05 - Lee's Rant

Rant time...

A good portion of what is posted in this forum is outdated or misleading, to quote Chris "opinion disguised as fact". Posters will make statements and then hold onto them even in the face of real evidence that they are wrong/misguided. There are plenty of moments of gold for sure, just often hidden under so much noise.

We don't know anywhere near as much as we think we do about the human body, how it responds to training and also how individual that is. Exercise science is still a relatively new branch of science.

The ego is a funny thing, it can drive us to poor decisions and make us defensive when we would be better served by being open minded. I own I can be and have been all of the above at times myself. I was more resistant to trying bigger gears than I should have been for example.

The more I learn about coaching, the human body, technique, tactics, diet, aerodynamics etc the more I realise just how little I know and just how much more there is for us to learn. I never want to stop learning and pushing both my knowledge boundaries and my coaching practice, the day I think I know it all is the day I'm done with the sport. If a coach/rider tells you they know it all steer clear!

There is more than one way! You can achieve the same result with different paths, I still haven't found some magic formula that is right for everyone because it doesn't bloody exist! Hard work, patience, dedication to every part of the puzzle is what makes real improvements, not whether you only do bilateral or unilateral gym work. We fuss so much over little details we miss the big picture, most reading and posting on this forum are developing riders (regardless of age) and yet so many are focussed on what the very elite are doing which may well not be right for them or their stage of development.

Three of the biggest factors in performance, your mind, your technique and your tactics are rarely ever mentioned here. At a non elite level, tactics play an even bigger role, often more though of who messes it up the least rather than who does the most things right...I go to numerous championship events each year and a surprising amount of the riders will be tactically limited and often riders who have been racing sometimes decades will make the same mistake time after time... Or riders who just can't ride a technically decent flying 200 or start anywhere near efficiently. You want to make big gains? Work on these basics and work on them with someone who can give you skilled feedback or video everything and learn how to critique yourself.

There is no silver bullet, there is no one exercise that will make you better than the others. It is a combination of many factors done as well as you can. EG if you neglect decent sleep that will have a bigger effect on your performance and improvement than whether you ride 100-110-120 in your flying 200.

You can still be fast doing it all wrong (or at least partially wrong ;-)), sometimes very fast if you are gifted enough. Look at Bos's recent performances to show that. We know or at least studies show us too much aerobic work kills fast twitch fibre potential, yet here is this guy rocking up after years on the road and knocking out pretty decent 200 times and winning a bunch of national championships.

Take a step back though and he is about half a second off the world's best and 2-3 tenths down on where he was when he was the world's best (and his kilo start was 1.6 seconds down, a massive gap, that's where the road work/lack of gym has really hurt him). Plus he is an excellent tactician. On current form he probably wouldn't qualify at a world cup, that road work has done him some harm, whether he can undo it in time for Rio will be interesting to see!

Lessons we can learn from this?

Talent matters, you can't be great without it, if you have been there before getting back to that level is easier than someone who hasn't hit those heights yet. And lots of road work will slow you down regardless of how good you are.

So my take homes from all this rant

• Make your training simple, as a developing rider you really don't need 25 different sprint drills
  Practice the basics often and with feedback from someone you trust, doing the same skill badly lots of times just makes you good at doing it badly
• If you are 40lbs overweight sort that out before you worry about your program too much
  Do your own research, don't take a faster riders word for it, investigate, come to your own conclusions
• Make it fun, involve friends-teammates in your training whenever possible, never underestimate the positive effect of a good training group
• Be honest and self critical, this is what sets the very best apart from the also rans, be brave and try new and different protocols
• Race as much as you can, get someone to video that racing and get feedback, the more racing you experience the more emotionally comfortable under pressure you will be and the more likely to make good decisions
• Just because you won doesn't mean you did everything right, and the same goes for losing, sometimes you ride the perfect race and still get beaten by someone better, concentrate on the process not the result. When you execute well you will get the results your talent and application deserve (one of the most disappointing races of my life I won, I was mad at myself for days after for how badly I had ridden it tactically and how lucky I was to have won).
• Analyse every race, training session, sleep, meal etc and look for ways to do it better next time. Strive for perfection while recognising it isn't possible. Reward yourself emotionally for getting the process right not for getting the result you want