#1: Fundamentals of being a better cyclist

All right, and we are on. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our first official Trivalo coaching podcast. My name is Jordan, and I'm here with my dad and head coach and founder of Trivalo Coaching, and that is Gerard Donnelly. And I say this is our first official podcast because this is the first time that we're going to be uploading it to all the fancy podcast apps. But for those who have been following us for a while, you would have seen our weekly videos on Facebook or other forms of social media. But this is our first official podcast, so it's pretty exciting. Welcome, dad.

Thanks, George. Yeah, I'm pretty keen and excited, and as usual, I'm learning so much about technology from yourself, and I'm following along and loving it.

Exactly right. So Tribala Coaching. We are specialists in cycling and triathlon coaching, and I say we, but I'm not really the specialist. That's. That's Dad's role. But I'm just here to ask questions and learn, just like you guys. And I help with the technology side of things. And I really love this part of the job because I ask questions on this podcast and on this show, and I get to find out the same answers you guys do. So for today, we're going to jump straight into a bit of a broader topic, but something that we discussed and thought would really help everyone, and that is how to fundamentally be a better cyclist. So we're talking. And there are a lot of factors. Um, and this is what you. You were saying to me. There's a lot of factors that contribute to becoming a better cyclist as a whole package. And they. That comes down to the fundamentals of what you need to get right, as well as a lot of the 1 percenters. So that's what we're going to be diving into today. And I guess we want to start straight away and go off with a bang and go, what. What is. What is key to becoming a better cyclist as a whole? And what if someone comes to you and says, I want to be a better cyclist? What kind of comes to your mind straight away?

That's great question, Jordan, but I'm just so stumped by that question because I've got 75 different answers for it. And you did ask me earlier, you know, what is the number one key thing that you would say to someone? And I said, probably that every session has a goal, purpose, and an outcome, and if. If that can be achieved, you will improve no matter what else happens. If you don't have a goal, purpose, and an outcome, then you're at the mercy of the other bunches, the bunch riders in your bunch. You'll just be a follower and you won't have any structure to improve upon. You'll be doing the same things day in, day out on the bike, which is fun to a point, but then becomes boring because, yeah, a little bit disillusioned that you're not improving. And so really, the basic fundamentals to be a better bike rider is to stick to a process that has a goal and an outcome for each session.

Perfect. So that was one part of the first question I wanted to get across as well, is if you get a training program, someone. So someone comes to you and says, I want to be better and you give them a training program. Is fundamentally a training program enough to make someone better?

Look, the. The athlete will definitely improve with, with, you know, the examples we've had of the Herald sun would do a Steve Montaguetti train for a marathon program, which is as vague and as general as you can, you could get. But athletes who follow it will do better than people who just say, I'm going for a run today and then start running and think, I feel like I'll do 15 minutes and with no real idea of how fast or what intensity. And for someone who says, right, today, Monday is my recovery day, tomorrow's my hard day, Wednesday is my tempo day, Thursday is my hard day, that sort of structure will give you such an advantage over a person who's just going to ride or run or whatever. With a group that are doing whatever the group wants to do rather than specifically what you're doing, outcome is to be achieved from your session. So yeah, to have to have sort of that as your goal, that the training program alone will improve you, but only improve you to a certain point.

So for someone who again, goal is to become better to start with, but become really good, what does it take you do you use the word fundamentals and 1 percenters, which is why we chose this topic. And let's start with the fundamentals. What does it take fundamentally to have not just some structure, but to go because you want to go another level? Right. You want to go not just hard day Monday, easy day Tuesday. What are the fundamentals of a training program? Yep.

So I was just thinking before when you were asking me that. I'm trying to think of an analogy to make it really clear, like if you're a tennis player and we all know that tennis players have a rally and if you get to have a hit with your mate, the first thing you want to do is have a hit, have a rally. But to start the match, you need to serve. And if you just have a rally all the time and don't do any serving, you're going to be struggling in a tennis match, in a game. It's the same thing as a bike rider or a triathlete. If, if you just concentrate on riding with a bunch all the time and not have the fundamentals such as the endurance ride, and I'll go through them, the endurance ride is probably the basis of all structure that you need, despite having any other aspect of your training. If you don't have that endurance ride and have an aerobic fitness base, you can't do the other things well. So one endurance ride, one endurance ride per week is paramount to your improvement. And this is what we're talking about here. Not your enjoyment, your improvement. If you're after enjoyment, then sure, stay with your bunch, do the same thing day in, day out, week in week out, year in, year out. That's a different story here. We're talking about improvement.

Yeah. And what defines an endurance ride?

Okay, so you have to look at, you know, I'll use the athletics again. If you, if you're aiming for an 800 meter or, or a 1500 or a 5K, you're going to have a little bit of a difference in, in endurance length as a marathon or a half marathon. So the longer the event, obviously the correlation between the endurance time is greater. So if you're doing 8 hundreds to 15 hundreds, your endurance run as you've experienced would be around that, you know, one to one and a half hours. And that's ample for a bike rider who's just doing crit races that lasts for an hour. You know, a three hour endurance ride is pretty good value because you're doing, you know, pretty much three times the amount of your event. Yeah. Uh, so if you're training for a road race, that's for example a World Road Race Championships each year, or 150k, you'd need to be doing, you know, at least that each, each weekend, 140 to 180 to 200k rides, the three peaks events, an eight hour event. What's your endurance ride? For that you need to be doing lots of four to eight hour endurance rides regularly. So it does vary according to the length of your event.

Yeah. And I just found this really funny that I asked you this exact question two or three weeks ago and I forgot your answer and I just realized I've asked the question again, but that's Funny, because I sit next to you all day and I hear you on your coaching calls and I hear you repeat the same information and you tell me that you tear your hair out sometimes saying the same thing over and over, and people just don't hear it. And if you haven't got the experience, then it's understandable. But that's why these fundamentals are so important, is that, that you can tell anyone over and over again what they need to do. But people really need to grasp the concept that there are these fundamental sessions that you need to do each week and understand the purpose of them. Like you said, they need. There's a goal and an outcome for each session, and you need to do them to actually make your training worthwhile.

Yep. And it also, Jord, depends on what phase you're in, aiming towards your end result. You could be for some of the triathletes. One of the guys has just asked me for Port Macquarie Training Program, 2019, May. Now that's a big program. That's a year. So we would train that person with a little bit of a variation because we want them peaking in April, May of next year. Sure, we get them into other events along the way as practice, as we've talked about in some of the other podcasts, but we certainly want to make sure that depending on the length of the program, depending on determines what, what are the fundamentals and how quickly they are implemented into your program. So do you want me to go.

On with some other one is endurance. What else do you need to do each week?

Okay, so obviously, and I shouldn't say that word obviously, because it's not obvious to everybody, otherwise they wouldn't need a coach. And that's one of the reasons why, you know, to get an effective training program, you need to have someone who has an idea about how to improve you. And, and one of the fundamentals that you need to do is something that's above the intensity of your race or your event. It doesn't have to be a race, it can just be your. Your main event. So you need to push your body beyond what it's normally used to. So you can't do that a lot day after day. And that's the downfall of some bunch groups where they're continually riding at as hard as they possibly can every day, which eventually will be too tiring and they'll go downhill rather than improve. So you really need to have some sort of intensity into, into your. Into your training load during the week. And the reason we could use the, the Weight training analogy here where you're lifting or squatting 100 kilo and you just keep doing 100 kilo for 10 weeks and the guy beside you does 100 kilo one week and then eventually goes 10, 10 kilo more each week. He will after 10 weeks be able to push 200 kilo or whatever the math is for that 220 kilo and the guy will still be pushing 100 kilo. And the difference between the two athletes will be phenomenal in what they can lift. The same with the intensity. The progressive overload of the intensity enables the athlete to have a stimulus that creates in the body to make it adapt to the higher level the next time they train. So all the time we're trying to push the body, um, we, we identify what the race specific intensity is and if we can train above it come race day, it should be a controllable thing that we, we have no difficulty with. We should be in control of what, what we're achieving. So the intensity and that can vary to one session, two sessions or three sessions a week depending on your sport and your length of your sport. Um, and I mean, you know, it could be a 100 meter sprinter, a 400 meter runner, a criterion rider or a time trialist. You know, it really depends on what your sport is and that we don't coach any sprinters.

So for cyclists.

Yeah, so in our, in our cycling races we really need to practice sprinting. So, so it's, it's, it is something that I do get some, some guys who, that is their thing that they are out and out, I hate to say it, sit on sprinters but we, we have that sort of rider in and we should have that sort of rider. But my job is to make them a bit, a bit of an all rounder so that they can actually not just be a one, what's the word, a one string to their bow. They need several. That's exactly right. And we, we try to improve their endurance, we try to improve their, their overall strength and power and not just in for sprinting so that they can actually go with attacks and be strong enough to not just sit on and you know, make a break and roll on the brake. So certainly the sprinting side of it, they would need to be doing high explosive short intensity sessions, you know, less than 10 second sprints, but repeated so that because you don't normally get to sprint in the middle of the race, the sprint is at the end. So you could have a really hard race and then have to sprint. So you need to be practicing sprinting when you're tired. And it's great. People can sprint fresh, no problem. But it's a different outcome. And you see the Tour de France or the Giro or whatever those pro races are the difference between guys who are really good sprinters and then see what they're like after riding 280k in sprint. Not always the best sprinter wins in those conditions because the best sprinter who can sprint fatigued who will win.

That's a big factor in the high intensity sessions is thinking about specifically probably what your strengths and weaknesses are. And that needs to go into your programming as well as the race specificity of what.

Yeah, yeah, it's a whole nother topic, isn't it? And, and look, I've got a lot of the athletes asking me what do you think is my best event? And, and it's easy for me to, because I'm, I'm not emotionally attached to them. I can say, listen, Jordan, your physique and your weight and your height allows you to probably climb quite well. And you're a bit of an all rounder. Whereas a really strong, powerful guy who carries, not overweight but carries a lot of weight because of his height, you know, a 95 to 100 kilo guy would normally be a good sprinter type and not a good hill rider. So I would steer them away from events that involve 4,000 meters worth of climbing. I would keep them on criteriums or road races or.

Plus data as well.

Yeah, yeah. So it's quite, it's quite an easy. And you know, somatotyping is, is, is exactly that. You know, we've seen examples of countries that from birth trying to find out what their, their country's athletes are good at. So they test them for everything, for gymnastics, for max VO2 testing for their, you know, for their aerobic capacity, which.

Would be pretty brutal. But you understand why they're doing it.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, there will always be people who, who, who can get past the system that says they're not going to be that because there's a, there's another aspect to, to, to competing and that's your brain and which we're not talking about today. But, but that is such a value, valuable tool in, in the actual athletes competitive skill set that's not to be underestimated. But we're not talking about that today.

Yeah, definitely. And that can be a topic for another day because it's definitely interesting talking about, you know, VO2 max or that kind of data. So on average, one to three high intensity sessions a week. You probably go two as a. Yeah, generally.

And look, because we have a seven day week with work, five days of work, two days off, we try to do midweek. The two are high intensity sessions and generally it works with people who have normal jobs. Tuesday, Thursdays you would schedule in for your high intensity sessions and you know, you would then have either an option on the race day for the weekend or you try and implement some of that intensity into your endurance ride. Because we're a little bit time poor because we work. So we have to combine a few sessions. That's right. If you are certainly not working, you could, you know, you could throw in a third intensity session because you'd have the time to recover as well.

So which brings us to what the third main.

Yeah, so recovery is. So you've got your endurance ride, you've got your high intensity rides and in between that you could have your easy session, which is different to your recovery session. And a lot of people get confused with that. The recovery session is basically trying to achieve recovery. There's no real fitness gain in the recovery session, whereas the easy session is somewhat harder than the recovery but easier than any other session. So there still is a fitness gain and there is a bit of a difference. So you can go for a two, three hour easy session with, with your mates as long as you're not going above the threshold level that we set. I call it the coffee ride sometimes. So there's an aerobic gain there. Aerobic fitness game. Whereas a recovery session, you're just trying to allow your working muscles to recovery, recover from the previous hard day. Say it's a Sunday where you rode a race, Monday's recovery, just to get the body back in shape for Tuesday's hard intensity session.

Yeah, yeah, and I, I really like this topic because I, I know myself and I know you've said this a lot. I know anyone listening might think, yeah, yeah, yeah, recovery session, I get it, it's easy. But I know you get surprised at how 95 of the athletes or anyone that you give a recovery session to get it wrong and don't do a recovery ride.

Yeah, yeah. And look, I've got lots of articles and lots of information. The Kenyans are classic at it. They do their recovery sessions at an astronomically slow pace and they're just jogging, talking, jogging and you know, it could be half an hour or 45 minutes max and depending on what event they're training for their cross country runners, marathon runners or track runners. But, but you know, for people to understand that the Kenyans can, you know, who can all run at two 20 kilometer pace or, you know, they can do an 800 in 140. They can, you know, that's right. And, and they train together, which is something that Australians or, you know, we, we have real trouble when we train together with ego. And one guy might feel like today's ride isn't a recovery ride and the rest of the group think it's a recovery ride. And that's one of the downfalls of training with other people is the recovery ride needs to be away from other people because we can't be trusted to do it slow enough. Whereas the Kenyans all know that the group run is an easy, not an easy, a recovery ride and they treat it like that.

Yeah.

Whereas if we happen to have someone who's wanting to ride hard, we will chase them on our recovery ride. I've seen it happen so many times. You end up doing someone else's trial training session and not what we said. The outcome and objective is to recover.

Yeah, and I mean you, you always over exaggerate it so that people get the point. But then, I mean, I know myself, when you were coaching me through this, I still didn't get the point. And people would have to see you on your recovery ride to see how slow you go.

Yeah. And look, the example is, and for people who know, you know, they've seen me on, on the road, going past me and, and you know, I say jokingly that grandma passed me on her ride to the shop bike and that gives you an idea of what I mean. It's not about riding fast, it's just about getting the blood flow. And look, I really do that session, not, not very often outside because I don't actually like the undulations and I don't like the fact that people are flying past me all the time. So I do it on the ergo, and that way I've got control and no one else can influence my session.

So you wouldn't jump on Zwift then either?

No, because the competitiveness of people is the issue here. And I'm calling it ego, but it's really competitiveness and you have to be pretty strong willed to keep focused on. And look, sometimes it's easy to be doing a recovery road because you're that smashed from racing well or having a hard ride the day before and, and you know that if you don't do the recovery ride well the next day, you won't achieve the goal and, and look, we had the Queen's birthday weekend the other day was a great example of one of the guys in the bunch, I'm never going to mention names, had a fantastic day out with his bunch and, you know, really rode well and was, you know, I was so, so pleased that he was so pleased, but unfortunately that wasn't the session that he was given. And the next day he had the high intensity session and he couldn't even finish 15 minutes of it. He was that tired from the day before where he flexed his muscles and, and did a different session to the one that was, that was planned. And that's a great lesson. Yeah, you have to go through that to find out that, yeah, gee, I shouldn't have done that.

Yeah.

Even though he knew he shouldn't have done it. But.

Yeah, that's why I really love this topic and that's why I really wanted to talk about this straight away, is because there's such, you know, some of the most profound lessons are the most, the simplest ones and just this concept of having a goal for each session and having very simple structure, which is your endurance ride, your two high intensity sessions and your recovery ride, making sure you tick those off. You know, you load your session into training peaks and you want to have all those green and the amount of people that know that they're the fundamentals but still don't tick them off. Or like you said before, you know, people are writing bunches all the time, you know, in every single session. One, they're not having any variation. Two, they're not ticking off these fundamental sessions that they should be. And you know, their week's just a rabble because of it. And whether you're a bunch rider or you're quite good and you actually have these sessions planned, if you're not ticking them off every single time, you know, you're selling stuff.

Sure. Yeah. And there's a few, a lot of points you've mentioned there. The first one probably is, what's, what's wrong with doing that with the bunch ride? Well, there isn't anything wrong if, if your outcome is that you just want to ride with your mates, you've succeeded and you will actually be a good bunch rider in your bunch. You'll be able to keep up, you won't get dropped. But as we said before, everybody has a competitive edge. Well, not everybody. Some people and a little bit of an ego and, and they won't be satisfied eventually with, with that. And they'll want to progress in their little bunch to Be a little bit more of a player. There's two types of bunch riders or races. There's spectators and instigators. And would you want to be a spectator in your bunch where you're just following the guy who's the strong man all the time? And here he goes again, he attacks and I have to chase and I'm getting tired and tighter and he's having a ball and I'm hating it. Or do you want to be the instigator? You want to be the guy who can, you know, play with the rest of the bunch at will? And the only way to do, to do that, to make that change, is to do something different. So if you keep doing the bunch ride each day, each week, each month, you'll be a good bunch rider in that bunch, and that's as far as it'll go. So, yeah, they're sort of the, the reasons why we have goals, outcomes and purposes of, of sessions. So that, you know, if someone came to me and said, how do I improve in my bunch? That's a great question because I've got the answer for them straight away. You know, stop riding in your bunch, come and do some specific sessions, go back to your bunch and just watch the jaws drop as you, you come back a different person.

Yeah.

You come back with some, some, some assets in your armory that people go, whoa, yeah, jaw dropping stuff. How is he doing that? He was crap.

Yeah.

Eight weeks ago. Yeah. So that's the exciting part. If, if you want to follow a structured program, you know, it will have overload. It will improve you regardless if you follow it 100%, you know, even if you followed it to a, a fraction of it, you'll still improve. But obviously if you did the whole thing 100, as you said, had greens in training peaks ticked off, you know, and very few people can achieve that. But if you, if you do achieve that, the correlation between improvement is astounding.

So to ask you, then the answer, if a guy comes to you and says, how do I do better in my bunch? You say, stop riding your bunch and start doing these fundamentals. Is the answer the same for a guy who is doing the fundamentals but wants to be better? You know, is it, is it that he needs his fundamentals to just have better outcomes and goals? Or, I mean, could the answer be pretty much the same?

Yeah. And look, you would ask, the question is, okay, does he have a power meter? Does he have a heart rate strap? Does he have, if he's a runner, does he know what his pace is for the set 5k or the half marathon or whatever on the bike. You know, does he know what his FTP number is? And if he's not, if he's doing a high intensity session without knowing what his numbers are, then he's actually not really doing the high intensity session. He might think he's riding hard because he's puffing and panting. But if he's not actually running at the pace or riding at the power then, or swimming at the, you know, the right lap pace, then you're actually just training blind. So it's nearly as bad as bunch riding, but it's a step above. But it's still not at where you should be.

Yeah, definitely. And then obviously the last point is just aiming for those green ticks each time because you can be doing the fundamentals, but if you're doing four out of six sessions or five out of six, or six out of six, but.

Not hitting your goals, then yeah, yeah, but that's true. And look, a lot of factors come into that, which is what we're probably going to talk about next is what are you doing off the bike or off your running shoes or out of the pool? What are the things you're doing to make sure you hit those targets that have been set for you? Because they won't be set. You know, in our program we don't set targets that are unachievable. We test you for your, your power number, we test you for your pace running, we test you for your swimming time trial so that we set targets, the paces that you can achieve that are going to progressively push you slightly each week. So if you, you know, if at the end of the day, if you don't have those numbers at the forefront of what you're trying to achieve, then you're just really. Yeah. Training blindly.

So, so there was one more fundamental. Which kind of comes in, it doesn't have to happen weekly, but that you said, and you've said this a lot of times, which is really important. And I guess throughout this whole show there, there's going to be a lot of things that you say a lot of times because they're quite important for people to understand. But it's this concept of racing practice and making sure that you're actually practicing the race that you're preparing for.

Yeah.

Even if that's your bunch ride.

Yeah, for sure. And look, we did talk about that a little bit with the local Trivello giant bunch ride we have here. We, we do the endurance ride on the Saturday And I throw in some intensity into that. But if you didn't have that opportunity to ride with a bunch, you would need to simulate your particular race requirements in a training session somewhere. So, and this is really fundamental for triathletes because the Ironman doesn't happen every three or four weeks. You could have a year between races. Um, and that's the extreme marathon similar. You would only have, you know, two marathons a year maybe. Or you know, some, some people can, can really punch out three or four. Um, but you know, generally. So there's a big gap between your actual race. So you need these other race like practices. We call, you know, we call it training, but they're actually race, race simulation practices. So if you're a time trial, it's looking, you know, if we look at the Masters, Australian masters time trial, it's a. Somewhere between 16 and 20k. We need to be practicing that, that distance at that intensity on a regular basis. So that's the other fundamental that, that we didn't mention in, in the endurance, the high intensity, the recovery and the easy ride. We need to continually throw in, not all the time so that we're not getting flat, but, but you know, so that it's, it's continually measuring ourselves as well to see how we're going and to see what our body responds to under that intensity. It's like preseason football. Guys are fit, they're running fit, they've trained quite well, their skills are up. The minute they have the first practice match, they think they're in such great shape. It's such a shock every year.

Guys are crazy.

Yeah. And he's thinking, I was fit. What's wrong with me? I've done all. But it's the, it's the intensity that you get in the race or the football match that you can't simulate in training. And once you put a number on that is, you know, or you put your boots on or your spikes or whatever, you know, jump on, put your leg over the bike, what, whatever you do with the number it says you have to race. Today is a completely different intensity attached to it. And I know myself if I'm in a training ride, for example, on our group ride through the hills, you know, I'm starting to get dropped. You know, it doesn't matter. I know the hill's another three minutes long. You know, I'll only be 15, 20 meters off the back.

Yeah.

But if that was a race and the bunch is riding away from me, I'm not going to lose the bunch Because I know that it could be another 50 minutes solo riding if I don't stay with them right now. So the mindset is completely different. So yeah, people say, oh, it's a really hard training session. Well, it's never as hard as the race. So the more times you can simulate that race practice, that will be the final sort of piece in the puzzle to give you an all well rounded program that will get you to achieve your best outcome on race day. And you know, people say to me all the time, oh, not another FTP test or another, another time trial. Well, if you don't do that, the first time you come to do that will be your race and your body will go, what the hell. Yeah, just like that first practice footy match. Yeah. So yeah, so yeah, it's a really great point that you've mentioned is the actual simulation of racing and if you can't get, we call them B races or C races, which is, you know, lower level club races or fun runs as a buildup, then you have to do that in your own training.

A time trial or.

Yeah, time trial. Yeah. Or an FTP test or. And you know, a lot of the, a lot of all the athletes I coach will help have those in their program. Perfect.

So that's, that's really the fundamentals covered. I mean I know you really harp on about the 1 percenters and there are, you've narrowed them down to five pretty key 1 percenters that you think everyone needs to make sure that they're doing at least to some degree. And the more you do, the probably better off you're going to be.

Yep, absolutely. And look, people are sick to death of me saying this. Are you doing the right thing with your sleep? Sleep's the real key. And look, I'm in the same position. I don't get enough sleep. But you know, sleep is our, is the human body's way of recovering. The longer you sleep before midnight, the more chance you have of waking up better the next day if you can be consistent with your sleep patterns. And of course a whole lot of things come in to affect that. The same stresses of work, family, money, relationships, all those things affect. And you know, don't underestimate how much it affects your sleep if you're thinking too much about things that are not going well.

The new research coming out is really showing how, how important sleep is and how we've almost underestimated it. We know it's important, but we've almost underestimated, I mean some of us stats coming out Which I, I don't know how true they all are, what I've heard, but it's talking about, you know, people's, people's recovery levels being at 50% capacity if they didn't get enough sleep. Stuff like that, where you think the next day, if you're riding at 50% capacity, you're really struggling.

Yeah. And there's so much involved in the sleep, you know, the various stages of sleep, the period where we do recover, the period where we dream, the period where we're semi awake and semi asleep. You know, everybody in the world sleeps, which is an amazing phenomenon when you think about it. You know, at one point in time, everybody in Australia is asleep and we all accept that that's what we should be doing. But there's different levels and layers of sleep and, you know, there's a whole issue on topic on getting sleep. But, but, yeah, but. So certainly we, you know, a lot of the apps now are making a little bit of headway in how well you slept and where you're restless and, and fatigue from TR affect your sleep as well. So if you're over training, it will definitely affect your sleep.

And obviously they reckon the increase in iPhone or which is the phone use. Yeah. Staring at your screen.

Yeah. The next next topic I was going to say with the sleep is what are you doing before you go to sleep? And that is a, you know, that's a major contributor to how well you sleep. So the idea is not to eat as soon as you go to sleep because the body actually has to digest the food. So you want to avoid that, you want to eat as early as you can. As we get older, the older generation, you know, the joke is having dinner at 4:30 in the afternoon. And that's going to the extreme because most people still at work, but, but certainly the earlier you eat, the more chance you have sleeping, more relaxed, if you've had a nice, you know, warm bath or. And the, the technology screens, having them turned off. And you can also have the dimmer function on your screen where you're not giving the direct light to your eyes. That's right. You hit that on the head. Having the lights dim in the house, not having the bright lights, because originally when, when man first came on this earth, there was no electricity. So when it went dark at night, we went to sleep. When the light came up, we woke up. You know, that was a long time. Could be 12 hours. And if you live in the northern hemisphere in Scotland, you could have four hours of daylight. And in summer, you would have 18 hours of daylight. I mean some of they're awake all day. So look at some countries where there's only one or two hours of daylight and it's only one or two hours of darkness in the, in the winter. So to sleep. Yeah, we've gone on a little bit too long with the sleep.

But I should say as well, we are a Scottish family so we, we can't take the piss out of them. Those are shot at Scottish people.

That's right. My father, mama are Scottish.

Number two.

Yeah, well, number two is really, I look, I think the massage and the foam roller, it plays a really major role in, in how well your body's recovering. And I'm really keen on getting a massage once a week. And the foam roller I'm staring at right now in the other side of the room. If you're just sitting there watching telly, it's a great time just to sit on it and roll your legs on it sideways front ways. It's a bit painful, I know, but, but if you do that regularly you give your legs some chance of recovery. And I know that I played golf yesterday and my legs were not fit for golf and they were sore as anything after the last two days, but I was on the foam roller and I woke up this morning really much better. So massage and the foam roller. One or the other foam roller is free. Massage obviously costs money, but that's I think a really worth it, important thing to, to try and, and, and implement into your program.

Definitely point three.

I think the third one is the, and this is really a broad topic, nutrition and I'm talking about the in ride nutrition and during the week. So nutrition can include hydration as well. So the amount of fluid you're taking in. But if you have a really hard, high intensity session and you don't take your nutrition seriously in the ride and then post the next day can be a problem because of that day. So if you did an endurance ride on the Saturday, which might have been three to six hours, if you didn't have the fuel on the day, you might have got through the session okay. But if you didn't have the right fuel, you will be, you know, low in the electrolytes, low in the carbs, dehydrated, and then the next session, the next day could possibly be compromised because of your lack of attention to detail with your nutrition. And especially on a long endurance ride, the recovery drink is really important that you get some sort of recovery protein drink into yourself immediately in the first 30 minutes of of the ride. And people say, well, sometimes that's hard because I'm commuting. Well, have the recovery drink ready. Yeah. Be organized. Having a little esky. Have a cold pack in the esky. I've done that, you know, many Saturdays.

That's what they called one percenters.

That's right. So you got to go out of your way, do the things that other people aren't prepared to do. That's where 1 percenter is. So, so the, the food intake during the week is really important as well, but there's too broad a topic really to be.

To be discussing that point four.

So I'm, I'm a big believer in strength and conditioning, and I think that that's a topic on its own. Off the bike strength and conditioning, where, you know, your body's in great shape to execute the intensity that you want to put it through on. On the. On or as a runner or as a swimmer. So if you're not doing those 1 percenters off the bike, that, that core work that gives you stability to not get a sore back when you jumped off the bike and you're a triathlon, you start running and, oh, gee, I feel really average, but I've never felt like this before. After 180k on the bike, you know, if you don't have the strength and core conditioning compared to someone who's just like, rock solid on the bike, gets off, has no, no issues, and can run normally. So many people I was at Port Macquarie watch get off the bike, and they were like cripples. They, you know, they, they had really lost all form. Their posture was poor. They were running, you know, bent over, couldn't stand up straight. And it really affects the outcome of their result. And had they just done the strength and conditioning work, the 1 percenters, which, again, people trying to avoid, you know, I'm doing the program, I'm doing the writing, I'm doing the running, I'm doing the swimming. Isn't that enough? No, it's not. That's the difference between, you know, you being. And also run or someone who's at the, at the highest end of the. Of your particular group. So, yeah, I think the strength and conditioning is definitely.

And that's something I've been impressed with with you. I mean, a lot of people tend to do that when they're younger, but give that up as they get older. And you always, always made us, as teenagers, start getting into it and you would do it with us and you would smash us at the core and you still See a strength and conditioning coach once a week.

Yeah.

The last 10 years or so. And you're going to keep doing it because it keeps you in shape.

Yeah. And whatever method works for you, you know, use that method. If you need a strengthening conditioning coach and Trivala coaching, have Amber Johnson from First Wave Fitness for the local area. But, you know, use someone who can, who can help you with that or just do your own program that you know at some stage is going to be a huge benefit down the track if you can be consistent with it.

Definitely. And the last point, this will finish us off.

Yep.

Number five.

So the stretching. Yeah, stretching, something that is a bit controversial actually. Actually because there's, there's both arguments for both ways. Some people, some experts, I shouldn't say some people, some experts in the field say that too much stretching can actually injure yourself. Um, and when do you stretch? So my rule of thumb is most stretching should happen after the session, not before. If you want to do stretching before a main race, then you need to warm up well and then just do some light stretching. But, but the majority of your, of your serious stretching where you, you know, you might spend 15 or 20 minutes is straight after a session when you're totally warmed up and the body can actually go to lengths. The muscles can go to stretch lengths that, that because they're warm and that's going to be the most benefit. And if you can be consistent with that, you know, you'll probably be able to get in, for example, on a bike time trial position better than if you weren't flexible. And you know, there's just so many examples of, in swimming, if you've got poor arm and shoulder flexibility, your stroke length in the swim will be compromised. If you've got tight hamstrings as a runner, you can't have a stride length that you want. If you're a time trialer and you can't bend your back, you can't get into the aerodynamic position.

Yeah.

So they're just the obvious things.

That's probably again a personal, personal experience and kind of what feels better for you. I know myself, I'm on the lower end of not doing enough stretching, but especially running a lot more than cycling. When I do the long runs, you know, I really feel it in my ITVs and when I stretch out after a long run, I get that relief straight away. But if I just during the week, if I just stretch in front of the telly, I really don't get that same feeling. So for me, that's Why I tend to be able to stretch straight after a long run because I actually want to do it. It gives me some relief, but I don't have the motivation to do it in front of the TV because I.

Don'T feel like doing, doing anything that's right. And I think if you structure it so that's part of your program, okay. The run involves the stretch, the ride or the swim involves the stretch. So that's actually part of the program. And you know, one of the guys not mentioning names is brilliant at it. He, he has and he records it on training peaks. And if it's a blank there, it's because he hasn't done it and he's really honest with it because it's not something I'm putting in for him to do. So same with the strength and conditioning. It's if, you know, if you want to be accountable to yourself for that, put it on training peaks and make sure that you've ticked it as a green. And you know, they don't have to be long sessions. They can be. A stretching session can be, you know, as minimum as five minutes, up to 20 minutes or half an hour. And the strength and conditioning can be the same. You know, you can just do a set of sit ups and push ups and, and you know, just some balance stuff. One legged balance stuff in 15 minutes. Calf raises. Same with stretching. You know, just go through a routine of stretching your hamstrings, quads, calves, back, you know, upper body, arms, shoulders, you know, it's, it's all there for you to do and it's very minimal time.

Yeah, that's a good way to wrap us up. It's five pretty key things you can do on top of the fundamentals. And I'll say it again, the reason I was really keen to do this topic is because this is something, a lesson that you've taught me, especially when I asked you to help me with a running program, was being humble in the training program. Because I thought I knew a lot and I thought, you know, if I set my own program I would do kind of more advanced stuff. Then you took it back to the basics and back to these fundamentals. And we always talk about these 1 percenters, which again, no matter how good you are, you need to be humble and make sure that truthfully, are you doing these fundamentals and are you doing know 1% is the best of your ability. If you do that, you're probably going to become better no matter what level you're at.

Yeah. And look, it brings to Mind that interview with Julian last week, you know, an Olympian. And, and you know, that was one of the things he said was just be, be consistent and stick with the structured program. Not trying to make it too complex. Just do the basics well and the fundamentals are doing that well. And, and there's no, there's no secret formula for that is out there that is making people better. It's actually doing the basic stuff 100%. And if someone was to tell you that if you're going into an exam with all the answers, how confident would you be? Well, it's the same with trying to improve yourself as an athlete. I'm giving you all the answers, but you're choosing not to take them. You're choosing to select some of the answers and you're getting some good results. So, so the person who selects all of the information that's given to them and executes it, they're the ones who are going to actually achieve faster and higher results in the end. Perfect.

That's a great way to finish. Well, thanks for joining me on the show. This is our first official podcast. That interview you spoke about with Julian was. We did an interview last week with NX Olympian, which will be uploaded as another show on here.

That's about it.

So thank you very much for listening. I think at this point, most of the podcasters do say, rate us, leave feedback, leave comments. So I guess if you want to give us some positive rating, I think that does help us. Not too into the podcasting myself, but we're giving this a good crack and we're going to be doing these once a week. If you do have any topics that you want us to cover, definitely let us know. If you have any negative feedback, keep it to yourself. And apart from that, we look forward to seeing you each week on this show. And that's about it from us.

Thanks. Jordan. Enjoyed episode one very much.

Cheers. Bye.