For most of us, autumn is when we take a break from hard training, let our diets slip, and go do some of those fun things that we had to forgo at the height of the season. Whatever we choose to do, the one thing we all understand is that doing a bunch of hard training and intense interval work in the off season isn’t going to do anything to help us come next spring.
So if training takes a back seat at this time of year, the big question becomes, are there other things you can do now to help set yourself up for a successful season? The answer is a lot! This is the time to figure out our gear and make sure it’s set up correctly.
Put another way, getting a new set of shoes and figuring out (where the cleats go and any aches and pains they cause) is a low-risk thing to do in November. But it’s playing Russian roulette with your target event in June if you change out your shoes three weeks before.
Joining us today to discuss this challenge are two top experts on setting yourself up for a successful season: show regular Dr. Andy Pruitt, who invented the Body Geometry fit system, and master fitter at Full Cycle, Ryan Ignatz.
They talk with us about the best time to make changes, the need for repeated fits and a pre-fit, and the challenges of getting our indoor bike set up correctly. We also talk about how to know when things like our saddles, pedals, and cleats are worn.
But we don’t just talk about gear. We also discuss stretching and weight training in the off season and whether this is a good time to do physiological testing. Finally, we discuss the impact indoor platforms like Zwift have on the traditional off season when racing is offered year-round.
So, double-check your bikes, saddles, and shoes, and let’s make you fast!
Episode Transcript
Trevor Connor 00:04
Hello and Welcome to Fast doc, your source for the science of endurance performance. I’m your host, Trevor Connor, here with Coach Rob pickles. For most of us, the fall is when we take a break from hard training, let her diet slip, and go do some of those fun things that we had to forgo at the height of the season. Whatever we choose to do, the one thing we all understand is that doing a bunch of hard training and intense interval work right now isn’t going to do anything to help our season come next spring. So if training takes a back seat at this time of year, the big question becomes, are there other things we can do now to help set ourselves up for the next season? The answer, fortunately, is a lot. This is the time to figure out our gear and make sure it’s all set up correctly. Put another way, getting a new set of shoes and figuring out where the cleats go and any aches and pains they cause is a low risk thing to do in November, but it’s playing Russian roulette with your target event in June if you change out your shoes three weeks before. Joining us today to discuss this challenge, are two top experts on getting our gear set up for success. We’ll talk with show regular Dr Andy Pruitt, who invented the BG fit system, and master fitter at full cycles, Ryan ignites. They’ll talk with us about the best time to make changes, the need for repeated fits in a pre fit, and the challenges of getting our indoor bikes set up correctly. We’ll also talk about how to know when things like saddles, pedals and cleats are worn. But we won’t just talk about gear. We’ll also discuss stretching and weight training in the off season and whether it is a good time to do physiological testing. Finally, we’ll discuss the impact of indoor platforms like Zwift that offer racing all year round on the traditional off season. So double check your bike saddle and shoes, and let’s make you fast. Well, welcome back. Andy Ryan, welcome to the show. This is the first time for you. We’re excited to have you.
Ryan Ignatz 01:46
Yeah, thanks for having me. What about me?
Dr. Andy Pruitt 01:48
What about you? Oh,
Trevor Connor 01:49
you’re here. I
Rob Pickels 01:50
- I’m sitting in the corner like I’m not even here.
Trevor Connor 01:53
Well, you kind of blend in with the the black things on the wall that happens. What
Rob Pickels 01:56
are we talking about today? Trevor, well,
Trevor Connor 01:58
so it is October, November, ish, this means a lot of people have just taken their time off. So we’re talking about getting ready for the new season. And look, we’ve done episodes on the training what to do when you you finish your off season and get back on the bike, or put back on the running shoes. Couple episodes you can check out for that, or episode 28 and episode 140 so we’re going to talk more about getting everything else ready, the gear, making sure that you set yourself up to avoid any sort of injuries. Hence, the reasons we’ve invited the two of you here. So where would you like to start? Andy, you made the point before we got going here that it’s impossible to separate it from the training. So even though this is a gear conversation, let’s start there. You’re not racing until March. It’s October, November. How important is training at this point?
Dr. Andy Pruitt 02:51
Well, I think the fall was all about experimentation. What didn’t you like about your past season? What kind of aches and pains Did you produce during the season? What’s lingering at the end of the season? So it’s really about experimentation. Is there something about your equipment, your shoes, your foot beds, cleat position, worn out parts, like worn out cleats. You just watch the World Championships on TV and you’re going, my God, I’d like to look like that, right? So is there some experimentation you want to do about your aerodynamics? I think that’s what the fall is all about.
Trevor Connor 03:22
Okay, Ryan, any thoughts here?
Ryan Ignatz 03:24
Yeah, and working with a lot of athletes over the years, I think there’s a time for a reflection, and it is a reflection on those things that Andy just covered in thinking back to the season, you know, were there things limiting you during some of the events? You know, whether that was some sort of lingering pain, whether that was some hot spot on the foot, whether that’s just You were always uncomfortable by hour four in some part, yeah, just anything related to that equipment limiting you. So reflect back on that and use this time while it’s fresh in your mind to move forward and come up with a game plan.
Dr. Andy Pruitt 03:57
I think some people find the fall and winter exciting because you maybe move indoors and really concentrate on what you want to do next spring. So getting your indoor setup, I know it’s somewhere on our outline today, but getting your indoor set up so that it’s attractive to you, it’s inviting to you, that there’s no excuses not to go do it, right? I mean, you need to have your winter indoor setup in a way that you get up and you go do it, you don’t have to set it up. It needs to be inviting. Yeah,
Rob Pickels 04:24
and Andy, I want to touch on something you mentioned before, which was, hey, people are watching the World Championships. Maybe they’re seeing some riders they want to emulate. They want a little bit more aerodynamic position. And we’re probably going to talk about some bike fit today, given the guys that are in the room. But you know, when we’re discussing training at this point in time, we have to remember that if we do want to achieve these positions that are going to put our body at was probably an end range of motion previously, right to get a little bit lower in the front, maybe adjust our seat height a little bit, then we’re going to have to be training the body through a range of motion as well, and that needs to start now as a relatively inflexible person. Listen, I will tell you you do not overnight, just change the range of motion that you need. So if you are planning on bike fitting or whatever in the future with the goal of becoming more aerodynamic, start those range of motion exercises today. Don’t start them after your fit appointment
Dr. Andy Pruitt 05:16
and or explore technical changes, equipment changes, crank arm length, forearm extension, angulation, all those different things that may allow you to achieve a more aerodynamic position without all the pain and suffering of increased range of motion. So it’s that time of year. It’s instrumentation. This is that
Rob Pickels 05:33
experimentation you’re talking about right now. Don’t do it in April or May, when your time trial season is getting hot and heavy. Do it in November, when it doesn’t really matter if your performance is top notch or not.
Trevor Connor 05:45
So that question was a little bit biased, obviously, towards the racer who has a season that’s starting in March or April, and this is kind of the point when there’s no races going on, unless you’re a cross racer. But what about the recreational rider who doesn’t have races? Does this apply to them? Should they just keep riding do their thing, or is it good for them to also have a down period where they focus on these other things?
Dr. Andy Pruitt 06:09
Well, if you’re looking at me, I think that the tourist or the event rider, they’ve all had a peak in their summer, whether it was ride the Rockies, I’m sorry it didn’t happen this year, whether that’s ragby, great ride across Iowa, there’s a lot of things that the type of rider you’re talking about actually do have a goal in this season. Once you reach your goal, physiologically, you do need a downtime. You cannot maintain a peak. You cannot
Rob Pickels 06:32
and I think that there’s a natural ebb and flow of the volume and time that people are putting into riding, right and as the weather gets cold here and the clocks change, people are naturally going to be riding less, even if they are more of an adventure minded individual. But
Trevor Connor 06:45
now here’s a question for you, does the whole explosion of indoor training throw this on its head? Because I can tell you, there were no actual formal races here in Colorado, at least this summer. There’s a whole lot of big races on Zwift for those people, do we need to shift? Was the summer, their downtime, and now they’re getting into farm or
Dr. Andy Pruitt 07:05
- Ryan, do you have people come to you as a fit consultant purely to get their indoors zwifting set up, perfected? Yeah,
Ryan Ignatz 07:14
I definitely do have some people who partly I think the demands indoors are different in terms of the static nature of it. Some people are trying to find more dynamic nature to that indoor riding. But yeah, there are people who want me to figure out how to set up their new Zwift bike or their whatever branded bike they have indoors that’s not exactly like their true outdoor bike. And there are limitations to some of these bikes as well. So what they’re doing even indoors is not even translating to outdoors. So being more conscious and aware of what it is that you’re setting up, I think, is important.
Dr. Andy Pruitt 07:47
I’ve got a friend, a neighbor, who does 90% of his training indoors and only rides his outdoor bike when he races. Yeah, I think it’s absurd, but nonetheless, if they come to you with this request, how closely do you want those bike setups to
Ryan Ignatz 08:01
be? Yeah, I would try to make them as close as I can. You know, unless there’s somebody who really just wants to have indoor, easy, volume riding bike, maybe that’s a little more upright, maybe little less TT, if they know they’re not coming out swinging and racing right away, maybe just to give them an alternate position to settle into over the winter as a form of some exercise, while they’re also doing some other cross training. But otherwise, yeah, we try to make them very similar. I
Rob Pickels 08:27
don’t know if this goes along with the outline, but I want to tease into this a little bit more, because, Ryan, you did mention, you know, the position is maybe a little bit more static. And I know I certainly experience this when I ride my long, long hours that I do on Swift which, if anybody knows, I make it about 48 minutes, and then I pick the bucket. But are there considerations, you know? And Andy Ryan, this is for both of you, right? You’re sitting in a relatively constant position. You’re not shifting your weight, you know. Do we have to be thinking about is the exact same saddle, indoor and outdoor? Is that the right choice? My road bike lives on the trainer. I haven’t taken it off the trainer in forever, but I’m riding the same saddle that I have on my outdoor bike. Should I be thinking about something different? I
Ryan Ignatz 09:11
think that’s person dependent. Some people can get away with that consistent saddle in both places. Yeah, when it comes to that static nature, though, things do pop up that may be different indoors versus outdoors, where it’s more dynamic. So I definitely see that well,
Dr. Andy Pruitt 09:25
I’m a big believer in that our undercarriage, our crotch, is tissue which is not designed to bear weight. So change, for the sake of change, sometimes is healthy. I think that a similar saddle design should be on all your bikes. That does not mean that the padding and structure of the saddle shell should necessarily be the same on all your bikes, and chamois choice can also vary. Winter. I use a little thicker chamois indoors than I would normally ride out. I’m a minimalist outdoors, and I’m more maxi pad on the indoor bike because of these differences, i. Gravity is more an issue on us on the indoor bike than outdoor bike. As we stand, we get stop signs. There’s all these different changes where we get to unload the undercarriage and the indoor bike, it’s just, you’re just stuck to the saddle, although I do encourage myself and others to make their indoor riding more dynamic, more outdoor, like right to stand sprint. Do all those different things. Can the saddle be different? It can be different in my purview, but it needs to be a similar concept, where you want to bear weight on most your skeletal structures, not on the soft tissues, not on the midline, whether you’re male or female,
Rob Pickels 10:34
it can’t be so different that it’s a now an inappropriate saddle. Correct? Yeah, correct. You
Dr. Andy Pruitt 10:38
can’t just throw the leftover saddles on your indoor bike. So many people put their Junker on the trainer, and I just think that Junker needs to be set up very similar, if not exactly, the same, as what you’re going to be training on,
Ryan Ignatz 10:50
yeah. And I feel like for the indoor rider who’s just doing more base through that winter time, indoor season, a little less intensity, then possibly a little more upright position is just better, or whether that’s just sitting in the tops more, whether that’s, you know, raising it up a centimeter or two spacer stack. I do feel like having just a little different weight distribution tends to be easier when you’re just in that, you know, zone two kind of riding.
Rob Pickels 11:15
I have so much sweat in my stem and steer tube right now. There is no raising of my handlebars at this point, the bike’s probably not even safe to ride outside anymore, but for everyone else who’s not in that position, probably a good idea. So
Dr. Andy Pruitt 11:27
that’s for the episode of indoor bike maintenance. Yeah, yeah. Well, you and
Trevor Connor 11:32
I were talking about this last week, I don’t cut off the top of my fork right down to the stem, because I want, in the winter to be able to bring it up and be a little less aggressive on my back, I
Rob Pickels 11:42
was riding with Flora Duffy one day, and she made fun of me because of how much steer to I had sticking up. Ever since then, my ego has been trashed. Thanks, lock flora,
Dr. Andy Pruitt 11:53
she can ruin your ego. She
Rob Pickels 11:55
was destroying me riding up left hand at the time, I had literally no comeback, yeah, totally, yeah.
Trevor Connor 12:01
Okay, let’s first talk about, is this a good time to be replacing some of your gear? And what should you be looking at is this, when you want to get a new bike? I know keeping your shoes lasting five six years is not a great idea. Should you be getting new shoes at this point in the year? What are some of the considerations in terms of gear that you should be looking at replacing or not looking at replacing. Yeah, somebody
Ryan Ignatz 12:25
who is also around retail a lot, I see, well, one time is changing, right? So if you are still riding maybe more mornings or evenings, you know, outside of work hours, then having some lights making sure that you’re safe there. I mean, you should probably have the lights anyways, just for daytime riding. But maybe you change the light intensity, you know, you start hitting 1000 1500 lumens on a front light, just for actual visibility, versus car visibility, right, right? So things like that might be important. And
Rob Pickels 12:53
on this point, I do want to stress. Riding at night is awesome. If you have a light setup that is worthy. It is so much fun. It will keep you riding longer into the year when the clocks change, you don’t have to. My kids ride with boulder Junior cycling, and practice starts at 430 and it literally is dark 10 minutes after practice, they do two hours with lights on, specifically in parks. It’s incredible. They have so much fun, and you should too.
Ryan Ignatz 13:21
Yeah, there’s a quietness in the night that you just don’t get during the day,
Rob Pickels 13:24
and you feel like a badass because you’re the only one person out there. Let’s be
Trevor Connor 13:27
honest. I still remember 20 years ago doing the night mountain bike rides where you had that giant light that was probably 200 lumen, and you had a battery that had to go on your water bottle. Yeah, because it
Rob Pickels 13:38
was hoy, enormous. Yeah, I night ride basically two times of year. In the summer, in the peak of the heat, I like to get out at night, and then kind of when the clocks change, you go too late in the year, it’s a little bit too cold without any sun radiant heating. But anyway, Ryan, back to you. I took us on a tangent. Yeah,
Ryan Ignatz 13:55
as far as other equipment, you know, this is a good time often for deals too. Not that deals should drive your decision making. You know, make those decisions based on what were your needs. You know, what didn’t meet your needs during the season? What was bothering you? Was it too tight of a toe box and you just toughed it out because you paid 400 bucks for these shoes. Start to make those decisions now towards something that works better for you,
Dr. Andy Pruitt 14:18
especially if you’re changing brands of something, whether that’s changing brands or styles of saddles, changing brands of shoes. I mean, the specialized shoes is more biomechanically inclined. So if you’re gonna make that kind of switch, either away from or to a biomechanical a design shoe, the wintertime is a nice place to decide whether that’s gonna work for you or not again,
Rob Pickels 14:38
because it gives you the time to put in and to learn and to adapt when it’s less risky, when it doesn’t matter quite as much.
Ryan Ignatz 14:46
You know, I work with some athletes that are on that cusp of Early professional career, and often this is a time of sponsorship change. And so for those athletes, you know, my recommendation is, don’t just go for the. Sponsorship that gives you stuff just to have a sponsor get the stuff that works with you, that aligns with you, that is not going to disrupt you or reduce your performance just because you get it for free or get it at a discount,
Dr. Andy Pruitt 15:11
you’ll actually be a better ambassador for that brand. If you sought out that brand because it really worked for you, then you’re going to be a better ambassador. Then somebody calls you, hey, we’re going to give you a bunch of free stuff, and you go, okay, cool. And it doesn’t work for you. Not gonna be a very good ambassador. That’s right. So good point on the sponsor changes.
Ryan Ignatz 15:27
Yeah, I certainly see that right now. So I do get some consultation time with that, just figuring out, hey, is this bike even gonna fit me? You know, they’ve been riding one bike for a long time. It’s working well, and then they switch brands, and all of a sudden it doesn’t even work.
Dr. Andy Pruitt 15:40
So Ryan, because you are associated closely with retail, if somebody wants to investigate handlebar or angulation or crank arm length, that was your expensive endeavors, hey, they are now,
Ryan Ignatz 15:52
is a common one. Now, you know, I’ve been around that conversation for a long time, partly coming from the multi sport world and just believing in that idea, but then the equipment wasn’t really caught up. Now with import from Taiwan, a brand protor, who they have solutions in this, there’s a few out there, but to somebody could rent time with a set of cranks that is fully adjustable down to 140 millimeter length. So pretty broad range of lengths that you could experiment with. And we can start to figure out these details of what opens up your hip, where do you still hold power? Well, but can do it sustainably. So they’re becoming better and better solutions.
Dr. Andy Pruitt 16:29
So they’re rentable.
Ryan Ignatz 16:30
I make it rentable.
Dr. Andy Pruitt 16:31
Ah, what a great idea. I mean, you could invest a couple 1000 bucks and all of a sudden, have it failed. And what about the forearms for time trialing? And we do
Ryan Ignatz 16:41
have different options available, yeah, at the store to test. So some of that we do during the Fit process, where I just have different equipment around that I can put on the bike and just test in real time and let people experience it, even if it’s just for a short amount of time. I think it’s really valuable to the rider to know, wow. I thought I was gonna love this. I don’t you know, or I didn’t even know this was possible. Can I
Rob Pickels 17:04
ask? And maybe this is a little bit, it’s going to be a little bit of a biased answer, perhaps because you’re both, you know, incredible bike fitters, but I want you to be as objective as possible. How many of these equipment changes that we’re discussing, how many begin with a bike fit? Or are there appropriate things for people to do. I as a rider, I feel like maybe a shorter crank length is important, right? But are people considering now the distance from your pedal to your saddle is different. Now your fore aft is different because the crank arm and is going to jump all over. Should people start with a bike fit, or are there equipment things that people can experiment with that maybe don’t require that full service. Well,
Dr. Andy Pruitt 17:42
bike fit is not a one and done. Bike fit should be something that you consider throughout your season. Your body changes, your musculature, tissue density changes, lots of reasons why a position may not feel the same to you at a different time of the season. So this is easy for me to say, because I’m now retired, and I’m not trying to sell bike fits. I think bike fit should be something you do three or four times in a 12 month span, right? And you should have a bike fit consultant that knows you, has records of your position, and you just go in for a quick, kind of like a dental cleaning, right? You go in and get a spot check. So bike positioning, bike fit, it’s an ongoing physiological process for any serious cyclist, I
Ryan Ignatz 18:29
agree. Okay, perfect. We offer, you know, some reduced rate follow ups just for this purpose, just so for the people who have a big picture. We know where we’re headed, what we’re trying to do, either that’s, you know, a couple things throughout the season that we’re trying to change or manipulate to try to improve performance. Then let’s not make so much, the cost, the barrier to coming back in and the time commitment, a barrier to coming back in. Let’s make it more accessible. So we do that internally, and just offer some more of those quicker follow ups. So it might still be an hour, hour and a half, but we’re really diving into what is working what is not. Let’s try to address those things and keep moving forward with a good plan.
Dr. Andy Pruitt 19:12
Many of my patients over the years were not local, right? They flew in from wherever, and so I had two or three hours to deal with them, and then you send them off with their new position. I tried not to let them leave boulder without all the changes made, but then we had to stay in close contact, because they’re not going to come back from Florida on a regular basis. It is a thoughtful process. It takes time, and that you talked about the adaptation time. So give me an example. Somebody comes in and says, I want to experiment with crank arm length. So you spend time with your adjustable cranks in your office, you come up with what you think is going to work. What do you give them as an adaptation time? I’d
Ryan Ignatz 19:50
say it depends on the person’s volume overall, but definitely a couple 100 miles, I feel like really tells the story. The first time is not always the best time. Also. Reason why I don’t really fit around power. You know, some people want to see that number in real time or heart rate, but it may not be there. You know, maybe it’s even under until they have a couple of rides to really adapt to it. Very
Rob Pickels 20:11
important point, well, backed up by research as well, oftentimes people are most efficient in whatever position they’re habituated to. You make a change, they become less efficient, but give them time to habituate, and they might be more efficient than they were initially. Right? There’s some interesting
Dr. Andy Pruitt 20:27
work out of the University of Utah. Jim Martin has done some work with crank arm length, where he blinded his subjects with two different crank arm lengths on each side, and within a very short amount of time, their body had adapted, and they were peddling fairly efficiently on both sides, regardless of the credit cards being different. So his hypothesis is that adaptation happens pretty quickly. As far as being able to turn the circle, but as far as being able to get you back your natural power, that’s going to take some adaptation for the musculature to do that. So pretty interesting stuff anybody wants to research that
Rob Pickels 21:02
he also, if people are interested in this topic, researched, I believe, a very wide range from like 140 millimeters to 240 millimeter early on. And there were obviously some differences in pedal velocity or whatever else. But the gist is not a very big change in power across a gigantic range, and here we are discussing the difference between 172 and a half and one seven, that was
Ryan Ignatz 21:26
peak power. So it’s not always what we’re after. So we’re looking at just efficiency or power over time. My final
Dr. Andy Pruitt 21:33
statement on crank arm length is, I think crank arm length is a fit tool, not a performance tool.
Trevor Connor 21:40
So one of the things I was thinking about coming into this episode, and I’m going to share a quick story from last week to kind of spark this conversation, is, Andy agree with you, if you have the resources, getting a fit multiple times through the season is great. A lot of people only have the resources to maybe do it once a year or once every couple years. And so the question is, is this the right time of the year to do it or not? And my feeling on this, and like I said, I’ll share a story, is I think this might be one of the best times to get fit, because it’s in that off season, or the base season, when you are bio mechanically habituating your body to the position. And so the story here is, I saw Ryan last Monday, so a week ago, and he fit me. And one of the things that really surprised me is you commented, you’re not recruiting your glutes at all, which used to actually be kind of a forte for me. I was really good at bringing in the whole musculature, so I’m like, Okay, what happened there? I guess I haven’t been working on it. So he did some great work on my bike, and I’ve been riding better all week, but I ended up on the trainer on Sunday. It was pouring rain outside, and I wanted to get some racing in, getting ready for an event in a week, and I got on my trainer bike, and I don’t know when’s the last time I fixed the position on it, but realized it was in a horrible position, and I could feel myself, I’m like, I could not recruit my glutes on this bike right now, if I tried in the position it’s in with the amount of time I spend in the winter on the trainer, I’m like, no wonder I become quad dominant. I was in a really bad position. And so the realization to me was asking that question, when’s the best time to get fit? It’s before you really habituate your body to the position. And I spent an entire winter habituating myself to just using my quads, so we need
Ryan Ignatz 23:21
to get your bike in so we can measure, we can compare, and set them up the same, exactly.
Dr. Andy Pruitt 23:27
I mean, that’s one of my notes right here. Indoor bike, outdoor bike should be set up the same. I
Trevor Connor 23:31
was surprised the difference in that. I had never noticed it until now. Well, that goes back
Dr. Andy Pruitt 23:35
to the not that your indoor bikes a junker, don’t, don’t be offended all of Trevor’s bikes. But we don’t have levels. We tend to want to put a bike on a trainer and leave it there, right? It’s a pain in the butt to take them on and off. So you’ve picked a bike, maybe the one that you don’t care about so much, and boom, you need to make sure the saddle is right. All those things pedals. I use a pair of shoes that kind of just lay by my indoor bike, and I hit me the other day, man, when’s the last time I changed these foot beds the long time since I changed those foot beds on indoor shoes. So yes, keeping up to date on the indoor stuff is just important to keeping up to date on the outdoor stuff.
Trevor Connor 24:09
So Rob, you’ll get a good laugh. It is my dedicated indoor trainer bike, because I took it to a bike shop a few years ago to have some work done on it. They handed it back to me and said, We cannot ethically work on this bike? They said, Nope,
Ryan Ignatz 24:22
not a bad thing for the indoor bike.
Rob Pickels 24:24
I bet it doesn’t even have disc brakes. Trevor,
Trevor Connor 24:26
do I own a bike with this? Well, I do. Actually, I have one bike with disc brakes. It was a joke, but they’re not hydraulic. So is this a good time to get fit? And if you’re doing it this time of year, what are the things you should be asking for? What are the considerations? Is the fit in November different from the fit if you go in in June, in the middle of your season? Yeah,
Ryan Ignatz 24:47
that is a good question. It kind of depends on the athlete, I would say, what they are shooting for, what we’re trying to accomplish with that fit. I think there’s always the caveat that there’s potential to change, but there’s a already recommended. What you’re going to change, like, why you’re going to change it in the future, and here’s when we’re going to do that. It
Dr. Andy Pruitt 25:05
depends on too, why they’re seeking the fit. If this is part of a regular, routine checkup, then I think you start with your major fit whenever you do it, and you do your periodical checkups later. But most people came to me with a reason to get a fit. It was rarely that I just want to go faster, or I have x pain or y pain, or what I change sponsorship bikes, and it doesn’t feel good. They had a reason for coming. There had to be some impetus for it. I think it depends on if it’s important in the fall or the spring. It’s why they’re coming. Gotta solve their problem first and then move on to the other things.
Ryan Ignatz 25:40
Yeah, and I see, because I’m partly around retail and even not fully, but there’s a lot of deals too. I’m seeing that people are bringing the new bike. So that’s the reason why. Maybe it’s we’re just setting it up exactly like their other bike, or maybe they’ve just never even had a fit. They have a new bike. They’ve read about this, heard about it through, you know, some kind of media, and they’re realizing, Hey, I’m finally going to invest in myself. I’m going to come get a bike fit, you know? Or I’m struggling with something. How
Rob Pickels 26:07
many people end up maybe in a trap or making a poor decision, because they say it’s the off season, they’re going to be deals. This bike is two grand off. I got to buy it, and then, crap, it’s the wrong size. It’s the wrong frame. Are you undoing a lot? Is this a poor way for people to go about it? Should they be seeing you first?
Ryan Ignatz 26:26
Yeah, ideally, that’s the ideal world. Not everybody thinks that way, or even knows what that means, what possibility there is, but yeah, we do a lot of bike fitting ahead of time. That’s the way to do it, whether that’s even using their old bike, making tweaks that maybe that bike can’t even fully accommodate and then using that to guide the decision making process when looking at a new bike, even
Dr. Andy Pruitt 26:46
custom bikes can be wrong. And one of the saddest days in my career was a guy that had flown in from New York with his brand new custom bike, and the only thing custom about that bike was his name on the bill. It didn’t fit him. I said, we cannot make this bike work for you. Can you imagine how devastating that is to somebody who had just bought a bike, custom bike, and there was no way that I can make that bike work for him. Or there’s the online purchase, or the used purchase online, and there was a great deal that’s so cool. It was somebody famous as a bike, and it just won’t work for them. So the pre fit is really, really an important possibility to pursue. If you think about online purchase, that
Trevor Connor 27:32
is a fantastic point that I haven’t thought about that. You know, yes, if you go and buy all your gear and then you go to somebody to be fit, they’re working with what you got, and it might not be the best stuff. So you’re not gonna end up with the best fit if you’re at that point in the season where you’re thinking about making a bunch of replacements. And so this kind of goes into the next topic of talking about saddle shoes, pedals, going to the fitter
Rob Pickels 27:56
first, right? And Trevor to help this transition for you something to consider that I’ve personally experienced a few times. You can buy shoes that fit, and they can be on sale, and life is grand, and then you go to the fitter. You put in the right foot beds, maybe you have to put in a various wedge or something like that. Suddenly you’ve taken up some volume in that toe box, and that shoe doesn’t fit anymore. So that great deal. What are you going to do? You’re gonna shove your foot into a shoe that’s now too small. Are you not gonna use these tools that are aligning your biomechanics, or are you gonna let this $200 pair of shoes that was 50% off just sit in your closet? Yeah,
Ryan Ignatz 28:32
that’s one of those conversations I hear all the time, like, oh man, the deal I got on this is so great, you know? And then they hold on to that belief that it was so great, they can’t move away from it, right? They’re just attached to it. So as a sometimes tough decision for them, I’m just there to help create solutions and offer suggestions and ideas. And more often, they go with the those ideas, but not always, and they have to deal with that. My line
Dr. Andy Pruitt 28:59
for you would be, I am your fit consultant. You’re paying me to give you advice. What you do with the advice I give you is totally up to you.
Trevor Connor 29:06
So let’s talk about shoes, saddles and pedals. So first of all, how often should people be replacing these? You know, I’m the retrograde. You know, every one of my bikes is ancient, but I would never wear a pair of shoes for five years.
Rob Pickels 29:22
I never wear the same shoes two rides in a row. I have a problem, though. What
Dr. Andy Pruitt 29:29
was your name? Mel zamarco related,
Ryan Ignatz 29:33
that’s funny, so
Dr. Andy Pruitt 29:35
I’ll start there. The saddle is the center of the fit universe period. If you change a saddle, even if you think it is the exact same saddle that you just are replacing because you broke it or it’s worn out, they weren’t made in the same line, the padding could be slightly different. There’s going to be something different about that new saddle. So the saddle is the center of the fit universe. If you change your saddle. Saddle, you have to consider saddle height, fore, aft, reach. It can affect all of those because you may be adjusting your pelvis to sit slightly differently on this new saddle. All of a sudden the reach feels too long, or the saddle is too high because the padding is thicker or more dense. So saddle changes cannot be made
Ryan Ignatz 30:19
lightly, yeah. I mean, I see we were just talking about foot beds too, you know, they just wear out, so replacing those more regularly, I think is really important. It’s really funny to think of somebody who had maybe three years on, you know, like a basic foot bed off the shelf, foot bed that is phone based, you know, and then you go to put in a brand new pair, it’s the same style of foot bed, and they’re blown away at the difference. And maybe that pain that was kind of coming up in their knee starts to dissipate things like that. And it’s like lotus was a super simple, easy solution, really highly
Dr. Andy Pruitt 30:52
paid pro who was having medial knee pain. He’d been all over the team docs. He’d gone to go speak surgeon. They were considering an exploratory arthroscope. And he said, I just run through my fit one more time. Is there something we can do? The only change we made was a new blue, specialized foot bed, and his knee pain went away.
Rob Pickels 31:10
I mean, parts wear out and they break right. Andy, you kind of briefly said it, I break saddles a lot. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s these birth given hips that I have, but I constantly have cracked shells and everything. And if I’m not looking for it, I don’t necessarily notice it, because it’s not something I can feel while I’m riding. Oftentimes, I’ll pick my bike up by the saddle, and they’re like, Wait, that flexed more than it should have. And I’ll look and there’ll be a crack. Got to replace it because it’s not supporting you correctly. The other end of the spectrum too. We look down at shoes. We look at cleats, right that is providing the stability for the other half of the structure. We talk about top down support and bottom up support as well. That cleat wears out. It’s not holding your foot in the right position. Maybe it’s allowing, you know, too much E version or inversion, and cleats are pretty cheap to replace. Do it ahead of time. The things that are less cheap to replace are oftentimes on the mountain bike shoe, where a lot of that support comes from those little outrigger pod treads next to the cleat. Those begin to wear down. You see people’s feet are rocking to the outside. You know, their biomechanics are totally altered at that point. So stay on top of these things and get them replaced and fixed, just like replacing your chain before you smoke your chain ring and your cassette. Be looking at these other pieces along the line as well. Couldn’t
Dr. Andy Pruitt 32:28
agree more. Yep, absolutely pedals. There are pedals that provide superb biomechanical support, especially road pedals. We have way more options to provide great support and assure good alignment. On road pedals, off road pedals, cyclocross, oh, geez, I need to clear mud, or I need to do all these different things. So I actually had patients that would train in an SPD, right, because it gave them better support. And they would race in a Crank Brothers or something for the mud clearance. And you throw away a lot of support. When you go to that spring loaded open based mud clearing pedal, you lose a lot of support there. But for race day, it’s only an hour, they had race shoes and race pedals, and then they had training shoes and training pedals, so they would have the support for their hours. There’s a lot to be said about any spring loaded cleat is going to fatigue. The spring is going to fatigue. So suddenly that end point you think you have has increased because the spring has worn out, or the metal cleats actually even worn, even on so keeping up on cleat and pedal is as important as keeping up on your saddle, no doubt.
Trevor Connor 33:36
So how often should you be replacing all these things?
Rob Pickels 33:39
I never read the same pedals two rides in a row. That one was a joke. The shoe one wasn’t. Well,
Dr. Andy Pruitt 33:47
listen, remember who you used to work for? Why you have so many shoes? Well,
Rob Pickels 33:51
I’ve worked for specialized and, yeah, I have, yeah, a lot of stuff, yeah, and Pearl, yeah.
Dr. Andy Pruitt 33:59
How often I think it depends on the hours, right? I mean, yeah, a brass cleat. Wow, they have a very short life, yeah, very short life. Let’s go back decades, and the black look cleat was a brand new thing, right? So we went from toe straps and sloppy slotted cleats to a ski boot, like binding click and you had no movement. The knee is the victim caught between the foot and the hip, so the epidemic of knee injuries that occurred with the invention of the black luclete. So simultaneously, I’m trying to figure out what are the solutions this from a fit and equipment standpoint, and my orthopedic partners are trying to figure out surgeries to resolve all these injuries that occurring because the black lip cleat, so along comes the time cleat and pedal system, which was a brass cleat, right? So we went from a fixed position black look to the spring loaded time system with a brass cleat, and the injury associated with the black cleat were. Really, really, for the most part, resolved, and a whole new set of injuries occurred with this sloppier system that allowed for more movement. So my point is, the truth is always going to be someplace in the middle, and really it’s your fit consultant that’s going to help you find that truth in the middle as a little sidebar to the brass cleat, which provides really a lot of flexibility, a lot of mobility, and that connection and they wear out very fast, right? So there’s a lot of things to consider. Cycling is simple. When Da Vinci invented the bicycle, this was a simple mode of transportation. It is no longer a simple child’s tool. It is a very complicated apparatus.
Trevor Connor 35:39
So shoes and saddles. What are signs to say? Time for new ones,
Dr. Andy Pruitt 35:44
aches and pains. Yeah, saddle
Ryan Ignatz 35:46
sourcing feels different, loss of power, sometimes physical. You can see the wear, but you might not be, I don’t know. I guess, savvy enough to see the wear, so the consultant can be really helpful, or even somebody at the service center at your local bike shop. You know, they might see some of those signs of wear that you just don’t know to look for. And I’ll
Rob Pickels 36:05
go on a limb and say it’s probably pretty hard to give a hard number $1,000 I don’t know. Everybody rides differently. You know, some people are more demanding on their equipment
Ryan Ignatz 36:15
mud, and some people are in super dry. So all those things matter. If
Rob Pickels 36:19
there’s any obvious sign of wear or damage. It’s too late at that point. You know, you should have gotten to it before that, but prior to that, I don’t know. I think, personally, it’s hard to say, Yeah,
Ryan Ignatz 36:30
I was just thinking of like an interesting example of riders. She used to do around 400 miles a week of riding. She’s a world champion, whatever, but she every prime month and a half, two months, we’d tell her about her chain is worn, right? So, you know, it’s not a fit oriented part, but it’s just something that is wearing out. She’s very powerful. She’s climbing a lot, and she just thought we were duping her into just selling her more stuff. And then, you know, I started trying to give her some numbers, like, the chain last you know, this time somewhere around 1000 to 1500 miles. How many miles are you doing? You do the math, yeah, this is time and, um, a chain
Rob Pickels 37:09
checker, like we talked about, you know, is very easy to use, relatively inexpensive. Get one. Check your chain. When it says it’s worn, it’s worn. Doesn’t matter if it’s still shifting good, that’s the point. Get a new one on there.
Ryan Ignatz 37:23
So that idea, then trying to translate that idea of a chain checker to footwear, maybe you clip the shoe in without being on the bike, and just move it around. And if it has a lot of movement and play, then things might be worn.
Rob Pickels 37:35
And if you’re doing that regularly, you’ll know what it feels like when things are good, and you’ll be able to get into feel when when things aren’t so good anymore. Another area that’s near and dear to my heart is chamois shammies. Wear out those 10 year old shorts. One the elastane, the spandex is gone. Those things are baggy. We don’t want to see you in those but that chamois is not providing you the support that it used to as well. They are, for the most part, just open cell foams. And that stuff does break down over time, with multiple washings, multiple loading, so on and so forth. So get some new shorts, too. And
Dr. Andy Pruitt 38:10
the more chamois lubricant cream you use, the quicker you’re going to kill your chamois they’re almost impossible to get clean to me, the more you’re using some kind of chamois cream, whether that’s vaseline or some kind of water soluble based one the more of that you’re dependent on, that tells me there’s something wrong with your saddle choice and your fit. Like fit discussions should begin at the glove wall, right? If a guy’s comes in looking for new gloves, for more padding, he doesn’t need more padding. He’s a bike fit. So I want to go back to the pedal and stance with So Ryan, so in the wintertime, I ride a fat bike a lot, in snow, in deep snow, in cleated boots. My stance width is so lack
Rob Pickels 38:51
it’s like you’re riding a horse. Yeah. Anyway,
Dr. Andy Pruitt 38:54
so how often in the winter time, how many fat bike fits are you doing? Or are people so lax about, oh, it’s just a fat like, I don’t need a fit, and the stance with so different is that something we need to consider?
Ryan Ignatz 39:06
Yeah, I mean, it’s something to consider. I know some people might struggle with that for sure, you know? And then there’s a crank length portion to that. That’s happening all at the same time. There’s no way to just make it narrower, you know, you can go to a narrow pedal, but the boots that you might wear definitely gonna force even wider stance with so I’d say it’s rider dependent, but some riders may struggle with it. I didn’t mean
Dr. Andy Pruitt 39:29
to throw it under the bus. I knew that was hard question, because there are people who just cannot ride fat bikes. That’s right, cannot ride Yeah, and
Rob Pickels 39:36
we’ll tack on to that too, though, and say I find that my stance with tends to be a little bit wider when I’m just wearing my winter insulated shoes and that’s a little bit thicker, or you have some nice thick shoe covers and they’re rubbing on the crank. So there is a lot of consideration here, not even just fat by candy, but for regular riding too. Probably
Ryan Ignatz 39:56
majority of riders can tolerate some of that with chain. Change, but not every rider for sure. And
Dr. Andy Pruitt 40:02
the good news is we’re not riding them forever and ever and ever, right? It’s once or twice a week, and they’re relatively short because it’s cold out there. I mean, two hours on a fat bike in deep snow. I’m toast,
Rob Pickels 40:13
Trevor. I’m looking at your outline here, and you have wheels question mark, and I’m gonna say, No, you should not be buying new wheels. I’m a wheels are a race day accoutrement person. Myself, I don’t think people should be out riding. You know, their race day carbon wheels all the time, especially not in the winter. Yeah. But
Trevor Connor 40:33
should you be buying your race wheels now and then, put them away until the racing season starts, and put a bow on them, open them
Ryan Ignatz 40:41
for Christmas. Again, there can be deals in the off season or into the fall as equipment gets cleared out. So if you know generally what your reason for purchasing them, how is it going to improve your performance? Sure, it could be a good time to find that equipment. You know, we could say that it’s obsolete by spring. You know, as far as the marketing is concerned, but in general, you know, pretty small advancements as we go. More important to me, counterpoint,
Rob Pickels 41:06
you’re going to go get a bike fit. You’re going to need a new bike. It’s going to be on a different drive train system. Your free hub isn’t going to work. You shouldn’t get the wheels now, bam, another point on my side,
Ryan Ignatz 41:16
and you may just want to change to your really basic training wheel at this time of year, just because there tends to be more stuff on the road, more wet weather, things like that, that you just don’t need to put the wear and tear on nicer bearings that might be in those race wheels. Maybe get those race wheels service. A lot of them might even come with ceramic bearings of grease in those to make them fast and make them smooth and give you that benefit needs to get serviced more regularly, more expensive, the car, fancy the car, the more maintenance it might need. So tired choice, though, I think, is more important. Disc
Dr. Andy Pruitt 41:49
brakes have made it harder to switch wheel sets, just for the sake of switching wheel sets. All right, getting that disc brake lined up to match perfectly as you change wheel sets, that has discouraged a lot of people from having race wheels versus training wheels.
Rob Pickels 42:04
I helped somebody on slow twitch the other day, and I said this exact thing, if you’re gonna do it, get the same hubs between the wheels. The rims or whatnot, can be different, but if you keep the hubs the same, usually it eliminates this problem. But we have it a lot in cyclocross, right multiple wheel sets per bike, and you don’t want a different hub in there, it really messes things up. When you’re like, why am I going so slow? And you realize your rotor has been rubbing for the past 20 minutes. That’s no fun. Yeah,
Ryan Ignatz 42:29
and brake manufacturers are understanding this, and with every evolution of new disc brake that comes out, there’s more and more clearance, just to help reduce that situation. So
Trevor Connor 42:39
let’s shift gears here a little bit, literally or figuratively both. Okay, good. So we’ve talked about the gear. So once again, October, November, people are starting to get ready for their next season. What are things that you can be doing to get your body ready? I know there’s a lot of directions we can go with this, but I want to start with one. Is this a good time of year to go and be tested? And I’m going to get my answer here. I think absolutely, this is the time of year to get your gear set up and figure all of it out, go get that fit. I’m not sure it’s the best time of year to go and get tested, because this is when you’re out of shape, and I think you want to wait until you have a little bit of fitness and the legs and the tests, and give you a little more information. But Rob, what do you think? Ironically,
Rob Pickels 43:24
Trevor, I just tested my wife, Melissa on Saturday, because I think it’s a terrific time of year. And the reason I’ll say that is I always think the best time to be tested is right now. Because what are you going to do between now and eight weeks from now, when you do have that better performance? Are you going to train based off of a guess? Is that going to be as efficient? I hope that that testing number changes. I hope that today’s testing number is not accurate two months from now, because you have gotten better. But no, I do believe it’s a great time to test. I do testing a little bit differently. I’m more focused on base paces. At this point, I might not push a test quite as hard or as long. I don’t really care about maximums as much, but I do want to know what that low down is, because I want to make sure that we’re dialed in and hitting the zones appropriately so
Dr. Andy Pruitt 44:11
Trevor that I think depends on where this episode airs. But when was your season over? When was your last true event or your peak day. And how have you degraded to this point? Great point. So you might be really fit in September. I mean, some people are smoking September right the World Championships are going on right now. So I think it really kind of depends on when your off season is. And a lot of people don’t believe in an off season anymore. I truly believe in an off season that said I’m a 74 year old bike racer I’ve been raising for 50 years, and the older I’ve gotten, the more important it is not to get out of shape. I try never let my baseline get below a certain level, and I still do one. Hard workout a week, even in the OFF time, because that’s what our friend Joe Friel says to do, use it or lose it once a week. You need to bust the glass ceiling. So when is the best time to test? I think almost any time, rest a few days, test, and you’re going to know where you are at that moment to kind of set up what you want to do the next three months. Yeah,
Rob Pickels 45:19
I will say real quick. The caveat being, it depends on what training is going to look like, test today and then take four, six weeks off. Maybe, okay, maybe today is not the best day. I brought up my wife Melissa, because we’re actually in the beginning of her build up toward next year after some time off. So
Ryan Ignatz 45:36
yeah, and I think that piggybacking off of what you were saying, Andy about just where you’re at relative to the fitness that you had, having an understanding of what that peak physical form looked like, as far as your engine, and using that as a tool to guide you know where you’re even really good at fat burning. Were you not what’s your outlook for the next season look like? And using that to maybe figure out, do you need a nutritionist? You need to really work on those things that on paper now, with some testing, are pointing out some glaringly obvious things that you could work on.
Dr. Andy Pruitt 46:08
Really good point.
Trevor Connor 46:09
What else can you be doing in October, November, to be getting your body ready, besides obviously putting time in on the bike or running or whatever endured sports you’re doing,
Dr. Andy Pruitt 46:20
let’s touch on stretching for a second. You know, we talked about Time Trial positions, or just acquiring a new position and some added flexibility you might need. So the physiology of musculo tendinous connections is really well described in the literature, and you can it’s individual dependent, but you can actually lengthen a tendon. Muscles are elastic anyway, right? So most of the time when we stretch, we kind of bounce stretch. You’re really just stretching the muscle. You’re actually just going to muscles length to change your range of motion. You have to affect a tendinous length change. And inside that tendon, this thing called a golgi body, which looks like a little spring coil, that you have to get that golgi body to trust you to actually let your tendon reach its full length and actually then begin to lengthen. So it takes four to eight weeks actually affect a tendinous length change. It takes about a week for you to lose those changes that you made over those six to eight weeks of stretching. So the fall people say, Yeah, I’m gonna spend the fall. I’m gonna get flexible again. I’m gonna spend my fall stretching and lifting weights. And then as soon as they start riding again in January, they stop stretching. Well, if you wanna affect a position with stretching, it is not a seasonal thing. It has to be a persistent thing, right? Physiologically. So stretching in the fall and then forgetting it, you might as well not bother. It’s
Rob Pickels 47:42
a good point. The other thing I’d like to say about stretching as well is it may or may not be beneficial to your performance or even your wellness. These strategies need to be targeted for what you need as an individual, if you have a ton of posterior chain flexibility, then adding more probably doesn’t help you, and if anything, it might decrease your stability and cause problems down the line. So make sure it’s an individual recommendation that you need as an individual to meet your goals.
Dr. Andy Pruitt 48:15
So I got a great example. So there’s in town here in Boulder, there’s a multi time world champion marathoner from South Africa. If you figure out who he is, great. If you don’t, that’s okay too. Anyway, comes to me with an Achilles and hamstring string, and I’m doing my exam, and I said, My God, you have the tightest hamstrings on Earth. Here’s what we’re gonna need to do. He goes, No, no, no, don’t. Don’t tell me to stretch my hamstrings. So they’re my secret weapon. They’re my accelerator. He said they’re so tight, I’ve learned how to rebound from them to increase my acceleration rate. So yes, he had hamstring strength because he was so tight, but he didn’t want to go into that stretching routine, because those were his secret weapons. So we did everything but stretch his hamstrings to make him well. And today he still has tight hamstrings, and he’s really fast.
Trevor Connor 49:03
Something I say to athletes all the time is, do not do stretching without concurrent functional work. You need to be strengthen those muscles as well. The simple way to say it to him is, if all you’re doing is stretching, you’re just gonna get floppy and then you get injured.
Ryan Ignatz 49:17
Yes, functional strength through that range of motion.
Dr. Andy Pruitt 49:20
Well, how about off season weightlifting? If you’re gonna let us stray from the equipment on to training, what about weightlifting? How’s everybody feel about weightlifting in the
Rob Pickels 49:28
fall beefcake?
Trevor Connor 49:29
I personally am a believer in weightlifting through the entire season.
Rob Pickels 49:33
I agree entire Yeah. And I think I’ll echo, you know, this is a Neil Henderson. Ism where, you know he very much worked with people to increase their strength, maybe even above and beyond what they needed during the season, knowing that within season, the strength training pulls back a little bit as you’re riding or your running volume is coming up. So yeah, I think this is a great time to even do a little bit more strength training than you would be doing on average,
Dr. Andy Pruitt 49:56
which was gonna be my comment that Trevor’s year round as a 74 year old. Absolutely lift weights year round, at least twice a week, but it changes. I’m back on the hip slit. I’m back. You know what I mean? I’m back doing dead lifts. I’m back doing those kind of things that I might not do more during the season. So I think your strength training can ebb and flow. It should never go away, but the style and impetus should be seasonal.
Trevor Connor 50:19
Another good point that you made to me a while back is the prioritization, because often you’re doing both weights and a bike ride or a run on the same day, and my feeling is in the winter or particularly right around now, I am prioritizing the weights. And if I get on the bike later and I’m sore and can’t do as good a bike ride, I don’t care, but I want a really good weight session. Yep, when I’m in July, I map out the bike training, prioritize that and fit in the weights where I can. So it’s a shift in the prioritize 100%
Rob Pickels 50:51
I totally believe in that this is also potentially a good time to see somebody like a physical therapist who is well trained and well versed to be able to do movement screens and understand deficiencies that you may have again to begin attacking them now, so that you’ve worked through that prior to the season beginning. That’s
Ryan Ignatz 51:08
kind of what I was thinking as it relates to the equipment side of what that looks like. Yeah, just going into the gym and doing more lifting really has no meaning behind it. Then that’s not really the way to go about this, so working with a really good functional strength. PT, to give you a plan. You know, maybe there’s a online plan that they can recommend, or a way to use an online platform, especially if you don’t have anybody close to you, or you have your own at home gym create use the technology to help define those goals and move forward with a plan and a good progression. Go
Dr. Andy Pruitt 51:42
back to Trevor’s not being able to ignite his glutes in a certain position, so they’ve weakened, makes them functional. So let’s think about some hip sled. Let’s think about some other things that can really focus in on his glutes. So you’re really going to know when you’re firing them, because they’re going to jump out of your chamois. You know,
Ryan Ignatz 51:59
I’d even say that you go into the gym and you do some of that strength that even makes that muscle sore. I feel like, especially in the glutes, you get on a bike, one you feel the activation pattern just is there, and you can feel it because you’re sore, but it doesn’t feel bad, comparative to like, you know, if you’re hiking heavy pack downhill, a lot of eccentric loading on your quads, you don’t really feel like doing any range of motion in those clods, but like your glutes when they’re sore, I feel like you can do that range of motion. You feel that activation pattern. Somebody
Dr. Andy Pruitt 52:27
mentioned about being a little more upright, maybe in the winter. Well, to ignite the glutes, we have to be forward flexed. So the more we set up on the indoor bike, the less glute activation we’re going to have. So I think that some parts of a workout need to be in a truly forward flexed position to put tension on so muscles won’t fire. There’s not tension on them.
Trevor Connor 52:47
Exactly why I couldn’t recruit my glutes. Because what I noticed on my indoor bike is I have a very short stem compared to my outdoor bike. My saddle is further forward, so where I’m stretched out on my road bike, on my indoor bike, I’m probably sitting straight up so you can see the TV better. I can that is true that
Ryan Ignatz 53:06
or you have to really be good at anteriorly tilting the pelvis to create some of that length of the glute. But then now you’re altering how you’re sitting on the bike and how you’re sitting into that
Dr. Andy Pruitt 53:16
and loading your perineum. Yeah, yeah. Potentially no free lunch, guys, the whole idea behind bike fit and bike positioning. There’s really no free lunch, and there’s an activity we weren’t designed to do. So the whole idea is to finding balance between all the contact points and putting ourselves in a position to utilize all of the facilities that we actually have as a human so that the idea of bike fitting is very complicated. It is not a tape measure measure your saddle height and your reach. It’s a very complicated dance to put all your facilities and a place that they can work to their maximum. So
Trevor Connor 53:52
as we’re rounding out here, got one last thing to discuss, which, to me is very interesting, because if we had done this podcast 15 years ago, this wouldn’t have been much of a discussion, but now it is an important part of this. There is truly an indoor season. Now, a lot of people out there care just as much about the indoor time as the outdoor time, and we touched on this at the beginning of the episode, but I’d kind of like to round out the conversation here of what should you also be doing right now to get your indoor setup ready. If that’s an important part to you, should you have a dedicated indoor setup, or should you just be bringing your road bike in? And should you be fit on your indoor setup? Let’s start with those two questions real
Rob Pickels 54:33
quick before we get there. I do want to point out Wahoo released the kicker in 2012 so you are right 15 years ago. Not a lot of smart trainers, but like, 13 years ago, not so far back. Well,
Dr. Andy Pruitt 54:46
swin actually had the velodyne before that was one of the original writers of the velodyne back in the 80s. And then the CompuTrainer was, you know, Chuck Webster. Compu trainer. He was a fluid dynamics guy that ran a. Company that built pumps for fluid flow, and he was a cyclist, and the compu trainer came out of that. So when you ordered a combo trainer, you went to this plumbing site. I
Rob Pickels 55:09
just brought us on the best tangent ever. You had a real question in there. So
Dr. Andy Pruitt 55:15
they were originally wind trainers. Yes, right? I mean, I had the back wheel only that was a fan, and the harder you pedaled, the harder the van blew. I missed. Drove your neighbors. No, it drove your neighbors. Crazy thing howled rollers were before that, and the old coaches would stuff a towel or something under one of your rollers to increase the resistance. So, I mean, we’ve been trying to figure out how to work hard indoors for a long time. Smart trainers have made it. I don’t know if it’s easy or not. You gotta be technologically sophisticated sometimes to get these things to work.
Trevor Connor 55:46
More of what I’m getting at is the shift has been in the past. It was a training tool, but the goal is always to be out on the road doing races out there. Now there is a legitimate indoor community. There are environments like Zwift where you can race with people. So now it is a thing in and of itself, as opposed to something that helps you get to where you want to go. Now for a lot of people, it is the goal itself. So does that change things? So that goes back to the questions of, should you be putting more work into this setup? Should you be getting it fit all these sorts of things? I think
Ryan Ignatz 56:23
from a mundane aspect to indoor training, it can be a great tool just to help get you motivated, keep you motivated while being indoors, versus just music in yourself. You know, which has its place too, or just yourself.
Dr. Andy Pruitt 56:37
I’m not a swift rider, so I’ve never joined that community. But indoor training can be lonesome. I’ve always enjoyed it, and I have no problem riding indoors. I mean riding hard indoors. I mean, I can do stuff indoors that I wouldn’t do outdoors, because I’d fall off, right? I mean, I can train harder indoors. But the community wise, we’ve got a group. We call it the spin docs. Yeah, you do. It’s every Tuesday night, November through March, and it’s some of my closest friends, and we train so hard on Tuesday nights, and then with the smart trainers now, our coach, who happens to be our son, loads the workout, and all of our smart trainers, and we’re all doing relatively the same workout, whether one guy’s FTP is 300 and other guys is 200 we’re all working, and at the end of that, we’ve had so much fun, and we beat each other up. We look forward to going there and getting our butts kicked, right? I mean, it’s really a fantastic thing. So it’s like a group ride outdoors, but it’s a group ride indoor. Does
Ryan Ignatz 57:36
that have to be every day? Probably not. Oh
Dr. Andy Pruitt 57:38
no, I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t survive.
Rob Pickels 57:40
Andy, there’s a unique aspect to this. You are doing this as a group in the same room, right? There’s the camaraderie, there’s the beep talking, you know, but now technology Trevor, we’re going to be talking in the future about velocity. Velocity recreates that in a virtual environment. Robbie Ventura’s thing that he’s going with right now. I know there are some people I was talking with Neil Henderson last night about it, that are getting good success, but it’s, you know, platforms like this or maybe worthwhile exploring right now. I personally get nothing from Zwift to tell you the truth, like the virtual world. I don’t know it’s great, but it doesn’t engage me like riding outside, does, let’s be honest, you know. So I think that this is a good time for people to experiment in platforms that engage them, which I think ultimately is the most important. I couldn’t care less what the platform is, as long as it gets you on the bike, keeps you happy, keeps you motivated. I
Ryan Ignatz 58:31
think having good gear trying to go outside first, to me, that’s just more important for the soul, even just to be outside. So I think first and foremost, having the right gear for that is always important. You were talking about setup, and so I think making sure that your setup is actually sound and healthy and it’s not going to create new wear patterns on your body that now you’re coming out more injured than ready for the season. So I think those are aspects to the indoor versus outdoor.
Rob Pickels 59:00
As we talk about indoor, I think that something to throw out there right now, something that keeps you on the bike longer than anything, in my opinion, are fans, right? Keeping yourself cool, keeping yourself comfortable, is really important. I think that this is a good thing to be investing in. And I’ll say there are two things that have worked really well for me. One, I’m not plugging them specifically, even though I’m plugging them specifically Vornado, seems like it works really, really well because of the focused sort of Airstream really can hit your body. The other thing that works pretty well are sort of the industrial blowers that are probably meant for, like drying your carpet after a flood or something. They tend to be a little bit louder, but they move a lot of air for me if I don’t have things like this creature comfort so to say, to keep me comfortable, I can’t last on the trainer very long, and it feels a little steep to invest in like brand name, $100 Vornado fan, but it makes all the difference in the world, if you ask me, I’ve
Dr. Andy Pruitt 59:56
known you a long time, Rob, and you are a sweat hog.
Rob Pickels 59:59
So. Sweaty bastard. I appreciate you know me that well, Andy, by the way,
Ryan Ignatz 1:00:03
Oh, that’s funny. I also think about the hydration side of this, and just from some of the testing that I do, and often, there’s this mindset that’s just different indoors, where I feel like people forget that they are sweating possibly even more. In some climates where they’re actually 75 degrees inside, and they’re not used to that kind of weather condition, period. And so, yeah, just making sure that you’re drinking more and keeping up with that hydration. The
Trevor Connor 1:00:29
other thing I’m going to bring up here and where I was leading the question a little
Rob Pickels 1:00:33
bit like, Guys, you’re missing?
Trevor Connor 1:00:36
No, it just so, like, I’m one of those people that became a full convert. You know, I, through most of my cycling career, would go out and do a six hour ride when it’s negative 20 out, because I hated the trainer that much.
Dr. Andy Pruitt 1:00:47
You’re Canadian, and I’m
Rob Pickels 1:00:48
hand yourself. I’ll
Trevor Connor 1:00:49
do that. I have completely flipped to in the winter. I am primarily on the trainer, part of this because I’m at work all day, so the only time I have daylight to get outside is on the weekends. And I have had maintained an old mindset of, well, it’s the trainer, so I don’t need to make sure the bike’s set up right. I don’t need to make sure this gear is very good. And it looks like I have because I had a bad setup on my indoor trained, really bad habits that’s now moved out onto the road, and I didn’t really consider that, because I just continued that mindset of, it’s the trainer setup who cares. And I think anybody who’s like me, who’s spending more and more time on Zwift, more and more time on, you know, something like velocity, on these different setups, spending a lot of time indoor, I think you need to take it as seriously, agreed,
Dr. Andy Pruitt 1:01:36
and I think we’ve made the point really clear. I think that the indoor setup needs to closely resemble your outdoor setup. Absolutely, you do some sweat testing, right? I do. So back to Trevor’s question, is this a good time to be tested? He was talking about physiologically testing, I think. But tell us about that, and when is the right time to do that? I think indoors, we do tend to sweat a
Ryan Ignatz 1:01:57
lot. Yeah. I mean, there’s different philosophies on hydration. How you do it, whether electrolytes are important, not important, and that’s a personal choice, I would say there is some research to say both ways are correct. So for me, I do some testing through precision hydration. It looks at sodium composition in your sweat, so it’s how much sodium Are you losing as an individual, which is genetically determined. Everybody’s sweat gland is a little different, but you could have a pretty large spread, anywhere from a couple 100 milligrams of sodium per liter of sweat loss to 2200 milligrams of sodium per liter of sweat. And again, there’s a little bit of philosophical ideas researches all over the place to say what is the best way to do this. But in some recommendation that we’re offering is this idea of replenishment from what you’re losing. And so indoors, there’s a lot of demand under sweat, especially under the higher intensities, even if it’s for a short amount of time. You know, if you’re somebody who loses easily a liter and a half to two liters on the moderate to moderately high range. Then now let’s say you also lose 1500 milligrams of sodium per that one liter. And you’ve lost two liters, that’s 3000 milligrams of sodium lost, and your body might store in your bloodstream somewhere eight to 10,000 for somebody kind of average size male rider. So really you’re depleting yourself, and so that needs to get replenished, for sake of just hydration status, which helps with recovery, will help with mood, helps with sleep, helps with cognitive mindset. So I think I see the people who have gone indoors, and they’re coming towards the season, they’re thinking about getting tested, which, in this case, you can test anytime, and it’s the same information. It’s not like your normal physiological testing that’s changing over time, because it’s genetically determined. And so in this case, I see these people who have been training through the winter, and they’re coming out ready to race, but they’re feeling flat because they’ve just been sipping on a water here and there, just in their indoor training, and they’re coming up more dehydrated, especially around here, because we’re in a very dry climate during the winter, right? And so they’re actually coming out of the winter under trained in a way, or just feeling very flat. And then they start to improve their hydration status, even if that’s just drinking more water. And they see a big benefit. So I see it from that angle as well. So paying attention to little details about hydration status. So Well,
Trevor Connor 1:04:26
guys, I hate to say it, we’ve been talking for an hour 20 now. We’re pretty close to so this has been a great conversation, but I think we need to wind it up. So Ryan, you’re new to the show. We have finished our episodes with our take homes. It’s so you have one minute to kind of summarize what you think is the most important or salient point you want everybody to take from this episode. So let’s give you a second to think about it. Since you didn’t know where you’re going to do this. Andy, do you want to go first with this one?
Dr. Andy Pruitt 1:04:58
I think the point made here. Is that our indoor setup is really important and that it deserves the same attention as the outdoor setup. So a bike you ride, it’s a bike you ride, whether it’s indoors or outdoors, it deserves similar attention and the way you sit on and the way you use it, if you change product, if you change equipment, saddles, especially this. Remember, the saddle is the center of the fit universe. Saddle change demands that you look at all the other basic bike fit measurements. Yeah,
Ryan Ignatz 1:05:31
thanks for that. Andy, yeah, I would say, just to add to that, would be, this is a great time to come and look at equipment choice. Consult with your fitter, on the equipment that you’re using your indoor setup, and reflecting on just what happened in this season while it’s fresh in your mind. Don’t wait till the spring, when you kind of forgot exactly what you did, how you trained, all the issues you were having. And let’s address those now with both equipment, time with the fitter, with your PT, and start your plan going forward. Ryan,
Rob Pickels 1:06:03
I’m maybe just gonna Taurus a little bit more, because awesome, awesome summary, in my mind, this is a great time to experiment. If you’re going to experiment, we all know you shouldn’t be trying anything just before race day, but as you’re doing those experiments, just make sure that you’re doing it with purpose, right? Don’t change for the sake of change. Maybe get some guidance from someone at the very least, look back at what your strengths and weaknesses were, what those little niggling pains were, and move from there as you choose the things to make improvements on moving forward.
Trevor Connor 1:06:31
So my take home is, I’m going to see just how hypocritical I can be in one minute. Oh
Rob Pickels 1:06:35
my god.
Trevor Connor 1:06:37
So this is something I’m very guilty of, is getting a setup that you like, find a bike that you like, find shoes that you like, find a saddle that you like, get it all set up, and then get into that mindset of, now, everything’s perfect. I’m not going to touch it.
Rob Pickels 1:06:53
Yeah, everything welds everything into place so it can’t possibly move. The
Trevor Connor 1:06:57
issue that we all have is everything breaks down. Everything stops working well. Your saddle, as Rob pointed out, I’ve cracked a few saddles too. You might crack them. Your cleats wear down, your shoe inserts wear down. All these things just stop functioning as well. So unfortunately, it’s just an ongoing thing, even if at one point you had the perfect setup with all the perfect gear of trying to keep it all functional and working well. And to me, this is a good time of the year to do that. Check in. Just look at everything and go, Hey, how is my saddle doing? How are my cleats doing? How are my shoes doing? Check all these things and say, Is it time to do something about these and go see a bike fitter to say, How am I looking on the bike? Not a great thing to take care of all that two weeks before your key event, which is also really hypocritical, because I saw Ryan last week and Tobago, my one target event of the year is next week. Better late than never. Trevor. Do as I say, not as I do in this particular one, because I’m not a great example, but you’ve learned. I’ve learned, but you learned myself. But All right, thanks, guys. That was a lot of fun to you guys. That was another episode of fast talk. Your thoughts and opinions expressed in fast talk are those of the individual. Subscribe to fast talk wherever you prefer to find your favorite podcast, be sure to leave us a radiant review. As always, we’d love your feedback. Tweet us at at fast talk labs, join the conversation at forum dot fast talk labs.com or learn from our experts at fast talk labs.com for Ryan Ignatz, Dr Andy Pruitt and Rob pickles, I’m Trevor Connor. Thanks for listening. You.
