Stephen Barrett is a cycling coach from Ireland, working as the head coach of the UCI WorldTour team Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale, and coaching several of the riders on the team personally, including GC contender Felix Gall. In this interview we discuss the inner workings of a WorldTour team, and a lot of nuts and bolts training topics right from the top of the world of professional cycling.

HIGHLIGHTS AND KEY TOPICS:

Stephen's training principles and coaching methodology
Periodisation strategies and training through race blocks
Tapering for important one-day races like the classics and for Grand Tours
The importance of VO2max-training
Indoor training, altitude training, training for durability, torque training, and more...
Advice for amateur cyclists and triathletes
The coaching structure in Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale, and Stephen's role as head coach
The development pathway from U19 to U23 to WorldTour

DETAILED EPISODE SHOWNOTES:

We have detailed shownotes for all of our episodes. The shownotes are basically the podcast episode in written form, that you can read in 5-10 minutes. They are not transcriptions, but they are also not just surface-level overviews. They provide detailed insights and timestamps for each episode, and are great especially for later review, after you've already listened to an episode.
The shownotes for today's episode can be found at https://scientifictriathlon.com/672/

LINKS AND RESOURCES:

Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale website, Instagram, and Youtube
Including sprint training in cycling – training responses and peformance improvements with Nicki Winfield Almquist, PhD | EP#300
Tour de Physiology: The Exceptional Power Outputs and VO2 of Climbing in the Tour de France - Ole Kristian Berg 2025
Pebbles of Perception: How a Few Good Choices make All the Difference - book by Laurence Endersen

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HOW CAN I SUPPORT THAT TRIATHLON SHOW (FOR FREE)?

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Subscribe to the podcast in your podcast app to automatically get all new episodes as they are released.
Tell your friends, internet and social media friends, acquaintances and triathlon frenemies about the podcast. Word of mouth is the best way to grow the podcast by far!
Rate and review the podcast (ideally five stars of course!) in your podcast app of choice (Spotify and Apple Podcasts are the biggest and most important ones).
Share episodes online and on social media. Share your favourite episodes in your Instagram stories, start a discussion about interesting episodes on forums, reference them in your blog or Substack.

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