wrote:

markhewitt1978 wrote:

NUFCrichard wrote:

I think very few people really reach a plateau where they simply can't improve anymore. .

Quite often even professional cyclists make that change and breakthrough from being ok to excellent; Wiggins comes to mind.

Nah, he just lost more weight.

Yeah, just like Armstrong did. :roll:

Don't want to get sidetracked, but the fact is that the figures given out by Wiggins, his coach and Sky regarding his changes in weight make even less sense than Armstrong's did. For one I can't really believe that the stick-thin 'old' Wiggins, the one who used to 'lose an hour a day' in the Tour, as he himself put it, had a body fat level of almost 16%, which is what he would have had to have been if the later figures he gave out were true.

Anyhow, some more wisdom from Michael Hutchinson's book The Hour.

In May 1995 I did my first 10-mile time-trial, and recorded a time of 23 minutes something. Pretty reasonable for a first go. Second time out I’d got the hang of it, and did 10 miles in 19 minutes 44 seconds. I beat thirty club riders who had been hammering away at it for years.

Since training will only get you so far, there is an obvious temptation to try something a bit more direct… And let us be clear: the drugs do work.

...I don’t make this assertion from personal experience. I was, and am, clean. That probably makes me an idiot, but I’m happy with that. At least I’m an honest idiot. I was never even in an environment where it was an available temptation, so I never had to make any real decisions about it. I can’t claim the moral high ground of a Graeme Obree, who said that he had walked out of his only pro team when he was asked to subscribe to the drug buying kitty.

…EPO makes a rider faster, and in a big way. It’s not like a training shortcut. You can exchange yourself for a whole different athlete. The rate of oxygen delivery to the working muscles is the major performance-limiting factor in aerobic sports like cycling or running - that’s what determines the VO2 max. More red blood cells means more oxygen means more speed. Much more speed. In a 40km time-trial, a race I might complete in 48 or 49 minutes, EPO would probably make me 2 or 3 minutes faster. Maybe more. In hour-record terms, it would probably mean more than 3km further. It makes all my position- and equipment-testing look pretty silly.

…The 1980s precursor to EPO, blood doping, was briefly back in vogue. Blood is taken from the rider, stored until his body has replaced it, and is then reinjected. As with EPO, it increases the number of red cells available. There is now a test for that too. But there will be something else. There always will be. There always has been. Hell, even the ancient Greeks were at it, with various herbs and plants. Cycling has such a big problem because drugs are part of the very texture of the professional sport. There was never a golden, Corinthian age of cycle racing. The heroes of the sport have always been professional, and where money is involved, every advantage will be sought, legal or not.

okgo

He weighed getting on for 80kg as a track rider, lost a bit for the road, and then lost another 6 or so KG for the tour, what doesn't make sense? His wattage figures have never drastically changed over the years from what I have read.

BenderRodriguez

okgo wrote:

He weighed getting on for 80kg as a track rider, lost a bit for the road, and then lost another 6 or so KG for the tour, what doesn't make sense? His wattage figures have never drastically changed over the years from what I have read.

Oh dear...

Ok, just for you, one illustration.

I was climbing fairly well in the 2007 Tour, but I've lost seven kilos since then: 78 to 71. It's taken nine months, in little increments, without any sort of crash diet. I've had regular check‑ups with Nigel Mitchell, the nutritionist at the Olympic team, to make sure I'm only burning fat, not any muscle. The last one was the day before the national championship, 28 June. He said I didn't have an ounce of fat left on my body. I was at 4% body fat, which is just at the point where you begin to burn muscle because there's nothing else left.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/20 ... -de-france

So, 71 kg = 4% body fat, or just under 3 kg, giving a lean mass of 68 kg. He was 78 kg when 'climbing fairly well in the 2007 Tour' and he emphasised that he had taken care not to lose any muscle, so in 2007 his lean mass must still have been around 68kg, which in turn means that in the 2007 Tour he must have been carrying 10 kg of lard giving 13% body fat. My body fat is less than that and I look like a fat pig compared to the way Wiggins looked in the 2007 Tour. I bet his actual body fat percentage in 2007 was more like 7%. Still, talking about large losses in weight has always being a favourite way for a rider to explain away transformations in their ability. Olano was another one!

Later stories from people like British Cycling's Matt Parker put the 'old', Olympic Wiggins at 82 kg, claiming that Wiggins had actually mainly lost upper body muscle, rather than fat, and yet, despite supposedly losing 10 kg of muscle from his upper body (a vast amount that should he seen him shrink from body-builder like proportion to stick thin) he has never really looked all that much different.

Plenty of other such nonsense has come from the Wiggins / Sky camp, which has already been debated to death elsewhere. Not in any way proof of doping of course. However, the consensus seems to be that if you are looking for the reasons Wiggins was transformed, the best thing to do is ignore everything that he, and Sky, put forward by way of explanation. It tends to be just too full of holes!

okgo

Oh, you're one of the tin foil hat brigade.

As you were.

okgo

Oh, you're one of the tin foil hat brigade.

As you were.

BenderRodriguez

okgo wrote:

Oh, you're one of the tin foil hat brigade.

No, I am just saying that you can't use the nonsense circulating about what Wiggins does, or did, supposedly weigh as evidence 'proving' that he did not take the traditional 'professional' approach to his Tour preparation.

napoleond

However, it may also just be misinformation from sky

BenderRodriguez

NapoleonD wrote:

Just happened upon this. 'Defining and developing aerobic capacity'...

https://attachment.fbsbx.com/file_downl ... EzDirVqOXZ

Back to the topic.

Link doesn't work for me.

BenderRodriguez

NapoleonD wrote:

However, it may also just be misinformation from sky

Quite.

One thing is for sure, if the actual figures show that that your riders are cruising along whilst putting out over 6.5 w/kg, you probably have every reason to 'massage' them a little.

mamba80

From what I ve seen, coached riders tend to make the best use of their available time, the coach introduces structure and discipline to a rider that possibly thought that's what they were doing anyway but weren't.
they then make improvements, until they reach the limit of their ability.
some people like to follow a plan and that's fine, most coaching(for a year) costs less than a set of branded carbon wheels, a decent frameset or even a 7 day camp to Majorca.

as for pro riders that suddenly break through into GC contenders (following years of mediocrity) unfortunately, history shows us that in the vast majority of cases, they cheated.

esdel

Surely the OP should let us know his goal and what his training regime is at the moment.

Not sure what a coach would cost but I bet its Money better spent on shiny stuff, when a simple but effective training plan costing £ 10 would probably have the same effect.

BenderRodriguez

mamba80 wrote:

the coach introduces structure and discipline to a rider

I think that the main benefit of using a coach is probably the fact that you are more likely to go out and so a session because you have to someone to answer to. Plus, if you are paying £100 - £500 plus a month, you won't want to feel that you are wasting your money.

napoleond

BenderRodriguez wrote:

NapoleonD wrote:

Just happened upon this. 'Defining and developing aerobic capacity'...

https://attachment.fbsbx.com/file_downl ... EzDirVqOXZ

Back to the topic.

Link doesn't work for me.

Bugger. I got to it through facebook. I'll see what I can do.

Edit: ar5e biscuits. It's an uploaded file on FB

napoleond

PM me your email address and I'll email it, managed to download the file.

BenderRodriguez

esdel wrote:

Not sure what a coach would cost but I bet its Money better spent on shiny stuff, when a simple but effective training plan costing £ 10 would probably have the same effect.

£10?

More like a minimum of £100 a month with a minimum 6 month sign-up. And that for a generic plan that, without knowing how exactly how the rider responds to training, recovers and so forth probably won't give much more than the rider could draw up themselves with a little reading.

Once a rider understands how they respond and so forth, and the basic principles of training, they might well do a better job of coaching themselves, especially as they can adapt the programme they are following every time they go out, depending on how they feel and so on.

Dave_P1

Of course, if you decide you do need / want a coach the next problem is trying to find one and asking the right questions. I see there's more and more companies appearing to offer these services but finding out who to go with could be quite a task.

LegendLust

BenderRodriguez wrote:

esdel wrote:

Not sure what a coach would cost but I bet its Money better spent on shiny stuff, when a simple but effective training plan costing £ 10 would probably have the same effect.

£10?

More like a minimum of £100 a month with a minimum 6 month sign-up. And that for a generic plan that, without knowing how exactly how the rider responds to training, recovers and so forth probably won't give much more than the rider could draw up themselves with a little reading.

Once a rider understands how they respond and so forth, and the basic principles of training, they might well do a better job of coaching themselves, especially as they can adapt the programme they are following every time they go out, depending on how they feel and so on.

My coach costs a lot less than that and every rider he coaches has a tailored plan - nothing generic.

As someone has mentioned - I'm time poor, so I wanted someone to make sure my available time is used wisely and that my training has structure to achieve my goals.

BenderRodriguez

LegendLust wrote:

My coach costs a lot less than that and every rider he coaches has a tailored plan - nothing generic.

I don't see how anyone could draw up a properly tailored plan without a detailed long-term analysis of how a rider responds to the loads placed upon them, and this along with the constant revision of any plan must surely be fairly costly.

Even at my age, training is always an exploration. For example, due to living in the Alps I usually focus on other types of aerobic exercise in the winter, such as ski-touring and cross-country skiing, plus some sessions on an indoor velodrome. It simply isn't practical to get out on the road when many of my favourite routes are blocked with snow or become part of a ski resort! This year I thought that I would have a change from the skiing and try some 'reverse periodisation', doing lots of threshold and above work on the track for a couple of months before going back to getting in some miles on the road. As I haven't done this before this has been a period of discovery, learning just how much I can do before signs of fatigue and so forth set in. How could a coach or anyone else know in advance just how I was going to respond, or when I might have reached a plateau and so forth?

It will also be interesting to see if all this threshold stuff actually makes me quicker when I start getting out into the mountains again. I know that my FTP has improved, though the return has not been great for the effort put in and I am still perhaps 10% short of what I used to be able to sustain when I was younger. For example, I can comfortably cover 41 km in an hour on my own on a bog-standard track bike with 32 plain gauge spoke Miche wheels, a road helmet and jersey and so forth, or almost 43 km/hr when doing '2 x 20s'. However, when I was able to take advantage of a break in the freezing weather to get out on the road for a few hours, I found that my pace when climbing and perceived level of fatigue was practically the same as it was this time last year when practically all I had done was play around on skis.

To be honest, I think that too many people become obsessed with finding some 'magical' programme that will produce results that no other plan would. I think that the reality is that if you stress the body sufficiently, it will respond, almost irrespective of the detailed structure of the plan you follow, and beyond that any differences are likely to be relatively marginal.

It could be that not only are the details of any bike plan that you follow not all that critical, it actually doesn't matter that much if you substitute a lot of your bike time for another activity. For example, for me at least, doing as much as 84 km in 2 hour sessions on the track, with '2 x 20's, 'pace line' sessions of an hour or more, often doing well over 50 km/hr, and so forth for the last couple of months doesn't seem to have given much more than doing some ski touring gave me in previous years, and yet specificity is supposed to be key. Oddly, I also had one my my best ever racing seasons after a winter when I spent most of my time running. What self-respecting cycle coach would have recommended that?! Similarly, when I younger and all I did was ride my bike, I once agreed to do a half marathon with some mates in a running club, with just two runs for 'training'. I ended up going round in 1 hour 25, the fastest time in the club, and the only thing that bothered me were the huge blisters that I got. Yet to listen to some people you would think that there was practically no crossover between activities.

Perhaps the most important thing is to ensure that whatever you do, you enjoy doing it!

mamba80

BenderRodriguez wrote:

Perhaps the most important thing is to ensure that whatever you do, you enjoy doing it!

here! here! sometimes folk get so carried away with ftp this or that and forget or have never known that cycling is a simple pleasure and the number one thing to improvement is enjoyment.

legendary27

I can't help thinking that the biggest conundrum in all of this is how to get a straightforward answer to a straightforward question on this forum without having to wade through three pages of people telling you what you do and don't need, whilst not knowing anything about you !!

I find the debate really interesting, but if I was the OP, I would be tearing my hair out by now.

Regards,
Gordon

BenderRodriguez

legendary27 wrote:

I can't help thinking that the biggest conundrum in all of this is how to get a straightforward answer to a straightforward question on this forum without having to wade through three pages of people telling you what you do and don't need, whilst not knowing anything about you !

That is just a reflection of the fact that, when it comes to the physiology of training, there are few 'black and white' answers, with much still being based on theorising and supposition.

Oh, and everyone responds differently in any case!

ai_1

legendary27 wrote:

I can't help thinking that the biggest conundrum in all of this is how to get a straightforward answer to a straightforward question on this forum without having to wade through three pages of people telling you what you do and don't need, whilst not knowing anything about you !!

I find the debate really interesting, but if I was the OP, I would be tearing my hair out by now.

Regards,
Gordon

Surely that's the whole point? There is no straightforward answer.
As you say yourself - we don't know much about each other - The answer would be debatable even if we had lots of detail but under the circumstances on a forum like this all contributors can do is give their opinions/suggestions. The OP will still need to decide for himself. There is no correct answer to a topic like this.
I don't think anyone is intentionally frustrating the OP!

jibberjim

LegendLust wrote:

My coach costs a lot less than that and every rider he coaches has a tailored plan - nothing generic.

So your coach earns less than he would in McDonalds?

legendary27

Don't get me wrong, I am not having a go at anyone. As I stated, I have found everything that has been written interesting and informative. Had the OP asked what people's thoughts were on whether a coach was necessary or not, then it would have been about as informative a thread as any I have seen on here. In terms of getting a response detailing the cost of coaching and providing a recommendation on a coach, not so much.

Incidentally, I do appreciate the irony of my adding to the increasing number of pages without providing an answer to the OP's question. Sorry - I'll stop now.

Regards,
Gordon

kettrinboy

Roboleeds wrote:

Despite training hard over the past year I sometimes wonder if I'm making progress with my cycling.i am therefore considering employing the services of a coach.i find myself struggling to structure a training plan that will Improve me as a cyclist,and therefore feel a coach would be beneficial.Can anybody advise me on the cost and any trainers they would recommend,I am based in Staffordshire,thanks.

Check out this outfit in Jersey, theres loads of factsheets to read up about training and they offer different levels of coaching and also a self coach manual based on your own power or even just HR data,I got the self coach manual last year and improved all my ride times/speeds on rides from 10 to 86 miles and at just 15 quid for it you cant go far wrong http://www.flammerouge.je/

Max Bridges

BenderRodriguez wrote:

legendary27 wrote:

I can't help thinking that the biggest conundrum in all of this is how to get a straightforward answer to a straightforward question on this forum without having to wade through three pages of people telling you what you do and don't need, whilst not knowing anything about you !

That is just a reflection of the fact that, when it comes to the physiology of training, there are few 'black and white' answers, with much still being based on theorising and supposition.

Oh, and everyone responds differently in any case!

Which is why coaching will always be more art than science. A program which works for most may well be useless for some. Outliers and non responders should avoid sports scientists.

LegendLust

jibberjim wrote:

LegendLust wrote:

My coach costs a lot less than that and every rider he coaches has a tailored plan - nothing generic.

So your coach earns less than he would in McDonalds?

Yes. I pick my weekly plans up from him in his cardboard box under the rail arches. I sometimes take him a Costa as a treat as well.

esdel

BenderRodriguez wrote:

esdel wrote:

Not sure what a coach would cost but I bet its Money better spent on shiny stuff, when a simple but effective training plan costing £ 10 would probably have the same effect.

£10?

More like a minimum of £100 a month with a minimum 6 month sign-up. And that for a generic plan that, without knowing how exactly how the rider responds to training, recovers and so forth probably won't give much more than the rider could draw up themselves with a little reading.

Once a rider understands how they respond and so forth, and the basic principles of training, they might well do a better job of coaching themselves, especially as they can adapt the programme they are following every time they go out, depending on how they feel and so on.

I paid £ 10 for a training plan early 2012, and i must admit all it did was focus my training and sort of ended endless miles, however it took 40 mins of a 70 mile ride.

Now i know enough about riding to know it was a combination of things that did it but a random plan to get you into a position to be a better rider is better than paying a coach, again i would repeat.

It depends on what the OP wants from a coach, what his goals and aspirations are.