70yr Old Gains 17 Watts in 12 Weeks [CASE STUDY]

Unfortunately, the expectation in cycling is that as you get older, you must slow down or lose power. And we can tell you this doesn't have to be true. And this is what makes Lindsey's story today so special. We're not talking about a 50 year old improving here or even a 60 year old. This is a 70 year old who hasn't progressed in years, who just gained 17 watts with our training structure. In his own words, he said, I wish I knew this sooner. So today we're going to go through where he was fitness wise, what the problem was with his training, where he is now, and what we changed to get this improvement. Dad, welcome to another case study episode. Can you take us through a bit of background story about where Lindsay was when he started, what kind of rider he was and what kind of athlete he was? Because it's a really important starting point.

Yeah, Lindsay's been one of those athletes that I've always admired, mainly because he's always been a really top quality rider, no matter what his age, and hasn't affected him in a lot of races that he's done. And I've always been interested in, you know, how he's been able to maintain that good level of fitness and just really understanding that his background when he, when I got to speak to him was he was a real quality runner as a youngster. You know, regularly around the 30 minutes for 10k and for everybody who knows that, it is very special. So he's got an engine, we know that from that he's had a lot of years of training. So he's, he's in his 70s, so he's been training himself for, you know, 50 years. Um, and a lot of the time was as a runner and more recently due to injuries, he's turned his hand to riding and, and he was, you know, obviously with that engine, he was quite a successful rider. And yeah, look, I've known him, you know, for a long time, traveling up to the sunny coast and doing a lot of training up there and he loves going there as well, as much as I do. So. Yeah, so I really got to know him quite well and it was great that he finally came on board after all those years. Yeah.

I guess to summarize kind of where he's at, what you're saying is he's a super fit athlete, a lot of experience, he knows a lot about training and he's got serious fitness behind him and in his legs, but he just was stagnant and he just hadn't really progressed on the bike. For a long time. And all those years that you'd been seeing him up at Noosa, he was kind of the same rider year in, year out. So what do you think the problem was? What was he doing wrong?

Yeah, and look, it's always hard to find that out without knowing what he was doing over those years. But it seemed to me, and when I actually got to see his training, that he was doing a lot of kilometers, a lot of volume and a lot of it was too hard. He was doing it. You know, we talk about the 80, 20, you know, 80% of your riding should be under Zone 2 and 20% above threshold into VO2 and aerobic training. And he was doing a lot between 75% and 90% that hard, that hard training zone that, that, you know, is good for some sessions, but not every session. And that seemed to be where he was. And so yes, he had a great level of fitness, but he was not progressing. That was the, he was, he was unable to do that high intensity jump that was required in some races. He had that engine. He could ride all day at the same pace. But he didn't do any easy sessions and he didn't really do any hard sessions. He did a lot of the same type of sessions and there's where his aerobic fitness came from. So really pinpointing that was the first thing that we really had to change.

Yeah, I think you summarized it really well when you said he was, he just was never fresh enough to train properly. He was just always training hard and always on the limit. And so we take that from where he was to where he is now. I think the summary, the best summary that we've said is that he's training less and riding better. You know, he's putting more power out at 70 years old than he has the last few years. And the specific numbers, he's gone from 246 watt FTP test to 263. So that's a 17 watt improvement. And we know how hard every watt is to get. And the fitter you are, the stronger you are, the more experience you have. Every watt becomes harder and harder. And again, we made this point at the start, but everyone says that you go backwards with age. But I mean, I'd ask you the question, you know, your, your peak FTP years has been 303 watts or 305. You know, how stoked would you be with a 17 watt improvement after all these years of training?

Oh, that's just a ridiculous improvement. And I've been being told Many years that as I get older I should be dropping my FTP. And for a lot of people, they will accept that challenge. And you know, I've been stagnating myself. I could almost do a case study on myself where I've just got 2 or 3 watt improvement here and there, depending on what part of the season I'm at. But Lindsay with a 17 watt improvement showed that he had really been under valuing his ability for all those years, which probably in hindsight would be a bit disappointing because you shouldn't be able to improve that much in such a short period of time at that level of fitness. And it's astounding. And so just by tweaking less of the same training and more specific training, getting himself down to a zone two level training instead of being zone three to zone half, three and a half. And so lots of zone two and zone one training and lots of zone four and above. And instantly we got huge improvements instantly from a person who is quite fit. And that is something that doesn't happen. We've got examples of all of our top guys who have been training under the program for 4, 5, 6, 7 years who are ecstatic about 4 watt improvement or 5 watt improvement. So to someone of similar looking like similar fitness ability improving that much, that, that's extraordinary.

And so let's go through the secret sauce. Everyone always wants to know, what did we do? What do we change? And you just hit two nails on the head there. That's. We took his more of his riding down to that from that middle zone to a lot easier and a lot harder at the top end. So can you explain that a little bit? I mean he was riding a lot of volume at that mid range, you know, 75 to 90% of his FTP.

Yeah. And look, one of the aha moments that we got was when I did our Zone 2 ride with Lindsay and we were up, actually up Noosa, heading out to Karoi on that road, for those who know that region well. And we were riding side by side and every time we came to a rise, Lindsay would put two or three meters into me and we were supposed to be side by side talking and you know, he's having to turn around to keep talking to me. And then as we get to the crest of the rise, I would come back up level with him and then put 10 meters into him as we progressed, you know, on a slight downhill. And he would be saying, what are you doing? Why are you riding like this? And. And I was saying to him, I'M holding the same power, Lindsay. I'm keeping the pressure on the pedals. In zone two, you're actually, when the hill, when the hill comes or the gradient increases, you're going outside of zone two, you're going into stepping into zone three. And then when you get to the crest of the hill, you're dropping into zone one. And so therefore you're doing this surging style of riding, which is okay on a specific session when you're trying to do that, but when you're trying to do pressure on the pedals and keeping it, you know, steady state under zone two, you're actually not achieving the goal of the session. And he's, he was just saying, this is amazing. If you hadn't ridden beside me, I wouldn't have never have known that. I said, yeah, we're meant to be staying together. I said, for the next 15 minutes, whatever I do, you just stay beside me, shoulder to shoulder. And, and he was, he just said, this is incredible. It was like an aha moment for him. And even though he thought he understood what we were trying to get him to do in zone two, until we actually rode side by side, he didn't understand what he was doing wrong. And, and that's, that seems a minor point. If you keep riding like that day in, day out, you're still not getting to ride zone two properly.

So that was the first point, was getting him to ride zone two properly. And so what do we do with these top end sessions? With these high intensity sessions?

Yeah, well, in the past, because he wasn't using a power meter and he was using perceived exertion, he had really no idea whether he's in the range of zone 4, 5 and 6 or not. And as much as he thought he was pushing himself to his best level, you'll never know with perceived exertion. And that's why the power meter can be such a handy tool. And the minute we tested him with his FTP and gave him his range, he had this big wide eye opening experience of, you know, riding to power for, for, for the first time where he thought he was riding correctly on, you know, say an efforts session, had five efforts. And by the time he got to second and third and fourth effort, he was unable to keep the power in the range because he'd gone too hard in the first effort, which is probably what was happening with his perceived exertion in those training sessions for all those years. And so he quickly learned that, oh, I need to watch the power and follow it across the five minute journey of what power number I should be riding at. And all of a sudden he started to ride these high intensity sessions in the right zones. And every one of those five efforts was in the right zones. And that's the thing that was enabling him to actually ride harder when it counted. So his improvement would be, obviously the relationship is huge between RO riding hard and hard enough as compared to thinking you're riding hard and actually not knowing whether it's hard enough. And. And that was a really big change.

And what's funny about that, and it's almost so ironic, is that his perceived exertion was probably the same before the program and after these hard sessions probably felt just as hard. But when you're looking at the power, one session is really effective because he's within the range and the other session is not. And he's not able to. He wasn't able to do those sessions hard enough because his whole training week was hard. And so, yeah, these key changes or you can see all the dominoes fall. And this is why he can. Such a fit, experienced rider can get such improvement. And I really love the example you used of one of the bunch rides you did with him. And like you said, you've known Lindsey a lot of years, but never actually coached him and then finally got the chance to coach him. And then two or three months in, you go on this bunch ride up in Noosa again. And can you explain kind of what happened?

Yeah, and look, that's a great story, but just before we move on to that, he mentioned to me how much he was enjoying those interval sessions because he actually had feedback. That was the other thing. He loves data, but he really didn't have data to use because he had no idea whether he's doing those hard sessions before, good or bad. And now he was getting this feedback to say, you nailed all those sessions and he was excited to try next week to try and match those or improve those. But the story I wanted to tell was that we do this Thursday bunch ride at Boraine Point and on the way out it's pretty social. And on the way back it's really, you know, everybody going flat out and attacking, and it's pretty much, you know, a hard 15, 20 minute effort all the way home, as hard as you can. And. And there's only a few guys who can really contribute to, to keeping the pace high. A lot of young guys there are really quality bike riders and a lot of the rest of the bunch is just hanging on single file. And that day, Lindsay was rolling turns with these young guys. And, and you couldn't wipe the smile off his face. I mean, you know, he'd done that right a lot and he hadn't really ridden like that for, for. He's been going up there for 20 years, probably 20 years ago. He's probably able to roll turns. But, you know, when we got back to the coffee shop, there was a couple of comments saying, lindsay, that was pretty impressive, mate. You know, and, and I'm telling everybody sitting there, you do realize he's now 70. And here he is, you know, rolling turns and, and they're the enjoyable parts as a coach, that you see a guy firsthand experiencing an improvement as he's getting rather than the expected decrease in performance as you get older. And he's an example of doing some really exact training and getting the improvement rather than, please, can you keep me at the same level as I get older? Well, no, we're not going to be satisfied with that. We actually want to get better as we get older. And he's not the only example of this.

Yeah, for sure. That's a great way to finish. And he's an example of FTP improvement. But not everyone has to improve their FTP. You know, you can improve in a whole lot of ways with cycling, and that can come from your ability to hold that FTP for longer or it depends on your strengths and weaknesses, you know. But the point is that you don't have to let age limit you from improving your ability on the bike. So that's a great way to finish. It's a great case study. It's a great story. We hope you enjoyed it. We'll see you in the next episode.

Don't want, like a backup one.