We discuss new research on what it takes to win the biggest races in cycling—and how that can help your own racing—and we analyze a study that looks at the potential causes of overtraining syndrome.
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Chris Case: Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Fast Talk, your source for the science of endurance performance Today, Trevor, Julie and I are going to discuss a couple studies. We’re gonna start out with, I’d say it’s one of Trevor’s favorite topics to discuss, although he’s got many, but this one. You’ve got personal experience with it.
It’s complicated. It’s sciency over training syndrome is a hard thing to study, and I think that’s where we wanna start to lay the groundwork for how hard it is to get new information about this and tease out what is actually causing over training syndrome. So Trevor set the stage with. A little overview.
[00:00:41] Trevor Connor: These are our thinking episodes, is what we’re thinking about. Mm-hmm. This is a new review, looking at potential mechanisms of over training. So the issue you have with studying over training. Is getting human subjects and doing an effective study. Because ethically you can’t say, I’m gonna put somebody in an overtrained state, which we know is bad for their health.
[00:01:02] Chris Case: Right? Yes.
[00:01:03] Trevor Connor: So the best you can do is try to catch somebody when they’ve done it to themselves.
[00:01:07] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:01:08] Trevor Connor: And then try to retrospectively figure out what’s going on with them quickly. Do some blood tests, whatever you can do. Yes. So it makes it really hard. So this review. Did what I love, which is saying, let’s look at the potential mechanisms.
So they focused on muscle tissue. We know that muscles basically lose strength. They aren’t as recovered as well in over training. And so they’re just saying what are potential mechanisms that lead to that? And so this is a biochemistry heavy paper, which I love. We won’t go into the biochemistry. Anybody who loves it as much as me.
Great read. Go read it. It’s fun.
[00:01:49] Chris Case: Get some hot chocolate. Sit by the fire and read your over training syndrome
[00:01:53] Trevor Connor: paper. You can read about, read about mTOR C one and all sorts of really cool things, which I love. But I’ll kind of just start it off with the high level summary. So again, they know that over training is more than just at the muscle level.
But they had to pick their fights. We know a lot happens in the muscle that’s bad when you’re overtrained, so they just focused on that. By the way, another quick thing we should define that they did right at the start, we did a whole episode on the different levels of overtraining, but there’s what’s called functional overreach where you’re fatigued, but if you mm-hmm.
Take a rest, you will recover.
[00:02:32] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:02:33] Trevor Connor: And become stronger. There’s non-functional overreach, which is a step further where if you rest, you’ll recover in a couple weeks, but you probably won’t get a training adaptation out of it.
[00:02:43] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:02:44] Trevor Connor: And then there’s over training. Over training takes months to years to recover from.
You will not adapt from it. It is a state that you want to avoid.
[00:02:53] Chris Case: Yeah. And they often attach or always attach the word syndrome there. And if I remember correctly, Dr. Seiler. Define it as such, there’s unknown pathways to get you to that over-training state. And so that’s the problem in a sense, is there’s no solid understanding of the mechanism.
[00:03:13] Trevor Connor: Yep. So they identified four areas where you see a mechanistic potential cause to over-training, and I’m gonna cover them really high level, but they went into a lot of detail on each, and we just don’t have the time here. Mm-hmm. To go into it in a lot of detail. But the four are neural fatigue.
[00:03:33] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:03:34] Trevor Connor: Indoc dysregulation or
[00:03:36] Chris Case: endocrine.
[00:03:37] Trevor Connor: Yeah. Fine.
[00:03:40] Chris Case: I only say that because sometimes when I hear you say it that way, I hear the word indoct as an indoctrinate and I don’t want people to be confused. So endocrine is. Possibly how Julie knows that word.
[00:03:53] Julie Young: I’m with the Chris.
[00:03:55] Chris Case: Okay. Okay.
[00:03:56] Trevor Connor: I’m just gonna use my usual cheese.
That’s that. Always say it in Canada. That’s fine.
[00:04:01] Chris Case: We have American listeners too. Yeah.
[00:04:03] Trevor Connor: The third one is mitochondrial impairment and the fourth one is chronic inflammation. And I’m gonna just do a quick overview of each. But really what they wanted to focus on is the inflammation, and kind of said inflammation is a contributor to all four.
So the first one, neural fatigue. We know that when you start to fatigue, the first thing you start to see is a decline in neuromuscular recruitment. So you see that in that really top end. You just can’t sprint as hard. Mm. And they talked about, it’s both central and peripheral. So you’re gonna see the fatigue starts in your brain.
Your brain just starts saying, I just can’t go as hard. Yeah. Stop trying to make, so if you go out and try to do high intensity intervals, your mind is just saying, yeah, leave me alone.
[00:04:46] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:04:47] Trevor Connor: But they also say at the peripheral level, there is feedback coming from the muscles saying, we’re beat up, we’re fatigued.
Leave us alone and they start sending that feedback back to the brain to say, stop.
[00:04:59] Chris Case: Yes,
[00:04:59] Trevor Connor: slow down. And that’s usually the first sign. And you know, if we’re looking for takeaways here, a lot of coaches know this. If you wanna see that your athletes are fatigued, have ’em go out and do a couple sprints. If they just can’t put the power out.
They’re starting to show the signs of fatigue. Mm-hmm. That’s where you see it first.
[00:05:17] Chris Case: Sometimes hard to notice in yourself. ’cause sometimes you just don’t have the motivation and you don’t chalk it up to a physical thing. It’s just a meh, not feeling it today. Next time it’ll be fine.
[00:05:27] Trevor Connor: Yep. Next one is in doctrine dysregulation.
Are you happy?
[00:05:36] Chris Case: No, you said it the wrong way. Endocrine
[00:05:39] Trevor Connor: end. What did I say?
[00:05:41] Chris Case: Endrin.
[00:05:43] Trevor Connor: Wow. Hadn’t even try to say it the way you wanted, say
[00:05:46] Chris Case: it. Endocrine.
[00:05:47] Trevor Connor: Okay. Well you’re just stuck with the way I said it.
[00:05:49] Chris Case: Fine. Everybody out there now knows.
[00:05:54] Trevor Connor: Just leave me alone.
[00:05:55] Chris Case: I’ll,
[00:05:56] Trevor Connor: so this one, they focus particularly on what they call the hypothalamic pituitary gonadal axis.
[00:06:03] Chris Case: Hmm.
[00:06:04] Trevor Connor: G.
[00:06:05] Julie Young: Yikes.
[00:06:05] Trevor Connor: I hope I got all of that right. Is that okay? I
[00:06:07] Chris Case: think, yeah. It was pretty good.
[00:06:08] Trevor Connor: But you tend to see a reduction in sex hormones in both women and men. Both women and men will see reduced testosterone. Which is important for recovery for tissue repair, so that can lead to injury. Likewise, without going into a whole bunch of these different hormones, what you see is a decrease in hormones that are involved in anabolic.
Mechanisms. Mm-hmm. So decrease in growth hormone, decrease in testosterone, which help muscles grow. And you’re gonna see an increase in hormones like cortisol, which are catabolic, which break muscle tissue down.
[00:06:47] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:06:48] Trevor Connor: That’s short bursts. Okay. That causes a breakdown. Then you have that, so that’s that functional overreach.
[00:06:55] Chris Case: Right.
[00:06:55] Trevor Connor: Then when you rest, you see a flip and you see that growth in muscle tissue. But if you’re constantly having catabolic hormones on the rise,
[00:07:04] Chris Case: mm-hmm.
[00:07:05] Trevor Connor: If you’re constantly in a catabolic state, tissue is just gonna break down. Yeah. And you’re never gonna repair quickly continuing through them.
Mitochondrial impairment. They talked about a lot of things, but really focused on reactive oxygen species. So oxidative damage, and this is where you see this hermetic effect, where if you see a little bit of oxidative stress, that’s actually one of the primary drivers of mitochondrial adaptations. So you need some from training.
It can be a beneficial thing,
[00:07:39] Chris Case: right?
[00:07:40] Trevor Connor: But there’s a certain point where it gets to be too much. It overwhelms and then it starts to damage the mitochondria and you see a breakdown and, and you don’t see a drop in the density of your mitochondria. You just start to see the mitochondria dysfunction. They just can’t perform as well.
[00:07:59] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:07:59] Trevor Connor: And so aerobic metabolism. Declines.
[00:08:02] Chris Case: Declines. Yes.
[00:08:03] Trevor Connor: And then finally, and then let’s turn this into a conversation. The fourth one, which they really focused on is inflammation. Mm-hmm. And they said, in each inflammation is a contributor to those three that I just covered. But they really talked about how when you see chronic inflammation, you start seeing a real breakdown in the functioning of muscle tissue and what they.
Said right at the start of this whole section about inflammation. That to me was really important is you see this huge overlap between chronic inflammation that you see from poor health, such as not exercising, eating a poor diet that we know now is a contributor to most chronic diseases and. The chronic inflammation that you see in over training.
They’ve been able to do some studies that show that over-training does cause inflammation. And so I think the key line to me in this review is, and I’m just reading outta this, although the upstream triggers of inflammation, these conditions differ markedly from those underlying OTS. So they’re talking about the chronic inflammation you see during chronic disease.
They go on to say where excessive training load, insufficient recovery and limited energy availability predominate the downstream inflammatory state exhibits overlapping future. So they’re basically saying completely different causes.
[00:09:32] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:09:33] Trevor Connor: But the end effect is similar. And they looked at these studies where you saw people with rheumatoid arthritis.
I see a lot of muscle weakness, very similar to what you see in over training.
[00:09:44] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:09:45] Trevor Connor: And now let’s, I’m gonna turn it over to you guys ’cause I’ve been talking a lot. That to me was kind of the key message, which is inflammation definitely appears to be a contributor to over training. You definitely see inflammation and over training, but that chronic inflammation from over training and the chronic inflammation you see from poor health.
Overlap a lot.
[00:10:07] Chris Case: Yeah. It actually reminds me a lot of the generalized stress response
[00:10:12] Trevor Connor: and I put a note in here saying, bring up Celia.
[00:10:15] Chris Case: Yeah, exactly. The, we did an entire episode on Han Celia and his groundbreaking work long ago. All these various factors could be used to elicit a response that looked similar.
Like you could take a chemical agent, you could take heat, you could take all these various sources, subject of subject to that, and you would get a response that looked similar, but the cause was
[00:10:38] Trevor Connor: right.
[00:10:39] Chris Case: Very different
[00:10:39] Trevor Connor: cell is generalized. Adaptation syndrome is basically you have multiple different causes, but when you put a stressor on the system, you see first in adaptation.
The adaptation can sometimes be beneficial,
[00:10:53] Chris Case: right?
[00:10:53] Trevor Connor: But eventually you go into a fatigue state, and so basically in chronic disease, what you see is you’re putting a stressor such as you’re eating something that’s very bad for you,
[00:11:04] Chris Case: right?
[00:11:05] Trevor Connor: And your body’s gonna handle it for a while, but eventually you will fatigue.
And then you see chronic disease. And in his whole paper, he said, I think this generalized adaptation syndrome is the cause of chronic diseases like diabetes and
[00:11:17] Chris Case: mm-hmm.
[00:11:17] Trevor Connor: Heart disease and a lot of other conditions. But this has been applied to sports and it’s the same thing. A little bit of the stressor.
You can get that generalized adaptation, you become stronger.
[00:11:28] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:11:28] Trevor Connor: But basically the same idea. You go into a fatigue state, which is over training,
[00:11:34] Chris Case: you overwhelm the system.
[00:11:35] Trevor Connor: And what he said is the fatigue state looks the same regardless of cause.
[00:11:40] Chris Case: Yeah, exactly.
[00:11:42] Julie Young: So a couple things that I was thinking about as I read this paper.
One, just reinforce the importance of understanding. We walk that fine line in training where if we have that appropriate stress, it’s gonna sharpen the response of these systems, where if we tip over that line. It’s detrimental to all these systems. You noted Trevor. And then the other thing I was thinking about as I read is, you know, it’s fun to dive into the minutiae and the molecular signaling and the mechanisms, but I thought, gosh, how can this be?
[00:12:17] Trevor Connor: No, wait, Julie, just leave it there. It’s fun to dive into these things. We don’t need a butt. It’s just fun.
[00:12:25] Julie Young: Nice, Trevor. But I was thinking to myself, how can this be meaningful to the everyday athlete? Like how can they act on this information? And it is interesting how the chronic inflammation is the trigger to.
These adverse effects on the neural fatigue, the endocrine, the mitochondria. But how can the everyday athlete monitor chronic inflammation? I think it’s just trying to find a way. Like Chris, you had said, you know, sometimes when you go out and you’re just are feeling, eh. Like in, in a workout. Mm-hmm. You know, how do you know if that’s teasing out the subjective and the objective?
And I think as athletes that’s hard because typically athletes are hard drivers and they’re just gonna, in most cases they like to push through. But how can you kind of reassure yourself with more objective measurements? So, I mean, of course we have what may be considered old school. Measurements of heart rate, which is crazy, but like the resting heart rate and how your heart rate is responding during training.
But if we go back to this idea of chronic inflammation being the driver, how can we monitor that as an everyday athlete?
[00:13:34] Trevor Connor: So monitoring is tough, and they even said in the review. We know inflammation is a key part of Overtraining, but we don’t yet have a good metric for it. So chronic inflammation that is caused by poor lifestyle.
We do have a metric the go-to is to measure something called C-reactive protein or CRP. And if you go and get a blood test with your doctor, it’s becoming more and more standard to see CRP in that blood test. And definitely when you see somebody. Who has just that chronic inflammation from poor health?
You are gonna see elevated CRP, but they’ve shown when an athlete is in an overtrained state. You have to be really overtrained to even see mild increases in CRP. So it’s just not a good metric.
[00:14:20] Chris Case: Mm.
[00:14:21] Trevor Connor: There are other measures such as IL six, but there’s still nothing that the researchers in Overtraining are saying.
We’re willing to put our hats on that and say this is the metric of inflammation in athletes.
[00:14:33] Chris Case: Can I ask a somewhat impossible question? How many athletes do you think are we talking about when it comes to true meets all the definitions of over-training syndrome?
[00:14:45] Trevor Connor: Well, that’s hard even because properly defining over-training syndrome is tough and the difference between non-functional over-training and overtraining syndrome.
Sure. They still are having a hard time saying, when are you in one or the other?
[00:14:59] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:00] Trevor Connor: If you just combine them both and say you’ve hit a point where you’ve trained too hard and now you’re not gonna adapt and you have to recover, I think it’s a lot.
[00:15:08] Chris Case: Hmm.
[00:15:09] Trevor Connor: Let’s say a large percentage of athletes, particularly high level athletes, have put themself in that state at some point or another.
[00:15:15] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:16] Trevor Connor: When you have an athlete that goes into an overtrained state. It can end their careers.
[00:15:20] Chris Case: Absolutely.
[00:15:21] Trevor Connor: I understand that. And you see that at the highest level. So I mean, there is some interest in this because you see, you know athletes when they get to the highest level and now they’re going to the world championships, they’re going to the Olympics.
Well, a lot of them will err on the side of, I need to train harder, I need to train bigger. They put themselves in that overtrained state and instead of ending up at the Olympics, they end their careers.
[00:15:44] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:45] Trevor Connor: And that’s not a hypothetical that has happened many times, but I’m gonna flip this around.
Let’s not talk about those high level athletes. You have a lot of people who get into sport because they want to improve health. Really get into it and start enjoying it and overtrain themselves. You know, I went through a bad overtrain. I was a pretty low level cyclist. Mm-hmm. When I went through my over training.
[00:16:05] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:16:06] Trevor Connor: And the issue is, again, we know that chronic inflammation leads to disease states and it goes both ways. They’re saying the end result is kind of the same. So if you are producing that high levels of inflammation from over training. That can be damaging to you in other ways. And there are studies showing a lot of cyclists are in a pre-diabetic state, have metabolic syndrome, and if you’re looking for metrics, these are the things I would look for.
[00:16:34] Chris Case: Mm.
[00:16:34] Trevor Connor: You’d be surprised how many cyclists go to the doctor and go, I’m really healthy, I’m a cyclist. And they go, yeah, actually you’re in metabolic syndrome, or you are showing the early signs of diabetes.
Mm-hmm.
[00:16:44] Trevor Connor: This is something that that Overtraining could potentially contribute to if you believe what this review is saying.
[00:16:50] Chris Case: Oh, another impossible question for you.
[00:16:52] Trevor Connor: Mm-hmm.
[00:16:53] Chris Case: If you cloned someone and had them do the exact same training to get them to the point where they were close to the edge and one was on a really, what everybody would conclude was a healthy diet, and the other person was on a really. Poor diet that caused a lot of inflammation.
Does that mean that person is far more susceptible to entering over training than the other person that is on a quote unquote healthier
[00:17:20] Trevor Connor: non
[00:17:20] Chris Case: noninflammatory diet?
[00:17:21] Trevor Connor: And look, this is all theoretical. Mm-hmm. They even said at the start of this review, because we, it’s so hard to do that research on humans.
So this review is basically proposing this as a hypothesis saying we don’t have absolute evidence. So let’s right now just go on the assumption that their hypothesis is pretty good.
[00:17:38] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:39] Trevor Connor: Then yes. And again, this goes back to Celia. Celia said, when your body is dealing with one stressor, it loses its ability to deal with other stressors as effectively.
[00:17:51] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:51] Trevor Connor: So if you are dealing with the stressor of poor diet that is contributing to inflammation. Your body’s ability to handle the stressor of training is going to be reduced, so you are going to be much more susceptible to over training.
[00:18:06] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:18:07] Trevor Connor: And so that was my big takeaway from this review is that if you are an aspiring athlete and you wanna get to higher and higher levels and you want to be able to train harder.
You have to get the other stressors in your life under control. And the biggest contributor to chronic inflammation is diet.
[00:18:26] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:18:26] Trevor Connor: If you are eating a very inflammatory diet, you need to get that under control. And we’ve certainly seen that with elite athletes back 20 years ago. Right. Elite athletes ate crappy diets and part of the way they compensated for that was doping.
Mm. It was a way to get around it. You are now seeing athletes focus more and more on less inflammatory diets. You do see them able to train harder. You do see their seasons going longer. You’re seeing them not go into an overtrained state where 20 years ago you go, if you were racing that hard and going that hard for that long, you would definitely be overtrained.
[00:19:01] Chris Case: Yeah. Yeah. I think generally speaking, the stressors, people are far more aware of what you’re saying that. The body’s ability to withstand the effects of stress are reduced if you’re dealing with a big stress like diet. But it’s just, it goes far beyond that.
[00:19:21] Trevor Connor: Yep.
[00:19:21] Chris Case: Reducing cognitive load, reducing all these other forms of stress that can hit the body, and if you bring those down, the training adaptations are, and the grand context of the overall stress load of the body is not as significant or is not going to.
Tip someone over the edge nearly as often, potentially.
[00:19:40] Trevor Connor: And remember, Lia? You ready for this?
[00:19:43] Chris Case: Yes.
[00:19:44] Trevor Connor: Hand CLIA was really the one who discovered and defined a lot of the endocrine hormones. Did I get it right?
[00:19:50] Chris Case: Very good. You did.
[00:19:51] Trevor Connor: There I go. And this review said, those are really important. We know those are a key part in Overtraining syndrome and in this review they go, we know inflammation contributes to those.
And when Celia was writing about them. We didn’t know about chronic inflammation. We didn’t know most of what we know now about the immune system. And you saw him. It was killing me, reading it, going, well, there’s something that contributes to this, but I’m not sure what it is. And I’m like literally reading cell work going, it’s inflammation.
Come on. It’s inflammation.
[00:20:22] Chris Case: Okay. You give the guy a break. It was a long time ago, you know?
[00:20:25] Trevor Connor: Yeah. We just didn’t know that back then.
[00:20:26] Chris Case: Exactly. Yeah.
[00:20:27] Trevor Connor: But Julie, they used a lot of marine models here. So this is studies on rats and mice. What’s your thoughts on that?
[00:20:33] Julie Young: Well. I guess my thought is they’re not the same.
I mean, the hormone profiles aren’t the same. Like we were talking a lot about stress. The social stresses aren’t the same. Psychological stress of performance isn’t the same, and you do think a lot about these stressors in life, and it’s how. People cope with them. And it’s also knowing that they’re not neatly siloed, but they all blend into that big bucket.
And of course that affects, you know, that emotional and mental stress affects how you feel physically. So I think there’s a lot to be said for that, how different the mirroring models are to the human models. But again, pretty impossible to get, as you said, get people to undertake something like this and be put into over training.
[00:21:17] Trevor Connor: Yeah, no, it’s a great point. ’cause they have done over training studies on mice, but they basically put the mice in a treadmill and forced them to train until they’re exhausted. So that whole psychosocial side. The mouse is probably sitting there going, what the heck are you doing to let me, let me off this treadmill?
But they’re not motivated athletes who are intentionally driving themselves to this.
[00:21:39] Julie Young: Another thing talking about the hormones, what I found interesting they brought out in this study was that even though a hormone level may appear normal in a blood test, what’s happening in Overtraining is there’s a dampened response.
So. Doesn’t necessarily mean all things are a go. And that’s where I think it is hard in terms of teasing these things out. And even with blood tests and a blood test is just a snapshot in time. It’s not necessarily decisive.
[00:22:09] Trevor Connor: Yeah, no, it’s a good point.
[00:22:10] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:22:11] Trevor Connor: You know the last thing I’m gonna say, because we were talking off mic before this of how can you tell.
What are the markers? And there, as we said, there isn’t a good marker of chronic inflammation. I’m gonna throw one out there that I know. We’ll get some emails with people arguing me to death on this one.
[00:22:28] Chris Case: Yes, please send them
[00:22:29] Trevor Connor: to Trevor. But this is my hot take. I’m still gonna throw it out there. Most of our immune system lives around the gut.
Most of our immune system is designed to deal with the fact that we have trillions of bacteria in our gut that we need to keep in the gut. And when they get past the gut, that’s when you start seeing real issues in our system. So when we are dealing with chronic inappropriate inflammation, a lot of it tends to happen around the gut.
Mm-hmm. Particularly some of our most inflammatory cells tend to live around the gut. So if you are having a lot of digestive issues. If you are getting leaky gut, if you are feeling bloated all the time, that is an indicator that you might potentially be dealing with some inflammatory issues.
[00:23:12] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:13] Trevor Connor: We know that sports heart training contributes to inflammatory issues in the gut, but so does diet.
Mm-hmm. So it’s good to look at other potential factors that are contributing to information, particularly if it is something that is affecting your training.
[00:23:29] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:30] Julie Young: I also think that we’re talking about these just basic, fundamental, good habits and we can’t forget sleep and how important that is in terms of offsetting.
I don’t know. Do you think that can help offset inflammation if we’re getting good quality sleep?
[00:23:43] Trevor Connor: A hundred percent. It can offset a lot of these factors. So even just going back to the the endocrine side, a lot of these catabolic hormones that get released. They prevent recovery and they need to be cleared.
And if you’re not getting enough sleep, that is when they tend to get cleared and your body goes into recovery mode. So you need that good quality sleep. You need those hours of sleep to allow that clearing and to allow the body to flip and go into that repair state.
[00:24:12] Julie Young: Makes sense.
[00:24:15] Trevor Connor: Every athlete has hit that point.
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[00:25:19] Chris Case: All right. Let’s switch gears.
Totally different subject. This is a study coming from the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, but it’s all about pacing strategy. Title is pacing strategy and workload distribution as determinants of success in one day. Monument cycling races. We just watched an incredible peri rube yesterday.
[00:25:42] Trevor Connor: Don’t tell me the results.
[00:25:43] Chris Case: Oh, really? You haven’t even seen it?
[00:25:45] Trevor Connor: I have not seen it.
[00:25:46] Chris Case: Okay. Well. Go watch it right now and then come back and talk about this study, see if it applies. No, Trevor, give us that two minute overview of what they were looking at in this study.
[00:25:57] Trevor Connor: Yeah, unique and kind of fun and exciting study because they were able to get data from basically the top cyclists in the world for two years.
So they were having them send. Their files and all their files from the different one day monuments like Perry Rube.
[00:26:16] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:17] Trevor Connor: And they had enough of the people who finished top 30, including winners
[00:26:24] Chris Case: top
[00:26:24] Trevor Connor: five. Yeah. Podium, finishers. Yeah. To be able to show what’s the difference.
[00:26:29] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:29] Trevor Connor: So first important point, they were comparing top five finishers to people who finished sixth to 30th.
[00:26:35] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:36] Trevor Connor: That’s important because they eliminated anybody who finished below that because those people tended to be the people who were working for the other riders. Sure,
[00:26:43] Chris Case: yep.
[00:26:44] Trevor Connor: Would do all their work in the first half of the race and then pull the plug and just soft pedal in.
[00:26:49] Chris Case: Exactly.
[00:26:49] Trevor Connor: So they want to eliminate those people because obviously you’d see big differences.
This is all the people that were out there to win, to perform, to get a result. But what separated the people that got the top five?
[00:27:01] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:27:02] Trevor Connor: So worth pointing out, but not what they focused on was you saw in the top performers a lower body mass index. Yes. A lower BMI. And a higher, what they called compound score, which is basically their average power divided by their average power per watts.
Per kilogram.
[00:27:21] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:27:22] Trevor Connor: So basically saying they worked harder.
[00:27:24] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:27:25] Trevor Connor: Which no surprise.
[00:27:26] Chris Case: Yeah.
[00:27:27] Trevor Connor: But the big conclusion that they drew in the study was you found. That the top five finishers tended to do more work in zone four. So this is on a seven zone scale.
[00:27:42] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:27:42] Trevor Connor: They use the hunter cogan scale and zone four would be from 90% of your FTP to 105% of your FTP.
So this is time at what most people think of as threshold work.
[00:27:54] Chris Case: Right.
[00:27:55] Trevor Connor: So you were seeing the top finishers spend more time in that zone four. Particularly in the third quarter of the race. And if you think about it, the third quarter of the race tends to be where the big separations happen.
[00:28:09] Chris Case: Pretty decisive.
Especially in the monuments.
[00:28:11] Trevor Connor: Right? So that was what they saw and what they concluded. And then we’ll go into our discussion of this because I’m gonna tell you ahead, I think they missed something really big. But what they concluded was that top finishers had a greater ability to do work in that zone four to basically ride a threshold, and they made the argument for durability.
[00:28:36] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:28:37] Trevor Connor: That you just saw higher durability. In these top performers. I don’t disagree with that.
[00:28:43] Chris Case: Hmm.
[00:28:43] Trevor Connor: I do think to be able to win these giant, you know, these are six hours, six, seven hour races, to be able to win them, you have to have that durability. And durability is basically that ability to keep going hard without seeing fatigue.
I think that’s absolutely critical. I agree with them on that. But not personally necessarily. The biggest conclusion I would draw from the data that they provided.
[00:29:06] Chris Case: Mm.
[00:29:06] Trevor Connor: The other big takeaway they gave is they said. You really saw them racing in a kind of polarized model. They were either going
[00:29:15] Chris Case: Yep,
[00:29:15] Trevor Connor: easy.
[00:29:16] Chris Case: Yep.
[00:29:16] Trevor Connor: Or they were going really hard.
[00:29:17] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:29:18] Trevor Connor: And therefore said, so you should be training polarized. You know, I’m a big fan of the polarized training model.
[00:29:23] Chris Case: Yeah.
[00:29:24] Trevor Connor: I would not use this study to say,
[00:29:26] Chris Case: to make that argument. Yeah.
[00:29:28] Trevor Connor: So I had a different take. But before we go there, Julie, what do you have to add to everything I said and what’s your takeaway from all this?
[00:29:34] Julie Young: I mean, I guess what struck me as their use of the word pacing. ’cause I feel like in a. Mass start race. It’s not pacing, it’s more going with the race. And we’ve talked about this, like the positioning. There’s more context to this than just teasing out that individual rider. It’s how they’re set up for that situation in the race.
You know, whether it’s perhaps their team is more sophisticated and protect. D that rider. In a mass start, you really have to be alert. You have to be going with the race and positioning yourself throughout the race. And we did talk about this a little bit, but it’s like being willing to do that work early on to put yourself in that position later.
And I think that’s where you were going with this. Trevor.
[00:30:20] Trevor Connor: Yes.
[00:30:20] Chris Case: I think that, this is probably a poor analogy, but it’s one that’s used in cycling a lot, and that is the book of matches. I’m hopefully not gonna steal your thunder here, Trevor, but I feel like they’re using the word pacing. Sure. And workload distribution.
What I feel like they’re getting at is you’ve got a book of matches. The people who know how to ride, if you will, they know how to hide. They know how to float through the Peloton. They’re not burning three matches. To cover a break or cover a gap. It’s one of those things where the best riders have what you would just call a knack of knowing where to be, whose will to be on, when to follow, when not to follow.
They’re not having to make massive surges here and there, and they’re. Foot is on the accelerator, but it’s never on the floor, if you will. They’re not stomping on the floor and then letting up and stomping on the floor because of the, just the innate sense they have of the race dynamics. When they need to accelerate.
It’s not a hundred percent, it’s a measured effort. I hear what you’re saying, Julie. If it were a time trial. It would be about pacing. It’s not a time trial. It’s not an individual effort. There’s so much going on in a Peloton. You are following wheels in these races. There’s flats, you’re coming back from them potentially.
But there’s team dynamics. There’s so much going on that it’s the good riders never panic. They. Never overexert themselves based on a panic reaction to a moment, and they measure everything really well. Hence they’re more in zone four rather than zone seven, zone two, zone six. Mm-hmm. Zone two. There’s a consistency there.
[00:32:19] Trevor Connor: Yeah. So to me, this study is a classic example of good researchers trying to do proper statistical analysis. And drawing all their conclusions based on the only data that achieved significance. Mm-hmm. But because the study had low power. Ends up drawing conclusions that might not be the best conclusions because there are other key trends that just weren’t quite significant.
[00:32:51] Chris Case: And for those who aren’t familiar with what you’re just saying about peer reviewed research and the powers of statistical analysis, give us the ten second explanation there.
[00:33:00] Trevor Connor: Right. So significance means that you see a difference in the data.
[00:33:06] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:33:07] Trevor Connor: That we can say confidently is not due to chance. So if you take a coin and you flip it twice and heads comes up both times.
[00:33:17] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:33:18] Trevor Connor: You can go, oh well tails came up. No times heads came up both times. Therefore this coin always flips heads
[00:33:25] Chris Case: incorrect.
[00:33:26] Trevor Connor: Right. You have a difference.
[00:33:29] Chris Case: Yeah.
[00:33:30] Trevor Connor: But you can’t say that’s not due to chance.
[00:33:32] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:33:32] Trevor Connor: If you flip that coin 10,000 times. It came up 9,000 times as heads.
[00:33:41] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:33:42] Trevor Connor: Then you have significance.
Then you can say, this isn’t chance. There’s something odd with this coin. It is coming up heads.
[00:33:48] Chris Case: Yeah. The amount of data you have at that point is powerful enough to say with confidence that is the conclusion.
[00:33:56] Trevor Connor: So power would be the number of times you flip it.
[00:33:59] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:33:59] Trevor Connor: So another way of looking at power in studies is if you have subjects, the more subjects you have.
[00:34:04] Chris Case: Yes.
[00:34:05] Trevor Connor: The more statistical power you have.
[00:34:07] Chris Case: Yes.
[00:34:07] Trevor Connor: And then there’s a way of calculating to say, we see a trend, it’s not due to chance.
[00:34:13] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:34:14] Trevor Connor: They say in this study to get the power that they wanted, they needed 46 riders.
[00:34:21] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:34:21] Trevor Connor: They had 42.
[00:34:22] Chris Case: Yes.
[00:34:24] Trevor Connor: And that’s, you know, 46 is the minimum. They obviously would love to have 200 items.
[00:34:27] Chris Case: Yes.
[00:34:28] Trevor Connor: So it means they went into the study with low. Power.
[00:34:33] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:34:34] Trevor Connor: Then what they did is they looked at the amount of work these cyclists were doing in each of the zones, and they showed in bar graphs kind of. Mm-hmm. You know, here’s where the top five, how much work the top five were doing in each zone, and then right beside it, how much the sixth through 30th finishers were doing.
The only one that achieved significance was zone four. In a race like this, these riders are gonna be doing an hour and a half plus in zone four
[00:35:02] Chris Case: at least. Yeah.
[00:35:03] Trevor Connor: But you actually even see overlap between the bars, between the two groups. You go over to zone seven and even zone six, there’s no overlap in these bars.
[00:35:13] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:35:13] Trevor Connor: The group that finished sixth through 30th, we’re doing a lot more work.
[00:35:20] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:35:21] Trevor Connor: In zone seven than the top five finishers. But a lot of work in zone seven, that’s sprint intensity.
[00:35:28] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:35:29] Trevor Connor: Is like four or five minutes. So I just don’t think they were able to achieve statistical significance there because it just wasn’t enough time in those zones.
[00:35:39] Chris Case: Yeah.
[00:35:39] Trevor Connor: But you actually see a bigger disparity between the bars. So you look at this and go, yeah, right. There’s no statistical significance there, but boy, when you look at this, there is a difference. So my conclusion is very similar to what you’re saying. This is more a skill thing than a strength thing.
[00:35:57] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:35:57] Trevor Connor: Other thing that’s really important to point out is in the first quarter and second quarter of the race, particularly the first quarter, you saw the top five finishers overall doing more work positioning. My interpretation of all this is the top five finishers in the first half of the race.
They’re saying, willing to say, I’m going to do a little more work, but it’s gonna be more in that zone three, zone four, zone five, which I can handle a lot of work at to stay at the front.
[00:36:26] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:36:26] Trevor Connor: To stay in position
[00:36:27] Chris Case: because overall in the long run, that’s gonna pay off.
[00:36:30] Trevor Connor: Right. And then when you got to the third quarter of the race.
They were always in the right position, so they had to do a lot of work around Threshold to keep themselves in the lead, but they were never caught out.
[00:36:43] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:36:44] Trevor Connor: And those people who finished six through 30th were not positioning as well. They were on the wrong side of gaps. Having to do a lot more sprints to close the gaps to jump across.
And when you’re doing that, even top level cyclists
[00:37:00] Chris Case: Yeah.
[00:37:00] Trevor Connor: Are gonna pay a price for that. And eventually there was just a gap. They couldn’t close ’cause they weren’t positioning well and they just missed the, they missed the lead.
[00:37:09] Chris Case: Yeah. We’re kind of saying similar things. Let’s assume that our interpretation is actually.
The better way to look at this. No offense to the researchers here. Mm-hmm. I only say this because I feel like this is a. More practical observation when it comes to amateur racing. I don’t think we would ever say, oh, because it takes zone four work to win a monument, that everybody should just go out and do threshold work all the time and they’re gonna win monuments.
No, but investing a little bit of effort in good positioning and measuring that out throughout a race rather than having to invest massive quantities of sprint like power. 50 times in a race, that’s a better way to race, a smarter way to race and probably will pay off in the long term with better results.
And I feel like that’s applicable to amateur racing.
[00:38:02] Trevor Connor: You have to assume all these people are very strong. Yeah, they’re doing a monument. Yeah. These are all strong riders. Remember the definition of FTP is what sort of power you can hold for an. And they’ve even shown that in Top Pros, their FTP is over an hour.
[00:38:17] Chris Case: Mm-hmm. Right.
[00:38:18] Trevor Connor: Or can be over an hour depending on how you define, like gives pure definition of FTP is an hour.
[00:38:23] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:38:24] Trevor Connor: Maximum.
[00:38:24] Chris Case: Yeah.
[00:38:24] Trevor Connor: It, it’s always an hour. But now you’re seeing tools like WKO, say FTP is where you start to see that drop in the power duration curve and Top Pros that can actually extend out over an hour.
[00:38:37] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:38:38] Trevor Connor: So these guys go in with the confidence of, yeah, I can do a whole lot of work up at that FTP zone.
[00:38:43] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:38:44] Trevor Connor: So I am more willing to spend, you know, very small matches.
[00:38:50] Chris Case: Yeah. That’s the matchbook analogy that I was trying to get at. I didn’t do a very good job of explaining it, but it’s like you’re just burning a, a little bit of the match and then a little bit more of the match rather than like igniting the entire book right at one time.
[00:39:04] Trevor Connor: So they’re willing to do that, to always stay at that front. Because they get, if I get outta position and I gotta. Burn a big match.
[00:39:12] Chris Case: Yeah,
[00:39:13] Trevor Connor: exactly. And I have to do that too many times.
[00:39:15] Chris Case: Yeah.
[00:39:16] Trevor Connor: I’m done.
[00:39:16] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:39:17] Trevor Connor: I can do that hour and a half in zone four, not all at one time, but over the six hours.
[00:39:23] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:39:24] Trevor Connor: But boy, if I do 40 sprints to.
Close gaps. I’m done.
[00:39:29] Chris Case: Yeah,
[00:39:29] Trevor Connor: it’s over.
[00:39:29] Chris Case: Yeah. I think the other thing that you could potentially say about the amount of work done in zone six and seven for those riders from the six through 30 finishing places is that there’s teammates. Of the leaders still in that group from six to 30, there’s not 30 different teams in a race, so we can assume that there’s mm-hmm.
Overlap. There’s multiple riders from the same team, and those are probably the last lieutenant, if you will, that are probably trying to cover moves. They might be put on the front to close down a gap or something like that, and so yeah, they’re having to do that and so they fall into that group.
[00:40:07] Trevor Connor: Which is a really good point.
A guy like Todd Abacha probably has teammates who are there that if they’re on the wrong side of a split, is going to close the split for him and he never really has to go out as only four.
[00:40:18] Chris Case: That’s right. That’s right.
[00:40:19] Trevor Connor: So, but you know, it’s also, it’s interesting to see how shockingly little work those top five finishers did in zone seven.
[00:40:28] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:40:29] Trevor Connor: It’s almost like they just avoided that.
[00:40:31] Chris Case: Right.
[00:40:32] Trevor Connor: They’re saying if I’m gonna burn matches, it’s gonna be the little matches. I am gonna spend a lot of time in zone four and I’m gonna save those big efforts for, and I absolutely need them.
[00:40:42] Chris Case: Yeah. So back to how this applies to the everyday racer out there.
I think that the lesson is all about understanding race dynamics positioning and energy conservation and things like that. And that’s what we’re getting at here. Again, if our conclusions are correct. To the the study here, then positioning and skills are not to be ignored whatsoever. And it’s not just a strength game, which we’ve known for forever in bike racing, but it sometimes is completely ignored.
’cause people just want to make their FTP high. They wanna go out and do intervals. They wanna train the engine, but they’re not training the craft of racing.
[00:41:33] Trevor Connor: Yep. Julie.
[00:41:34] Julie Young: Yeah, so I was just listening to you guys talk about matches and willing to work and for me, when I was racing a lot in Europe, it is such a different beast over there as compared to what a lot of people in North America know.
And you do feel like it is a fight for your life. It really does take work. And I think. That that term matches kind of concerns me sometimes, especially with the amateur athlete. ’cause then I think there’s this fine line of them being fearful to do the work. And that’s what I found in my career is a lot of people weren’t willing to do that work, to stay near the front because it is work.
And again, it is a fight for your life. But to be willing to do that and not be fearful that, oh, I’m burning too many matches. ’cause as you guys said, it really does place you in that position where. You’re out of trouble. You can take advantage of opportunities, but again, it doesn’t come easy. And I think helping people, maybe the amateur athlete understand that it’s okay, like you can do it.
You have the fitness to do that, and it’s not this fear of burning those matches.
[00:42:36] Trevor Connor: I’ll give an example here. I remember back. Many years ago now, sadly, I was at Cascades with my team and I had had years and years and years of practice being in the field and being at the right spot in the field at the right time.
And it’s, as you said, you can’t be fearful of doing work to stay at the front. You gotta stay at the front. But I had gotten very good at what I called surfing the waves, knowing when there’s gonna be a movement to the front. So I would get myself to the front without ever putting myself in the wind. It still meant I had to put out 300 watts.
I had to go threshold.
[00:43:11] Chris Case: Mm-hmm. Threshold. I like that.
[00:43:13] Trevor Connor: But I was never sprinting. And at this one particular race, I watched one of my teammates who was relatively new. Keep trying to get to the front, and he was just going out into the wind and sprinting up to the front of the field, and then he would drop back and then he would sprint up again and I just went, oh boy, you’re in trouble.
[00:43:32] Chris Case: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
[00:43:33] Trevor Connor: You are just burning all these matches to get up to the front. And when the key moments were happening in the race, even though he was doing all that. He was never at the front when the chemo open happened. And then he would have to do all that work. So I ended up later on in another race saying, look, just sit on my wheel and do what I do.
Watch how you read the field. Mm-hmm. And keep yourself at the front and try to teach him. But on that particular race, you saw the result. And the sad thing was after the raise, we were sitting at our host house and he was showing everyone seems, look at this, look at my normalized power. Look how high it is, and all this stuff.
And I had to be kind of the bad guy and pull ’em aside and go, that’s a concern.
[00:44:15] Chris Case: Right?
[00:44:16] Trevor Connor: Because the top pros here, who know how to ride the field, they were averaging 180 watts, you know, normalized.
[00:44:23] Julie Young: Mm-hmm.
[00:44:23] Trevor Connor: You were two 70. Mm-hmm. And tomorrow’s the real day of the race. Mm-hmm. And you better go get some recovery on because you’re going in with a deficit.
And sure enough, he finished 20 minutes down the next day. Mm. Because he had destroyed his legs on that day.
[00:44:37] Chris Case: Mm-hmm. I find that this is the type of experience. That is perfect to try to gain in fast group rides, particularly group rides, where you’re actually not the fittest person there and you have to force yourself to be at the front or else halfway through that ride, you’re off the back and you’re by yourself and it’s lonely and it’s boring.
Like you gotta, you’ve got to. Experience what it is to measure the effort, a hard effort, and do the work to stay at the front, because otherwise you’re gonna do exactly this. Get out in the wind, sprint to the front, tax yourself, go to the back, do it again. You can only do that so many times, but that measured dance or surfing the wave or whatever word you wanna throw in there is.
It’s not innate. It’s not also something that is evident. That’s the way that is maybe the most efficient overall because it still takes a lot of hard work, you know, and it takes a, a level of comfort following wheels and being close to people that takes time to gain that. People don’t always have.
[00:45:48] Julie Young: Chris, I could not agree with you more in terms of capitalizing on those fast-paced group rides.
It’s just such an incredible way to gain that experience, that race experience. And I had a coach, I don’t know if you guys are familiar with Leonard Harvey Knits. He was a good. Crack racer. Mm-hmm. And when I was in Sacramento, we had the river ride and he’d take me out there and like he was incredible at finding the holes and gaps ’cause he contended, he didn’t have much natural talent, but I mean, I thought he was incredible.
But he was so good at conserving and rather than, as you described, Trevor. Out and around and sprinting through the wind, we would navigate holes and it was so scary trying to follow Harvey through these holes and like getting your bars in those little spaces, but just that’s the only way to learn how to do it, is just through experience and it just, it makes all the difference in the world.
You know, oftentimes coaching athletes, they think, oh gosh, these people are so much fitter than me. And it’s not that, it’s the skill they’ve developed. That they’re conserving. Mm-hmm. And so that they have more in that last quarter of the race.
[00:46:52] Trevor Connor: Well, I will kind of finish this out by giving two games to play, which I always used to play.
That you do in the group ride. And this is, you know, this first one, if you’re on a group ride where you are bleeding from the eye sock, it’s just to, hang on, you can’t play this game. Mm-hmm. Find a group ride where you can comfortably hang on. And here’s the challenge to play. So whatever your FTP is, let’s say your FTP is 2 75, the game to play is, I can’t ever break 325 watts.
Mm-hmm. So I’m gonna go on the group ride. I have to figure out how to stay in the lead group, never get caught out. But I can never break 3 25.
[00:47:34] Chris Case: Yeah.
[00:47:35] Trevor Connor: And it’s a tough game to play because. If you aren’t paying attention, if you aren’t staying at the front, if you’re not at the right place at the right time, don’t lose the race because you screwed it up.
The game is how many times did I have to break the rule?
[00:47:48] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:47:48] Trevor Connor: And to try to reduce each time, the number of times you had to break that rule,
[00:47:52] Chris Case: right? Yeah.
[00:47:53] Trevor Connor: So that’s learning how to conserve. Another great one is if you are in big enough a field. Practice moving to the front in the middle of the field, you can never go out and put your face in the wind.
Mm-hmm. Just move up through the field and that is learning how to see the holes. And here’s the one secret I will tell you about the holes. If you see a hole open
[00:48:14] Julie Young: go,
[00:48:14] Trevor Connor: and then you wait to see that it’s gonna stay open. You’ve already, yeah, you’ve missed it.
[00:48:18] Chris Case: Yeah. You’ve waited too long.
[00:48:20] Trevor Connor: The best riders see the holes before they open as, yeah.
They know that there’s gonna be a separation. They’re moving into it as it opens.
[00:48:27] Chris Case: Yeah,
[00:48:27] Julie Young: no hesitancy.
[00:48:29] Chris Case: I think there’s also something to be said for like, if that is not. What you’re comfortable at, then don’t force the issue because that’s true. You don’t want to start,
[00:48:40] Trevor Connor: you want to cause a
[00:48:41] Chris Case: crash. You don’t want to cause a crash.
Exactly. You won’t be invited back to that group ride. But I hear what you’re saying. But those are two very good skills based experiences to try to have and improve upon in group rides so that you’re not doing that in races, that’s for sure.
[00:48:57] Trevor Connor: Yeah.
[00:48:58] Julie Young: Well, I also think you become. More alert and as you had mentioned, Trevor, you’re surfing the wave.
Or I always think about once you, you start feeling that washing machine effect and you’re going backwards, you gotta figure out how to go forward. So I think in a just road racing, you just mentally have to be on your game and so alert because things are happening so quickly. And to me, that’s a really important part about maintaining position.
[00:49:21] Trevor Connor: Yep. And to me that was the ultimate. Message of this lesson, which was the top riders were better at positioning and willing to go. Yeah, I’m gonna do a lot of time at zone four, keeping myself at the front. Yeah, but they were always in the right place at the right time.
[00:49:38] Chris Case: Yeah,
[00:49:38] Trevor Connor: that’s what I got from the study.
[00:49:40] Chris Case: Very good. That was another episode of Fast Talk. Subscribe to Fast Talk wherever you prefer to find your favorite podcasts. Be sure to leave us a rating and a review. Hey, don’t forget we’re now on YouTube. Give us a like and subscribe there too and help us reach new audiences. As always, remember that the thoughts and opinions expressed on Fast Talk are those of the individual.
Join us on social media at Fast Talk Labs. And for access to our endurance sports knowledge base, continuing education for coaches as well as our in-person and remote athlete services. Head to Fast Talk labs.com. For Julie Young and Trevor Connor, I’m Chris Case. Thanks for listening.
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