February 13, 2025 • 53 mins
Overview:
Joe Friel, legendary coach and author of "The Cyclists Training Bible", "Fast After 50", and "Ride Inside" (among other titles), is back on the podcast to discuss some fundamental truths and takeaways on coaching and training. Whether you're new to training or you've been working out for decades, this is an opportunity to confirm what you've experienced and learned over the years and to discover more nuanced observations and techniques from one of the best coaches in the profession.
IN THIS EPISODE
- Importance of a high performance mindset
- Balancing the Big 3: Career, Family, Training
- How to individualize training for Time-Crunched and Time-Rich Athletes
- Overreaching vs Overtraining: Importance of scheduling rest
- Race readiness: The difference between resting and tapering
- Strength training: Why to do it, how, and when for Time-Crunched Athletes and Aging Athletes
LINKS
- Suggestions for the Aging Athlete - Joe Friel
- Motivation: Thoughts on Training #5: Motivation - Joe Friel
- Consistency: Thoughts on Training #3: Consistency Is Key - Joe Friel
- FastTalk, Joe’s New Training Bible
- Joe Friel’s Website and Books
ASK A QUESTION FOR A FUTURE PODCAST
GUEST
For endurance athletes and coaches, Joe Friel needs no introduction. A legend in the endurance coaching profession, Joe is the author of some of the most successful books on endurance training, including "The Cyclist's Training Bible", "The Triathlete's Training Bible", and "Fast After 50". He was a founder of Peaksware, creator of TrainingPeaks software. As a coach, his clients have included elite amateur and professional road cyclists, mountain bikers, and triathletes and duathletes.
HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
From the team at CTS.
This is the Time Crunch Cyclistpodcast, our show dedicated to
answering your trainingquestions and providing
actionable advice to help youimprove your performance, even
if you're strapped for time.
I'm your host, coach AdamPulford, and I'm one of the over
50 professional coaches whomake up the team at CTS.
In each episode, I draw on ourteam's collective knowledge,
(00:30):
other coaches and experts in thefield to provide you with the
practical ways to get the mostout of your training and
ultimately become the bestcyclist that you can be.
Now on to our show.
Now onto our show.
(00:50):
Welcome back, time Crunch fans.
I'm your host, coach AdamPulford.
Joe Friel is a coaching legendin endurance sport.
You've already heard from himin our mini-series on the Aging
Athlete, where we talked abouthow being consistent in your
training is really one of themost important elements for any
athlete at any level of thesport, including the ones that
are aging up in their racecategory.
But his lessons don't justapply to masters and
(01:14):
grandmasters.
In fact, his book, theCyclist's Training Bible, has
been a go-to resource for manycyclists and coaches over the
past 20 years.
His latest and fifth editionkeeps training principles that
stand the test of time and havebeen updated for the latest tech
and individualized trainingapproaches.
So today I'm back with CoachFriel to discuss key themes from
(01:37):
his book that any time crunchedor time rich athlete can apply
to their training program forbetter success in health,
fitness and performance.
Joe Friel, welcome back to theshow.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Thank you very much, Adam.
Glad to be here.
Thanks for having me again.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Yeah, no, this is fun .
Picking the brain of the coachof coaches is always super fun
to do.
So first question is why didyou decide to write the fifth
edition after so many years hadpassed from the advent of the
first one?
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Well, I wrote the first one in about 1996, the
first edition of the book and Igot around to the late 2018,
2019, 2020 era and I began torealize that, man, lots of
things have changed.
I just can't go back and hit it.
I really need to rewrite thisbook.
(02:29):
So I just threw out themanuscript I don't think I kept
the same was the table ofcontents and I just started
writing a whole new book,because there's just been so
many changes that had occurredin over gosh, a 20 year period
of time that I couldn't Icouldn't really live with myself
.
I'm going to go back and makethose, those, uh, those changes
(02:50):
yeah, no, I totally agree.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
I mean the, the, the sport has evolved at a great
level and um.
But, like I said, I think the,the, the things that you write
about right, the, the evergreenkind of coaching things that
will be here with us forever.
I mean, we'll talk about someof those today.
In a lot of this it can go backto the basics, but the advent
(03:12):
of the individualized trainingprocess too, we'll press into
that today.
But where I'd like to start iswith mindset.
So if we can first talk aboutreally, I think how you open up
in the book is adopting a highperformance mindset.
Why do you start the book likethat and what is a high
performance mindset for anathlete?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah, good question.
I always thought that themental side of the sport was
just as important as physicalside, and so when I've coached
athletes over the years, I'vespent a great deal of time
trying to understand who theythink they are as athletes and
people and if there's anythingthat's holding them back from
performing at a high level.
And you always find thesethings.
(03:57):
I've coached athletes fromnovices to olympian and, uh,
it's always the same thing.
They've got, they've got littlethings going on within their
minds that are potentialpotholes, things are going to
cause us to stop, and so I'vealways tried to figure out what
these things are and then try toput a not really quell them,
(04:19):
but try to understand them asmuch as I can help, so I can
better understand the athleteand how to work with this
particular athlete.
And so I started chapter thebook with that chapter, because
that, for me, is, uh, among thelook forward.
I'm talking to an athlete aboutcoaching them.
So you know I started down thelist of things that I look for,
(04:39):
and these things are alwaysevolving in my head.
You know, these things are notlike carved in stone and never
change.
I'm always thinking about um,what sort of things am I
learning that could apply to theathletes I've coached, and so
I've come up with a list that isstill used to this day when I
(05:01):
talk with athletes about, about.
So it's just a very importanttopic, one that cannot be
ignored.
If you ignore this, you're inhuge difficulty with that
athlete come down the roadsomeplace.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah, and and I encourage everyone to pick up
the book and learn a little bitmore we're not going to go over
the one, two, threes here inthis podcast, but we're going to
plant the seeds of kind of whatto pull out from the book.
But I think in the way of this,this mindset like starting
there.
One thing that you wrote wasattitude first, results then
(05:35):
come next.
Like you know, couldn't agreemore.
So if, if some listeners arehere and they're like what would
be like the number, I can't getthat like killer attitude.
What's one thing, one thingthat they can do kind of in
their, in their life or in theirhabits to start cultivating
that performance mindset?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah, there are lots of subset points here, I think.
First, the one I always lookfor in athletes is his
motivation.
That's key.
You you know, if the athlete isnot motivated to train, there's
nothing I can do to make thatchange.
I've I had, I'm writing anotherbook right now and inside the
book I write about one of my,one of the athletes I coached,
(06:19):
who had poor motivation.
Tremendous athlete, tremendoustalent, but he had poor
motivation and um that I couldput up with that for only one
year.
You know if, for example, ifthere's anything that came up
whatsoever during the day thatmight interfere with his uh
training that day, he wouldsimply bow to whatever the thing
was and not not work out.
(06:39):
But when it came to race day,he's a tremendous athlete.
He was really one of the bestrace day athletes I've ever
coach day.
He's a tremendous athlete.
He was really one of the bestrace day athletes ever coached.
He's just tremendous talent.
He was a former um um nationalchampion, junior national
champion in road cycling.
He had way, way too much talentbut always came back to
haunting uh.
(07:00):
Where it really hurting themost was in uh was in the base
period.
We were trying to build a bigaerobic base.
That was very low motivationfor him and so, um, those were
days.
He would miss a lot of thosedays and always just for me it
was really a challenge trying toget him to just to train and um
(07:22):
.
So that always showed up whenwe got to the long races later
in the season.
You know, we got to three, fourfive-hour races and he had a
hard time struggling to just getto the finish line.
His talent didn't mean anythingat that point, he just didn't
have the base he needed becausehe hadn't been motivated enough
during the base period toestablish that.
So I coached him for one season.
(07:44):
I said man, I can't do thisagain.
So I set him on his way byhimself.
Usually when I, if I let anathlete go, usually I'll refer
them to another coach.
Here's somebody I think couldreally help you.
But this time I didn't do thatbecause I just saw me passing my
problem on to another coach whodoesn't need more problems.
So I didn't make anysuggestions whatsoever for him
(08:07):
and he raced for a while afterthat on his own, as near as I
could tell I don't think he hada coach and didn't really last
very long and eventually droppedout and was no longer racing,
which was a shame because hejust he was.
This is a tremendously talentedathlete that could have gone a
very long way if he really puthis mind to it.
(08:29):
So that's the key thing for meis I want to look for motivation
in the athlete.
There's lots of things that gointo that.
You know, for the averageathlete, I think one thing that
really helps us to is to have atraining partner.
If your motivation is low,having a training partner really
kind of gets you out the door.
Another thing that might helpyou didn't help me with this one
athlete, but one thing thatmight help you with a low
(08:52):
motivation is having a coach.
Um, if you feel responsible tosomebody, something somebody
you're going to report to, buthow the workout went, that's
your coach, and you know thecoach is going to be looking
good, and sometimes it's areally good way to get motivated
is to hire a coach to to workwith you.
And there are lots of otherways.
I I think, for example,everybody should have a second
(09:14):
passion besides sport.
I don't know what it would be.
Whatever you're interested inbesides sport could be
woodworking or playing the fluteI don't know what it could be,
but whatever it turns you on,that's a good thing to have.
Having something besidestraining on in your sport uh,
can give you something to kindof lean back on when those days
(09:36):
when you're not really feelingreally good about yourself
because your motivation is lowand you don't really feel like
going for a workout, justknowing you've got something
there you can lean against thatmakes you happy, kind of
relieves some of the tension andallows you to make some
decisions.
That might be a little bitbetter down the road in the
future.
And there are lots of stuff wecould talk about motivation for
(09:56):
an hour all by itself, but I'llleave it at that.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Yeah, no, those are really good things, and I think
the thing that pops out to me isjust limiting distractions as
well.
I think, when you talk abouttraining coming to the forefront
and one of the things that wetalked about in the previous
podcast was focused on familycareer training I think the
little side hobbies are superimportant to remain balanced,
(10:21):
but we're not talking about hugeundertakings and we're also not
talking about diluting thefocus.
It's really keeping it tightand, rather than adding
something in to stoke motivation, I would encourage people to
look at distractions, look atthings that take away from their
focus and their energy, becauseit could just you could have
enough motivation.
You could just have it depletedby all these other things.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Yeah, yeah, good points.
It's extremely important to bemotivated, but it's the sort of
thing that you just can't turnon or turn off.
It's something that needs to bethere to be able to take
advantage of it, to be the bestathlete you possibly can be.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yeah for sure.
So as we turn to another keyconcept in your book, it's the
individualization of trainingand recovery.
When you wrote the firstedition back in 96, correct me
if I'm wrong, but I don't thinkthat the concept of
individualized training approachwas a thing.
Is that true?
Is that true?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
That's pretty much the case.
We've all turned the same wayback in those days and we've
learned an awful lot over theyears.
But the principle ofindividualization has been
around for a long time but nottaken very seriously until maybe
the last 10 years or so tobecome a much more serious topic
among athletes and coachesabout knowing what's unique
(11:47):
about you.
Everything is unique in someways.
They can't all train exactlythe same way.
We need to train in ways thatare appropriate for us and
whatever that means and thisreally is a difficult topic to
deal with and where I see mostathletes making the big mistake
in this area is they tend tolook to others to see how they
(12:09):
should train.
So if they're, if they've gotsome people they ride with, for
example, on in a group ride andsomebody impresses them, they
tend to gravitate towardwhatever that person does in
their training.
They do it also.
But you really can't count onthat.
Um, what works for one personis not likely to work for
somebody else.
I know lots of people who justhad lots of talent, like the
(12:29):
person I mentioned just a littlewhile ago, and it was natural
talent.
He just had everything goingfor him, he inherited the right
genes.
He was in the right place atthe right time when they were
handing out genetics or sportsright time when they were
handing out genetics or sportsand he came across because that.
He came across as beingextremely talented, not so much
in motivation but in terms ofhis physical ability.
(12:52):
He really had everything ittook.
If you use that guy as a model,there's lots of problems there
with how he trains.
That may not work for you.
He just was able to do thingsthat I've not seen other
athletes be able to do.
Um, he's.
For example, his bike handlingskills were amazing.
He reminded me some of the pros.
You see, uh, from time to time,we've got tremendous talent,
(13:14):
tremendous skills.
Uh, he had those skills.
He could do things with hisbike that most people can't do.
So anyway, there, that's thesort of thing you want to look
for in yourself is what?
What makes me unique?
Who am I?
Um, don't copy others methods.
Find out what works for you.
That's a very difficult thingto do, but one of the ways to do
that is to look back whenyou've had your most success.
(13:35):
When you had success, what wereyou doing that was unique at
that time?
What were you doing in trainingthat really worked out for you,
um, and then use that as amodel for how maybe you should
look at your training goingforward, not just doing things
because you see others doing itthat's perhaps one of the worst
things you can possibly do.
So and finally, I think youneed to know your strengths and
(13:57):
weaknesses what am I good at andwhat am I not so good at and
knowing those things is going togo a long ways in terms of
making decisions about yourtraining.
For example, I always havesuggested that athletes should
really focus on their weaknesses, which I call limiters.
They're a race.
Specific weakness is a limiter.
For example, if a race is arace an athlete's going to do is
(14:19):
involves a lot of climbing andthe athlete's not a good climber
, that's that's a limiter.
But if there's no climbing atall in the race it's flat then
it's not a limiter anymore.
It's a weakness, but not alimiter.
So the idea is know what you'regood at, know what your
limiters are, focus on improvingyour limiters while you
maintain your strengths, so thatthat's really the starting
place.
(14:39):
Place is who am I as an athlete, what am I good at and what am
I not good at making thatdecision will help you make
decisions down the in the futurefor all your training going
forward yeah, I, and I think Imean the individualization of
training is something that Ipreach and harp about on this
podcast quite often and in mybrain right now.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
What I'm envisioning is this slide from Dr Andy
Coggin and Tim Cusick uses it ina lot of his presentations
where we show how people canmake their power or make their
pace and effectively it's, themore aerobic we get, the more
similar and predictable we are,the more anaerobic we are, or
that we do, or the harder effortwe are, either much more
(15:23):
anaerobic or not anaerobic atall, and so finding, like your
fingerprint of the or thephenotype of an athlete is also
really important, and you talkabout some field testings and
some other things that in toolsthat people can use in your book
to help identify some of these,uh, individuality, um aspects
to help them train and recovermore and not.
(15:44):
On the recovery side, I mean wecould talk about the you know
podcasts about this too, but noteverybody recovers the same,
like some people.
Some people need the couch andTV, some people need a, you know
a book and quiet time, but youknow, decreasing stress is
always the key.
You just need to find whatworks for you in that way.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yeah, no doubt about it.
Somebody mentioned on onTwitter I read a note about that
that one guy was talking aboutsome people recharge their
batteries by being around otherpeople for extroverts, and some
people challenge you to rechargetheir batteries by being alone.
Both are okay.
There's nothing wrong with oneor the other.
It's just the way we are.
(16:24):
We're human beings andeverybody's got their own way of
of responding, so do what worksbest for you.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Yeah, and, as you can tell from my two examples, you
can probably guess what, what,uh, what vert I am on that, um.
But you know, to this point,you know, one of the questions I
was going to ask you is youknow, for the, the self-coached
athlete, um, what should they doabout their individualized
training?
But the answer that I almostwant to throw out there and you
(16:53):
correct me if I'm wrong, butit's like, like, don't be afraid
to fail, like go, try, fail andyou'll figure it out, and you
talk about that in your book.
But I mean this there's a lotof trial and error, but you can
point people in the rightdirection, right, coach?
Speaker 2 (17:06):
That's how we became adults from children is we
learned by failure.
When a toddler is learning towalk, they fall down an awful
lot, but they always get back upand keep on trying.
Eventually they learn to walk.
It's the same thing with adults.
We make mistakes, we're notperfect and when we fall down we
need to get back up again andkeep going ahead, because if we
(17:27):
keep doing it it's going to workout eventually.
So it's really a mindset thing.
Again, it's this idea that if Ijust stay focused on what my
goal I'm trying to accomplishand stay at it, I can probably
come an awful long ways towardsaccomplishing it.
I might even pull it off in amatter in a short period of time
.
Or, on the other side of thecoin, it may take me a long time
(17:49):
.
It may take me a couple ofyears to pull this off as
opposed to a couple of months.
But that's okay.
It's because that's who you areas an individual.
Don't don't take that to meananything in the negative.
It's just who you are and youneed to learn to live with who
you are when you're in yourtraining.
Your training needs to reflectyou as the individual.
All this stuff ties togetherinto one big bow, and we need to
(18:12):
kind of keep all that in mindas we're making decisions about
how we should be doing ourworkouts.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Yeah, and speaking of workouts, I want to change now
to some adaptation and andfinding some, some peak fitness,
because I think, in the way ofthat individualized training,
trial and error, there's theseheavy time periods where we go
through when we're just, we'rebuilding fitness, we're getting
a super fit, but along with thatcomes fatigue we get, we get
(18:41):
tired, and I get questions onthe podcast of um.
You know how much is too much,or you know when?
When should I punch through?
And really it's the question ofoverreaching versus
overtraining.
Overtraining is a whole kettleof fish that we don't need to
get into right now, Cause, again, that's probably five podcasts
(19:01):
alone there, but overreaching isis a very critical piece of the
athlete's journey.
So, for to you, uh, coach, real, can you talk about?
Uh, what?
What is overreaching?
And when are athletes going toexperience that overreaching
effect of like, where they'rejust tired and they, they need
to kind of keep on going for abit before we get the fruits of
the training?
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Yeah, the whole, this whole issue of fatigue and
recovery from fatigue that's anextremely important concept in
training.
In fact, I would say it's oneof the key concepts in laying
out a program is how oftenshould the athlete recover
Because they're going to wind upoverreaching?
(19:44):
That's normal.
Overreaching is considered tobe something we really should
find to be happening ratherregularly in our training.
We kind of push ourselves alittle bit to the limit.
When I say that, I say thatwith a little bit of hesitation,
because when I say pushyourself a little bit to your
limit, most athletes think thatmeans they got to push
themselves so they can't hardlyget off the bike anymore.
(20:05):
They're just worn out andthat's not the way it is.
Pushing yourself to your limit,I mean just be.
It's barely beyond where youare right now as far as your
fitness.
If you're able to ride twohours pretty easily um, in zone
two, for example, let's see ifwe can bump that up to two hours
and 15 minutes, as opposed togoing to three hours or four
hours to see if we can do it.
(20:26):
We kind of like learn to holdback on this whole idea so that
we have overreaching in verysmall quantities.
We're not trying to whipourselves into shape.
We're trying to help ourselvescome into condition, into
fitness, in a very gentle way.
If we can, I'll give you anexample of that.
(20:50):
I coached an athlete a few yearsago Actually, actually, he
started doing something before Icoached him.
He came to me with a problem.
The problem was he was verytired.
Um, in fact he was so tired hecould hardly get out of bed in
the morning.
And he brought his training logwith him so I could look and
see what he'd been doing.
And what he told me he hadtried to do was to create a
training plan that was eightweeks of nonstop high intensity.
(21:12):
He figured if he could getthrough that he would start the
season being in the best shapehe'd ever been in.
He could whip anybody at thatpoint.
He did just the opposite.
He really just didn't have anyenthusiasm at all for the sport,
although he still wanted tocontinue training.
He did it in the seventh weekof that eight-week plan.
When he came to me, he wantedto know what he should do and
basically I said well, you'vegot to take time off.
(21:32):
There's nothing, no otheralternative there.
You've got to stop training.
You've got to get you back tonormal again.
And it all happened justbecause he simply did not take
rest days.
He just poo-pooed that wholeidea of taking a break.
He wanted to push himself tothe limit as much as he could
every day, and by doing that hethought he could make himself
(21:54):
into the superhuman, and hadjust the opposite effect.
We all have kind of that notionin the back of our minds that if
I just push myself a little bitharder, I can be a better
performer.
I can race faster, I can dowhatever it is I can do better.
I push myself beyond my limitsfrequently, almost daily, as
(22:14):
this guy thought.
And that's not the way it works.
The way it works is you workout in very small quantities.
You take small bites movingforward for improving fitness,
extremely small bites.
They're not big bites at all.
You don't go seven weeks andnever taking a rest week.
What you do, in fact, is whatthe athlete should be doing is
(22:35):
ask themselves when should Itake a break?
Am I ready to take a break now?
That's the key question.
Am I so tired right now that Ineed to take a rest break, take
off for four or five days, justreally cut back on training, cut
out intensity, cut back onduration and just rest.
Take an extra day off and justrest.
Should I do that or not?
That's a good thing to beasking yourself, but athletes
(22:56):
never ask themselves thatquestion.
They assume if they do thatthey're a wimp and they just
aren't.
Aren't doing what they shouldbe doing.
The best athletes don't do that.
The best athletes always pushthemselves to their limits every
day is how they see the world.
But that's not the way ithappens.
You won't see toddy pogacar onhis bike, pushed himself to his
(23:16):
limit every day for seven weeks.
It's just not going to happen.
Um, but yet somehow we've cometo the conclusion.
That's why these people are asgood as they are, because they
can handle this massive amountof training without ever taking
a break.
Not the case, they take lots ofbreaks.
In fact, as the research hasbeen showing from Dr Seiler,
stephen Seiler, the last 20years, these athletes do about
(23:39):
80% of their training very easy.
In fact, tati Pagaccia's coachis a friend of mine and he goes
says that that Tati spends anawful lot of time, a gigantic
amount of time, just riding easy.
In fact, this is kind of likeInigo's therapy, for everything
(24:01):
is to ride in zone two.
You get a lot of zone tworiding and everybody hears about
that anymore.
That's who it came from, xeniaGosan-Milan, who coaches Tati
Pagaccia and Iwana Yuso and afew of the other UAE guys, and
they're doing pretty well andthey're not pushing themselves
to the limits every day.
They're taking it very easy,most days, in fact, very, very
(24:22):
easy.
They're training a lot in zonetwo, which is not hard, but I
can try training zone two.
But it's amazing what it doeswhen you take that attitude that
I'm going to train easy and bytraining easier I'm going to
become faster, and that reallydoes happen.
Why it happens?
Because, number one, you gointo hard workouts feeling fresh
, rested, ready to go, so nowyou can really push yourself to
(24:43):
your limit.
Um, it's hard to do that morethan twice a week.
An athlete who tries to get inthree hard workouts in a week
means you're only getting aboutone day of recovery between two
of the hard workouts and that'sgenerally going to be not enough
for the athlete to be recoveredto really have a good workout
(25:05):
48 hours later.
So what I emphasize to athletesis they work in what I call a
5-2 pattern.
They do five days a week easyand two days hard.
If they do that, I canguarantee them they'll come into
the hard workout days andthey'll become really hard
workouts.
The quality will be very good.
So it's it's a big.
The problem is not so muchphysical, it's mental.
(25:26):
When you work with athletes onthis question, we're kind of
going back to the mindset thingagain.
If the athlete has to get outof their mind that the only way
to improve is to push yourselfas hard as you possibly can
every chance you get, that is100% wrong.
It's just backwards from whatyou should be doing.
It should be the other wayaround, where you push yourself
very seldom during the week,like I suggested, two times a
(25:47):
week, and if you do that, thenperformance is going to be is
going to grow over time andyou're going to have much better
performance than you've had inthe past because of your ability
to uh, to do things that mostof the other athletes don't do.
So I'll stop talking nowbecause that's one of my
favorite topics and so I'll justback off on it.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
No, the passion is real.
Uh, when I when I asked thatquestion, but I think you know
to this point, joe is you hitthe nail on the head with all of
that.
But for the, thenon-Tatapagatchas of the world,
you know the time crunchedathletes, even time rich
athletes on the weekend, uh,amateur athletes, masters
athletes we get tired from otherstuff too.
(26:29):
It's not the training, you know, if we've got 10 hours of
training, that's actually fairlyeasy to organize and and um,
tell what to do.
It's all the other stuff.
So the question to you is howdo you, how do you determine
when you're tired from life,when you're tired from a life
stressor versus a trainingstressor, and and and how would
you adjust on the fly with anathlete like that?
Speaker 2 (26:52):
yeah, what I've talked.
I've talked about this beforewith lots of people, I think
with you.
Actually, one time, probably, Iwant to meet with an athlete
who's got problems, like likethe guy I talked about earlier.
Uh, one of the first questionsI ask is how much sleep are you
getting and getting, becausethat that's usually an indicator
of what's going on in theirlife.
If the f is not getting atleast seven hours preferably
(27:15):
eight or more hours a night umof sleep, then there's something
wrong with their lifestyle.
And usually that thing that'swrong with their lifestyle is
you're trying to wedge too manythings into their day.
And this always brings me backto the next topic, then, which
is you know, as you mentionedyou referred to it a little
while ago three things in yourlife.
(27:35):
You know family, career andtraining.
If you've got a high goal,that's that's the only three
things you should have in yourlife.
If your goal is simply tofinish a 5K walk, you can
probably pile more things intoyour life.
If you're going to be nationals, that's not going to work out.
(27:57):
You just can't put more stuffinto your life.
In fact, you're just takingthings out of your life.
So we get back to the basicsand as soon as you get back.
Because the problem is, whenpeople have too much stuff in
their life, what they always dois they try to find extra time
by cutting back on sleep.
They go to bed later and get upearlier so they can wedge more
(28:18):
things into their day and thatbegins to show up in their in
their performance.
Their training goes down thetubes, they're not racing well,
everything's going poorly, justbecause the bottom line is they
just got too much stuff going on.
So when you figure out whatthose things are, get them out
of their life, get them back tojust three things that they
focus on, and now we can startmaking some progress in their,
(28:39):
in their training and theirperformance.
So it's right, it's not reallyreal complicated.
It's just a matter of gettinglife back to normal again, back
to what we're, how we normallywould would operate in um in the
world as human beings.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Yeah, uh, completely agree with that.
In, the higher the performancegoal, the more necessary that is
keeping distractions at bay,keeping motivation stoked,
focusing on very few things tobe good at for sure, and that
and that leads into, um, kind ofmy last talking point on
overall um training progression.
(29:18):
Uh, from your book is when youdo talk about performance and
one of your last chapters youtalk about race readiness.
So can you talk about what racereadiness is and how it's even
a little different than just, uh, you know, freshening up for a
hard workout or or, um, even alittle different than a taper
Cause?
There's a lot more that goes onto race readiness.
I'll turn it over to you.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
We're getting close to, uh, to what I call an A race
, a high priority race, whichyou should only have probably
one or two of the entire season,three early, pressing that.
So building an aerobic basethat took months to accomplish.
Then we started building raceperformance or race fitness,
getting ready for the intensityof the race besides the duration
(30:01):
.
So these things begin to cometogether and then finally, we
come down to the end of theseason, the end of this
preparation for this race, andwe start to do what you
mentioned a while ago, which isa taper Again, a cut back on
volume.
And as we cut back on volume,what happens is the athlete
begins to feel rested.
And we do this very gradually,in small steps.
(30:22):
We kind of step down, takingthis volume down.
While we're keeping theintensity high, intensity must
be kept high.
If you don't keep the intensityhigh, intensity must be kept
high.
If you don't keep the intensityhigh, if you, if you lower the
intensity also as you'relowering the duration, you're
simply going to wind up withvery poor race readiness when it
comes to race day.
Keep it, keep the intensityhigh and cut back on the, on the
(30:42):
volume, the duration of yourworkouts.
How many, how many hours, forexample, you train in a week.
That goes on for typicallyabout a week and a half, two
weeks, and then the athletestarts coming into what we call
form.
Um, form is an interesting word.
Won't go into the details, thehistory of it, it's a word that
goes back to 19th century horseracing.
But the bottom line is, whenyou're coming into form, you
(31:04):
begin to feel really rested,really fresh, and you have this
eagerness to do something hard.
You have this eagerness to pushyourself to the limit, and so
you have to really watchyourself.
When you get to this point,this, and you're down now to
maybe a week, week and a halfuntil the race, and you've got
this sense that you're feelingso good, you want to go out and
test out how good you areagainst other people.
(31:25):
So you go to a group ride andyou wind up riding three hours,
pushing yourself to the limit,and that's the end of your peak
readiness.
You just blew it.
The race is now over.
You're no longer going to berace ready.
You're going to be tired whenyou come to the race again,
because the whole idea ofpeaking is to get rid of fatigue
, to get rid of this tirednessand as it goes away away, then
(31:52):
form begins to go up, and formis a dangerous sensation.
It's dangerous because it feelslike you really should be doing
something more than what you'redoing right now.
You feel like you could reallyrip the legs off another athlete
if you wanted to.
So you have to do that.
And we finally come to the lastfew days before the race, and
now we cut way back.
Now we're just going to do justvery short workouts and have
extremely high intensity forwhatever the intensity for your
race should be time trials, forexample, versus mountain bike,
(32:14):
versus road race, viteriumversus all these things you know
there's all kinds of talk aboutin cycling.
The idea is we're trying to getyou, get you to the point that
you are rested and fresh andready with the intensity that
you need to be able to use onrace day.
And then we come to race dayitself, and now you should have
this um, this bound up, energyand enthusiasm and readiness to
(32:38):
go.
That's hard to hold back, andyet you still have to hold back.
If the race starts and you pushyourself to your limits
immediately go out really hard.
You may have just blown yourentire race.
That's the sort of thing thatnovices do.
I coached a pro mountain bikerone time, um, who was really
(32:59):
very good, but the only one ofthe major problems I noticed she
always started toward the backand, uh, she'd work her way up
through the race and finallywind up in the very front of the
race and could often wind upwinning.
And that worked really well ifthe, if the course had enough
places where she could pass.
But if it's a single trackalmost all the way she'd be
stuck someplace back in the packand couldn't get.
(33:21):
Couldn't get to the front.
So I had to try.
I tried to change that with her.
I told her it's good, she had arace coming, so let's see if we
can just go out a little bitfaster out of this race, kind of
get in the front and see howthat feels to you and we'll kind
of draw conclusions from thatpoint going forward.
So she called me after the raceand said it was a disaster.
She went out so hard that in thefirst two minutes she had to
stop alongside the road andcatch her breath.
(33:42):
She was breathing so hard andso I realized that she doesn't.
She didn't understand thedifference between going
extremely hard and controlled,controlled hard, and she didn't.
She couldn't do that.
She could go out extremely hard, but she had to learn how to
control that, that enthusiasmshe had and that fitness and
that form that she brought alltogether.
So we had to go through thiswhole process then of trying to
(34:04):
teach her how to start a race,and once she learned how to do
well, she was always good.
But once she learned how to dothat, she became extremely good.
She went on to win a cup, twonational championships back to
back.
A really, really good athletewas one of the things that was
holding her back was this, thisthing about, uh, how to, how to
start a race?
Um, but she was good at holdingback.
(34:25):
She just wasn't so good atmanaging what that, what that
intensity needed to be to excel.
She eventually learned, though.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yeah, and that's where you know I I tease out
race readiness is because it ismore specific than oh you're
tapered or oh you're fresh.
You know there's a lot thatgoes into race readiness.
It's almost like freshness,flow, preparation and patience
all coming together at the righttime.
And again a lot of that justcomes with trial and error, as
(34:56):
you just described with themountain bike athlete, is you
got to fail a little bit to moveforward on that.
But I think that in thatpreparation, in that process,
what we're talking about hereare those those high points of
what athletes are looking for,the performance aspects and then
how to get there.
Well, all the tools in theworld right, those two books
(35:17):
behind Joe, those are, those aretools, right.
This podcast is a tool and Ithink to all that point.
You know, one of the finalthings that I get a ton of
questions on for enduranceathletes is strength training,
and I don't want to get into Ithink the case is closed in how
(35:37):
beneficial it can be to athletes, so we're not going to convince
anybody to do it.
Some of the questions that Iget and I'll just flip them to
you, joe is when an athlete getscrunched on time.
So we were at 10 hours andmaybe this week I only have six
to eight.
Should I do my strengthtraining or should I do my
endurance training?
Which one should I cut?
Speaker 2 (35:58):
I would not cut either one.
I might wind up figuring,figuring how to do both.
I may wind up tapering thosethings a little bit, cutting
back on the amount of durationinvolved in them.
But um, first of all this thissport cycling is an endurance
sport.
We're doing um, strengthtraining to um, as a supplement,
(36:19):
if you will, to help to helpout in improving our performance
, but it's not the main thingwe're doing.
The main thing we're doing isriding our bikes and building
endurance.
So we're not going to cut backon that at all.
We need to keep that going.
Figure out things that can helpto keep the strength turning
going also, especially for olderathletes.
This is a real thing.
(36:40):
For older athletes.
They need to be very aware ofbuilding strength, lifting
weights, putting stress on theirbones and their muscles.
If you're 20, 25 years old,it's not that big a deal, but if
you're 55, 65 years old, it's abig deal.
You need to be focused on this.
So what do you do when youdon't have time and you need you
(37:01):
know you need to get it insomehow.
I would say let's look at what'smost important in the strength
turning realm.
I would say number one is forcyclists is hip, knee, ankle
extension strength.
Being able to drive the pedaldown is key to to the athlete's
performance on a bike.
So you haven't got time to goto the gym, so what can you do?
(37:23):
How about doing one-leggedsquats in your living room?
It's only going to take fiveminutes or so and you can get in
a.
You can get in three sets infive minutes of one-legged
squats.
It's not going to take a lot oftime at all.
In fact, it's going to bereally quite good for you or for
the older athletes, even olderthan 65 and, say, 75 or even
older.
Just sitting down in a chairand standing up, sit down, stand
(37:45):
up, sit down, stand up, sitdown, stand up.
That's the same activity again,helping to build that hip, knee
, ankle extension strength thatis so important.
So that's critical.
That's the most important thingthe athlete should be doing.
The second most important thingI find with athletes is core
strength doing.
The second most important thingI find with athletes is core
strength.
(38:05):
Um, core strength shows up inathletes in the way they pedal
their bikes.
When they're working at theirhighest level, they wind up
scooting forward to the saddle.
They they're losing uh powerbecause their core is not strong
enough to transport the powerfrom their.
You know what you're trying todo is you're trying to transport
parts that you're holdingholding the handlebars, down
through your torso to your legs.
That's the process you're goingthrough.
(38:26):
If you let go of the handlebars, you can no longer drive the
pedals nearly as hard as youcould when you were holding on
the handlebars.
So that that's that's.
This whole thing is linked fromhands to feet.
There's a there's a link goingon here and it goes through your
core.
If core is weak, you cannotdrive the pedals as nearly as
powerfully as you could if theywere, as if you had good core
(38:47):
strength.
Again, it doesn't take much.
Just do some planks, get on thefloor.
You don't have to go to a gymto do that.
Just get on the floor and dosome planks.
So we can narrow this wholething down.
If you're crunched on time, wecan narrow it down to two
exercises being as the mostbasic exercises the athlete
should be doing.
The cyclist, especially, shouldbe doing.
That's not complicated at all.
(39:07):
It's not going to take hardlyany time at all.
You can fit into your day.
I would also suggest fitting inother things, but now we're
starting to talk about takingmore time, but these take a lot
of time.
I would suggest you need someflexibility training.
That should be part of your gymworkout.
Gym workout is not just liftingweights, it's also flexibility
and it's also mobility.
(39:30):
Cyclists tend to have reallypoor mobility in the hips.
Hips and lower back uh, justdon't have the mobility they
should have when they've beenright.
You know, riding a bike is asingular, plain activity.
You're going straight ahead allthe time.
It's not like basketball orfootball where you've got a lot
of movement going on laterally.
This is a straight aheadmovement, one single plane.
(39:51):
Because of that, our hipsespecially become rigid.
We lose the ability to move ourhips as they're meant to be
moved, and that sets us up forproblems on the bike.
The transfer of power again tothe pedals if the hips are not
stable, that presents problemsfor the athlete in terms of
(40:11):
their ability to drive thepedals down.
Flexibility is part of that.
You need to have someflexibility, especially lower
back.
Athletes who have poorflexibility typically have
really tight backs and down theback of their legs also
hamstrings, calf muscles, very,very tight.
You need to work on that alsothat that has a lot to do with
how you sit on the bike whentimes are tough, when you're
(40:33):
being pushed to your limit.
It's not just strength, it'snot just your aerobic, anaerobic
endurance, it's also your yourthe core strength that you have
or you don't have, and theability to move your body as
it's designed to be moved, tomove it in ways that allow you
to perform at a higher level.
(40:54):
So that's critical.
It doesn't take much time atall.
The most important thing is toget on the bike and besides that
, the second most importantthing is work on hip, knee,
ankle strength.
And third, on the bike andbesides that second most
important thing is work on hipknee ankle strength.
And third, work on core.
And fourth, work on flexibilityand those things.
Those last three things takevery little time.
You can knock it out in 15minutes, no problem at all.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Yeah, and to that point I think too, like
everybody has their threshold oftime.
But when you're saying I don'thave time, look at your schedule
, get a little creative.
But also don't think that you,as Joe said, need to go to the
gym.
Like, get creative.
I say and I probably said it onthis podcast before is the bar
(41:34):
is so low for endurance athleteson muscular fatigue, like we
can, we can overcook our musclesso we can train our muscles
properly in 10 to 15 minuteswith some of the exercises that
Joe just mentioned, and thenyou're tired and then you rest
and then you move on.
Like muscles are ones and zerosin the way of are they fatigued
, are they not?
Whereas the aerobic system,it's more complicated.
You go forever.
And that's where I would say ifyou don't have time, great
(41:57):
strength training is good foryou.
Don't sacrifice endurance time,but look at the time.
If you have time in theevenings 10, 15 minutes, maybe
while you're watching TV, maybeyou're traveling you get to the
hotel, take 10 minutes and dosome planks.
You're going to feel a heck ofa lot better if you just do a
little bit of that in yourwhatever else time that you're
kind of burning.
(42:17):
So just get creative about that.
Last question to you, Joe, onum, on strength training, is one
that I get often.
Um, but it's when to do thestrength training.
So say we have enough time, wedon't have all the time in the
world, but should we be doingstrength training sessions on
hard interval days or should webe doing it on easy endurance
(42:39):
days?
Should we be doing it on ouroff days?
When should we, when shouldideally we be doing it on easy
endurance days?
Should we be doing it on ouroff days?
When should we?
Speaker 2 (42:46):
when should ideally we be doing our strength
training?
Speaker 1 (42:47):
yeah, it kind of depends um.
This is a loaded question too,by the way.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
There's just a lot that goes on.
There's a lot of stuff going inmy head about this whole thing,
but the bottom line is that, um, um, first of all, strength
training.
If you talk about the bigpicture of strength training not
just doing a few setups or afew crunches, rather, or, or
planks or that sort of thingthere's some things that really
(43:13):
do need some more attention, andthat's so early in the season I
like to have an athlete.
But going back to the way I doit now but this may not work for
everybody this is how I wouldhave an athlete do it Early in
the season.
I'm talking about like back inNovember, december one of the
focuses of our training isstrength.
(43:35):
That's one of the things I'mreally focused on with the
athlete, and so now it's a highpriority, and actually the bike
at that time is a little bitlesser priority.
So I'm going to have theathlete working out twice a week
in the gym, but they're goingto be solid workouts in the gym,
they're going to be hardworkouts and the bike workouts
(43:55):
are not going to be all thatdemanding, because we're talking
about it's october or novemberor december.
We have a long time till thefirst race.
Let's just kind of build someaerobic fitness, a lot of zone
one, zone two, and that's aboutit.
Even do some cross training, gofor a run, go for a walk, go
for a hike um row on a gym, amachine in the gym, whatever it
may be.
But the focus then during thistime is on strength we're going
(44:19):
to build, we're going to buildstrength.
Then we're going to start now.
We're going to start switchingthe the priorities around.
So as we move extremely earlybase period, like november,
december, as we move out of thatinto january, february, now we
start doing more time gym.
So now, instead of liftingheavy weights and trying to
(44:40):
build, uh, muscle mass, ineffect, we're going to start
doing much lighter weights withhigher repetitions.
So that becomes the way wetransition.
So there's a periodizationprocess going on here.
So we've periodized from doinghigh strength training emphasis
with low cycling emphasis to theother way around.
(45:01):
By the time we're like injanuary and february, now we're
starting to put more time on thebike.
So now let's go back to whenthose workouts should be done.
If it's, if it's october,november, I'm going to pick out
the best days of the week tolift weight because at this
point, from my point of view,cycling has actually a second,
secondary position relative tostrength, turning and all the
other stuff we've talked aboutin the gym mobility and
(45:23):
flexibility, all that kind ofstuff.
So this now becomes our focus.
So now, what's the best days tolift weights?
As the season progresses, we'rein this period of time where
we're talking about now we'regoing to switch to putting more
emphasis on the bike and less onthe gym.
I'm going to change that.
I made you wind up changingthose days.
When is the best time now?
What's the best time to rideyour bike?
(45:45):
When can we fit in strengthtraining?
And I would suggest, like injanuary, february, march.
That should come after longrides, should not be done the
day before rides like that.
And when you get into the timeof the season when you're
working on high intensity.
Same idea Strength training nowbecomes something we do after
(46:07):
the high intensity workouts.
And by this point, by the way,when we get to high intensity
training on the bike, I alwayshave the athlete cut back on
strength training.
We go from two workouts a weekin the gym to one workout a week
.
It just becomes maintenance.
The challenge is not reallyhigh.
You can get by with it quiteeasily and recover from it in a
matter of days, no problemwhatsoever.
So now, if it's only going tobe one workout a week and that's
(46:30):
going to come on a day forexample, it could be on a day
when there's a day off I wouldoften have athletes take a
monday off from training andthat would be the day training
being on the bike and that thatwould become the day they lifted
weights.
And then tuesday might be along ride or an easy zone two
sort of ride, and then wednesdayperhaps is their first hard
ride of the week.
That's now 48 hours afterlifting weights, and the weights
(46:52):
exercises weren't all thatchallenging anyway.
So that's the way I progressedthe whole thing.
So the idea is you have toperiodize this.
It's not things you just puttogether and they stay that way
for the entire season.
You have to blend them togetherbased on priorities and what's
the and especially also if theathlete's needs are that's.
That's one of the priorities.
I didn't go into that, but youhave to say what it is this
(47:13):
athlete really needs.
If the athlete really needs alot of strength training, we're
going to do a lot of strengthtraining, especially october and
november into december there'sgoing to be a lot of strength
training, especially October andNovember into December there's
going to be a lot of strengthtraining going on.
If they don't need so much,then we'll do much less of it.
It really is a veryindividualized matter that has
to be resolved based on theindividual and also what the
schedule calls for as far astraining in the big picture.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
Yeah, well, that's probably the perfect answer on
that one, and very inclusive too.
I like the way how you went allthe way back into the
periodization because, again,it's a loaded question.
I actually got this questionback in 2023 and I did an
episode on it I think it'sepisode 166 talking about
combining strength training andcycling, and so you can check
(47:58):
out that for a little bit more,because essentially, it really
plays out to what are you tryingto achieve?
What are your goals with theathlete?
And I think it will cycle andit will flow.
And this goes back to what Joewas talking about with
individualized training approach, where everybody's a little
unique and a little different,because some athletes don't need
as much strength training andsome athletes don't need as much
(48:19):
strength training in certaintime periods, whereas others do
training, and some athletesdon't need as much strength
training in certain time periodswhereas others do.
There's no perfect answer otherthan figuring out what works
best for you and your individualneeds, but Joe just laid out
probably some of the bestexamples and a path to follow in
the way of finding that out.
So, to wrap this thing up, I'dsay let's summarize by a few of
(48:39):
the key points, and the firstone is results come when you
establish the attitude.
First, joe talked about havinga high performance attitude and
how that will trickle over intoevery aspect of training and
racing.
Second part is that cycling hasevolved tremendously and
coaches as well as athletes.
We need to evolve with it.
(49:00):
So Joe did just that by writingthe fifth edition here of this
book, and individualization hascome to the forefront in
understanding that dose responseof training for better
performing athletes.
Finally, there's a fine linebetween overreaching and
overtraining.
A high performing athlete needsto tow that line at times, but
error on the side of a littleless.
(49:22):
There's some tools that I usepersonally to show uh and teach
athletes when they're walkingthat line and when to stay, when
, when to go, uh.
But again, that comes down tothat individualization of sorts.
Everything that Joe talkedabout agree completely.
So, uh, if, if, if.
You need to rewind back towhere uh Joe talked about.
Uh, you know when I asked himthat question and he talked
(49:44):
about how passionate he wasthere.
But overall, this is an awesomepodcast.
Joe, I really thank you againfor taking even more time on
your day to talk about one ofthe many books that you've
written.
So thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Thank you, adam, I enjoyed the conversation.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
You know, before we go, I just want to kind of share
one last quick story.
Joe, I mean, you're awesome attelling stories, but I have to
share one.
This is a little bit of fullcircle in the way that this
interview is shaping up, becauseback in college I was a
chemistry major and a wrestlerin a D3 school.
I've been an athlete my wholelife, had no clue what the heck
(50:22):
was I going to do after college,but my wrestling coach told me
to go sit on exercise phys classwith Carl Foster.
My friend got me into mountainbiking.
That led to Xterra racing, thatled to road triathlon, road
racing, and I had always been adecent runner.
So pretty soon I just changedeverything over to exercise
physiology.
I got obsessed and I convincedmy professor that we should have
(50:45):
a triathlon class on campus.
We started a triathlon club anda cycling club and we had an
exercise science class triathlon101.
And we had about 30 students inthat class getting college
credit for it and we used yourtriathlon training Bible, the
third edition, as our coursebook.
So I was teaching from thisbook back in college, 22, some
(51:07):
years ago, and now we're sittingon a podcast talking about
training.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
Well, thank you very much for using my book.
I appreciate your, your candoron that.
It's it's.
It's always fun to hear thatpeople got something out of
something I wrote.
That's that's.
That's, that's the greatestthrill there is writing a book,
as people say.
Yeah, I get emails all the time.
People say that you changed mylife because of what you wrote
people's lives at all.
I'm just trying to help them beembraced.
(51:31):
Better is all I'm trying to getto.
So thank you very much fordoing that.
I appreciate it Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (51:36):
You know, I think most coaches would would love a
few hours to pick your brain onall these topics.
I'm just glad that we could.
We could do it, record it andshare it with literally
thousands of people.
So, um, joe, if people want toread your books or they want
more more of you, uh, do theyfind you on social media?
More podcasts where can theyget more joe friole?
Speaker 2 (51:55):
um, I've got a website called joe friole
training dot com.
All my books are listed there.
You can purchase them throughthe website, um, and the blog is
there.
Also is stuff that goes backdash to to 2007, I think is when
I wrote my very first blog onthat, on that website.
So there's there's a long, longhistory there.
(52:17):
You can almost trace thechanges have taken place in my,
in my philosophy of training andmy methodology by looking at my
, my blog, but there's just awealth of information there from
stuff that goes back a long way.
So so, yes, joefreeltrainingcomis the website.
Speaker 1 (52:31):
Perfect.
Well, we'll link to that in ourshow notes, as well as blogs
and writings on motivation,consistency, some stuff that he
did with fast talk, fast after50, you'll, you'll find it all
there.
So again, joe Friel, thank youso much for taking time and,
yeah, I think our audience willget a lot out of this one.
Speaker 2 (52:51):
Thank you, I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1 (52:55):
Thanks for joining us on the time crunch cyclist
podcast.
We hope you enjoyed the show.
If you want even more actualtraining advice, head over to
train rightcom backslashnewsletter and subscribe to our
free weekly publication.
Each week you'll get in-depthtraining content that goes
beyond what we cover here on thepodcast.
That'll help you take yourtraining to the next level.
(53:16):
That's all for now.
Until next time, train hard,train smart, train right.
From the team at CTS.
This is the Time Crunch Cyclistpodcast, our show dedicated to
answering your trainingquestions and providing
actionable advice to help youimprove your performance, even
if you're strapped for time.
I'm your host, coach AdamPulford, and I'm one of the over
50 professional coaches whomake up the team at CTS.
In each episode, I draw on ourteam's collective knowledge,
(00:30):
other coaches and experts in thefield to provide you with the
practical ways to get the mostout of your training and
ultimately become the bestcyclist that you can be.
Now on to our show.
Now onto our show.
(00:50):
Welcome back, time Crunch fans.
I'm your host, coach AdamPulford.
Joe Friel is a coaching legendin endurance sport.
You've already heard from himin our mini-series on the Aging
Athlete, where we talked abouthow being consistent in your
training is really one of themost important elements for any
athlete at any level of thesport, including the ones that
are aging up in their racecategory.
But his lessons don't justapply to masters and
(01:14):
grandmasters.
In fact, his book, theCyclist's Training Bible, has
been a go-to resource for manycyclists and coaches over the
past 20 years.
His latest and fifth editionkeeps training principles that
stand the test of time and havebeen updated for the latest tech
and individualized trainingapproaches.
So today I'm back with CoachFriel to discuss key themes from
(01:37):
his book that any time crunchedor time rich athlete can apply
to their training program forbetter success in health,
fitness and performance.
Joe Friel, welcome back to theshow.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Thank you very much, Adam.
Glad to be here.
Thanks for having me again.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Yeah, no, this is fun .
Picking the brain of the coachof coaches is always super fun
to do.
So first question is why didyou decide to write the fifth
edition after so many years hadpassed from the advent of the
first one?
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Well, I wrote the first one in about 1996, the
first edition of the book and Igot around to the late 2018,
2019, 2020 era and I began torealize that, man, lots of
things have changed.
I just can't go back and hit it.
I really need to rewrite thisbook.
(02:29):
So I just threw out themanuscript I don't think I kept
the same was the table ofcontents and I just started
writing a whole new book,because there's just been so
many changes that had occurredin over gosh, a 20 year period
of time that I couldn't Icouldn't really live with myself
.
I'm going to go back and makethose, those, uh, those changes
(02:50):
yeah, no, I totally agree.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
I mean the, the, the sport has evolved at a great
level and um.
But, like I said, I think the,the, the things that you write
about right, the, the evergreenkind of coaching things that
will be here with us forever.
I mean, we'll talk about someof those today.
In a lot of this it can go backto the basics, but the advent
(03:12):
of the individualized trainingprocess too, we'll press into
that today.
But where I'd like to start iswith mindset.
So if we can first talk aboutreally, I think how you open up
in the book is adopting a highperformance mindset.
Why do you start the book likethat and what is a high
performance mindset for anathlete?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah, good question.
I always thought that themental side of the sport was
just as important as physicalside, and so when I've coached
athletes over the years, I'vespent a great deal of time
trying to understand who theythink they are as athletes and
people and if there's anythingthat's holding them back from
performing at a high level.
And you always find thesethings.
(03:57):
I've coached athletes fromnovices to olympian and, uh,
it's always the same thing.
They've got, they've got littlethings going on within their
minds that are potentialpotholes, things are going to
cause us to stop, and so I'vealways tried to figure out what
these things are and then try toput a not really quell them,
(04:19):
but try to understand them asmuch as I can help, so I can
better understand the athleteand how to work with this
particular athlete.
And so I started chapter thebook with that chapter, because
that, for me, is, uh, among thelook forward.
I'm talking to an athlete aboutcoaching them.
So you know I started down thelist of things that I look for,
(04:39):
and these things are alwaysevolving in my head.
You know, these things are notlike carved in stone and never
change.
I'm always thinking about um,what sort of things am I
learning that could apply to theathletes I've coached, and so
I've come up with a list that isstill used to this day when I
(05:01):
talk with athletes about, about.
So it's just a very importanttopic, one that cannot be
ignored.
If you ignore this, you're inhuge difficulty with that
athlete come down the roadsomeplace.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah, and and I encourage everyone to pick up
the book and learn a little bitmore we're not going to go over
the one, two, threes here inthis podcast, but we're going to
plant the seeds of kind of whatto pull out from the book.
But I think in the way of this,this mindset like starting
there.
One thing that you wrote wasattitude first, results then
(05:35):
come next.
Like you know, couldn't agreemore.
So if, if some listeners arehere and they're like what would
be like the number, I can't getthat like killer attitude.
What's one thing, one thingthat they can do kind of in
their, in their life or in theirhabits to start cultivating
that performance mindset?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah, there are lots of subset points here, I think.
First, the one I always lookfor in athletes is his
motivation.
That's key.
You you know, if the athlete isnot motivated to train, there's
nothing I can do to make thatchange.
I've I had, I'm writing anotherbook right now and inside the
book I write about one of my,one of the athletes I coached,
(06:19):
who had poor motivation.
Tremendous athlete, tremendoustalent, but he had poor
motivation and um that I couldput up with that for only one
year.
You know if, for example, ifthere's anything that came up
whatsoever during the day thatmight interfere with his uh
training that day, he wouldsimply bow to whatever the thing
was and not not work out.
(06:39):
But when it came to race day,he's a tremendous athlete.
He was really one of the bestrace day athletes I've ever
coach day.
He's a tremendous athlete.
He was really one of the bestrace day athletes ever coached.
He's just tremendous talent.
He was a former um um nationalchampion, junior national
champion in road cycling.
He had way, way too much talentbut always came back to
haunting uh.
(07:00):
Where it really hurting themost was in uh was in the base
period.
We were trying to build a bigaerobic base.
That was very low motivationfor him and so, um, those were
days.
He would miss a lot of thosedays and always just for me it
was really a challenge trying toget him to just to train and um
(07:22):
.
So that always showed up whenwe got to the long races later
in the season.
You know, we got to three, fourfive-hour races and he had a
hard time struggling to just getto the finish line.
His talent didn't mean anythingat that point, he just didn't
have the base he needed becausehe hadn't been motivated enough
during the base period toestablish that.
So I coached him for one season.
(07:44):
I said man, I can't do thisagain.
So I set him on his way byhimself.
Usually when I, if I let anathlete go, usually I'll refer
them to another coach.
Here's somebody I think couldreally help you.
But this time I didn't do thatbecause I just saw me passing my
problem on to another coach whodoesn't need more problems.
So I didn't make anysuggestions whatsoever for him
(08:07):
and he raced for a while afterthat on his own, as near as I
could tell I don't think he hada coach and didn't really last
very long and eventually droppedout and was no longer racing,
which was a shame because hejust he was.
This is a tremendously talentedathlete that could have gone a
very long way if he really puthis mind to it.
(08:29):
So that's the key thing for meis I want to look for motivation
in the athlete.
There's lots of things that gointo that.
You know, for the averageathlete, I think one thing that
really helps us to is to have atraining partner.
If your motivation is low,having a training partner really
kind of gets you out the door.
Another thing that might helpyou didn't help me with this one
athlete, but one thing thatmight help you with a low
(08:52):
motivation is having a coach.
Um, if you feel responsible tosomebody, something somebody
you're going to report to, buthow the workout went, that's
your coach, and you know thecoach is going to be looking
good, and sometimes it's areally good way to get motivated
is to hire a coach to to workwith you.
And there are lots of otherways.
I I think, for example,everybody should have a second
(09:14):
passion besides sport.
I don't know what it would be.
Whatever you're interested inbesides sport could be
woodworking or playing the fluteI don't know what it could be,
but whatever it turns you on,that's a good thing to have.
Having something besidestraining on in your sport uh,
can give you something to kindof lean back on when those days
(09:36):
when you're not really feelingreally good about yourself
because your motivation is lowand you don't really feel like
going for a workout, justknowing you've got something
there you can lean against thatmakes you happy, kind of
relieves some of the tension andallows you to make some
decisions.
That might be a little bitbetter down the road in the
future.
And there are lots of stuff wecould talk about motivation for
(09:56):
an hour all by itself, but I'llleave it at that.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Yeah, no, those are really good things, and I think
the thing that pops out to me isjust limiting distractions as
well.
I think, when you talk abouttraining coming to the forefront
and one of the things that wetalked about in the previous
podcast was focused on familycareer training I think the
little side hobbies are superimportant to remain balanced,
(10:21):
but we're not talking about hugeundertakings and we're also not
talking about diluting thefocus.
It's really keeping it tightand, rather than adding
something in to stoke motivation, I would encourage people to
look at distractions, look atthings that take away from their
focus and their energy, becauseit could just you could have
enough motivation.
You could just have it depletedby all these other things.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Yeah, yeah, good points.
It's extremely important to bemotivated, but it's the sort of
thing that you just can't turnon or turn off.
It's something that needs to bethere to be able to take
advantage of it, to be the bestathlete you possibly can be.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yeah for sure.
So as we turn to another keyconcept in your book, it's the
individualization of trainingand recovery.
When you wrote the firstedition back in 96, correct me
if I'm wrong, but I don't thinkthat the concept of
individualized training approachwas a thing.
Is that true?
Is that true?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
That's pretty much the case.
We've all turned the same wayback in those days and we've
learned an awful lot over theyears.
But the principle ofindividualization has been
around for a long time but nottaken very seriously until maybe
the last 10 years or so tobecome a much more serious topic
among athletes and coachesabout knowing what's unique
(11:47):
about you.
Everything is unique in someways.
They can't all train exactlythe same way.
We need to train in ways thatare appropriate for us and
whatever that means and thisreally is a difficult topic to
deal with and where I see mostathletes making the big mistake
in this area is they tend tolook to others to see how they
(12:09):
should train.
So if they're, if they've gotsome people they ride with, for
example, on in a group ride andsomebody impresses them, they
tend to gravitate towardwhatever that person does in
their training.
They do it also.
But you really can't count onthat.
Um, what works for one personis not likely to work for
somebody else.
I know lots of people who justhad lots of talent, like the
(12:29):
person I mentioned just a littlewhile ago, and it was natural
talent.
He just had everything goingfor him, he inherited the right
genes.
He was in the right place atthe right time when they were
handing out genetics or sportsright time when they were
handing out genetics or sportsand he came across because that.
He came across as beingextremely talented, not so much
in motivation but in terms ofhis physical ability.
(12:52):
He really had everything ittook.
If you use that guy as a model,there's lots of problems there
with how he trains.
That may not work for you.
He just was able to do thingsthat I've not seen other
athletes be able to do.
Um, he's.
For example, his bike handlingskills were amazing.
He reminded me some of the pros.
You see, uh, from time to time,we've got tremendous talent,
(13:14):
tremendous skills.
Uh, he had those skills.
He could do things with hisbike that most people can't do.
So anyway, there, that's thesort of thing you want to look
for in yourself is what?
What makes me unique?
Who am I?
Um, don't copy others methods.
Find out what works for you.
That's a very difficult thingto do, but one of the ways to do
that is to look back whenyou've had your most success.
(13:35):
When you had success, what wereyou doing that was unique at
that time?
What were you doing in trainingthat really worked out for you,
um, and then use that as amodel for how maybe you should
look at your training goingforward, not just doing things
because you see others doing itthat's perhaps one of the worst
things you can possibly do.
So and finally, I think youneed to know your strengths and
(13:57):
weaknesses what am I good at andwhat am I not so good at and
knowing those things is going togo a long ways in terms of
making decisions about yourtraining.
For example, I always havesuggested that athletes should
really focus on their weaknesses, which I call limiters.
They're a race.
Specific weakness is a limiter.
For example, if a race is arace an athlete's going to do is
(14:19):
involves a lot of climbing andthe athlete's not a good climber
, that's that's a limiter.
But if there's no climbing atall in the race it's flat then
it's not a limiter anymore.
It's a weakness, but not alimiter.
So the idea is know what you'regood at, know what your
limiters are, focus on improvingyour limiters while you
maintain your strengths, so thatthat's really the starting
place.
(14:39):
Place is who am I as an athlete, what am I good at and what am
I not good at making thatdecision will help you make
decisions down the in the futurefor all your training going
forward yeah, I, and I think Imean the individualization of
training is something that Ipreach and harp about on this
podcast quite often and in mybrain right now.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
What I'm envisioning is this slide from Dr Andy
Coggin and Tim Cusick uses it ina lot of his presentations
where we show how people canmake their power or make their
pace and effectively it's, themore aerobic we get, the more
similar and predictable we are,the more anaerobic we are, or
that we do, or the harder effortwe are, either much more
(15:23):
anaerobic or not anaerobic atall, and so finding, like your
fingerprint of the or thephenotype of an athlete is also
really important, and you talkabout some field testings and
some other things that in toolsthat people can use in your book
to help identify some of these,uh, individuality, um aspects
to help them train and recovermore and not.
(15:44):
On the recovery side, I mean wecould talk about the you know
podcasts about this too, but noteverybody recovers the same,
like some people.
Some people need the couch andTV, some people need a, you know
a book and quiet time, but youknow, decreasing stress is
always the key.
You just need to find whatworks for you in that way.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yeah, no doubt about it.
Somebody mentioned on onTwitter I read a note about that
that one guy was talking aboutsome people recharge their
batteries by being around otherpeople for extroverts, and some
people challenge you to rechargetheir batteries by being alone.
Both are okay.
There's nothing wrong with oneor the other.
It's just the way we are.
(16:24):
We're human beings andeverybody's got their own way of
of responding, so do what worksbest for you.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Yeah, and, as you can tell from my two examples, you
can probably guess what, what,uh, what vert I am on that, um.
But you know, to this point,you know, one of the questions I
was going to ask you is youknow, for the, the self-coached
athlete, um, what should they doabout their individualized
training?
But the answer that I almostwant to throw out there and you
(16:53):
correct me if I'm wrong, butit's like, like, don't be afraid
to fail, like go, try, fail andyou'll figure it out, and you
talk about that in your book.
But I mean this there's a lotof trial and error, but you can
point people in the rightdirection, right, coach?
Speaker 2 (17:06):
That's how we became adults from children is we
learned by failure.
When a toddler is learning towalk, they fall down an awful
lot, but they always get back upand keep on trying.
Eventually they learn to walk.
It's the same thing with adults.
We make mistakes, we're notperfect and when we fall down we
need to get back up again andkeep going ahead, because if we
(17:27):
keep doing it it's going to workout eventually.
So it's really a mindset thing.
Again, it's this idea that if Ijust stay focused on what my
goal I'm trying to accomplishand stay at it, I can probably
come an awful long ways towardsaccomplishing it.
I might even pull it off in amatter in a short period of time
.
Or, on the other side of thecoin, it may take me a long time
(17:49):
.
It may take me a couple ofyears to pull this off as
opposed to a couple of months.
But that's okay.
It's because that's who you areas an individual.
Don't don't take that to meananything in the negative.
It's just who you are and youneed to learn to live with who
you are when you're in yourtraining.
Your training needs to reflectyou as the individual.
All this stuff ties togetherinto one big bow, and we need to
(18:12):
kind of keep all that in mindas we're making decisions about
how we should be doing ourworkouts.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Yeah, and speaking of workouts, I want to change now
to some adaptation and andfinding some, some peak fitness,
because I think, in the way ofthat individualized training,
trial and error, there's theseheavy time periods where we go
through when we're just, we'rebuilding fitness, we're getting
a super fit, but along with thatcomes fatigue we get, we get
(18:41):
tired, and I get questions onthe podcast of um.
You know how much is too much,or you know when?
When should I punch through?
And really it's the question ofoverreaching versus
overtraining.
Overtraining is a whole kettleof fish that we don't need to
get into right now, Cause, again, that's probably five podcasts
(19:01):
alone there, but overreaching isis a very critical piece of the
athlete's journey.
So, for to you, uh, coach, real, can you talk about?
Uh, what?
What is overreaching?
And when are athletes going toexperience that overreaching
effect of like, where they'rejust tired and they, they need
to kind of keep on going for abit before we get the fruits of
the training?
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Yeah, the whole, this whole issue of fatigue and
recovery from fatigue that's anextremely important concept in
training.
In fact, I would say it's oneof the key concepts in laying
out a program is how oftenshould the athlete recover
Because they're going to wind upoverreaching?
(19:44):
That's normal.
Overreaching is considered tobe something we really should
find to be happening ratherregularly in our training.
We kind of push ourselves alittle bit to the limit.
When I say that, I say thatwith a little bit of hesitation,
because when I say pushyourself a little bit to your
limit, most athletes think thatmeans they got to push
themselves so they can't hardlyget off the bike anymore.
(20:05):
They're just worn out andthat's not the way it is.
Pushing yourself to your limit,I mean just be.
It's barely beyond where youare right now as far as your
fitness.
If you're able to ride twohours pretty easily um, in zone
two, for example, let's see ifwe can bump that up to two hours
and 15 minutes, as opposed togoing to three hours or four
hours to see if we can do it.
(20:26):
We kind of like learn to holdback on this whole idea so that
we have overreaching in verysmall quantities.
We're not trying to whipourselves into shape.
We're trying to help ourselvescome into condition, into
fitness, in a very gentle way.
If we can, I'll give you anexample of that.
(20:50):
I coached an athlete a few yearsago Actually, actually, he
started doing something before Icoached him.
He came to me with a problem.
The problem was he was verytired.
Um, in fact he was so tired hecould hardly get out of bed in
the morning.
And he brought his training logwith him so I could look and
see what he'd been doing.
And what he told me he hadtried to do was to create a
training plan that was eightweeks of nonstop high intensity.
(21:12):
He figured if he could getthrough that he would start the
season being in the best shapehe'd ever been in.
He could whip anybody at thatpoint.
He did just the opposite.
He really just didn't have anyenthusiasm at all for the sport,
although he still wanted tocontinue training.
He did it in the seventh weekof that eight-week plan.
When he came to me, he wantedto know what he should do and
basically I said well, you'vegot to take time off.
(21:32):
There's nothing, no otheralternative there.
You've got to stop training.
You've got to get you back tonormal again.
And it all happened justbecause he simply did not take
rest days.
He just poo-pooed that wholeidea of taking a break.
He wanted to push himself tothe limit as much as he could
every day, and by doing that hethought he could make himself
(21:54):
into the superhuman, and hadjust the opposite effect.
We all have kind of that notionin the back of our minds that if
I just push myself a little bitharder, I can be a better
performer.
I can race faster, I can dowhatever it is I can do better.
I push myself beyond my limitsfrequently, almost daily, as
(22:14):
this guy thought.
And that's not the way it works.
The way it works is you workout in very small quantities.
You take small bites movingforward for improving fitness,
extremely small bites.
They're not big bites at all.
You don't go seven weeks andnever taking a rest week.
What you do, in fact, is whatthe athlete should be doing is
(22:35):
ask themselves when should Itake a break?
Am I ready to take a break now?
That's the key question.
Am I so tired right now that Ineed to take a rest break, take
off for four or five days, justreally cut back on training, cut
out intensity, cut back onduration and just rest.
Take an extra day off and justrest.
Should I do that or not?
That's a good thing to beasking yourself, but athletes
(22:56):
never ask themselves thatquestion.
They assume if they do thatthey're a wimp and they just
aren't.
Aren't doing what they shouldbe doing.
The best athletes don't do that.
The best athletes always pushthemselves to their limits every
day is how they see the world.
But that's not the way ithappens.
You won't see toddy pogacar onhis bike, pushed himself to his
(23:16):
limit every day for seven weeks.
It's just not going to happen.
Um, but yet somehow we've cometo the conclusion.
That's why these people are asgood as they are, because they
can handle this massive amountof training without ever taking
a break.
Not the case, they take lots ofbreaks.
In fact, as the research hasbeen showing from Dr Seiler,
stephen Seiler, the last 20years, these athletes do about
(23:39):
80% of their training very easy.
In fact, tati Pagaccia's coachis a friend of mine and he goes
says that that Tati spends anawful lot of time, a gigantic
amount of time, just riding easy.
In fact, this is kind of likeInigo's therapy, for everything
(24:01):
is to ride in zone two.
You get a lot of zone tworiding and everybody hears about
that anymore.
That's who it came from, xeniaGosan-Milan, who coaches Tati
Pagaccia and Iwana Yuso and afew of the other UAE guys, and
they're doing pretty well andthey're not pushing themselves
to the limits every day.
They're taking it very easy,most days, in fact, very, very
(24:22):
easy.
They're training a lot in zonetwo, which is not hard, but I
can try training zone two.
But it's amazing what it doeswhen you take that attitude that
I'm going to train easy and bytraining easier I'm going to
become faster, and that reallydoes happen.
Why it happens?
Because, number one, you gointo hard workouts feeling fresh
, rested, ready to go, so nowyou can really push yourself to
(24:43):
your limit.
Um, it's hard to do that morethan twice a week.
An athlete who tries to get inthree hard workouts in a week
means you're only getting aboutone day of recovery between two
of the hard workouts and that'sgenerally going to be not enough
for the athlete to be recoveredto really have a good workout
(25:05):
48 hours later.
So what I emphasize to athletesis they work in what I call a
5-2 pattern.
They do five days a week easyand two days hard.
If they do that, I canguarantee them they'll come into
the hard workout days andthey'll become really hard
workouts.
The quality will be very good.
So it's it's a big.
The problem is not so muchphysical, it's mental.
(25:26):
When you work with athletes onthis question, we're kind of
going back to the mindset thingagain.
If the athlete has to get outof their mind that the only way
to improve is to push yourselfas hard as you possibly can
every chance you get, that is100% wrong.
It's just backwards from whatyou should be doing.
It should be the other wayaround, where you push yourself
very seldom during the week,like I suggested, two times a
(25:47):
week, and if you do that, thenperformance is going to be is
going to grow over time andyou're going to have much better
performance than you've had inthe past because of your ability
to uh, to do things that mostof the other athletes don't do.
So I'll stop talking nowbecause that's one of my
favorite topics and so I'll justback off on it.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
No, the passion is real.
Uh, when I when I asked thatquestion, but I think you know
to this point, joe is you hitthe nail on the head with all of
that.
But for the, thenon-Tatapagatchas of the world,
you know the time crunchedathletes, even time rich
athletes on the weekend, uh,amateur athletes, masters
athletes we get tired from otherstuff too.
(26:29):
It's not the training, you know, if we've got 10 hours of
training, that's actually fairlyeasy to organize and and um,
tell what to do.
It's all the other stuff.
So the question to you is howdo you, how do you determine
when you're tired from life,when you're tired from a life
stressor versus a trainingstressor, and and and how would
you adjust on the fly with anathlete like that?
Speaker 2 (26:52):
yeah, what I've talked.
I've talked about this beforewith lots of people, I think
with you.
Actually, one time, probably, Iwant to meet with an athlete
who's got problems, like likethe guy I talked about earlier.
Uh, one of the first questionsI ask is how much sleep are you
getting and getting, becausethat that's usually an indicator
of what's going on in theirlife.
If the f is not getting atleast seven hours preferably
(27:15):
eight or more hours a night umof sleep, then there's something
wrong with their lifestyle.
And usually that thing that'swrong with their lifestyle is
you're trying to wedge too manythings into their day.
And this always brings me backto the next topic, then, which
is you know, as you mentionedyou referred to it a little
while ago three things in yourlife.
(27:35):
You know family, career andtraining.
If you've got a high goal,that's that's the only three
things you should have in yourlife.
If your goal is simply tofinish a 5K walk, you can
probably pile more things intoyour life.
If you're going to be nationals, that's not going to work out.
(27:57):
You just can't put more stuffinto your life.
In fact, you're just takingthings out of your life.
So we get back to the basicsand as soon as you get back.
Because the problem is, whenpeople have too much stuff in
their life, what they always dois they try to find extra time
by cutting back on sleep.
They go to bed later and get upearlier so they can wedge more
(28:18):
things into their day and thatbegins to show up in their in
their performance.
Their training goes down thetubes, they're not racing well,
everything's going poorly, justbecause the bottom line is they
just got too much stuff going on.
So when you figure out whatthose things are, get them out
of their life, get them back tojust three things that they
focus on, and now we can startmaking some progress in their,
(28:39):
in their training and theirperformance.
So it's right, it's not reallyreal complicated.
It's just a matter of gettinglife back to normal again, back
to what we're, how we normallywould would operate in um in the
world as human beings.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Yeah, uh, completely agree with that.
In, the higher the performancegoal, the more necessary that is
keeping distractions at bay,keeping motivation stoked,
focusing on very few things tobe good at for sure, and that
and that leads into, um, kind ofmy last talking point on
overall um training progression.
(29:18):
Uh, from your book is when youdo talk about performance and
one of your last chapters youtalk about race readiness.
So can you talk about what racereadiness is and how it's even
a little different than just, uh, you know, freshening up for a
hard workout or or, um, even alittle different than a taper
Cause?
There's a lot more that goes onto race readiness.
I'll turn it over to you.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
We're getting close to, uh, to what I call an A race
, a high priority race, whichyou should only have probably
one or two of the entire season,three early, pressing that.
So building an aerobic basethat took months to accomplish.
Then we started building raceperformance or race fitness,
getting ready for the intensityof the race besides the duration
(30:01):
.
So these things begin to cometogether and then finally, we
come down to the end of theseason, the end of this
preparation for this race, andwe start to do what you
mentioned a while ago, which isa taper Again, a cut back on
volume.
And as we cut back on volume,what happens is the athlete
begins to feel rested.
And we do this very gradually,in small steps.
(30:22):
We kind of step down, takingthis volume down.
While we're keeping theintensity high, intensity must
be kept high.
If you don't keep the intensityhigh, intensity must be kept
high.
If you don't keep the intensityhigh, if you, if you lower the
intensity also as you'relowering the duration, you're
simply going to wind up withvery poor race readiness when it
comes to race day.
Keep it, keep the intensityhigh and cut back on the, on the
(30:42):
volume, the duration of yourworkouts.
How many, how many hours, forexample, you train in a week.
That goes on for typicallyabout a week and a half, two
weeks, and then the athletestarts coming into what we call
form.
Um, form is an interesting word.
Won't go into the details, thehistory of it, it's a word that
goes back to 19th century horseracing.
But the bottom line is, whenyou're coming into form, you
(31:04):
begin to feel really rested,really fresh, and you have this
eagerness to do something hard.
You have this eagerness to pushyourself to the limit, and so
you have to really watchyourself.
When you get to this point,this, and you're down now to
maybe a week, week and a halfuntil the race, and you've got
this sense that you're feelingso good, you want to go out and
test out how good you areagainst other people.
(31:25):
So you go to a group ride andyou wind up riding three hours,
pushing yourself to the limit,and that's the end of your peak
readiness.
You just blew it.
The race is now over.
You're no longer going to berace ready.
You're going to be tired whenyou come to the race again,
because the whole idea ofpeaking is to get rid of fatigue
, to get rid of this tirednessand as it goes away away, then
(31:52):
form begins to go up, and formis a dangerous sensation.
It's dangerous because it feelslike you really should be doing
something more than what you'redoing right now.
You feel like you could reallyrip the legs off another athlete
if you wanted to.
So you have to do that.
And we finally come to the lastfew days before the race, and
now we cut way back.
Now we're just going to do justvery short workouts and have
extremely high intensity forwhatever the intensity for your
race should be time trials, forexample, versus mountain bike,
(32:14):
versus road race, viteriumversus all these things you know
there's all kinds of talk aboutin cycling.
The idea is we're trying to getyou, get you to the point that
you are rested and fresh andready with the intensity that
you need to be able to use onrace day.
And then we come to race dayitself, and now you should have
this um, this bound up, energyand enthusiasm and readiness to
(32:38):
go.
That's hard to hold back, andyet you still have to hold back.
If the race starts and you pushyourself to your limits
immediately go out really hard.
You may have just blown yourentire race.
That's the sort of thing thatnovices do.
I coached a pro mountain bikerone time, um, who was really
(32:59):
very good, but the only one ofthe major problems I noticed she
always started toward the backand, uh, she'd work her way up
through the race and finallywind up in the very front of the
race and could often wind upwinning.
And that worked really well ifthe, if the course had enough
places where she could pass.
But if it's a single trackalmost all the way she'd be
stuck someplace back in the packand couldn't get.
(33:21):
Couldn't get to the front.
So I had to try.
I tried to change that with her.
I told her it's good, she had arace coming, so let's see if we
can just go out a little bitfaster out of this race, kind of
get in the front and see howthat feels to you and we'll kind
of draw conclusions from thatpoint going forward.
So she called me after the raceand said it was a disaster.
She went out so hard that in thefirst two minutes she had to
stop alongside the road andcatch her breath.
(33:42):
She was breathing so hard andso I realized that she doesn't.
She didn't understand thedifference between going
extremely hard and controlled,controlled hard, and she didn't.
She couldn't do that.
She could go out extremely hard, but she had to learn how to
control that, that enthusiasmshe had and that fitness and
that form that she brought alltogether.
So we had to go through thiswhole process then of trying to
(34:04):
teach her how to start a race,and once she learned how to do
well, she was always good.
But once she learned how to dothat, she became extremely good.
She went on to win a cup, twonational championships back to
back.
A really, really good athletewas one of the things that was
holding her back was this, thisthing about, uh, how to, how to
start a race?
Um, but she was good at holdingback.
(34:25):
She just wasn't so good atmanaging what that, what that
intensity needed to be to excel.
She eventually learned, though.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yeah, and that's where you know I I tease out
race readiness is because it ismore specific than oh you're
tapered or oh you're fresh.
You know there's a lot thatgoes into race readiness.
It's almost like freshness,flow, preparation and patience
all coming together at the righttime.
And again a lot of that justcomes with trial and error, as
(34:56):
you just described with themountain bike athlete, is you
got to fail a little bit to moveforward on that.
But I think that in thatpreparation, in that process,
what we're talking about hereare those those high points of
what athletes are looking for,the performance aspects and then
how to get there.
Well, all the tools in theworld right, those two books
(35:17):
behind Joe, those are, those aretools, right.
This podcast is a tool and Ithink to all that point.
You know, one of the finalthings that I get a ton of
questions on for enduranceathletes is strength training,
and I don't want to get into Ithink the case is closed in how
(35:37):
beneficial it can be to athletes, so we're not going to convince
anybody to do it.
Some of the questions that Iget and I'll just flip them to
you, joe is when an athlete getscrunched on time.
So we were at 10 hours andmaybe this week I only have six
to eight.
Should I do my strengthtraining or should I do my
endurance training?
Which one should I cut?
Speaker 2 (35:58):
I would not cut either one.
I might wind up figuring,figuring how to do both.
I may wind up tapering thosethings a little bit, cutting
back on the amount of durationinvolved in them.
But um, first of all this thissport cycling is an endurance
sport.
We're doing um, strengthtraining to um, as a supplement,
(36:19):
if you will, to help to helpout in improving our performance
, but it's not the main thingwe're doing.
The main thing we're doing isriding our bikes and building
endurance.
So we're not going to cut backon that at all.
We need to keep that going.
Figure out things that can helpto keep the strength turning
going also, especially for olderathletes.
This is a real thing.
(36:40):
For older athletes.
They need to be very aware ofbuilding strength, lifting
weights, putting stress on theirbones and their muscles.
If you're 20, 25 years old,it's not that big a deal, but if
you're 55, 65 years old, it's abig deal.
You need to be focused on this.
So what do you do when youdon't have time and you need you
(37:01):
know you need to get it insomehow.
I would say let's look at what'smost important in the strength
turning realm.
I would say number one is forcyclists is hip, knee, ankle
extension strength.
Being able to drive the pedaldown is key to to the athlete's
performance on a bike.
So you haven't got time to goto the gym, so what can you do?
(37:23):
How about doing one-leggedsquats in your living room?
It's only going to take fiveminutes or so and you can get in
a.
You can get in three sets infive minutes of one-legged
squats.
It's not going to take a lot oftime at all.
In fact, it's going to bereally quite good for you or for
the older athletes, even olderthan 65 and, say, 75 or even
older.
Just sitting down in a chairand standing up, sit down, stand
(37:45):
up, sit down, stand up, sitdown, stand up.
That's the same activity again,helping to build that hip, knee
, ankle extension strength thatis so important.
So that's critical.
That's the most important thingthe athlete should be doing.
The second most important thingI find with athletes is core
strength doing.
The second most important thingI find with athletes is core
strength.
(38:05):
Um, core strength shows up inathletes in the way they pedal
their bikes.
When they're working at theirhighest level, they wind up
scooting forward to the saddle.
They they're losing uh powerbecause their core is not strong
enough to transport the powerfrom their.
You know what you're trying todo is you're trying to transport
parts that you're holdingholding the handlebars, down
through your torso to your legs.
That's the process you're goingthrough.
(38:26):
If you let go of the handlebars, you can no longer drive the
pedals nearly as hard as youcould when you were holding on
the handlebars.
So that that's that's.
This whole thing is linked fromhands to feet.
There's a there's a link goingon here and it goes through your
core.
If core is weak, you cannotdrive the pedals as nearly as
powerfully as you could if theywere, as if you had good core
(38:47):
strength.
Again, it doesn't take much.
Just do some planks, get on thefloor.
You don't have to go to a gymto do that.
Just get on the floor and dosome planks.
So we can narrow this wholething down.
If you're crunched on time, wecan narrow it down to two
exercises being as the mostbasic exercises the athlete
should be doing.
The cyclist, especially, shouldbe doing.
That's not complicated at all.
(39:07):
It's not going to take hardlyany time at all.
You can fit into your day.
I would also suggest fitting inother things, but now we're
starting to talk about takingmore time, but these take a lot
of time.
I would suggest you need someflexibility training.
That should be part of your gymworkout.
Gym workout is not just liftingweights, it's also flexibility
and it's also mobility.
(39:30):
Cyclists tend to have reallypoor mobility in the hips.
Hips and lower back uh, justdon't have the mobility they
should have when they've beenright.
You know, riding a bike is asingular, plain activity.
You're going straight ahead allthe time.
It's not like basketball orfootball where you've got a lot
of movement going on laterally.
This is a straight aheadmovement, one single plane.
(39:51):
Because of that, our hipsespecially become rigid.
We lose the ability to move ourhips as they're meant to be
moved, and that sets us up forproblems on the bike.
The transfer of power again tothe pedals if the hips are not
stable, that presents problemsfor the athlete in terms of
(40:11):
their ability to drive thepedals down.
Flexibility is part of that.
You need to have someflexibility, especially lower
back.
Athletes who have poorflexibility typically have
really tight backs and down theback of their legs also
hamstrings, calf muscles, very,very tight.
You need to work on that alsothat that has a lot to do with
how you sit on the bike whentimes are tough, when you're
(40:33):
being pushed to your limit.
It's not just strength, it'snot just your aerobic, anaerobic
endurance, it's also your yourthe core strength that you have
or you don't have, and theability to move your body as
it's designed to be moved, tomove it in ways that allow you
to perform at a higher level.
(40:54):
So that's critical.
It doesn't take much time atall.
The most important thing is toget on the bike and besides that
, the second most importantthing is work on hip, knee,
ankle strength.
And third, on the bike andbesides that second most
important thing is work on hipknee ankle strength.
And third, work on core.
And fourth, work on flexibilityand those things.
Those last three things takevery little time.
You can knock it out in 15minutes, no problem at all.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Yeah, and to that point I think too, like
everybody has their threshold oftime.
But when you're saying I don'thave time, look at your schedule
, get a little creative.
But also don't think that you,as Joe said, need to go to the
gym.
Like, get creative.
I say and I probably said it onthis podcast before is the bar
(41:34):
is so low for endurance athleteson muscular fatigue, like we
can, we can overcook our musclesso we can train our muscles
properly in 10 to 15 minuteswith some of the exercises that
Joe just mentioned, and thenyou're tired and then you rest
and then you move on.
Like muscles are ones and zerosin the way of are they fatigued
, are they not?
Whereas the aerobic system,it's more complicated.
You go forever.
And that's where I would say ifyou don't have time, great
(41:57):
strength training is good foryou.
Don't sacrifice endurance time,but look at the time.
If you have time in theevenings 10, 15 minutes, maybe
while you're watching TV, maybeyou're traveling you get to the
hotel, take 10 minutes and dosome planks.
You're going to feel a heck ofa lot better if you just do a
little bit of that in yourwhatever else time that you're
kind of burning.
(42:17):
So just get creative about that.
Last question to you, Joe, onum, on strength training, is one
that I get often.
Um, but it's when to do thestrength training.
So say we have enough time, wedon't have all the time in the
world, but should we be doingstrength training sessions on
hard interval days or should webe doing it on easy endurance
(42:39):
days?
Should we be doing it on ouroff days?
When should we, when shouldideally we be doing it on easy
endurance days?
Should we be doing it on ouroff days?
When should we?
Speaker 2 (42:46):
when should ideally we be doing our strength
training?
Speaker 1 (42:47):
yeah, it kind of depends um.
This is a loaded question too,by the way.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
There's just a lot that goes on.
There's a lot of stuff going inmy head about this whole thing,
but the bottom line is that, um, um, first of all, strength
training.
If you talk about the bigpicture of strength training not
just doing a few setups or afew crunches, rather, or, or
planks or that sort of thingthere's some things that really
(43:13):
do need some more attention, andthat's so early in the season I
like to have an athlete.
But going back to the way I doit now but this may not work for
everybody this is how I wouldhave an athlete do it Early in
the season.
I'm talking about like back inNovember, december one of the
focuses of our training isstrength.
(43:35):
That's one of the things I'mreally focused on with the
athlete, and so now it's a highpriority, and actually the bike
at that time is a little bitlesser priority.
So I'm going to have theathlete working out twice a week
in the gym, but they're goingto be solid workouts in the gym,
they're going to be hardworkouts and the bike workouts
(43:55):
are not going to be all thatdemanding, because we're talking
about it's october or novemberor december.
We have a long time till thefirst race.
Let's just kind of build someaerobic fitness, a lot of zone
one, zone two, and that's aboutit.
Even do some cross training, gofor a run, go for a walk, go
for a hike um row on a gym, amachine in the gym, whatever it
may be.
But the focus then during thistime is on strength we're going
(44:19):
to build, we're going to buildstrength.
Then we're going to start now.
We're going to start switchingthe the priorities around.
So as we move extremely earlybase period, like november,
december, as we move out of thatinto january, february, now we
start doing more time gym.
So now, instead of liftingheavy weights and trying to
(44:40):
build, uh, muscle mass, ineffect, we're going to start
doing much lighter weights withhigher repetitions.
So that becomes the way wetransition.
So there's a periodizationprocess going on here.
So we've periodized from doinghigh strength training emphasis
with low cycling emphasis to theother way around.
(45:01):
By the time we're like injanuary and february, now we're
starting to put more time on thebike.
So now let's go back to whenthose workouts should be done.
If it's, if it's october,november, I'm going to pick out
the best days of the week tolift weight because at this
point, from my point of view,cycling has actually a second,
secondary position relative tostrength, turning and all the
other stuff we've talked aboutin the gym mobility and
(45:23):
flexibility, all that kind ofstuff.
So this now becomes our focus.
So now, what's the best days tolift weights?
As the season progresses, we'rein this period of time where
we're talking about now we'regoing to switch to putting more
emphasis on the bike and less onthe gym.
I'm going to change that.
I made you wind up changingthose days.
When is the best time now?
What's the best time to rideyour bike?
(45:45):
When can we fit in strengthtraining?
And I would suggest, like injanuary, february, march.
That should come after longrides, should not be done the
day before rides like that.
And when you get into the timeof the season when you're
working on high intensity.
Same idea Strength training nowbecomes something we do after
(46:07):
the high intensity workouts.
And by this point, by the way,when we get to high intensity
training on the bike, I alwayshave the athlete cut back on
strength training.
We go from two workouts a weekin the gym to one workout a week
.
It just becomes maintenance.
The challenge is not reallyhigh.
You can get by with it quiteeasily and recover from it in a
matter of days, no problemwhatsoever.
So now, if it's only going tobe one workout a week and that's
(46:30):
going to come on a day forexample, it could be on a day
when there's a day off I wouldoften have athletes take a
monday off from training andthat would be the day training
being on the bike and that thatwould become the day they lifted
weights.
And then tuesday might be along ride or an easy zone two
sort of ride, and then wednesdayperhaps is their first hard
ride of the week.
That's now 48 hours afterlifting weights, and the weights
(46:52):
exercises weren't all thatchallenging anyway.
So that's the way I progressedthe whole thing.
So the idea is you have toperiodize this.
It's not things you just puttogether and they stay that way
for the entire season.
You have to blend them togetherbased on priorities and what's
the and especially also if theathlete's needs are that's.
That's one of the priorities.
I didn't go into that, but youhave to say what it is this
(47:13):
athlete really needs.
If the athlete really needs alot of strength training, we're
going to do a lot of strengthtraining, especially october and
november into december there'sgoing to be a lot of strength
training, especially October andNovember into December there's
going to be a lot of strengthtraining going on.
If they don't need so much,then we'll do much less of it.
It really is a veryindividualized matter that has
to be resolved based on theindividual and also what the
schedule calls for as far astraining in the big picture.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
Yeah, well, that's probably the perfect answer on
that one, and very inclusive too.
I like the way how you went allthe way back into the
periodization because, again,it's a loaded question.
I actually got this questionback in 2023 and I did an
episode on it I think it'sepisode 166 talking about
combining strength training andcycling, and so you can check
(47:58):
out that for a little bit more,because essentially, it really
plays out to what are you tryingto achieve?
What are your goals with theathlete?
And I think it will cycle andit will flow.
And this goes back to what Joewas talking about with
individualized training approach, where everybody's a little
unique and a little different,because some athletes don't need
as much strength training andsome athletes don't need as much
(48:19):
strength training in certaintime periods, whereas others do
training, and some athletesdon't need as much strength
training in certain time periodswhereas others do.
There's no perfect answer otherthan figuring out what works
best for you and your individualneeds, but Joe just laid out
probably some of the bestexamples and a path to follow in
the way of finding that out.
So, to wrap this thing up, I'dsay let's summarize by a few of
(48:39):
the key points, and the firstone is results come when you
establish the attitude.
First, joe talked about havinga high performance attitude and
how that will trickle over intoevery aspect of training and
racing.
Second part is that cycling hasevolved tremendously and
coaches as well as athletes.
We need to evolve with it.
(49:00):
So Joe did just that by writingthe fifth edition here of this
book, and individualization hascome to the forefront in
understanding that dose responseof training for better
performing athletes.
Finally, there's a fine linebetween overreaching and
overtraining.
A high performing athlete needsto tow that line at times, but
error on the side of a littleless.
(49:22):
There's some tools that I usepersonally to show uh and teach
athletes when they're walkingthat line and when to stay, when
, when to go, uh.
But again, that comes down tothat individualization of sorts.
Everything that Joe talkedabout agree completely.
So, uh, if, if, if.
You need to rewind back towhere uh Joe talked about.
Uh, you know when I asked himthat question and he talked
(49:44):
about how passionate he wasthere.
But overall, this is an awesomepodcast.
Joe, I really thank you againfor taking even more time on
your day to talk about one ofthe many books that you've
written.
So thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Thank you, adam, I enjoyed the conversation.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
You know, before we go, I just want to kind of share
one last quick story.
Joe, I mean, you're awesome attelling stories, but I have to
share one.
This is a little bit of fullcircle in the way that this
interview is shaping up, becauseback in college I was a
chemistry major and a wrestlerin a D3 school.
I've been an athlete my wholelife, had no clue what the heck
(50:22):
was I going to do after college,but my wrestling coach told me
to go sit on exercise phys classwith Carl Foster.
My friend got me into mountainbiking.
That led to Xterra racing, thatled to road triathlon, road
racing, and I had always been adecent runner.
So pretty soon I just changedeverything over to exercise
physiology.
I got obsessed and I convincedmy professor that we should have
(50:45):
a triathlon class on campus.
We started a triathlon club anda cycling club and we had an
exercise science class triathlon101.
And we had about 30 students inthat class getting college
credit for it and we used yourtriathlon training Bible, the
third edition, as our coursebook.
So I was teaching from thisbook back in college, 22, some
(51:07):
years ago, and now we're sittingon a podcast talking about
training.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
Well, thank you very much for using my book.
I appreciate your, your candoron that.
It's it's.
It's always fun to hear thatpeople got something out of
something I wrote.
That's that's.
That's, that's the greatestthrill there is writing a book,
as people say.
Yeah, I get emails all the time.
People say that you changed mylife because of what you wrote
people's lives at all.
I'm just trying to help them beembraced.
(51:31):
Better is all I'm trying to getto.
So thank you very much fordoing that.
I appreciate it Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (51:36):
You know, I think most coaches would would love a
few hours to pick your brain onall these topics.
I'm just glad that we could.
We could do it, record it andshare it with literally
thousands of people.
So, um, joe, if people want toread your books or they want
more more of you, uh, do theyfind you on social media?
More podcasts where can theyget more joe friole?
Speaker 2 (51:55):
um, I've got a website called joe friole
training dot com.
All my books are listed there.
You can purchase them throughthe website, um, and the blog is
there.
Also is stuff that goes backdash to to 2007, I think is when
I wrote my very first blog onthat, on that website.
So there's there's a long, longhistory there.
(52:17):
You can almost trace thechanges have taken place in my,
in my philosophy of training andmy methodology by looking at my
, my blog, but there's just awealth of information there from
stuff that goes back a long way.
So so, yes, joefreeltrainingcomis the website.
Speaker 1 (52:31):
Perfect.
Well, we'll link to that in ourshow notes, as well as blogs
and writings on motivation,consistency, some stuff that he
did with fast talk, fast after50, you'll, you'll find it all
there.
So again, joe Friel, thank youso much for taking time and,
yeah, I think our audience willget a lot out of this one.
Speaker 2 (52:51):
Thank you, I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1 (52:55):
Thanks for joining us on the time crunch cyclist
podcast.
We hope you enjoyed the show.
If you want even more actualtraining advice, head over to
train rightcom backslashnewsletter and subscribe to our
free weekly publication.
Each week you'll get in-depthtraining content that goes
beyond what we cover here on thepodcast.
That'll help you take yourtraining to the next level.
(53:16):
That's all for now.
Until next time, train hard,train smart, train right.
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