Originally Posted by
AlexTaylor
The brits follow the doctrine of what is called something like, I think, cumulative gains. If doing something adds just a tiny percent they do it. This together with lots of other little extra percentages mounts up. It's not just in training but in lifestyle and nutrition etc.
This is also shown in the development of the bikes, every single little component was looked at to see if it could be improved upon since the world champs...
It's called the aggregation of marginal gains
Dave Brailsford (British Cycling performance director) was asked if any gain on it's own made a difference and he said 'probably not' 'but put them all together.....'
BC also have a policy of questioning every process and procedure and basically asking 'Is this going to help win medals? If not why are we doing it?'
Actually there are plenty of stories about Chris Hoys training, In one an Australian coach was filming him train, he was making sprint efforts so hard that they left him retching afterwards. He just kept repeating the whole process, with identical results, several times - the coach in question was so impressed that he used the film of the trainng session to show his team the meaning of hard work.