Welcome to another potluck conversation with regulars Grant Holicky, Trevor Connor, and Rob Pickels. In these discussions, we pick topics that we find interesting and break them apart using a mix of science, humor, and our own experience. In this show, we discuss the following:
What’s most important when you commit to a serious training plan?
Coach Holicky has worked with many athletes who have made the commitment to raising their game as athletes—some ultimately becoming professionals—and have needed to follow a dedicated training plan. But shifting to a structured and committed plan can actually be very difficult. Holicky asks the team what’s most important to remember when making that transition.
If you struggle to find top-end speed in races, do you need more high-intensity workouts or more base fitness?
Coach Connor has raised this several times on the show—often athletes come to him saying they need to work on their top-end speed because they can’t go with the attacks in races. But the truth is, they are riding so close to their limit in the hours leading up to those attacks that they’re just too tired to attack. What they need to do is improve their base fitness. Connor asks the team if they agree with this assessment.
Have we ever done things that we know go against the science?
We pride ourselves at this show on staying on top of the science and sharing training approaches that we believe are backed by science. So, Rob Pickels, a physiologist, asks the team to call themselves out and admit if there’s anything they do in their training that either has no science behind it or even goes against the prevailing science. If you’re wondering where this question is going to go, let’s just ask, have you heard of PowerCranks?
Get ready for some unique conversations – and let’s make you fast!
Quotes from the Show
- “Well, let me say this about science. And this is just a general statement about science. It’s a general statement about research. Okay, that research does not and is not able to take into consideration how varied individual human beings are and how they react. Yes, a lot of different things. Yep. You know, we can sit here and talk about, there’s a lot of research that talks about people that are fast responders to training and people that are slow responders to training we know these things. And this may be why I like the mental performance side of things a little bit more. We don’t really take that into consideration when we sit down and we Bring six people into the room. Sure, the variability of what you’re going to get in that science is actually pretty huge. We’re trying to boil things down to generalities that we can use. And a lot of times, we can boil those things down very, very well, because you do double blind studies with an individual and you get that information. But there’s so many things out there that you need to be comparing apples to apples. And so often we’re comparing apples to oranges, or nectarines, or whatever you want to go down that road of. So I do think it’s important for people to recognize that. “And this the last piece, I’ll put to that it’s all a combination of mental and physical. There’s a reason placebos work. And so we have to get comfortable with some of that uncomfortableness. We want answers, we want to know, this is what it does not do that for you. And that’s why I think there’s important pieces.” ~Grant Holicky re Individual Responses
- “Yeah, great, I think he’d make a really, really terrific point. And this is where oftentimes looking at the individual results if a paper includes them, and oftentimes they don’t, you can have an intervention, I don’t care what it is a placebo, a supplement, a training protocol, and half that group can say improved by 20 Watts, the other half of the group can get worse by 20 watts. But all that’s reported is that there was zero, because when you average plus and minus 20, you get zero, there was zero change in performance. But here’s the thing, that intervention was very worthwhile for half that group and very not worthwhile for the other half of the group. And that individuality is really important, which is why I always suggest to people try that it might go against the grain, here’s the thing, it might not have any benefit for you. But if it’s unlikely to have a deleterious effect, or it’s unknown, every once in a while I dropped words that you don’t understand grant. If it’s unlikely to do harm to you, grant you Thank you. That was there’s kind of no reason not to do it, just to see.“ ~Rob Pickels re. Individual Responses
- “And that gets to a good point. As a quick tip for anybody who’s interested in trying to break away. You want somebody to go with you, you got to dangle yourself. Yeah, you can’t Yeah, get to farm for on the field. And understand, majority of the time it’s the field that’s gonna catch you not one or two writers. So you’re gonna have to make multiple attempts before you get that ideal scenario, where you dangle yourself out one or two guys jump up to you.” ~Trevor Connor re. effective attacks
Episode Transcript
Trevor Connor 00:04
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Fast Talk, you’re something-something for the science of endurance sports training. Rob, that’s your line, not mine.
Rob Pickels 00:13
You’re something-something.
Grant Holicky 00:16
He is something-something.
Trevor Connor 00:19
So, we are here with the clown posse again.
Rob Pickels 00:22
Wow, the insane clown posse.
Grant Holicky 00:25
You know, I like when I show up. It’s like, suddenly there’s this, you know, raucous name to what we’re doing. We’re the clown posse when it’s me. You know, you have some other guests on and it’s like, oh, this is the expert on whatever, Grant’s here, clown posse.
Rob Pickels 00:40
I think that makes you the scapegoat, right?
Grant Holicky 00:42
No, that’s exactly what it is. It’s
Rob Pickels 00:44
mildly the episodes suck. That’s because Grant was here.
Trevor Connor 00:48
I have actually wondered about that. If people feel like I’m multiple personality, because when you’re not here, and we’re talking about the scientists like super serious dive in deep into the science. Yeah, yeah. When you’re here, it’s
Grant Holicky 00:59
not it’s just a show. Just everything devolves really quickly. I’m just impressed. Rob’s awake. Come back,
Rob Pickels 01:07
Rob. I’m awake. Want to tell him what you just did? woke up and came to work?
Grant Holicky 01:11
How when you went over to
Rob Pickels 01:14
if you’re a regular listener of the show, I’ve certainly mentioned trans Portugal. And I kind of did it the past two weeks, you did everything that you could I did everything I could have done. I missed the first stage, unfortunately. So trans Portugal was a eight day mountain bike stage race from the northern border of Portugal and Spain, to Villa Mora on the southern coast. And unfortunately, an airline who is unnamed but has a major hub in Denver. You can look that up if you want. They left my bike on the tarmac outside the plane flying from Washington to Lisbon, despite me pointing it out to the to the flight attendant. So I missed the first stage, arguably getting my bike back was a bigger challenge. than the five and a half hours I would have spent on my mountain bike absolute. But I was I was able to do the race from stage two to eight. So on my strong win,
Grant Holicky 02:08
why, well, cumulus time did you win?
Rob Pickels 02:11
No, no, because they gave me they allowed me to stay in like the GC. But what they did was they gave me like an eight hour time for the first stage, which which I finished in 95th place because I was like three hours behind everyone else. You know, it takes pressure. Yeah, no, no doubt. But yeah, it was big. It was fun. It was, gosh, five to eight hours a day on the bike. There was one stage that was four and a half hours. And it’s amazing how four and a half hours can feel like a rest day. Yeah. But after what I guess for me, it was 41 total hours in seven days. By far the biggest volume I’ve ever done. You know, my body held up really well. And maybe we should do an episode on that. But I crushed and used multiple recovery modalities, right. And in terms of what I was doing, from bodywork, to nutrition to all of that, I was really on top of it. And it’s funny my biggest weeks, I had 217 hour weeks leading into this, which were sort of the biggest ones that I could manage, especially because of the treatment that I was getting for my autoimmune issues. I had an infusion during a 17 hour training week. And 30 out Yeah, exactly. I was pretty crushed from those right when I’m working and family and everything else. And a 41 hour week that was dedicated, was actually physically easier. Because it was the only thing I had to worry about amazing. But anyway, that’s sort of enough about that. It was it was an amazing experience. It’s probably a once in a lifetime thing. I don’t know that I want to go do it again. We’ll give it another melon. And we’ll see. Ya know, of course, of course, amazing experience, the race. I mean, in all honesty, logistically, one of the more impressive things I’ve ever seen the race organizers. Absolutely. Fred and the entire transportable team. They crushed it. I mean, impressive all
Grant Holicky 04:08
around. Very cool. How old are your kids now?
Rob Pickels 04:11
They’re 10. Yeah, there’ll be 11 in July coming. Okay, so I got six years. He got six years. One until you can
Grant Holicky 04:18
tell I can just disappear for a week or so my bike two weeks disappear for two weeks? Because I’m super jealous.
Rob Pickels 04:26
Yeah, well, but on the next one, two weeks from now is Finland gravel. So but I’m taking the whole family to that. So I won’t be an absent father. I’ll just be an overtrained.
Grant Holicky 04:38
I’ll just be absent emotionally. Exactly. Yeah. All right. So what are we doing today? Oh, good question. We’re chit chatting. Apparently this is the this is welcome to the chit chat. Welcome to the ketchup hour. This is
Trevor Connor 04:53
another potluck. So we got three questions. Grant. Do you remember your question?
Grant Holicky 04:57
I do remember my question. So my My question is, and there’s a bunch of different ways to take this. But as people who work with athletes coaches, what would your biggest piece of advice be? And what I’m looking for is like really distill this down to a word or a sentence for somebody starting a regimented training program or a high level training program for the first time, like, what’s the most important thing? Right. And I think it’s so easy to get lost in the weeds of it. We’ve talked about this before you can get into the, you know, what is the micro advantage, right? What’s the, what’s the tiny little thing you can do? But what most people need is what’s the big thing. And it’s really easy to miss what the big thing is for people. Obviously, I’m bringing this up. So I have a thought. But I’m really interested to hear what you guys think
Rob Pickels 05:51
everyone’s looking at me. So I’ll throw something out there. You guys can agree or disagree. For me, it’s, if I’m distilling this to a sentence, it’s trust the plan. And I don’t know, Grant, if that’s going in the direction that you want to go, but it’s the direction I’m choosing. I think that oftentimes when people begin something, they expect to see radical changes almost immediately. And sometimes that happens, without question, sometimes that happens. But more often than not, that doesn’t happen. And I think that people can become a bit anxious. Right? I’ve been at this for a month. I’m not any faster. I’m getting shelled out of the group ride. Now, I got to do a you know what, I know that grant prescribed this, but I think I’m going to do a couple extra hill repeats this week just to make no, no, no, no, no. I think at some point, you have to reevaluate the plan without question, but the plan takes weeks and months, sometimes even years to be fully effective. And it doesn’t mean you should do things that are obviously not working. Well. I’m not saying that. But you do have to give things time before you adjust.
Grant Holicky 07:01
Yeah, that’s kind of what I had in mind. I think there’s that great line from Melanie McQuaid. She wants I remember on this show, it was a long time ago. But she once said that every training plans, the scientific method, right? You start with a hypothesis, then you test your hypothesis, and then you go from there. So you know, kind of what you’re saying, Rob, is you got to put the time in the test the hypothesis, and then you come back to the table with the coach and go, okay, is this relationship working a? And if the relationships working all right, what do we need to change what needs to be different? Now we try that we see what happens.
Trevor Connor 07:33
So something our listeners don’t know, we actually recorded this. I say this with quotes, we recorded this episode a couple of weeks.
Rob Pickels 07:43
I was gonna say, we recorded two thirds of the episode. And by that we recorded a whole episode I just wasn’t. My microphone wasn’t turned on. We didn’t turn on
Trevor Connor 07:52
all the mics. So what I’m bummed about is the fact that I was on my game that day. You think it was really I felt though I had good answers. And last night, I was like, What were my answers? I should go back and check and went, Oh, that’s right. We didn’t record it.
Grant Holicky 08:11
Well, listen, this is what I was saying at the time that we shouldn’t sit down and try to redo it then because we would have tried to remake the answers. You know what, Trevor? Sometimes, so sometimes you just gotta move forward.
Trevor Connor 08:23
I’m just gonna tell our listeners for the rest of this episode somewhere in the ether. I had much better. You’re getting my be answered. Wow, they’re just not coming.
Grant Holicky 08:36
See, I think that somewhere in the ether is my C version D version and effort.
Trevor Connor 08:42
This is solid B today. So my answer. Continuing, what would rob said is trust the plan, but don’t obsess the plan. A lot of people when they they have that structure plan, they have that target goal. Start getting obsessed with every workout has to be perfect. Everyone has to go exactly like it is on the plan. And when a workout doesn’t go well, when the power isn’t there when they have to stop in the middle of intervals. They go, Oh my God, what does that mean? Am I off course for my target. What that means is absolutely nothing. You were just having a bad day. If you have three bad weeks in a row. We got to talk. We got to talk we got to adjust. But don’t get obsessive about that individual workout if it didn’t go exactly the way you think. I mean, I still remember back 2007 August 2007. I have what I still consider one of my best bills. And every once in a while I’ve gone back and looked at my notes for all of my workouts and it was like one day I went out to do my intervals and like, did two intervals legs weren’t great, turned around little frustrated next day went out and did them I know it’s where God threw him power wasn’t great, but I got the intervals down like if you read my notes, it doesn’t sound Right, right, right. If you go day by day, a perfect bill, but I look back on as a whole because I adjusted because it didn’t worry about those individual days. It was a great build.
Rob Pickels 10:09
Yeah. Moving day by day is never the way to look at any weight loss, right? A slice of pizza, you’re three pounds heavier tomorrow because of the assault, right? That doesn’t mean that you need to weigh yourself. Well, I’m three pounds heavier, but I have kidney failure. So what does it matter?
Rob Pickels 10:30
In the other side of this though, Trevor to is, sometimes there will be amazing days sprinkled in there. And also, it’s okay, you can hang a little bit of your ego on those amazing days. But those aren’t necessarily the truth either. Just like the bad days aren’t the truth. We’re looking at the overall long term chain. Yeah, but
Grant Holicky 10:48
one thing I do like to say is you can’t fake a good day. You have a good day. You didn’t get lucky. And suddenly your numbers were 10% higher than we
Rob Pickels 10:59
really are. You can miss calibrate your power meter. Sure, sure. But
Grant Holicky 11:02
what I do mean, and I’ve said this to athletes a lot though, over the years, like a bad day probably has reason. A good day, you didn’t just trip and fall and fall bass ackwards into 340 Watts, you know, or that I mean, it’s real. I know you say this a lot with swimming, because it’s so black and white, right? You didn’t trip and fall and break a minute and the 100 breaststroke, you broke a minute 100 breaststroke, that’s real. And you can have the bad days
Rob Pickels 11:30
340 Watts man grant your Sprint’s getting really weak?
Grant Holicky 11:33
Yes. I’m getting old, I turned 50 in a month. Oh,
Rob Pickels 11:36
once you’re 50 you can’t sprint any
Grant Holicky 11:39
light switch over? Yeah, it’s like the day off. So I gotta
Rob Pickels 11:42
blow that away. Trevor, are you over? 50?
Grant Holicky 11:45
He didn’t have a sprint. No, come on.
Trevor Connor 11:49
I’m approaching 40.
Rob Pickels 11:52
He just started cutting but he had 50 and started cutting backward, right? That’s
Grant Holicky 11:58
reverse now that was a joke in my family. Rivers grandmother said to him, like we decided you’re no longer getting older. No. Does that light switch. So my I liked those answers. We’re all in the same idea here. My biggest thing is consistency. So I guess I’ve just been extremely fortunate that I haven’t had that many athletes through the years that missed a lot of stuff. But I’ve had a couple athletes through the last couple of years where the talk of what they want to do doesn’t necessarily match up with what they’re doing. Yeah, and there’s a lot of days just completely off in the training plan. And to me, whether you’re starting from scratch, and this is, you know, you kind of touched on this, when you’re talking about take your time be patient. And that’s one of the things we see in a lot of adherence issues with people with exercise programs, just in a general population, they’ll go for a week, they’ll go for two weeks, and then the adherence is gone. Because they didn’t see the changes right away. Or they’re you know, and this is a little bit what you’re alluding to Trevor, they’re like trying to knock it out of the park in the first two to three workouts, and they’re so darn sore, they can’t do the third. So for me, it’s kind of combining the two things that you guys are talking about. It’s just do the work, be consistent, plan the life around it a little bit. And be honest with yourself, your coach and the people around you. This is what I can do. And this is what I can’t do. And I guess that boils down to me to making sure that your goal and the path to that goal line up. You know, and it’s fairly easy to say, here’s my goal. And here’s my What’s your path. I don’t know, that’s my goal.
Rob Pickels 13:43
And I think that’s an area that working with a professional coach is able to marry those two concepts together. And, and in all honesty, I don’t know a lot of athletes that are able to do that himself. I
Grant Holicky 13:56
can’t. But that’s one of the things that I think is really unique. And I don’t know about you, Trevor, but it took me 30 years of coaching to kind of be decent at coaching myself. Like I was not good at coaching myself until the last four or five years and I still make massively dumb mistakes.
Trevor Connor 14:13
I still love Dr. Andy Pruitt’s comment to me when he found out I was coaching myself. He just looked at me and said, Trevor heart surgeons don’t do heart surgery on themselves.
Rob Pickels 14:24
And I will say from firsthand experience, and he didn’t fit himself either.
Grant Holicky 14:28
No, right. Right. Right. Which is a good Very good point. Yeah.
Trevor Connor 14:34
So I think I remember my answer in the ether because he just reminded me going with oh, look at the
Grant Holicky 14:40
answer. See, I thought this was an A answer for us and we knocked it out. I
Trevor Connor 14:46
did. I’m just saying I’m falling behind. Can you catch up to add to your consistency because it’s really key. First of all, if you go out to do intervals and they’re not in the legs, and YouTube to come home and adjust the plan, that’s not a lack of consistency, unless that’s happening every single time. That’s just adjustment. That’s, that’s smart. The issue that I see with athletes when you give them a plan, and this is where I, as a coach, go, I don’t think I can coach you anymore, is that athlete that will skip to three days and then go out and do that killer work and make up for those two, three missed days ago, you know, sure. I only worked out twice this week. But they were both five hour days. And I cried myself, right? That’s not the same thing. This isn’t studying for an exam. You can’t cram. You got to do the work every day.
Grant Holicky 15:35
Yeah. And I think, you know, that’s certainly something like one of the things and all coaches are different. But one of the things that I really push hard is early on in the relationship when an athlete misses a day. And they’re like, I just push everything back a day, right? Yeah, no, because if you push everything back a day, then that second rest day is gone. And now we’ve got five workouts in a row, correct? You know, we can’t do that we are five days where we’re training in a row, whether that’s volume or intensity. And so that’s one of the first things I’m trying to teach when this goes on. And and I use good old fashioned Catholic guilt. Nope, can’t Well, that means that I’m going to have like three rest days in a row. You know, you made your bed, man, you gotta lay in it, you know, and and listen, if this was something that was unavoidable, maybe we’ll shift the schedule around. But if you’re just saying I just ran out of time, I couldn’t pull it off, then no, we’re not going to shift like that, because it doesn’t work.
Rob Pickels 16:33
I think that this is a feature of advanced level coaching. When you go from the individual workout, to how do workouts interact with each other? That’s advanced level coaching. Yeah. And I don’t think that a lot of athletes, or basic coaches understand that. And they say, Hey, I wasn’t able to do the workout today. I’ll just do it tomorrow. There is no difference, right? Well, there is in the interconnectedness of how everything comes together. And there are downstream consequences of changing today, there should be downstream consequences. And in my opinion, that’s not a value judgment. That’s not bad or wrong. But it doesn’t mean that we can just keep things as they are and expect to have the same outcome. Well, and
Grant Holicky 17:18
I think the downstream issues are usually fatigue. That’s the thing that’s kind of hard to wrap your head around, right? Like, well, I just had to take two days off because I was sick or something. So now let’s just jump back into it. Put all those workouts in five days, because I’m behind. Yeah, well, now suddenly, you’re behind for a whole other reason, because you’re so fatigued, you’re not going to be able to do anything. Yeah. So consistency to me is just huge, whether it’s adherence starting a program, whether it’s staying in a program, but to me, that seems to be in a lot of ways, the biggest jump between the very good athletes and the truly elite athletes. And it combines the thing that all three of us said it’s just do the work. It’s just you line it up, and you just do the work. And you don’t really worry about it till we take a step back and look at the big picture. We get it done. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I so often I’ve said that talent, in so many ways is about showing up.
Trevor Connor 18:14
You know, we I think we’ve talked about this before, but everybody loves to watch a Rocky movie and watch the 10 Minute Workout montage I get pumped up and go Oh, that’s amazing. But the real workout montage boring as hell would be boring. No work was good enough.
Grant Holicky 18:29
Hey, I hate to say it. I hate to say it, but the lance commercial where I’m on my bike that then what am I on thing like, obviously.
Grant Holicky 18:42
But that’s the commercial, right? If it’s if he wasn’t on, you know, lots of drugs. He also was technically on his bike. He was on his bike a lot just on his bike with a lot of drugs.
Rob Pickels 18:54
While it feels like we’re wrapping up this topic, I just want to point out that if anybody watches South Park, the montage clip from South Park is the greatest montage I’ve ever seen. So if you haven’t seen it, I’m sure it’s on YouTube.
Grant Holicky 19:07
You do need to go see it. We’ll
Trevor Connor 19:08
put that in the
Grant Holicky 19:11
show notes. Come on. It’s a Colorado show.
Trevor Connor 19:14
If Rob can find the link.
Rob Pickels 19:16
I’ll get it in there. No, no question. All right.
Trevor Connor 19:18
So my question I kind of liked to do this. This is something I’ve said on the physician a question or B question. Oh, hey, now I literally make two questions in there one’s a one’s been we’re going with a Alright, so here’s my a question. This is something I’ve said many times on the show but I want us to challenge it. I want us to to see if you guys agree with us. But I have many times that athletes come to me say I’m struggling and races when you get towards the end of the race and the attacks start. I get popped so I need to work on my top end. And more often than not, what I actually find is the issue is the base fitness is not there. So the Couple hours leading up to those attacks, they’re sitting at threshold. And so they just don’t have the attack. Because they’re too tired. When the attacks happen, and I go, what we need to do is have you in zone two, maybe zone three in those two hours beforehand, so you’re still fresh when the attacks happen. So that’s my question to you guys is can you actually improve an athlete’s attack? By building that base level?
Grant Holicky 20:28
I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love to, you know, challenge what you say, I would love to. But I don’t disagree with it here. I think that we all know it like build time, and base is going to build ability. Like, let’s simplify it right. And Trevor gives me a hard time he’s like, why don’t you ever geek out with me? Like, well, let’s simplify it. How efficient are you at clearing? Right,
Trevor Connor 20:54
by the way to interrupt I just recently found out, you have a chemistry degree in Utah, I have a biology degree and you taught biology, I know you can geek out, I can. Yeah. And you refuse to stop it, I
Grant Holicky 21:06
refuse. It’s just not that i That’s not what I find super interesting about coaching. You know, that’s like, we all go down a rabbit holes of what we like. And I like it, and I’ll spend time on it. But I definitely get to the point with some of those research articles where my eyes start to glaze over. But I can read a research article on mental performance. And I’m like, yeah, so you got to kind of go with what you go with, right? But I mean, the whole idea is, let’s simplify it, the more time you spend in base, the better you are, the more efficient you are clearing lactate or, you know, however, you want to say that you your threshold is going to rise up and when your threshold rises up, we’ll talk about this. But the idea of w prime, how many? How much do you have in the tank? And when you raise that threshold level up, you’re over at loss often. And so you’re going into that tank less often? And without a doubt. Yeah, I mean, this is, and this is also the difference about who you training your training across writer, you training a seven day mountain bike stage race guy, you do an unbound or what are you doing? Because what you need, and each one of those things is very, very different. If you’re doing for our road races, you better raise that threshold up. Because yeah, listen, the first hours miserably hard. This is the mentality of a road race, the first third is really hard, because everybody’s still fresh. Everybody’s strong, you don’t get in a race like that without being able to push it on to watts. And then everybody gets tired and it calmed down a little bit. And then late in the race, the stuff that matters happens and the people that aren’t fit, or popped out the back. So it’s, you know, what can you do over and over and over again?
Rob Pickels 22:51
Yeah, for me, anytime we ask a training question, it’s it’s about understanding the athlete and the needs of the event. You know, I think that this is where power profiling is really important to understand what is this athletes limitation? I think that there are definitely times where the riders aerobic ability more than strong enough for the level that they’re competing at, and they lack anaerobic ability. That happens. Right, you know, but, you know, Trevor, I do think that as a recommendation, more often than not, people are probably deficient on the aerobic side of things. And as Grant was saying before, if we can retain the anaerobic capacity that that person has, and build higher aerobic ability, you’re you’re sort of layering that anaerobic capacity on top of a higher aerobic, which means that ultimately even all of even when we’re in a purely an or I shouldn’t say purely, it’s never purely, but when we’re in a dominantly anaerobic workload, you’re all in for a minute trying to establish a break, that is now 50 Watts better than it used to be right, because your aerobic ability is higher. In Trevor, I think they’re getting to the root of your original question. If somebody is floating around thresholds, they’re getting a little bit of recovery, but they’re also dipping into that tank just to maintain that pace. So there is a bit of depletion, there is fatigue. And that fatigue actually goes beyond they’re using more carbohydrate, their glycogen stores are lower, so all of their abilities are coming down. They probably have more metabolite byproducts, so on and so forth. And so that person that’s been doing this, it primarily in a robic workload, they’re at a better potential, they have their full potential left ahead of them. And even if their anaerobic ability is slightly worse, they have all of their anaerobic ability ahead, right. We’re this other person and this is where I am. I’m an anaerobic monster. But half the time my anaerobic tank is half empty, so it doesn’t matter that it’s a big tank. It’s not there anymore. Yeah.
Grant Holicky 24:55
And I think one of the big pieces to that comes into that it’s like how well can You recover once you dip back into the aerobic. Like if we’re, if we’re simplifying it right, you know, okay that it eased off, we dipped. Okay, we’re going 250 Watts again, can I recover? Well, we all know this feeling and the science is there behind it, but we know the feeling. If I went over my limit too many times, when I finally get that chance to recover, I ain’t recovering man, I’m just like hanging on for dear life. I do think there’s one thing that a couple pieces that I would throw out at this, and one of them is I do think there’s a purely technical piece of the jump, the idea of the job, especially when you’re writing and, and that’s cadence, and just how you pedal the bike in general, I think you’re watching people more and more often now, riding with a very high cadence, because that high cadence allows people to react much quicker, right? If you’re riding at 75 cadence at cadence in the group goes, you’re not going to be able to accelerate the way the people that arrive at 90 or 95 cadence can accelerate. And now that has a bunch of downstream consequences, right, the the musculature of the legs is, is being asked more of that you’re gonna have to respond at a higher level two, just maintain that same speed. So I, you know, this is something that I’ll work into a lot of the training plans is we’re going to do the muscular efficiency work, we’re economy work, however you want to say it, we’re going to do high cadence work, we’re going to do high cadence holds. And we’re going to push those guys to ride and girls to ride at a higher cadence all the time you watch cross now, and you watch the the freaks, you know, Vanderpool, even air Vanar, and Pidcock. And how they translate now to the pavement do those guys are riding at 90 to 95 cadence on the dirt. And they and now they go on the road. And it’s constant. You know, you watch fan art going up the climb last year at the tour, and he’s just tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. It’s really, really impressive. And I do think that gives you a whole lot of help in that regard. Yeah,
Trevor Connor 27:05
I would agree with that. So I want to present the counter argument to my point. And that’s actually what motivated this question. So several weeks ago, I was doing a race here in Boulder. And a give a quick bit of background, I’ve really been focusing on threshold work this year, simply because, unfortunately, due to my a fib, more often than not in a road race, I have to pull out. So I decided, you know, that almost never happens if I’m doing a 2030 minute time trial. So this year, I’m just going to focus on time trials, it’s something I can do. So I’ve really been working on time trial form and got my threshold way up, got that aerobic side way up, been doing no work on that top end whatsoever. And so I was in this race, you were there later on. So I got in this breakaway with another rider right at the beginning, we were away for about an hour. And I could tell my aerobic system was was stronger than his because when I was getting on the front, I was sitting at threshold I was sitting at, you know what I could sustain I thought for the rest of the race. And he kept going back down, back down, ease up. So and he wasn’t taken as hard to pull. But on this course there were a couple of these 32nd steep hills, we would get to that. And he would drop me like a bad habit. And I finally had to say to him, You got to stop doing that you got to back down on that hill, because I’m working for you will work really hard and the rest of it. But you just saw that difference. And ultimately it came down to when we got caught after an hour was just before one of those 32nd hills. And another rider attacked from the what was left of the field. The guy was with had that top end he was able to go with that. Right and stay in the breakaway. I got caught that was it for me. Yeah.
Grant Holicky 28:55
But this comes back to Rob’s statement about power profile. No, right. You know, I think there’s a lot of ways to look at this. But I I do feel like the majority of the athletes that I get, if I look at their power profile, it feels like people want to become time trial. It’s like they gravitate towards that place. And I have my argument for that. While I think training peaks is a wonderful tool. Training peaks gives a lot of love to volume and threshold. Because you can put a bunch of time under load in those things. And so TSS goes up through the roof. Yes. If we do short, high intensity workouts Siler was talking about this on an episode that went up a couple of weeks ago, right, if you’re doing short, intense up training sessions, it doesn’t catch up. It can’t really see it the same way. I have a
Trevor Connor 29:43
sprint workout that will you won’t be walking for the next two days. Right? And it’s like 50 to
Grant Holicky 29:47
your right, right. So I think we as coaches and athletes gravitate towards that place and we do forget about the ability to create a top end and my big piece of why I like to train in that 120 or 150%, with regularity with my athletes isn’t necessarily about creating the jump. It’s getting them comfortable being in that place. Yes. How does the body feel when you’re in that place? And how does the mind feel in that place? Like, I think it’s really, really important. I love one minute intervals on the trainer, people think I’m nuts. But what you have to do to do one minute, at 120 to 140%, of threshold on the trainer is being a big gear and turn it over. And it’s a different feeling. When you’re in a large gear at a 90 to 95 cadence ripping that thing over, you’re not grinding in the pedals. It’s just like, too, but you know, there’s a load, and it feels different with the body, and the mind man having to be able to sit in that place. It really, really helps. And so I’m the intensity guy, you know, that’s kind of what I get, because I like to live in that world, or I like to go in that world. But I don’t go there for long. You know, one of my big workouts with people is three to one, you know, three minutes at 110, two minutes at 121 minute at 150 or over with applicable rest in there. And we’ll do two to three sets of that.
31:20
But that’s 12 minutes above,
Grant Holicky 31:22
you know, that’s 18 minutes up. That’s a lot. You got to recover from that. But it’s going to do good things for you.
Trevor Connor 31:29
One of the best workouts I’ve seen for building that ability to be on those attacks. And I agree to I think it’s more mental than physiological is one minute on 30 seconds off. Yeah, beat that six times. Because first time you ever do the workout, you do that first one minute, you’re going hard, you’re going Oh, this isn’t too bad. And then you start going, Okay, this is really hurting, then you’re going oh my god, this is unbearable. And you look at your timer, and you’re only 20 seconds. And you got another 40 seconds ago and you struggle through that first one minute. And then that 32nd recovery just feels like nothing.
Grant Holicky 31:59
Oh, it’s gone so fast. Neal, they turned it into a suffer fest revolver minute on minute off and you do 16 of them. I love that. Yeah. And it’s that same idea. But one of the things. Now this comes back to one of the other things though, and I think this is really, really important. I remember. And I’ll, I’ll bring it up, you know, Max chance one of the guys that used to ride or train back in the day and he was a very good cross writer had a moment and road where he was very good. Max said to me one time he’s like, I try to I go off the front. And I attack. But nobody ever comes with me. So I’m always solo. And I’m out there for a little while. And then I just get caught and popped. And what I started to figure out was Max’s top N was so damn high. Nobody could go with him. A and he was going so hard. And he was comfortable going so hard because he was across rider that he was digging the big hole. And I’m Neil used to say this all the time, the bigger you shovel the bigger hole you can dig now. So when we’re talking about those workouts of a minute on minute off, we’re not asking for a minute at everything you got, see how many you can do when you fall apart, you call it a day through all this is at 120%. This is Be smart, and you probably will finish number 16. Gone. That sucked. But I could do more. Yeah. And that’s the thing where you’re going to start to get that repeatability over and over and over again. The last thing I’ll say on this is when I look at across power profile, like a power graph after a race, I’m not looking for average power, I’m not looking for any of that. I’m looking to see what happens to the peaks. Because the peaks come at the same point. And of course, every lap, and for the most part, you have to ride them at the same effort every lap, those peaks drop, or do you have the slight you when they come up at the tail end? I want to see that you that tells me that the repeatability is there.
Trevor Connor 33:54
And that gets to a good point. As a quick tip for anybody who’s interested in trying to break away. You want somebody to go with you, you got to dangle yourself. Yeah, you can’t Yeah, get to farm for on the field. And understand, majority of the time it’s the field that’s gonna catch you not one or two writers. So you’re gonna have to make multiple attempts before you get that ideal scenario, where you dangle yourself out one or two guys jump up to you. And then the group tries to ride away from well,
Grant Holicky 34:21
and the last piece to that is remember that you’re usually not going to go away when you feel good. Now usually have to attack when you feel pretty crappy or kind of tired, because that means the rest of the group is not going to chase you. Yeah,
Rob Pickels 34:35
I want to round out this conversation grant by touching on something that you mentioned when you were talking about Max, and that is he felt really good going that hard. And that really resonated with me because that’s something that I dealt with this entire past week in Portugal. Right? It wasn’t about people attacking. It was a mountain bike race and they were very long stages there was often times that I was writing completely solo out there. But the stages, you know, we’re talking to seven, eight hour long stage. The attacks for me were the steep climbs that were forcing me to get up. Right, exactly. You know, and I spent a lot of time you know, I set a plan for myself, if it’s flat or a slight incline, I’m just writing it based sort of all day. If it’s if it’s a true climb, then I’m writing just at sub threshold. And anything I have to go over threshold, I’m going as easy as I can, just to move up that grade, right. And that’s meant I spent a lot of time holding myself back at 350 Watts kind of nose on the stem just crawling up the steepest climbs that a lot of other people are hiking. Yep, I wanted to be at 425 450. And I’m somebody when I’m doing these workouts grant, oftentimes a little bit harder, feels better than a little bit easier. You know, I hate that somebody
Grant Holicky 36:02
feels better than Tempah,
Rob Pickels 36:04
especially in ERG mode, it’s like if this was just 3% Higher, I would be in, I’d be in my comfortable place. But for an event like this, I wasn’t able to be in the place I wanted to be because repeats of those at 450 would have trashed my legs. And people need to recognize that about themselves. Because in this long race, it is about the repeatability because I have 35 More of these steep climbs to do today. And I need to be able to go at the top of this climb, I have to be able to go right back to 200 225 watts at base. And because that’s how I’m gonna get the fastest average speed, I go for 50. And I have to take 30 seconds of huffing and puffing at 150 recovery watts. That’s not fast. And I caught a lot of people because kind of of this race craft, feeling good pushing hard over the top getting up to speed before the downhill. Suddenly, I’m 10 miles an hour faster down the downhill. And I’m flying by people that I probably could have caught on the client if I had gone all in, right. But I wouldn’t have been able to maintain my speed over the course of the day.
Grant Holicky 37:10
Super short comment. This is where I think people really misuse the power meter. You know, we train with power meters. We all know what our power is. We know what our threshold is. We know what we get in the race, we throw it out the window, just throw it out the window. I mean, I did a gravel race not too long ago and we hit the base of a two and a half hour climb. Essentially we were going to be climbing for two and a half hours and people are just dropping bombs. Yeah. And they’re going nuts. I’m like ticking away at 280 going right. I’ll see if I’m just there that much deterred me and in the second hour the clench up the back nuts.
Trevor Connor 37:48
So let’s finish up my question with giving grant a gift. Going back to that race at it a couple of weeks ago you encountered me on the way home
Grant Holicky 38:00
yeah, we I was out I couldn’t do it because of my son’s lacrosse game and I’m Rod doing a training ride. And I come rolling up with I was with Eric and I come rolling up to Trevor. And I don’t think I’ve told you this yet, but we’re coming up on you. And I’m like, Oh, that looks like Trevor. But they’re gone. So
Trevor Connor 38:19
I was maxing out at 130 watts at that point.
Grant Holicky 38:23
We rolled up said hi couldn’t really engage Trevor much of a conversation. And I was like, I felt like a Dumb and Dumber Well, he did golf saw. See you later. We wrote away. And I don’t even know if I got much of it acknowledgement.
Trevor Connor 38:42
You got who said you came across me when I was maybe a mile from home. And I was doing the calculation in my head if I could make it.
Grant Holicky 38:51
I just wanted to know I would have. I would have been totally fine, you man. Oh, that was that was pretty classic. You were in the box. I loved it. I was
Trevor Connor 39:03
deep, deep in that box.
Rob Pickels 39:07
A bass talk listeners. This is Rob Hybels. Wouldn’t it be cool to decide what Trevor and I are going to talk about on an upcoming show? Or how about we answer a question on polarized training you’ve been dying to know what about a 30 minute zoom? Call with me or Trevor on your favorite sports endurance topic. This is all possible when you become a fast talk Patreon member. We have four monthly memberships to fit your level of support. If you enjoy fast talk help us stay independent and dishing out your favorite sports science topics by becoming a fast talk Patreon member today at patreon.com/fast off podcast.
Trevor Connor 39:44
All right, Rob, what’s your question?
Rob Pickels 39:46
We are sciency people for the most part, right the the tagline is your source for the science of endurance sports performance.
39:56
That’s what you that that’s the tagline. It is
Trevor Connor 39:59
was the beginning of the show,
Rob Pickels 40:01
I don’t know you are like something, something blah, blah, blah, whatever. But I’m gonna I’m gonna admit something. Listeners, I have a confession to make. Sometimes I don’t really pay attention to science. And sometimes I do things that the science says, you probably shouldn’t do this. And so I’m wondering from you guys, are you in the same boat? All of your decisions? Do you have rational, scientific reasons to do what you do? Or is there evidence against your choice, but you know what, you still do it because to you, you know, it works.
Grant Holicky 40:36
I do everything by the book. I never make any mistakes.
Grant Holicky 40:42
You can tell by my appearance.
Grant Holicky 40:47
Now, dude, I’m a train wreck. This is what I was saying earlier about trying to coach yourself. It listening to your own brain is one of the most difficult things on the planet because your own brain can rationalize any dumb crap that you can think of. And you get to the tail end of it. And you’re gone vote that was just idiotic. What was I doing? And I’ll give you an example of this. Now, to answer your question more specifically, I’ll come back to that shall we have we have that point. But last year, during cross season, I had a good start to the year things were going well got to Fayetteville for the World Cups with the guys and I did the middle race and there had a good day came out of it. All my cross riders had a week off after the Fayetteville World Cup off the bike to get ready for the second half of this season. I went home and I rested for about two days. And then I started training really hard. And we got to really rad two weeks later, three weeks later, and I got an ear infection. And then I got another ear infection. And then I got RSV. And then I got that. And by the time all that was the throw away. And I got to Thanksgiving and said well screw it, you know, whatever, started, you know, took a bunch of time off, drank some beer, had some fun, ate some turkey relaxed, trained a little bit, one of the nationals have my best finish ever at Nationals. And in retrospect, I can look back at that and go, duh. I mean, that makes complete sense. If I’m asking professional riders to take a week off, and I go home to family and work. And when I’m on the road, I’m working even if I’m racing. Yeah. And you know, I’m doing all that stuff. Well, I did I need less time off than they needed. I mean, it’s just dumb, but you get caught up. And I mean, for a lot of us that for still racing at our age, it’s because we’d like to competition, we’d like to push ourselves. We’d like to challenge ourselves. And then a lot of ways I like training more than I like racing, I love to train. But I got to remind myself, is this make sense? Is this what I need to be doing? Especially when I’m training a bunch of 20 year olds, and I’m nearly 50 I can’t do what they do. And I gotta remind myself of that.
Trevor Connor 43:04
Don’t tell yourself that. There’s absolutely no sign saying that 50 You are slower than a 20 year old? Nothing. Absolutely nothing that that that’s my answer for you.
Grant Holicky 43:14
That’s your answer. I ignore science. The fact that 50 year olds are just like 20 year olds, you will not
Trevor Connor 43:21
prove me wrong. Fair enough, Says the guy with a heart condition. Fair enough.
Rob Pickels 43:28
Trevor, what about you? What do you do that spits in the eye of science? So everything?
Trevor Connor 43:36
This is another case where I can’t remember my answer. And it’s really been doing.
Rob Pickels 43:40
We didn’t make it. We didn’t make our way through. No, I thought we did. I think this is when we stopped. So
Grant Holicky 43:46
he answered the question. You asked the question. I looked up and went
Rob Pickels 43:49
Oh, so we are breaking new ground listeners. Yeah.
Trevor Connor 43:52
Well, so still, I know there’s something better than this, but my big answer is because everybody’s heard this for me. I believe in the five six hour ride. Yeah, and there just isn’t a ton of science behind that mostly because it’s really hard to study. The five six hour ride it’s much easier to study interval work Wait,
Rob Pickels 44:10
Trevor’s doing what I do. The science sucks it’s not me
Trevor Connor 44:15
whenever I do science Yeah, what’s your point?
44:20
Yeah
Grant Holicky 44:23
that’s just that’s just
Trevor Connor 44:25
and again you wonder why I’m not married Wow No, wait a minute. We did do this because I remember my answer. Power cranks Oh,
44:38
that’s right. You got into this power cranks. Oh, my god. Holy
Rob Pickels 44:43
Jesus. My
Trevor Connor 44:44
power cranks. I use them all the time. This episode. Study on power cranks has said no. But I still believe in him.
Grant Holicky 44:54
Rob and I are doing the same thing we did last time which is like fighting the hell out Power crank
Rob Pickels 45:01
all right all right all right power cranks because most people don’t know what power cranks are.
Grant Holicky 45:06
Same people don’t know what cranks are. Power cranks
Rob Pickels 45:09
are the left and right crank arm are not they are able to freely rotate. Meaning if you push it down to one exactly, if you push down on the right crank arm the left crank arm doesn’t automatically come up. So when you get off the bike they both hang straight down. Yes, push is just wrong in the thought is because you’re pulling up actively pulling up your leg it is improving the mechanical efficiency of the pedal stroke, but we all know that the physiological efficiency goes down dramatically. There’s a lot of science that backs that up
Grant Holicky 45:48
those yeah. Oh yeah,
Trevor Connor 45:50
these things are murder. So look tell you a couple is first of all, here’s a clear benefit. I had a friend who also no no hear me at
Rob Pickels 46:00
a friend another friend has got
Grant Holicky 46:02
a sim Brandon same that would be like beneficial.
Trevor Connor 46:05
He chose power cranks on his own. But he did was because he saw me using them. So he had power cranks he was overriding in Europe on his power crank stopped at a store to get some food. Somebody tried to stay because you have to clip into power cranks they couldn’t steal the bike. So there is a clear benefit.
Rob Pickels 46:24
All right, well, okay, I’ll give that to you. I can win right there. Yep.
Trevor Connor 46:29
I did have another friend who’s seen me on power cranks all the time. Tried a set of power cranks he bought them. He and I went out for his first ride. I almost had to push them home after 45 minutes. I believe it because he was in so much pain. And he sold them after that. Hell yeah.
46:44
The company still exist. Yes.
Trevor Connor 46:48
Really? Yes. They still produce them.
Grant Holicky 46:52
Yeah, we’re gonna get a cease and desist.
Rob Pickels 46:55
Yeah, hey, you know, try them. Try them for yourself. Maybe they’re great. I will say other than like a parking lot spin. I have never ridden power cranks. Maybe Maybe they’re God’s gift to to improving on the bike. I doubt it. But maybe they are, you know, try it yourself.
Trevor Connor 47:11
Another benefit is people see me ride them. So look, this is a ton of fun. On the bike paths. As you’re passing a commuter when you’re riding power cranks. You wait until you know you’re just in line of view with them. And then you do two pedal strokes in sync with one another, like a dolphin kick, immediately go back to the regular stroke. And you can see in their face, they’re like, did
47:35
I just see that? Love it? What’s going on? Love it. That is
Trevor Connor 47:39
a benefit. All right. So seriously, the claim benefit which the sciences agrees with is that it teaches you to pull up on the backstroke until you get a smoother stroke. That’s just not true. But my argument for the benefit in the whole pedal stroke, the weakest muscle in the whole stroke is your hip flexors. Your hip flexors are only really designed to be strong enough to lift your leg. So if they try to do more than that, they’re going to fatigue pretty quickly. So if you’re in a good, hard, long race, the first thing that’s going to fatigue are those hip flexors. And that’s when you hear athletes talk about I was pedaling in squares. That’s because what’s happening is the hip flexors can’t lift up anymore. So even though they can’t put power into the upstroke, they can no longer lift the leg, which means your leg is now going to rest on the pedal and the leg pushing down now has to lift the leg coming up and that leg weighs 4050 pounds. You’re going to lose power, power cranks strengthen those hip flexors prevent them from fatiguing. So what I found is when I do power crank work that point where you kind of crack and you just start pedaling and squares that never happens.
Grant Holicky 48:54
Or you Ross another episode of fat brought to you by the power crank sponsored Trevor Connor I do this
Rob Pickels 49:03
when you’re writing your power cranks tell tell me how are you integrating this into into your training?
Grant Holicky 49:09
Are you still writing? Yes.
Rob Pickels 49:10
Do you have them on a special bike? Do you are you writing them every day? Are you doing workouts you just writing base? How are you incorporating this oddly oddly broken bike component into your daily resume enjoy
Trevor Connor 49:24
this I have them on a dedicated bike. It’s a 1994 Sandvik titanium bike where I actually snapped the frame and half and had it welded back together nice. So this frame itself if you look at it, it is a Frankenstein frame with a set of power cranks and it has
Rob Pickels 49:43
box section Mavic wheels on it. It probably has colored Hutchinson tires. The bar tape is that like that splattery black and yellow,
Trevor Connor 49:55
black and blue on the left. Black on the right
Grant Holicky 50:00
Are you ready to moto style on the brakes? There’s toe clips.
Rob Pickels 50:05
There’s regularly Rigby
Grant Holicky 50:07
members, right? That’s right.
Trevor Connor 50:08
The brakes are RX one hundreds. Ice. Ice. This is a throwback right there heard of those anymore? Wow.
Rob Pickels 50:16
Does it have a frame pump? Yes, of course it does.
Trevor Connor 50:19
I’ll be the first to say this. It is the most me bike
Grant Holicky 50:22
ever downtube shifters.
Trevor Connor 50:24
I love that bike. If somebody came into my garage and stole all of my bikes, including that one that’s the one I would cry over. And nobody else in the world would even dare put their leg over that frame.
Rob Pickels 50:35
No and
Grant Holicky 50:36
this is Trevor Connors entire garage answering your question Rob. What do you fly in the face of science? Moving on from the power cranes just
Trevor Connor 50:51
I have totally destroyed wrong question.
Grant Holicky 50:55
But I didn’t know that incident is crashing Berlioz.
Rob Pickels 50:57
In fact,
Grant Holicky 50:59
I think we all do. And and I’ll you know, I’ll say this as a coach, I will often ask my athletes to say listen, if you have something that you’ve always done, it’s like that workout that session that makes you feel good. Tell me and if it’s idiotic, and really is going to hurt you. We’re not going to put it in. If it’s one of those things that you know, this isn’t really gonna hurt you, but it’s not really helping you. Yeah, we’ll do it. Get the confidence up feel good about what you’re doing. And I mean, use science to guide it, right? Like, I know a lot of people when they’re doing something like say on them, they want to try to cover that distance before they go to Unbounce. So they they feel comfortable that they can do it. Okay, let’s not cover the 200 miles. But let’s do back to back seven hour rides. Yeah. Right. So that the work, like you know, so how do we cover the time? Or how do we do those things? So I think there’s a lot of that stuff that is it perfect in a training plan setting? No. But does it give you confidence on how you feel on the bike that your hip flexors are solid that you can do what you need to do? I think that’s what’s really, really important.
Rob Pickels 52:07
Yeah, yeah.
Grant Holicky 52:08
What do you do?
Rob Pickels 52:10
Uh, probably a lot to tell you the truth. But what inspired this is exogenous ketones. Ah, there’s, you know, there’s been a lot of talk on various forums. Right now I’m reviewing research and Ill research is equivocal at best and at times it detrimental to performance because of maybe some GI distress or whatever else. Um, but ketone esters have worked well
Grant Holicky 52:37
for him. Yeah, you’ve said they make you feel like a rockstar, it’s incredible
Rob Pickels 52:41
to tell you the truth. And I’m willing to concede that it is a mental thing, not from a placebo effect, but more from a, my mood greatly improves, right, it almost feels like an odd sort of shot of caffeine or something like that, mentally to tell you the truth. You know, I didn’t actually use them in Portugal, I had enough with me that I could have taken them on stages, if I want to. But I was also crashing 500 calories an hour, don’t ya, and I didn’t necessarily want to combine the two of those in the middle of nowhere in Portugal, you know, like, I don’t know, I just I was not able to prepare for something like that. And during race day wasn’t the time to try it. But I did do exogenous ketone esters every night before bed, because there is a bit of science that says, hey, maybe this is worthwhile for recovery and improving performance. And I don’t know, I mean, I recovered really well. And life was great. I’m not going to say that that was the ketones. I can’t say that that was the ketones, but I’m on the internet, I feel like oftentimes sort of defending them and saying to people, you have to give it a shot and see if it works for you. Now, the downside is you can certainly have some GI distress with this stuff. But the major downside is they’re expensive. It is a really expensive commitment to do this. And, and part of me doesn’t want to believe that they work for me, and that’s what it is. At this point. I think it’s a belief that it works for me, because I’m shelling out some cash. Um, but you know, the thing is, I just, it seems like it does something I’m not gonna lie.
Grant Holicky 54:21
Well, let me say this about science. And this is just a general statement about science. It’s a general statement about research. Okay, that research does not and is not able to take into consideration how varied individual human beings are and how they react. Yes, a lot of different things. Yep. You know, we can sit here and talk about, there’s a lot of research that talks about people that are fast responders to training and people that are slow responders to training we know these things. And this may be why I like the mental performance side of things a little bit more. We don’t really take that into consideration when we sit down and we Bring six people into the room. Sure, the variability of what you’re going to get in that science is actually pretty huge. We’re trying to boil things down to generalities that we can use. And a lot of times, we can boil those things down very, very well, because you do double blind studies with an individual and you get that information. But there’s so many things out there that you need to be comparing apples to apples. And so often we’re comparing apples to oranges, or nectarines, or whatever you want to go down that road of. So I do think it’s important for people to recognize that. And this the last piece, I’ll put to that it’s all a combination of mental and physical. There’s a reason placebos work. And so we have to get comfortable with some of that uncomfortableness. We want answers, we want to know, this is what it does not do that for you. And that’s why I think there’s important pieces.
Rob Pickels 55:58
Yeah, great, I think he’d make a really, really terrific point. And this is where oftentimes looking at the individual results if a paper includes them, and oftentimes they don’t, you can have an intervention, I don’t care what it is a placebo, a supplement, a training protocol, and half that group can say improved by 20 Watts, the other half of the group can get worse by 20 watts. But all that’s reported is that there was zero, because when you average plus and minus 20, you get zero, there was zero change in performance. But here’s the thing, that intervention was very worthwhile for half that group and very not worthwhile for the other half of the group. And that individuality is really important, which is why I always suggest to people try that it might go against the grain, here’s the thing, it might not have any benefit for you. But if it’s unlikely to have a deleterious effect, or it’s unknown, every once in a while I dropped words that you don’t understand grant. If it’s unlikely to do harm to you, grant you Thank you. That was there’s kind of no reason not to do it, just to see.
Grant Holicky 57:13
Well, I’ll piggyback on this real quick. And I think recovery modalities are really big. Yep. In that, right. There’s a lot of science that says that the ice bath doesn’t work in terms of improving performance, but what does it do for your abilities sleep, because lower your core body temperature, maybe it turns on the parasympathetic nervous system, there are things that could then have a downstream effect that are incredibly beneficial for you? Does it just calm me down? Right, and you know, a lot of people get on the foam roll. I’m not a big fan of foam roll. I think people foam roll way too hard. We could get into that. But it might not be the act of rolling, it might be the time given to rolling that self hair and slowing down and all of those things. So how do you say it’s not the rolling, it might be the rolling? Because they wouldn’t do that otherwise? So I do think that this is a really important question for people to ask themselves of what am I do? Like you said, Is it hurting me? No, it’s not hurting me, then it’s probably helping you because you feel good when you’re doing the power cranks.
Trevor Connor 58:19
They do so much good.
Grant Holicky 58:20
They would hurt me. So look,
Trevor Connor 58:24
I’ll kind of potentially finish this out with just one warning. I remember a guy who I rode with for a bit who had a ton of potential could have gone pro wanted to go pro but the time and but never did. And he failed for one simple reason. He had it in his head that if you did what the science said, you weren’t thinking for yourself, and you weren’t going to be successful. And he used to get on my case all the time. Like I would say to him, why he was doing was doing so I got your dad, just what the you know, all the coaches say on the research says you got to think for yourself. And so he was out to make a training plan for himself that was unique, because it’s not what everybody else does. And it’s gonna make them that much better. Now, you can’t beat people doing
Rob Pickels 59:07
the same thing.
Trevor Connor 59:09
He failed. Yeah. So remember, yeah, try these things, find some things that work for you. But science is gonna get you at 90 95% of the way there don’t start thinking, Oh, well, that’s what the science says. Forget that.
Grant Holicky 59:23
Yeah, that and that’s by no means my intention with this. I just think there are a lot of variabilities in there. But this is why you need good guidance. And one of the things that I love is to find the connection between what the sports scientists are saying and what the coaches are saying. Coaches are out there doing it on a daily basis. They’re finding their own quote unquote, research and anecdotal information. And then look at what happens in the lab. How do you combine what happens in the real world and what happens in the lab, find the middle of that Venn diagram and go with it.
Rob Pickels 59:54
There you go. Well, did we answer him?
Grant Holicky 59:57
I think we did. All right.
Trevor Connor 59:58
I think we gave for answers, we have we learn
Grant Holicky 1:00:02
more about again you know, one of the things I love about this show is the insight into Trevor Connor and his dark and strange play
Trevor Connor 1:00:15
you really certainly want to go there’s a
Grant Holicky 1:00:17
whole nother crevice that I just got a peek up with the power cranks thing is just like self hate.
Trevor Connor 1:00:24
So can I just say I actually asked the founder of power grams. I was pretty sure. I did a nine hour ride on power grids. I was pretty sure it was the longest ride ever done. And he told me it might be the second longest but there was a guy who did longer. How this is what killed this guy did it it was a charity event. I did 24 hours on a trainer on power cranks rap. He
Grant Holicky 1:00:50
better have raised a
Rob Pickels 1:00:51
lot of money on a trainer to that yes worse.
Grant Holicky 1:00:55
I don’t know makes it somewhat better. I mean, we do because both hanging down at least you’re not
Rob Pickels 1:01:01
going to know ninja ninja ninja. The height of power cranks was back in the day. Right? It wasn’t it wasn’t yesterday. No. Which means these were like old Cyclops mag trainers with very low inertia. Very good. So you’re huffing that thing up and over the top of every pedal
Trevor Connor 1:01:24
had to have been painful. Don’t stop my nine hour ride was a blast. And for one reason my hip flexors didn’t crack once they cracked twice. There was a deeper level of crack in your
1:01:39
flexors. My
Rob Pickels 1:01:41
God.
Grant Holicky 1:01:43
This has been fast doc and insight into the dark recesses of Trevor Connor his mind for more information on Trevor Connors mind. Please refer to Trevor Connor as
Rob Pickels 1:01:52
mine. Yeah, the thoughts and opinions of Trevor owners mind are definitely.
Grant Holicky 1:01:58
And be careful with Trevor Connors mind once you get in there. You may never get back out.
Trevor Connor 1:02:02
What does it say that I’m making fun of my own mind. Well,
Rob Pickels 1:02:05
what was that show? It was set in the Pacific Northwest in a hotel. It had this sort of supernatural ending, um, Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks. I feel like you know how like Twin Peaks got really odd at the end and they’re like going through burdens. That’s like Trevor’s mind. Yes. Yeah,
Grant Holicky 1:02:24
I agree with that.
Rob Pickels 1:02:25
I agree that that was such a great show what
Trevor Connor 1:02:27
was going through my head. I started watching Barry a week ago here I’m into season two and you were talking about the deep crevices in my mind. I’m like
Grant Holicky 1:02:37
there’s some insight there.
Rob Pickels 1:02:38
I don’t know that these are crevices. I think they’re crevices.
Grant Holicky 1:02:44
deep, dark and scary.
Trevor Connor 1:02:46
Oh boy, and that was another episode of Fast Talk. Subscribe to Fast Talk wherever you prefer to find your favorite podcast. You guys haven’t interupted me yet.
Grant Holicky 1:02:54
Nope, just do it.
Trevor Connor 1:02:55
Be sure to leave us a rating. Review the thoughts and opinions expressed in Fast Talk are those of the individual or apparently the deep crevices of my mind. As always, we love your feedback. Tweet us at @fasttalklabs. Or join the conversation at forums.fasttalklabs.com. Learn from our experts at fasttalklabs.com or help keep us independent by supporting us on Patreon. For Grant Holicky, and Rob Pickels. I’m Trevor Connor. Thanks for listening!
