Training pseudo science?
 

Reading these forums, and seeing advice floating around makes me wonder...


I ride hard every time I go out.


I don't do recovery rides.


I don't eat or drink some fancy formula to fuel my ride or recovery.


I don't crunch numbers or have a plan to ramp up my performance, yet as the year goes on, I get faster and faster.


I'm starting to think that a lot of available information is based on a person trying something and it "working", without any idea of what the outcome would have been without it.


If I have a headache, and eat skittles... when the headache goes away, do the skittles get the credit?

Ride harder and more often. Recovery rides are wonderful. Needing a recovery ride is even better.

Do what works for you with achieving whatever goals you set for yourself.

Good for you.


Me and at my age. I'll take all the help I can get.

You're not training hard enough. If you don't NEED a recovery ride, you didn't ride HARD.

Recovery days are the standard in the industry from high school all of the way up to the olympics. It's not pseudo science. It's science. What YOU are proposing is psuedo science. "I don't see this trend under my not at all standard conditions so it's obviously not true."

I think it's real science and known to work, but the devil is in the details. Experts will have specific training plans tailored to individuals, and sometimes advise general plans, and the rest of us take it as gospel and argue and advise amongst ourselves and those details of individual differences get lost.

I've never ridden a recovery ride. I've no idea whether that has helped or hurt me, but I'm pretty sure that embarking on a formal training plan, I'd need the scheduled recovery rides.

Exercise science isn't one size fits all. What works for one person won't necessarily work for another, and there are definitely fads and changing opinions among cyclists and coaches on the most efficient way to train.

That said, just riding hard all the time will get you to a point where you plateau or realize you aren't getting better at certain specific types of riding.

When you go out and ride hard, are you ever doing above-threshold intervals, or are you just riding at the fastest steady pace you can manage for your intended distance?

It's also important to remember that everyone has different goals. If you want to just ride a lot and get gradually faster, don't change a thing. If you want to enter races and eventually move up the category ladder, you absolutely can't just ride around like that and expect to hang on.

Out of curiosity, how do you determine what "hard" is? What is your basic yardstick for determining performance?

I don't train for anything either, and I never have a plan in place. Hell, half the time I go out I don't have a plan of where I'm going. I just ride around. But I know that when I do a century on Monday, my body is gonna take it easy on Tuesday, whether by brain wants to or not.

If you haven't had days where you simply can't ride faster, you're not riding as hard as you think. Or, more likely, if you're only riding 3-5 days a week, you are recovering. You're recovering by not riding.

Which tells us that you weren't in impressive shape to begin with.

:roflmao:

I think that people are misreading the OP; they're not saying they don't do recovery rides, but rather saying that's one of the psuedo-scientific assertions they often read about here.

I may be wrong, and the OP can correct if so, but that was how I understood the post.

I don't run across those kinds of comments so often myself, but it doesn't surprise me at all that people draw conclusions without having understanding, and don't even think of things in the right way from the get-go.

This may very well be the case, but I have yet to hit this plateau. This may be the reason I'm skeptical of all of the people who swear by strict, albeit different and often conflicting methods.


Both. My time to ride is limited, so I join groups who average speeds that put me on the rev limiter. I blow myself up pulling, and recover on the rear. The time I need to recover is getting noticeably shorter.


My goal is eventually racing but I'm not jumping into it until I am able to hang on to our local "smash-fest" rides that are lead by solid racers.


I'm getting closer to this goal doing what I'm doing. The reason I am questioning the training methods I'm reading is because they all have different ideas on how I can get faster, as do these forums.


So far, all I seem to "need "is riding with guys who push my limits, and it's working rather well.

Maybe, but it read more like a manifesto than a question to me.

None of the examples you listed sounded like advice, but rather habits of cyclists. And usually those kinds of habits aren't prefixed with "I intend to race in the near future and these are my habits to get there" but rather "I'm a hobbyist who enjoys cycling" or "I'm trying to maintain reasonable health & weight". And for those goals doing what works sounds reasonable.

As for the skittles/headache example, you're comparing that with cyclists describing their habits over years of cycling. If every time you have a headache over a number of years you eat skittles and the headache goes away then yes, I'd attribute it to the skittles & a sugar deficiency.

Ah yes, it's clear now. I should have guessed as much from reading their "the consipiracy is real" User Title!

I determine what "hard" is by pushing myself until I can no longer carry on conversation.


Where I'm on the edge of "blowing up" while pulling the line until I need to rotate to the back.


I ride with a group where most guys are stronger than I am.


It's not uncommon for me to average 170bpm on a group ride.

And we were all sucked into it... Bwahahahahaha.

You are riding, not training.

You are correct.


That being said, it doesn't bother me when people get offended by, or defensive about simple questions/observations.

Got it. You're right where a lot of people are when they start getting interested in racing.

We all have our own anecdotal evidence, but I'll say that when I started racing, I was doing the same thing. Just riding a lot and trying to hang on in fast groups.

When I began entering races, I was able to hang in the pack just like group rides, and I wasn't getting dropped, but I was also not able to attack and get into breaks or ride solo off the pack for extended periods, and my sprint was basically just enough to hold my position across the line rather than blowing by the others like some riders are capable of doing at the end.

That's where you start working on the marginal gains through structured workouts. It's to get to that next level where you're not just riding around in the group, you're able to control the race.

Everyone is starting from a different base ability when they race, so there's always someone who will win Cat 4/5 races who just rides without a thought towards a plan, but they'll eventually hit a wall where they can't beat the people around them unless they start to train effectively.

It's also worth pointing out that you can quantify all of this with power. If you have a power meter, I can all but guarantee that you'd see a bigger increase in your FTP by doing a targeted FTP builder program with a coach or even just from an online workout guide that incorporates intervals and recovery than by just doing lots of group rides.

Seriously, yes it is hard trying to determine what is good for one and not for another. I will do the same ride and one day feel spent and then next time I'll feel great. I'm not sure why but I do try and figure out what I may or may not have done over the last 24 hours i.e. ate, slept, exercised etc and try to determine if in fact played a part on my performance.


So many factors play a part and I'm not one who takes any of them too seriously. Having metric can be fun but it can also be distracting.

You're not "blowing up." If you were "blowing up" you'd fall off the back and have nothing left to catch up. You don't know what riding hard is, as most non-professional/collegiate athletes know. You've never ridden hard enough to experience "hitting the wall."

A hard workout will leave you with nothing left. You will barely be able to make it home. The next day is your recovery day because you physically can't run/bike any faster.

You're not working hard enough.

My guess is the OP is overweight and losing weight, therefore getting constantly "better" from loss of weight/gaining muscle.

You say your 'system' is working well but you're not actually doing what you want to do which is racing.

The alternative approach would be to start racing immediately and apply a little more structure to your training. Everyone starts at the same level in racing and if you have trouble hanging with the beginner racers that will provide an indication that your program needs refinement.

No mysteries here, and no pseudo science.

If you are starting from a place of not riding hard much, then doing so will make you faster. You are still exercising regularly and making yourself fitter and stronger. There are lots of ways to build cycling speed and endurance. 1. Ride pretty hard, pretty often 2. Ride medium speed, A LOT, 3. Ride extremely hard for short intervals. All of these will make you faster, but at different rates and in different ways. If you can ride 100 miles easily, then obviously it's going to help you ride 10 miles faster that if you've only ever ridden 10 miles.

BUT, THE SCIENCE REMAINS: If you ride with a fast group regularly, you will get faster. But if you also do interval work, and recovery rides, and fuel intelligently, you will be EVEN FASTER.

----

As an anecdote...I began riding regularly in spring of 2015. That whole summer and fall, I was riding with a fast group, and increased pretty fast like you probably are now...but always ended up with the "B" section of that group...the fastest guys were always leaving the rest of us behind. you might compare those fast rides to an "8 out of 10" effort...I was never sprinting, but I was working pretty hard to keep up.

Over this past winter, I didn't do rides like that, only some 30 minute slow outside rides in the cold, and a session of 20 minute indoor interval sessions of all-out 30-second sprints (1 or 2 times/week).

On our first few spring Fast group rides, I was able to keep up the front guys (triathlete, iron-man types) and ended up being in the front "A" group....even though I rode less over winter than normal. There's no question that those short sprint intervals once or twice a week conditioned my legs and body in a way that riding "mostly hard" had not done...I noticed increases in ability within a week or 2 of starting them.

Forget the forums and the Internet in general, get a coach.

riding 'hard' on every ride is what a lot of casual riders do.

stick with that program and see how well it works when you start competing against riders who have an actual training regimen.

hey, someone has to finish last, right...?