Empirical Cycling Podcast

Alex Carmona, Empirical Cycling coach with wealth of coaching and racing experience, discusses transitioning from aerobic builds to harder efforts, honing non-fitness skills, race and workout intensity balance, race specific preparation, tapering into one day and stage races, group rides as effective workouts, race-specific intensity and timing, road race preparation, tapering strategies, eating keto before a hill climb, ideal warm-up for race day, managing training intensity and volume, concept of fatigue, and factors for race success.

This podcast delves into the details of redox and its role in cellular processes, including its relation to adaptation, recovery, and nutrition. It explores mnemonic devices for understanding oxidation and reduction and discusses redox potential and electron carriers. The podcast highlights the importance of redox potential in cellular function, the role of Sirt proteins in caloric restriction and exercise, and the misconception of AICAR as an exercise replacement. It also explores cellular signals for exercise adaptation, the importance of rest and nutrition in reducing oxidative stress, and the factors that contribute to adaptations in redox signaling. The podcast concludes with discussions on balancing energy and recovery, inflammatory responses and recovery, and potential measurements of redox state in cells.

This podcast discusses common mistakes people make on rest and recovery days, the importance of individualizing these days, and the benefits of active recovery. It emphasizes the need to replenish calories on rest days and the significance of sleep and establishing a bedtime routine. The hosts also explore the importance of athlete feedback, adjusting training, and the benefits of rest days and recovery weeks. Overall, the podcast highlights the significance of rest and recovery in training for optimal performance.

In this episode, 20+ year bike racing veteran Giancarlo Bianchi discusses the tactics of bike racing, and the process of honing racecraft and why people thought his FTP was significantly higher than it is. We cover the chess-game aspects of bike racing like positioning, aerodynamics, wind, reading the competition and body language, course and competitor recon, and a lot of stories from his own race career. We also answer your listener questions like how to practice with few racing opportunities, tactics that might annoy other racers, and much more.

The podcast discusses common strength training mistakes made by cyclists, including tracking load and fatigue, impact on the bike, recovery, session frequency and timing, and max testing. They also answer listener questions on explosive lifting, hypertrophy vs strength phases, expected fitness impacts, alternatives to strength, and water weight.

Delving into glycogen depletion in training, the podcast questions the efficacy of 'train low' methods. From molecular pathways to substrate use, it dissects training with low muscle glycogen levels and its impact on performance. Emphasizing the need for a holistic training approach, it warns against the limitations of low glycogen training and its potential downsides. Gender differences, mitochondrial ATP production pathways, and the ineffectiveness of this approach are also discussed.

Pro cyclist and coach Taylor Warren joins for a wide ranging discussion, including how he still finds fitness improvements after a decade of training and racing, balancing rest and workouts mid season, the value of the basics, RPE, and if American racing has gotten easier or harder. We also answer your listener questions on Legion's tactics, the most important power durations for domestic US racing, racing the course vs racing the people, training regrets, how much pros train, and more.

This is a wide ranging conversation with professional cyclist and Empirical Cycling coach Maeghan Easler. We discuss her successful race season domestically and with the national team, American vs European racing, and how improving fitness changed her training needs, along with more training and coaching topics like volume, recovery, intensity, nutrition and bodyweight, individualizing, and why she prefers 7 hour rides to 8. Instead of listener questions to finish the episode, we react to your controversial training takes submitted for a now forever-lost episode.

This episode takes a long look at the mechanisms behind aerobic adaptations from high intensity exercise, starting with an early study showing how AMPK activation leads directly to mitochondrial biogenesis, followed by a recent meta-analysis showing when high intensity exercise does and doesn't lead to adaptation. We provide guidelines in terms of exercise intensity, duration, and how well trained you are. Then we give some practical takeaways, plus debunk all the ways "hacking" this adaptive signal chain don't work. Marinus Petersen of KiloWatt Coaching steps in as a guest co-host for Kyle and provides an additional perspective from his coaching experience, and his formal exercise physiology education.

Empirical Cycling coach Rory Porteous discusses common reasons for fitness plateaus and their fixes. Topics include fatigue management, overcoming plateaus, motivation, training methodologies, understanding workout purposes, expectation mismatch, and the importance of consulting with an expert for improvements.