How Much Can I Increase FTP, Training Zones, RPE, Wearable Tech, And More

Topics Covered In This Episode:

  • How much can you increase your FTP in one season
  • Rate of perceived exertion
  • Why do we have training zones
  • Should you use wearable technology like Whoop or Oura Ring
  • Nils van der Poel: thoughts on his training methodology

Guest Bio:

Kolie Moore coaches professional, elite, and amateur athletes of all disciplines at all levels. He’s consulted for World Tour teams, world champions, national team coaches, is part of the WKO development group that creates and tests new and advanced cycling analytics, independently developed many unique analysis tools for road racers and sprinters, and educates and develops other coaches.

Kolie is a lifelong cyclist, national championship medalist, and former Taekwondo instructor and competitor (3rd Dan; selected for international WTF and ITF competitions, and Junior Olympics competitor). He holds a BS in Biology from Boston University, where he learned biochemistry, metabolism, and physiology. This background gives him a scientific and fundamental understanding the unique optimization required for each individual that is reflected in his training methods.

Connect With Kolie Moore:

Website: https://www.empiricalcycling.com/about-our-coaches.html

Podcast: https://www.empiricalcycling.com/podcast.html

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/empiricalcycling/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/type_iix

 

Show Links:

Rate of perceived effort meme

 

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or on your favorite podcast platform

 

Episode Transcription:

Please note that this is an automated transcription and may contain errors. Please refer to the episode audio for clarification.

Adam Pulford (00:00:06):

As we get organized about this episode today, like it’s gonna be very casual compared to some of the other episodes I’ve done in the past. And even what Coley has probably done in the past where he drills down, like real deep into some specific stuff. And, and, you know, we always use the term super nerd out about stuff. We’ll still do some of, some of the nerding out, but we’re, I I’ve, I’ve picked a few topics that are just gonna be like more, uh, kind of fast paced, getting Cole’s thoughts on stuff and I’ll, I’ll chime in and, uh, it’s, I’m kind of gonna call it like current events for the endurance community, if you will.

Kolie Moore (00:00:42):

I like that. Yeah. And I, I want your thoughts on a lot of these topics too, cuz um, I know you’ve got some and uh, you know, I’ve got half formed thoughts on some of these things. Um, and so I think this’ll be a good discussion. Hey, I’m looking forward to it. It’s it’ll be very Joe Rogan possibly. Oh gosh.

Adam Pulford (00:00:58):

Well,

Kolie Moore (00:00:59):

Well not, not in some ways in the, a conversation away. Yes.

Adam Pulford (00:01:05):

I love it. Yeah. And I’ve, I’ve wanted to do, you know, an episode like this or more episodes of this because the feedback I get from our listeners too, is just like, you know, I love the, the huge context and going deep, but like make ’em a little shorter make ’em concise and give a few thoughts. So I think like we’ll on the train right podcast. We’ll, we’ll aim to balance out some of the lengthy discussions with some of the timely and, and more, more poppy stuff. But, um, that being said, uh, I think the number one thing that I’m gonna ask you Colie first of all, is in, in regard to R P and that stands for Raider perceived effort or exertion, uh, kind of depending on, um, what you’re reading, what you’re looking at, but I’ve been finding, I’ve been talking to my athletes a little bit more kind of at the start of the, the year anyway, like January and February and just bringing more context to, okay. Remember that tempo feels like a seven out of 10 and, and threshold feels more like an, maybe nine outta 10, this kind of stuff. So, but you also posted a meme yesterday. So let’s start there with, with

Kolie Moore (00:02:11):

Our, if you wanna see the meme, you can go check it out at empirical cycling on Instagram. Um, I’m almost at 2000 followers. Hey, let’s get it go.

Adam Pulford (00:02:19):

Yeah. Get ’em up above 2000, like the meme. But tell us about that meme.

Kolie Moore (00:02:23):

I would, I don’t know what to do with all the followers anyway. Um, so the meme it’s, you know, the, the, you know, the four brain meme, um, you know, of the increasing enlightenment. So the, so the joke is, uh, well, I’ll explain the joke in a second. Well, you’ll get the joke anyway. So it’s, it starts with, you know, with the regular brain is riding to R E the slightly more enlightened brain is writing to heart rate. The even more enlightened brain is writing to power. The ultimate enlightened brain is writing to RPE. And the joke obviously is that you started in the right spot all along, but on the way you actually learned to use these tools, because somebody in the comments was like, Hey, I actually find RPE to be really helpful, but, you know, if we use it in conjunction with heart rate and power, it’s even more powerful and I completely agree, but you know, me can’t really go into all that level of nuance cuz it’s a meme, you know?

Kolie Moore (00:03:21):

Um, and I, I actually wrote, uh, a, a journal article on this, in a medical journal about injury, um, that, uh, my, my friend and, uh, uh, empirical cycling client invited me to write and I kind of go into this. And then, uh, more recently I saw an art on UAE coached using like a three minute FTP effort along with RPE and heart rate and whatnot to gauge how rider’s feeling. Um, and I didn’t know there was a name for this thing and I forgotten what the name is, but it’s something like that is so useful. Um, and so, uh, where we’ll be going with, to RPE on this, uh, we have a lot of, a lot of

Adam Pulford (00:04:02):

Ways we can go. Yeah, yeah. We were kind of, so the, the scattering was first bringing some context to that meme that you posted. We’re, we’re putting it on, on, on YouTube so people can like watch that or see it if, if they don’t go to your Instagram, um,

Kolie Moore (00:04:15):

I’ll, I’ll send it to you. You can drop it down on the video. Perfect.

Adam Pulford (00:04:16):

Yeah, we’ll do that. But the, the question is then like, why is like, first of all, let’s talk about what RPE is. Like, where did we get it from? What’s the scale of numbers that you use in your coaching and for our listeners, just to give some grounding of what we’re talking about in terms of RPE. Yeah.

Kolie Moore (00:04:37):

Well, for RPE it, my coaching, uh, obviously we have to use anger points because it can’t just be, you know, a 10 outta ten’s a sprint and then zero outta 10 is, you know, being asleep. Right. Um, so we have to kind of find an anger point for a common language. Um, and so I typically use a seven outta 10 as threshold eight outta 10 being just over threshold, but not max. Uh, and then, you know, not nine outta 10, 10 outta 10, that actually adds context. Cuz if somebody’s doing like a really long FDP workout, uh, they might get to a nine or a 10. Um, and at some points, a lot of points, I actually tell people not to go past an eight outta 10 for any effort. Um, and so it doesn’t necessarily always correlate exactly to a power level, but you know, it kind of has this multidimensional quality to it, uh, cuz it has to do well.

Kolie Moore (00:05:27):

Cuz cycling obviously is multidimensional cuz we don’t, we not only have, um, intensity and duration. There’s also a third dimension of fatigue on top of that. And so everything kind of gets, you know, has its own context. And I think it’s interesting actually that you said like a threshold effort might be an eight and nine because this is really just one of those things of a common language between a coach and a client where we just wanna be able to, you know, have training communicated to us. And we also want to communicate, uh, certain things about training that we want the client to achieve. Right. So is that, is that how I’m sure that’s pretty much how you use it too, right?

Adam Pulford (00:06:03):

Yeah. In fact, I, I was answering a question, um, to an athlete yesterday about this in email and instead of anchor point, I used hinge point and you know, referred to the anaerobic or aerobic threshold that kind of, that, that point over. And I was like, well, you know, so we could basically just have like two zones and then start to break up RPE, you know, based on that. And as long as you’re on the same page of whatever the number means, I think most of us like in the field or say coaching virtually are using something from a, a scale one to 10, 10 being a max effort, one being super easy or sitting on the couch, whatever, however you want to define it. But I think it’s again, yeah, that hinge point or that anchor points are really important to start to bring context. And I think the context is what is, um, the most important part when you’re coaching an athlete? Uh, one thing I’ll say is like, this is also derived off of the Borgs scale, um, that we used to use in, in like human performance labs and in more like research settings. And that was derived from, uh, what Borg found on heart rate, um, using like a six to 20 scan. Am I right with that?

Kolie Moore (00:07:13):

Uh, yeah, it was six or seven to 20, uh, actually in his original paper on it, he actually caught cautioned that you don’t parallel it too close to heart rate because he knew that at the time that heart rates were a little bit individualized. So even though a 16 outta 20 might for most people correlate to 160 BPM out of a 200 BPM max, that he knew that there was additional context and variability in people. So he actually cautioned in that paper, you know, don’t use this two closely to heart rate

Adam Pulford (00:07:40):

Parallel. Yeah. So what I mean by the heart rate parallel is choosing this number. You could then find a closely related heart rate by some mathematical calculation, right. Um right. But there, there is, you know, fallacies with that. And so as we evolve using this scale of one to 10 to determine an effort is super important. Now back to your meme, it’s like, you know, kind of this like this brain that’s not super active and you’re using RPE and then you go to heart rate, then you go to power and the brain is lightening up and then you go back to RPE and it’s like, whoa, this is awesome. That’s what you’re talking about. And really without the hinge points or without the anchor points that dead brain with RPE only is happening. But with all the hinge points with all the anchor points, with all the context, now we have that enlightened brain. That’s, that’s effectively what you’re saying.

Kolie Moore (00:08:31):

You know, let’s last night, I actually had an idea for a, a good, but not obviously not great, um, a metaphor for this, which is, uh, the, uh, actual temperature skills that we use Fahrenheit and Celsius because you know, the only temperature that we can actually really measure is like true zero. And then above that, it’s like, who knows, like we have to find anchor points to talk about temperature. And so we use, you know, the most common element that we have or not element, but the most common thing that we have on earth, which is water. Uh, well, besides nitrogen gas, I guess is water anyway. Uh, so, so it’s like we picked, um, you know, if Celsius scale is nice and even zero degrees is the freezing point of water hundred degrees, uh, is the boiling point of water and that’s great. Um, Fahrenheit, little weird 32 and uh, two 12. Okay. But we’re still talking about the same thing. And so that’s a good way to think about RPE and these anchor or hinge points, uh, because physiologically, there is some FA is changed with this kind of stuff. Yep.

Adam Pulford (00:09:37):

Yep. So, but why does it all matter? Like if we got power meters now, why do we even, why are we even using RPE?

Kolie Moore (00:09:45):

Um, you know, it, there’s, there’s a lot of ways to use it obvi well, obviously, as you know, as I know, um, and so yeah, I think

Adam Pulford (00:09:53):

Actually devil’s advocate there. Just gonna, why are we using, why does it matter? Right.

Kolie Moore (00:09:57):

I appreciate that. Yeah. Um, I think probably the best use I can think of for RPE is figuring out if you are tired.

Adam Pulford (00:10:07):

Yeah. That’s a good one. Yep.

Kolie Moore (00:10:09):

So if your usual numbers start to decouple from your usual RPE, that’s a sign of, well, if they start feeling easier than normal, then it’s like, oh, I gotta retest. I’m nice and fit. Or if they’re feeling harder than normal, um, now you’ve got some decisions to make, cuz I think a lot of people might think ohoh, my numbers are going down. This is feeling harder. I need more training. Whereas uh, people like us, well, most of the time I would say nine outta 10 times say you probably need more rest. And so learning to read your legs is such a critical part of becoming a really successful athlete. And actually one of the things that you mentioned to talk about today was, um, Neil VanderPol.

Adam Pulford (00:10:50):

No Sandol

Kolie Moore (00:10:51):

Yeah. I was gonna say anybody named VanderPol is probably a, you know, aerobic freak and they should probably get signed by any those, all of them. If your name is VanderPol hit up, any us, they will give you a contract. Just

Adam Pulford (00:11:01):

Give you gold medal role. Your name is the okay. Gold medal next.

Kolie Moore (00:11:05):

Um, cuz in his, uh, in his, uh, you know, that long, long article that he wrote, I only got through about half of, um, what he was talking about, but he’s always talking about the limit. Yeah. And he’s talking about RPE and other things that you can measure. But he, I, I searched actually in it, how many times he mentions the limit, which he uses capital letters for.

Adam Pulford (00:11:24):

I’m just gonna say he capitalize it and

Kolie Moore (00:11:27):

We’ll yeah, it’s, it’s a, it’s a very German thing, but it’s also, you know, can be like a religious thing. Like you capitalize God or he, um, and so just to emphasize the importance of it, uh, and I think that actually has, uh, a lot of really cool implications because he, he didn’t actually explain it.

Adam Pulford (00:11:45):

No,

Kolie Moore (00:11:46):

But he talks about

Adam Pulford (00:11:47):

It. Yeah. And you know, I’d say let’s get to, NI’s like a little bit afterwards, but to that point, when you capitalize a word like that, you’re showing respect to it. You don’t have to define it. Right. That’s that’s kind of the part like say it’s God capitalized. Right. Okay. I get it. The limit, the edge, whatever you okay. Respect. Okay. Um, yeah. So kind of coming back to perceived effort be because whether you’re finding your limit or your edge or where that 10 is, right. You’re given respect to that because that’s, that’s where your body’s at. Right. And I find it just like you said, to read your legs, it’s an awareness tool, right? Yep. And having the perceived effort along with the power stamp or the heart rate stamp or whatever, that’s the awareness tool that I try to instill in my athletes to let them know where they’re at, where their freshness is on the day where 200 Watts is on the day where 300 Watts is at, you know, where it’s at because you know, whether you’re doing a long hill climb and you’re creating more, um, train exponentially as you go with a longer interval, right?

Adam Pulford (00:12:56):

The perceived effort ticks up, even though you may be maintaining 200 Watts the whole time you get more tired, just like you said, in a criterium, you’re not using your power meter to gauge effort, right? You gotta know you’re putting out effort. You’re, you’re doing the race. However, through the whole time period, as you are aware of the race settings in the corner and the person next to you and all this kinda stuff and aware of your own fatigue, you gotta be able to make those decisions based on perceived effort. And this is where we’re going with it. Um, the goal is not to stare at the power meter. The goal is not to stare at the hurry, monitor. The goal is to check it with the awareness tool that is RPE.

Kolie Moore (00:13:36):

Yeah. It’s a feedback loop.

Adam Pulford (00:13:37):

That’s it? That’s it. Yep. Cool. I like, I like where that’s at and in the spirit of not drilling super deep coli, we’re moving on, but

Kolie Moore (00:13:48):

It all right, let’s go it,

Adam Pulford (00:13:49):

But it’s adjacent too, because I’m, I’m kind of setting you up. I got this question. I think it was from an athlete’s wife and it was like, cuz we’re we were talking about, um, perceived effort in some of the, in zone two and all this, which we’ll talk about, but it was like, well, why do we have training zones anyway, then like if you have all these power meters that read differently and heart rate monitors and everybody’s heart rates, a little D why have training zones? Why not just use RPE? And I was like, huh, I that’s a pretty good, pretty good question, actually. So co uh, to you, why, why do we even have training zones?

Kolie Moore (00:14:24):

Um, well it’s the same thing as, as we have RPE, if we wanna be able to describe prescribe or communicate how hard we’re going, you know, cuz before it’s like everybody used speed or uh, you know, lap or something like that. Um, and you know, that has a big place, certainly, especially in timed and distance, uh, type events, but you know, in cycling, um, it’s, it’s so it’s so much more open and free unless you’re on a velodrome all the time. Um, and it’s um, you know, so using power zones, uh, I think ACOG has said many times and you’ve probably heard this too, uh, were originally meant to be descriptive, not pre prescriptive. Yep. And so cuz I think, you know, Andy comes from the day where you would have certain types of rides, you know, you would go out, do an endurance ride or like a temp or a group ride or you would do a, you know, threshold ride or you would do just some max efforts up some Hills or sprints or whatever. And then he was like, okay, now you come home, you’ll look at the power data and you figure out what you did.

Adam Pulford (00:15:29):

So yeah. Can you tell me, can you are listeners, what do you mean by descriptive versus prescriptive?

Kolie Moore (00:15:36):

Right. So descriptive means a post HOK analysis tool. Um, and so you, you go out and you do the thing as you normally would. And then you look at the thing afterwards and this is kind of how I, I actually prescribe most VO two max efforts. Yeah. Because I just assign them as max and people go do them. And then I look at the power and the pacing and everything and nine times outta 10, absolutely nail it one outta 10 times something to tweak. Uh, but it’s a post HOK tool. It’s not, you need to ride five minutes at three 30 Watts it’s you need to go max. And then we will look at our tools later and see how effective this is being.

Adam Pulford (00:16:15):

I’m so glad you brought that up because this is also something that I’ve been trying to communicate to my athletes in terms of like here’s, here’s the ranges on the day and say they go out and they even like super crush. It maybe went a little over. Maybe it was like just hanging onto it’s like, no, no, no that’s fine because we’re still on the edges of that. Still developing threshold, whatever we’re trying to do V2. But yet the human being has ranges themselves on the day. Sometimes you come in and you’re like, man, I feel like super human Superman, superwoman, whatever other days you’re like, I’m like, or man, I just gotta get through this.

Kolie Moore (00:16:52):

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, and it’s um, you know, it’s helpful too in well, cause I assign so much stuff by RPE rather than a power target because like a power target can also, you know, for, for us coaches, it can actually come to bite us in the end because uh, if we give our client a certain power target and they’re not quite recover, we didn’t know that they didn’t eat enough last night. They didn’t sleep well, whatever it is, if they can’t do it now we’ve gotta start thinking about, oh, why didn’t this person? Why couldn’t they do this, that, why did I assign this too high? Or why was it too low? Maybe it wasn’t quite effective workout. Um, and so especially when you start assigning things like intermittent efforts, like if you assign somebody like two by 20 of 15 seconds on 15 seconds off, how do you prescribe that?

Kolie Moore (00:17:40):

Is it, you know, 120% of FTP, 150, 200 and different people can do different, uh, you know, different intensities with this kind of stuff. So I’ll tell them, you know, if you like, if somebody wants to do via Tmax efforts and they insist on having a power target, which happens sometimes and that’s okay, I’ll give them what I think they can maintain. And then I’ll say, do the first two efforts like this? Yes. And then I want you to push it a little more for the last, whatever 2, 3, 4 efforts. Yep. And then you can see just how much you can go with this. And that’s also a good way to measure performance afterwards too. You use power as a, a target as a starting point, but then you can use whatever power you did as a post hoc analysis tool of, okay, now you did these efforts three weeks ago and you did 330 Watts this week. You did 345 Watts for these. So we see progress.

Adam Pulford (00:18:33):

Yep. Yeah. And that’s a beautiful way to, to queue up. Someone’s like first VO two, cuz they’re like, what is a 10? And it’s, there’s a lot of anxiety that goes on with VO two max efforts, five by five, five by four, whatever to, oh, I

Kolie Moore (00:18:45):

I’m sure you’ve got athletes too. And I do as well who have more anxiety for either a Tmax session, their, their first one of the season or whatever, or like, you know, just a, a regular fitness test than they ever had for like the SATs or the LSATs or whatever.

Adam Pulford (00:19:01):

It’s it’s it’s bonkers. Yeah. It really is it, yeah. It styled this down a little. We’re just going out there and doing a little, little bit of work on the bike. Um, yeah, exactly. Uh, but you know, to that point, the descriptive versus prescriptive, it’s good for all coaches out there to listen and even reminder of yourself cuz when you, when we’re building, you know, we’ve, we’ve kind of gotten to a point where, you know, a lot of this, uh, say automation that goes on with, um, uh, building, um, training programs, whether it’s static or, or dynamic or, or custom or whatever, we’re bringing context, we’re using these tools that we’ve, you know, uh, in Coggan in particular have really helped to define and shape up with training zones. Um, but as we prescribe them and kind of tell the athlete what to do both like in words and typing or um, you know, on the phone and then, and then they go out and do it. That athlete still looks at that number and it’s like, oh, coach said 60. I gotta go above 60%. I gotta hold onto it. So your first five hour ride and it’s an endurance miles ride of 60 to 76% and they’re at four hours and 30 minutes like, oh, just like re each and for 60% kinda missing the point.

Kolie Moore (00:20:16):

Yeah. Yeah. They are. Uh, well I think that’s, that’s a way that, you know, using training zones pre prescriptively can actually come to bite us as well. Exactly.

Adam Pulford (00:20:27):

Yeah.

Kolie Moore (00:20:27):

And so a lot of the time when you have somebody go ride, um, like, uh, I’ve had countless athletes who have done endurance rides too hard and they’ve done it like that for years. And uh, and you know, I’ve had a lot of clients come to me, uh, amateur and professional, both who have said, I am, this is something’s not going right. Can you help? And the first thing I do is I tell them, put your computer in your back pocket.

Adam Pulford (00:20:53):

That’s

Kolie Moore (00:20:53):

A good one, go ride to feel. Um, and so many people at, at levels that you wouldn’t believe well, Adam, you would believe, but the listeners, you might not believe, uh, the level that this goes up to.

Adam Pulford (00:21:05):

It’s pretty remarkable. Uh, I, I mean, we could talk at length even about what goes on mentally to have to have that happen. Right. Whereas where I work with the athlete too, is if, if I have an athlete there where they get heady about those numbers, I’m just like just disassociate from it. The number means nothing. Right? And then they say, well, why measure it at all? It’s like me measure everything so that we can be descriptive afterwards, cuz we want to know what’s working in the long run. So we need the numbers. However, when it’s getting to the point where it’s causing all this stress and all this anxiety, then we’d have to put it to bed. So that’s pocket or change the screen, whatever we tape we used to do when you couldn’t, you know, customized screens and stuff. So yeah. Um,

Kolie Moore (00:21:51):

Yeah. Yeah. I think that works really well. Um, and uh, oh nevermind. I had a thought and I completely forgot it. So

Adam Pulford (00:21:58):

No it’s, I mean, so training zones still a thing still need them and you know, they, they are the anchor points and hinge points to go along with RPE. Okay. Yeah.

Kolie Moore (00:22:09):

Yeah. It’s like, it’s like, um, it’s like, if you think that the power number is everything and I, I, you know, back in like what, 2013, I was like this too. Like I was like heart rate. Doesn’t matter. I didn’t wear heart rate monitor for years. I, I looking back on it, I wish I had, I would have so much better data about my aerobic fitness. Yeah. Back then, uh, which was not great, but you know, I would know what it was. Um, and um, you know, I just, I just thought the power number was everything and that as long as you hit X Watts, you are getting Y adaptation and that’s actually not really the case. There’s so many ways to elicit at different types of adaptation in the body that, um, you know, using power numbers really, uh, and you know, writing to the same, like RPE over, you know, like I’ve got, I’ve got athletes who get up in their head about their threshold number all the time. And a lot of the time I’ll actually tell people to go do their threshold, that first blind, just to take power, your screen, put tape over it, whatever it is, um, watch your lap time, but push what, you know, feel threshold feels like. And then we’ll look at the numbers and they’re always really good or better than expected afterwards.

Adam Pulford (00:23:20):

Usually usually better with a moderately trained athlete. For sure. And I’m glad you brought that up because one, one thing I, I wanted to mention about perceived effort and pertains to training zones here is, um, pacing like pacing is, is super crucial. Yes. Right. And so whether it is time trialing or, you know, kind of endurance long haul or whatever it is, is that, that number alone, the power number anyway, or even the heart rate number, that’s not gonna get you a great pace. It has to core coalesce with effort as you go. So pacing’s critical.

Kolie Moore (00:23:53):

Absolutely.

Adam Pulford (00:23:54):

Uh, you mentioned threshold, so I’ll just kind of segue to number three, because this is also, this is a pretty, I get this question every year, but it’s is it, you know, my FTP is this number right now. How much can my FTP increase in one season?

Kolie Moore (00:24:14):

Oh boy,

Adam Pulford (00:24:15):

I love giving Coley. These really specific questions with no context. It’s like my favorite thing to do. Cause I know exactly where his brain is. Right. But

Kolie Moore (00:24:26):

I’m like a wind up toy you’re yeah, you

Speaker 3 (00:24:28):

Really are. Um,

Kolie Moore (00:24:31):

Okay. So, Uh,

Adam Pulford (00:24:35):

You guys should just go on YouTube and watch what he’s doing right now. It’s awesome.

Kolie Moore (00:24:39):

Yeah, man. And I’ve gotten this question from, from, uh, perspective clients and current clients of course. And just friends. Yeah. I’m sure you do too. Um, and the answer is we don’t know until we try.

Adam Pulford (00:24:52):

Yeah.

Kolie Moore (00:24:52):

And it’s like, uh, like one of my clients is, um, actually several clients that have just a ton of power. Like they’re average, FTP is like three 90 when they’re untrained, you know, and I, and you kind of train them in a certain way. If you think they’re at their ceiling of potential and you train them a very different way, if you think that they have room to grow and I’m not convinced anybody is really at their potential until we try to get them more fit to try to get them more rubber capacity or, or, you know, time trial endurance or whatever, whatever it is, you know, sprint Watts, um, take your pick. Uh, we don’t know until we try and that especially goes for FTP, cuz FTP is highly correlated to aerobic capacity and endurance and you know, like 9,000 different things that we can name, like in terms of physiology. And so, um, you know, actually I have a, I have a similar question. It’s like, if you’re doing an, uh, like an FTP test, like one of mine, like a long one that you know is mostly by RPE and you figure out what threshold feels like, and you look at the number, right? I’ve been wondering this, this little, like little thought exercise. Do you have to go over it to be sure that you we’re at it?

Adam Pulford (00:26:10):

Do you have to go,

Kolie Moore (00:26:11):

Do you have to go over FTP to be sure that you are at FTP at the lower number? And I think the answer might be yes. Well for me anyway,

Adam Pulford (00:26:19):

I think so. Um, just to answer your question right now, because again, it’s the limit, right? It’s the edge and

Kolie Moore (00:26:27):

With the capital

Adam Pulford (00:26:27):

L yeah. And so what I always, my term has always been the edge. Right. And I capitalize the E cuz the analogy I use is you don’t know where the edge is until you go find it, meaning you go up to it and you look over right. You look over, but then you’re like back because finding the edge is not any bene in this context, in the metaphor, it’s not beneficial. If you just jump over it right then there’s, you can’t live to tell the story. So you find the edge, so you have to go over, but then dial it back. And so I think from a metaphorical standpoint, as well as actual standpoint, when you’re out there on the road doing something, you gotta go a little over it to answer it. And

Kolie Moore (00:27:07):

So, and so to bring that back to how much FTP can you gain in a year, you don’t know until you try to go over that edge, is your FTP actually 250 Watts? Like, is that as much potential as you have or if you change up your or training or you add more rest or you try to add more volume, like if you manipulate some factor, does that get you more aerobic improvement? You don’t know until you try. And um, there are also ways to see if you are, you know, aerobically kind of stagnant as it were like plateaued maintaining. Uh, and if that’s on purpose, if you don’t have more time to train, if you’re too stressed off the bike, whatever it is, um, that’s okay too. Um, but you know, if you I’ve, you know, I’ve seen people gain 80 Watts, a threshold in a year, it’s their first year to be sure, but they’ve done it. Um, I’ve also seen people gain 10 Watts in a year and for somebody who’s highly developed, gaining 10 Watts in a year can be a huge victory. Yep,

Adam Pulford (00:28:09):

Yep. Yeah. And so to that point, I I’d say for those who go do a group ride and they figure out they’re riding next to a coach and they ask ’em this question. Um, just so you know, um, ahead of time is the, the less trained you are, the more you can gain in your FTP in the season and for pretty much everything else, the more well trained you are the less that percentage or, uh, amount of wattage you will gain in that year. So those are some of the kind of contextual points. And, and to the point of like, if you’re kind of coming off the couch and say, you start working with a coaching and you do a field test, I’ve seen people you up to, I think co said like 80 Watts, I’ve seen up to like 20, 25% increase. Okay. Um yep.

Adam Pulford (00:28:54):

And saying, going from like 200, probably up to around 2 45, 2 50, something like that, that’s sort of, that’s huge. Yeah. Yeah. Sort of increase in somebody who’s not well trained and that’s pretty normal, right. Because the glycolytic energy system in the, and training that threshold is some of the most trainable stuff that you can do in a human body. And so, you know, that’s the good news, you know, the bad news is if you are close to your genetic potential, you know, the gains get, you know, smaller at the top. So it’s, this question is hilarious. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s a good question, but it’s also hilarious, but because everybody always asks it and there’s just so much to get the answer. There’s so much context that needs to be had. So, and,

Kolie Moore (00:29:36):

And not, and not only that, it also depends on who you are like genetically, which is not up to you. I mean, every cyclist at the top level or at pretty much any level has put in a ton of hard work. Yep. And some can improve really quickly and, you know, keep that improvement up year to year some improve at a slow and steady rate. And some it’s like pulling teeth,

Adam Pulford (00:30:00):

You. Yeah.

Kolie Moore (00:30:01):

And, and that’s okay.

Adam Pulford (00:30:02):

And it’s also, I mean, just straight up, I’m gonna tell everybody it’s also what you’re willing to give up. Right? Yeah. Like, are you only gonna train 10 hours a week or are you gonna train 20 or can you train 30? Like, do you need to train 30? Like, you know, there’s a lot of time that can go into that answer as well. Yeah.

Kolie Moore (00:30:20):

Yeah. And you know, uh, I actually, you know, I think, um, uh, one of my empirical cycling coaches, uh, is always talking about her, um, swimming background and how hard the coaches would push people back then. Um, and you know, she was, she was saying that, uh, her high school swimming coach had said your genetics don’t, it’s how much hard work that you put in that matters. Um, which is, which is both true. And it’s also a boldface line because like one of my very hardest working clients has a threshold of a, of, you know, about 200 Watts and he has some of the best endurance, you know, relative to his threshold.

Adam Pulford (00:31:02):

And

Kolie Moore (00:31:02):

He has, uh, you know, his average, average size, like 65, 70 kilos. Um, and so, you know, he’s not gonna be on the world tour, but he works as hard or harder than anybody. And, and he, and you know, it, it’s one of those things where there are certain things in your genetics and, and in your body and in your, you know, mental makeup and in your physical makeup and in your genetic makeup, that can say, all right, we’re gonna give you as much endurance ability as we can at your, you know, albeit low aerobic capacity. And, and I honestly, I like working with somebody like that, as much as I like working with somebody with a 440 watt FTP.

Adam Pulford (00:31:43):

Yeah. I, I mean, where my brain was just going there is like, I’ve always said whether I’m running a team, building a team, coaching, an athlete, whatever it is, I would much rather work with somebody who’s a good hard worker and has a lower VO two, rather than the, you know, 85 VO two that can’t get outta their way when it comes to organizing their life.

Kolie Moore (00:32:08):

Honestly. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, you know, it’s like picking people on your team. You’d rather have the person who’s for sure. Fun to hang around, hang out with, and who’s got a good head and a race rather than that person who like, you know, takes the flyer three laps to go and gets caught every single time. It’s like, take the flyer if you need to, if that’s part of the team strategy fine. But like, if you just like heat off the front, just, just

Adam Pulford (00:32:30):

Ridiculous. Yeah, for sure.

Kolie Moore (00:32:32):

For sure.

Adam Pulford (00:32:33):

Okay. We’ll, we’ll kind of, digres a, a little bit off the training spectrum and then swing back to it. But, um, here’s another kind of question I’ve been getting a lot is coach, should I get the aura ring or the whoop strap? What are your thoughts there co

Kolie Moore (00:32:51):

Uh, I have very few thoughts cause I always confuse the aura ring with birth control. I, um, well

Adam Pulford (00:33:00):

Really either, either way, just answer how, how you best can,

Kolie Moore (00:33:03):

Although to be fair, if you’re wearing an aura ring, no kidding. Might act like that. Anyway, I’m just kidding. I am seriously kidding. Um, you know, I, I it’s, you know, it’s for like what HIV tracking, sleep tracking, stuff like that. Um, you know, I’ve been doing some digging into HR V with a research group lately. And one of the things that we find is that, um, the quality of the strap and the heart rate measurement matters a lot, uh, cuz algorithms that calculate these things on top can are complex. And then if you have a weird heart rate detection or like if you have an ectopic B or something like that, like, like all these algorithms can get thrown off. So the first thing you need to do is look at what is the quality of the heart rate data that I’m getting here. Yeah. You know, cuz I would say most people should probably sleep with a six lead EKG, but not everybody’s actually gonna do that. So

Adam Pulford (00:33:56):

Do you sleep with a, with that?

Kolie Moore (00:33:59):

Uh, no. I would get kicked out of it. So, um, you know, so I think, you know, the other thing that people are looking for with this stuff is they’re looking to track their recovery.

Adam Pulford (00:34:11):

Right.

Kolie Moore (00:34:13):

Um, and so I think if you can use it as a tool, um, cuz you know, it’s the same thing that uh, that, you know, mills, VanderPol was talking about. He, he measures a lot of stuff, but not to the point of driving himself insane and he uses it in a certain way, but he has, he has a method that works for him. Yeah. And he, he’s not a slave to anything in particular and he uses how he’s feeling above all. But it’s like, when you need to, if you suspect you’re like getting sick or you suspect you’re a little overtrained or something like that, you can use HR V data from a whoop or an oring to help triangulate on something. But you should not, I don’t think you should train to it. You know, you shouldn’t have this thing as a training master, like how you’re feeling should be the number one thing. Like you might have your HR V in the tank one day and you’re feeling great and you get on the bike and you have a great workout and it’s like, oh, what happened there? I don’t know. You know what I mean? So, but, so what do you think should people get it? Do you actually, do you make your athletes

Adam Pulford (00:35:19):

Get one? No, I do not. I do not hold my athletes down and force them to, to purchase, um, anything, um, directly,

Kolie Moore (00:35:26):

Likewise like that.

Adam Pulford (00:35:27):

Um,

Kolie Moore (00:35:28):

Would you recommend it to your athletes?

Adam Pulford (00:35:29):

Typically? I have recommended it to athletes and I, I mean full, full disclosure. I am wearing in aura ring.

Kolie Moore (00:35:37):

Are you sponsored by them?

Adam Pulford (00:35:38):

Not sponsored by them.

Kolie Moore (00:35:40):

Um, all right. All right. Hit Adam up. Uh, he would like a sponsorship special

Adam Pulford (00:35:43):

Code, uh, coach Coley for, for the discount. Um, you know, I, I, I used to be a little bit more hot on it than I am now. I, I will admit, um, I liked the, I liked the technology in jail, like the way it operated versus whoop, where there wasn’t a subscription based their way of measuring HR V at night versus a certain point during the day or during a workout that whoop used to do. I don’t know if they still do made more sense based on the litera tr I was reading when it comes down to extrapolating the information that you want to get from HIV, which is, is the system or is it not right? And for the endurance community, I think that’s why a lot of people, that’s one of the primary reasons why we want HIV and we’re in the or ring. I think my observations of it could have been on it for year and a half, almost two years now, gen two to gen three,

Kolie Moore (00:36:34):

It’s still no kids not, sorry. It’s

Adam Pulford (00:36:35):

Still no kids. It’s in, it’s an incredible thing. Um,

Adam Pulford (00:36:40):

But what I’ve seen is that it’s it bring, it brings great awareness to your sleeping habits. So in terms of in, when it all is kind of like coming together here somehow by picking all these random, uh, topics, but rate, perceived effort training zones and what we’re trying to achieve, right? The, a sleeping thing that quantifies how much sleep you’re getting can help you determine how much total sleep you’re getting somewhat accurately, how much like time and zone you are sleeping or getting, and then how to optimize, getting more sleep. And, and here’s how to do it. Say, you go to sleep at midnight and you get in eight hours of sleep. But the deep sleep is lacking. What is suggested is to go to bed earlier. So then you go to bed at 10, you get eight hours of sleep. You wake up a little earlier, right?

Adam Pulford (00:37:33):

But you get in a good amount of deep sleep and REM sleep and all these other things. Well, cool. Now I’ve just, you know, biohacked myself great, but it doesn’t that great. But the problem with a lot of these wearables, is it everything that peop that I find anyway with my athletes and with myself, goes back to what we already knew. Get eight hours of sleep, go to bed somewhere between nine and 10. Typically get more sleep. If you can, don’t drink. Don’t, you know, don’t drink a bunch, especially like before bed, don’t do a bunch of, you know, uh, work before bed put, work away, no screens, all this, the more you can do that, the more sleep and quality sleep you tend to get. Now, when it comes to HR V I I’m all over the place, man. I, there there’s coaches that are like,

Kolie Moore (00:38:24):

Oh, you hold, I know, I know exactly where you were going with this, cuz I was going right there, which is, um, having HR V for a well trained athlete or even a moderately trained aerobic athlete. Um, you know, if you’re like just off the couch, you know, I think, or, or you’re a recreationally active person who who’s got a busy life and whatnot, you know, I think a lot of people just wanna be told what to do and that’s fine. I understand that. I, I wanna just be told what to do when it comes to so many aspects of my life. Cause I’m just so tired all the time when I’m done with work and, you know, training and everything. Sure. So I understand that, but for people who are, you know, moderately trained to highly trained, um, by that we can just say, if you’ve been doing aerobic training for a co for a couple times a week for a couple months, right at that point, HRV actually seems to react a lot more to what happens when you’re not training, then whatever you’re doing in training, unless you’re way overdoing it.

Kolie Moore (00:39:20):

In which case, um, you know, we have other metrics that we can look at to say, okay, you’re overdoing it. But, um, HR V does seem to react a lot more to, are you drinking? Are you spending too much time on your screens? Uh, things that, uh, it, it it’ll make you think about the quality of your sleep and the quality of, you know, life just in terms of stress and everything. So it seems to, um, for people who have that kind of stuff on lock, it’s probably really not gonna do much for you, but if you need something to tell you, Hey, you didn’t get great sleep last night. This is probably going to affect you and your mood or your training or whatever it is. If not today, then next week, next month. Cause it always catches up. Uh, if this is something that’s gonna help you look at that and you know, get better sleep hygiene or, you know, not have extra beer or glass of wine with dinner. This is something that can be very beneficial.

Adam Pulford (00:40:22):

Exactly. And, and I think that having more awareness and a little bit more accountability to some of those healthy habits, I think it’s great. So that’s why, you know, when I say I, I pick up a new athlete and we start talking and all this kind of stuff and they say, what show I get, whatever I tell ’em is gonna be born out of what I observe in their habits and their awareness or lack thereof and their, um, openness to technology and all that stuff. So it just, it, that part depends. But back to HR V real quick, because I do not change training at all based done an HRB number same and cuz I’ve seen it super low, trending low and super low and have good days. I’ve seen it high in trending high and not have good days and have good days. I’ve seen it medium and have good days or bad days. So it it’s, there’s so many, any other variables at play in the human physiology and psychology that an HR V number. And I’m sorry for those who are super in love with it and all this kind of stuff, like it is not strong enough of a thing for me to do anything with it other than observe it for now, track it over time and see if I can find changes or trends and changes.

Kolie Moore (00:41:39):

Yeah. The body’s much more complex.

Adam Pulford (00:41:41):

Yep. It’s um, and I will say too, like you can, you can drive your HR V down a lot with intensity and just like grind yourself out. Um, in, in stress strain, you can do it with drinking. You can do it with like relational stress. Like I’ve seen it right. And you can drive it down. Eventually you will. It’ll catch up to you. However, I think that also if you know, you can compartmentalize and do all and, and the way to do it is if you do a hard block of training or racing or whatever and do good habits and take care of yourself, it’ll go down, down, down, but you can still perform. And that’s what I want everybody to realize or grasp is if you do all these other things really good, but you’re seeing this one thing say bad, doesn’t really matter, cuz it’s not that strong of a corollary.

Kolie Moore (00:42:32):

And I’ve seen it actually have the opposite with people. The more tired they get, the better their HIV looks. Then as soon as they get a rest day, it just tanks.

Adam Pulford (00:42:40):

Hmm. Interesting.

Kolie Moore (00:42:42):

Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Pulford (00:42:42):

That’s so super weird. Still not there yet. I still subscribe to measure many good things. And then even if we don’t know it at the time, whether it’s worth it or not, but it’s pretty cool to measure. And if you’re into data, if you’re not into the numbers and it just kind of stresses you out anyway, don’t add it. Okay. So we’ve talked about him. We mentioned him a few times. The internet, I wouldn’t say the internet is breaking over Neils, VanderPol, however, endurance community. It’s been pretty buzzy and hot and I’ve had a lot of people, um, text me and talk to me. And I even did a podcast with Jason co. We already talked a little bit about Neils. Those who don’t know him. I don’t know. You didn’t watch the Olympics, but uh, Neils VanderPol, he’s a Swedish speed skater in, uh, long distance.

Adam Pulford (00:43:29):

And he, uh, won two gold medals in the 5k and 10 K he set Olympic and world records and he’s a badass straight up. Yep. So he, the, the reason why we’re talking about him is for, for many reasons, but he’s, uh, uh, the more I read about him, he’s super cool, dude. I kind, I kind of wanna meet this guy and just hang out because of his character. But also he was, he won. And for those who also don’t know speed skating, the Dutch are like, IIOS okay. They have all the money. They have all the people, they have all the, whatever talent, Sweden, they’re pretty good. You know, the Nordic Nordic country, they medal a lot and all this, but not as good as a Dutch. So there’s this battle there, but yet, um, NIS wins the medals and beat Dutch and they’re like, well, blah, blah, blah.

Adam Pulford (00:44:21):

How did you know? You’re not all that good. You know, that’s not the right term, but he’s like, well, here’s how I did it. Boom. And he does his 63 page manifesto stating how he trained for this Olympic cycle, what he did, why he did it. And then he goes off on some of this like philosophical pontification of sorts on nutrition and alcohol. Uh, and then how to break down how to skate a 10 K, which is the title of this, this thing. And he does that after he wins, right? So it’s not only like, boom set, all the records dropped, everybody wins the medal, but he’s like, and here’s how I did it. So go ahead. You can do it and come get me if you want, but here here’s what happened. And here’s how I did it. And it is like mad respect to that guy for the performance as well as the here’s what I did.

Adam Pulford (00:45:14):

And to frame it up a little bit, uh, co got through half of it. But, uh, cuz I, I give this to him yesterday, mind you less than 24 hours ago. And he still has a full-time job and a relationship and he has better things to do than read 63 pages that I sent him on text message. But um, the contact is the guy trained his butt off like 30 to four 30 to 35, I think up to 38 hour weeks. And he did it with a five and two, meaning he, he trained five days a week and took the weekends off. Okay. And that’s, that’s pretty, that is abnormal in terms of a rhythm for people, but the volume is fairly normal for, uh, you know, an Olympic aerobic of athlete. So based on what you read Coley and his kind of methods and systems, what, what are some of your initial thoughts of like, you know, should the endurance athlete be freaking out about this as well? Or what, what are, what are some of your thoughts initially?

Kolie Moore (00:46:09):

Uh, well he made a mistake publishing it because now I know exactly how to beat him.

Adam Pulford (00:46:15):

Perfect. 20 Coley, 20, 26 or whatever that year’s gonna be.

Kolie Moore (00:46:20):

Uh, I don’t even know how to skate. Um, but I will soon cuz he told me how to do it. He

Adam Pulford (00:46:24):

Touched you how to skate a 10 K so

Kolie Moore (00:46:26):

Yeah. Now I just have to ride, you know, I just have to do 90 minutes at 400 Watts, five days a

Adam Pulford (00:46:32):

Week in seven hours of aerobic building after that.

Kolie Moore (00:46:35):

Oh my God. I mean, I mean, you know, the guy has an amazing capacity to both work and recover. Yeah.

Adam Pulford (00:46:46):

That’s it.

Kolie Moore (00:46:47):

Um, I, I don’t coach any professional athletes who could maintain that training schedule on. Yeah. Um, but you know, it seems like he found it based on what worked for him and based on, you know, decent actually good fundamental training principles.

Adam Pulford (00:47:10):

Yeah. Really good.

Kolie Moore (00:47:12):

But you know, it’s, it’s not one of those things where every, he can look at what he did and go, oh yeah, that’s how it’s done. Of course. Cause obviously the Dutch don’t train like that and they’re still winning. They’re still winning medals. Um, he, he beat the pants off everybody in the, in the 10 K, but you know, he didn’t, you know, he didn’t beat the pants off, everybody that much in the 5k. Um, but you know, 10 K, 12 minutes twelveish minutes, um, you know, that’s a good combination. It’s mostly aerobic capacity. So big, big, big via two max. And so all of the endurance writing really helps support that kind of thing. It’s, you know, that’s good. And actually, you know, it’s funny cuz one of the things that, um, that I’ve done with a lot of my professional athletes who have never really done good targeted training in terms of like physiological systems, they’ve done a ton of volume, but they haven’t done good quality Viat max work and good quality threshold work a lot of the time. And so as soon as we do it, we see the aerobic capacity jump hugely in the course of, you know, a couple weeks, um, after they’ve, you know, gotten ready to do that kind of thing. And so, um, you know, this kind of thing is a lot like how I schedule, um, period for my athletes except, you know, I think he has an advantage in some ways in that, um, you know, his competitions are, you know, they’re not, they’re not anything like a cycling, uh, competition calendar, you know,

Kolie Moore (00:48:46):

You know, and not only that, um, they’re shorter and uh, you know, he, he has a lot of, uh, a lot of luxury, uh, in terms of, um, you know, his, his ability to recover and train. Yeah.

Adam Pulford (00:49:00):

Yep. Yeah. And you know, I’ll get into what I liked about the training side of it. But my, my

Adam Pulford (00:49:09):

Straight up criticism in terms of applying this to like say cycling or something else, is he even notes this in his, his paper is like, this is how he did it for skating a five and 10 K, which is essentially a short time trial, not a mass start start or, or a long pursuit or a long pursuit. Right. It’s not a mass start. He’s like, if it’s mass start yeah. Stuff changes, you can’t do this. Right. Yeah. Because of the, the dynamic aspect of it, where, where is the five and 10 K more controlled. Okay. And so keep that in mind for all those listeners who now are, wanna do a five and two and do 30 volume, 30 hours of volume. Okay. Um, so yes, to, to everything that co said, like the structure of it is great. The rhythm of it is you unique with the five and two.

Adam Pulford (00:49:54):

However, he found that that worked for him and it, it, it, it allowed him to stay more motivated because having two days completely off to hang out with friends and socialize, whatever that kept him going and his stoke was high on Monday. Um, but to Cole’s point, that’s pretty, you know, a lot of training five days. So genetically very gifted motivational was there. Um, and you know, his, his, uh, his overall progression and build was very sound. I mean, a lot of aerobic capacity. Then he shifted into some, what we, you know, would call like threshold. And then when it was time, he got very specific and he skated fast and he, he trained to do that. He also broke down his race very systematically in terms of the, the speed times per lap of what he would have to skate in order to achieve a world record in order to, in order to win gold. And then he executed on it, like straight up. So I mean like the structure of everything is great, how he went about it was amazing. And there was, you know, obviously, and I’m not sitting here like trying to pull it apart. What I’m trying to do here is have a conversation about people are super excited about it. Now they, the, a champion did it, so now they want to do it. Right.

Adam Pulford (00:51:11):

Yep. And what would you say to that? Cool. Um, everybody wanted to do a five and two,

Kolie Moore (00:51:18):

You know, I’ve, um, I’ve experimented with that kind of stuff with some athletes and you have to be super, super, super well trained to do like three days of hard work in a row, much less four or five. Right. And just two days of recovery, like Nobody on my roster could do that. And I would, I would imagine very few people in the world could do that.

Adam Pulford (00:51:41):

Yeah. Cause, keep in mind, like these five days, you know, again, 30 hour, 30 to 38 hours. So we’re talking four at minimum eight at the maximum hours per day in a row of riding running. And you didn’t do that much skating in the off season. But anyway, so just to frame this up for people who haven’t read this thing yet, so anyway, sorry. Cool.

Kolie Moore (00:52:04):

Yeah. Well, I think actually one of the other things that this article does a good job of, uh, explaining to some degree is the amount of technique involved in speed skating.

Adam Pulford (00:52:13):

It’s actually really cool. I knew nothing really about that. So that’s it. This is cool.

Kolie Moore (00:52:16):

Yeah. Um, yeah, I had been kind of fascinated by speed skaters for a little while. Kind of like I’m fascinated by Olympic weightlifters. Um, or just weightlifters, if you’re wanna be pedantic about it. I know there’s people out there. Sorry. I know it’s just called weightlift. Okay. Um, that’s alright. Uh, so I think, um, you know, the thing, the thing with something like that is that, um, we don’t really have that kind of ability on, in cycling to manage splits and whatnot, but also in cycling, I’m gonna say it, there’s not a lot of technique involved unless you are racing offroad or like trials or something like that. Uh, there’s not a ton of technique.

Kolie Moore (00:52:58):

Um, it’s, uh, it’s unique to, well, it’s not unique. It’s actually, yeah. I think it’s unique to cycling in that there’s not much technique involved cause in a lot of sports, uh, you know, a good active recovery, moderate recovery kind of easy day is like work. Yep. Um, and we don’t really have the need to do that in cycling unless, you know, coaching somebody for cycle cross or mountain bike in which case. Okay, cool. Skills day, go off road, keep it of chill, you know, work on drops or whatever it is you wanna work on. Um, and so, you know, so when it comes to him skating at speed, um, you know, the tech, the technique in terms of corners and, you know, everything is, it’s really fascinating to compare with cycling because that’s the kind of thing where like, if I want to, um, improve, if I wanna train somebody for a, a pursuit, let’s say like a long pursuit, let’s say a five or six K pursuit.

Kolie Moore (00:53:58):

Um, you know, five, six minute effort. I would train them the same way as like regular pursuit, but there are two different sessions. I would have them be doing on the bike. As we get closer to competition, the first would be a straight up Viat max workout, which would be all out. I don’t care about your pacing. You just go start hard and you keep it hard. The goal is improving a rubber capacity, you know, to build on all that base that we’ve put in into you so far. The other one would be a race specific workout. Now we’re trying to gain the most speed. And so, you know, that’s one of the things that I noticed he wasn’t really doing because, you know, if, if you’re skating, whatever, you know, fast, hard efforts that you’re doing like to him, that’s probably good VO two max work. Um, but know to me, uh, you know, somebody like him, they can do it. Not everybody can have great view to max work done like that kind of evenly paced, somewhat sub maximal. Um, but he’s not so much other stuff it’s, it’s kind of hard to tease out, you know what I

Adam Pulford (00:54:59):

Mean? For sure. And that’s, that’s actually like a really, that that’s a point that I wasn’t necessarily gonna bring up here, but it was the kind of a question mark to me too, because he said like, in his latter the last couple years, he, he didn’t do too much what he called VO two work. And what I understood by that was the limit. Right. The maximum stuff, because he’s like, yeah, it’s too hard to recover from. Right. But he kind of hung his hat on, like I’m, I’m the skater that skated the most 32nd lap from what I under. And again, we’re hacks here when it comes to speed skating. I have no nothing, but from the context, I do know it’s a pretty fast lap. And, but to him it was somewhat race pace. And, but tolerable to the point point where it was like high threshold for him.

Adam Pulford (00:55:50):

So it wasn’t overly taxing to the point where he couldn’t come back and do it again the next day, cuz he clearly did. And he did so many of those, but that got his timing down. That was the rate specificity. And he knew that he, you know, he could skate, I think it was like 260 laps at 30 seconds in a week. Okay. Solid. Not all I gotta do is start chipping it down from there when I’m halfway through in order to achieve, uh, world record that’s in that process. Like I respect the process of breaking that down. That is so

Kolie Moore (00:56:22):

Cool. Yeah. And also I really liked how he mentioned that he felt like certain off ice techniques and like skating, slower, all that kind of stuff would actually disrupt his technique from, from skating at speed.

Adam Pulford (00:56:35):

That’s the other unique point. Right? So he, he doesn’t strength train. He doesn’t do the, um, slide board. He doesn’t, although

Kolie Moore (00:56:41):

He was already strong

Adam Pulford (00:56:43):

For sure. But yeah. And he did some and he nod to that too. He did slide board. He did strength training before, but in this, you know, then he, so he, and he was a speed skater, young developed. So he had a lot of ice time. Um, after PON chain, he, uh, was in the army for a year and then came back and kind of had this new way of kind of doing things. So keep in mind for like anytime it’s this is the ands Erickson sort of thing is he had a lot of hours in the bank before he did this latest thing too. So you can’t overlook those elements. Okay. Yeah. Before he did this, like Rocky Babo, Swedish speed skating sort of training regimen.

Kolie Moore (00:57:21):

Yeah. Punching, you know, uh, beef carcasses and whatnot.

Adam Pulford (00:57:26):

Right,

Kolie Moore (00:57:27):

Right. Cause I’m sure that’s how you train for boxing,

Adam Pulford (00:57:28):

Running through the fields, chasing things. I dunno. Um, so to kind of bring this thing back like, oh first, before we kind of bring this home, cuz we’re right on an hour and I promised myself, we wouldn’t go too far. The last thing I’ll say is this, guy’s also a prankster and a jokester. He has fun. He has a section on alcohol, which you should read. And he’s like, you know what? I didn’t deny myself a beer every once in a while. And sometimes I needed eight beers and whatever kept me happy. That was fine. So he, and he writes like this and it’s great. Not only that I saw found in New York times article, I’m gonna link to it in this. So everybody can in this quick read, it’s not 63 pages, but it talked about how he and a Swedish friend stole a fish before the Olympics dead fish. And they went in, they put it between the mattress and the box spring of some Dutch speed skaters and duct taped it like this. Oh God. And it just like beat and everything. And he, and, and the Dutch were like complaining. They’re like, no, it was the Norwegians. They did this, blah blah. And so, and then, and then, so it came out that it was actually him and they asked him like, why did it? He’s like, cuz it was funny.

Adam Pulford (00:58:39):

And so even though that there’s this battle Royal between, you know, the SWS and the Dutch, where everybody in the Dutch and speed skating you, he has a good time with it too. You know? And this is when I’m looking at what creates a champion train hard rest, well have fun along the way and let’s win some gold medals. And that’s why I think that’s why I wanted to talk about this. Um, the guy’s a champ for sure, but what you don’t do, what he did, it was his process us in, in what he found to be successful. However, what we can take away from it is, you know, he found what worked for him. He developed a lot of aerobic capacity. He changed the training to be more specific or developed energy systems along the way, got specific during race season and used these cues, call it rate, perceived effort or awareness tools along the way. Um, and, and challenged his coach to refine the process as he went in order to achieve what he wanted to achieve. And I think if, if there’s anything that you get when you read the six D three page thing, it is that it is not that you need to drink eight beers a night and do 38 hours of training

Kolie Moore (00:59:48):

And you also need to put dead animals in the beds of your, and that opponents, uh, don’t actually do that. Uh, you know, cuz I, I was just thinking if that were me like a cycling equivalent might be like somebody cutting your brake cables on your bike it before a race and now you’ve gotta bring it to a shop. And you’ve got that level of stress, like cuz that can hugely impact somebody’s like peak performance as that level of stress. And so, um,

Adam Pulford (01:00:13):

I think you did it like before the opening games. I I think

Kolie Moore (01:00:17):

All right. If it was as long as it was before the Olympics, that’s okay. If it was actually during the Olympics, that’s really.

Adam Pulford (01:00:22):

Yeah. I think it was like, I mean a few days ahead. I don’t know to be sure, but yeah, it good point Coley. Hopefully he didn’t do that like the night before.

Kolie Moore (01:00:31):

Hopefully not, oh God.

Adam Pulford (01:00:32):

Oh my gosh. But that would be a good, um, I mean that’s like, anyway, I won’t go there. I was gonna say that’s good war tactic.

Kolie Moore (01:00:40):

It’s it’s very, it’s the Norwegian godfather thing

Adam Pulford (01:00:43):

You go. Yeah for sure.

Kolie Moore (01:00:45):

Yeah. Gosh,

Adam Pulford (01:00:46):

Well co we’re we’re gonna wrap it up here right at the top of the hour. Um, thanks to coli of empirical cycling for, uh, joining us today to talk about some current events in the endurance world.

Kolie Moore (01:00:58):

Yeah. It’s been a lot of fun. Thanks for having me.

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