Some workouts just don’t go like you planned. Maybe you visualized pushing the pace at the front of the group ride, or crushing that set of intervals, or spinning along smoothly for hours on end. Instead, you felt sluggish, like you were pedaling squares, or like you couldn’t get out of your own way. Crappy …
There is an entire generation of cyclists that views VO2 max as a genetically pre-determined performance ceiling. A more modern and nuanced take shows it to be quite responsive to training. With different types of workouts we can increase VO2 max itself, as well as peak power, fractional utilization, and power duration at VO2 max. That’s …
By Chris Carmichael, Founder and Head Coach of CTS In exercise science and coaching there are long and passionate debates about the structure of interval workouts, the intensities that should be used, the duration of efforts and recoveries, and the total amount of work performed during a training session or a block of training. …
By Chris Carmichael, Founder and Head Coach of CTS There is no shortage of endurance challenges spanning the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Although the “Festive 500” – 500 kilometers between December 25-31 – remains one of the most popular, you can also find other distance-, duration-, and elevation-based challenges for the coming …
By Chris Carmichael, Founder and Head Coach of CTS My coaches and I work with many athletes leading high-pressure careers, including C-suite executives, entrepreneurs, first responders, and medical professionals. Others are experiencing life-altering levels of stress from failing relationships, long-term caregiving for sick loved ones or aging parents, or grief from losing loved ones. There …
By Chris Carmichael, Founder and Head Coach of CTS If you want to get a sense for the quality, durability, and versatility of a bicycle, you need to get feedback from cyclists with a range of body sizes, experience levels, and riding styles. I can tell you I love a certain bike, but that’s the …
By Chris Carmichael, Founder and Head Coach of CTS When you tally up all the workouts and rest days, Time-Crunched Athletes spend more than 95% of their time NOT exercising. Even cyclists on high-volume training plans rarely spend more than 10% of the total hours in a week training. What you do – or don’t …
By Chris Carmichael, Founder and Head Coach of CTS With Thanksgiving coming up I have been thinking a lot about gratitude and what I’m thankful for. There are, of course, the obvious ones like being grateful for my family and their health and wellbeing. But this year in particular, there’s so much more to be …
By Chris Carmichael There are three main areas that need to be addressed when you want to become a better, stronger, and faster climber. First you have to increase your maximum sustainable power. This increases the pace you can sustain for prolonged climbs, and in the best case it also means you can ride …
By Chris Carmichael, Founder and Head Coach of CTS When I was an elite athlete and even during the early years of my career as a coach, too little attention was paid to sports psychology, both in terms of how we could apply it to enhance performance and in terms of the ways harsh coaching …