Last Updated on 10 November 2021:
I reference my ambitions to turn my clients into “complete” cyclists regularly; through my blog and directly with those I chose to work with. It’s also a big part of my book, “The Guide to Truly Effective Cycling”, and I always try to ensure my athletes are prepared for every eventuality in a more holistic way than what typical coaching does.
Covered in this blog:
- Becoming “complete” in training
- Top focus areas
- Becoming “complete” in your events
- Top focus areas
Becoming “complete” in training
The reality is, unless you are looking at your training holistically, you’ll never really unleash all your potential. Of course, there’s a degree of accurately gauging your commitment to be made – you’re only human and there is a line to be drawn between reaching your goals and loving every moment of the journey towards them – sadly, in the pursuit of cycling performance improvements, we often forget riding a bit is supposed to be fun.
You’ve probably heard people talk about the cycling training you complete only making up a fraction of the performance improvements you make, with a larger portion of those gains coming from your nutrition. I agree with this; eating healthy will increase your cycling performance. You don’t need to eat perfectly, but the closer you can get to eating healthily all the time, the stronger a cyclist you will become. There’s not a huge excuse to neglect this area either; you have to eat, so it might as well be healthy, at least some of the time!
How you approach your hydration is another key area to looking at your training holistically. While we all usually acknowledge that we need to eat differently, we often don’t understand how personal we need to hydrate too. We often all sweat different volumes of fluid and concentrations of electrolytes. Replenishing these will make a massive difference to an individual’s performance, so personalising a hydration strategy is a wise factor to spend some time on.
You probably know that your cycling performance improvements aren’t actually realised on the bike, they happen later after your body has had adequate time to recover. You can, of course, aid your body on its mission to recover. Many factors will contribute to your body recovering faster, the easiest win might be optimising your sleep, but making simple decisions based on if it will help or hinder your recovery, will help develop your recovery mindset. For example, next time you’re faced with this choice, take the lift/elevator rather than the stairs; your legs will thank you.
If you’ve read my book, you will know how big of an emphasis I place on developing the right mentality. I actually believe that our performance improvements come more from mentality than they do from training or nutrition. How you develop your mentality to improve your cycling performance is a huge area, but worth spending the time. Adding in meditation, mindfulness and gratitude practise, positive mental attitude training, and motivation work is a great start to developing that winning mentality.
Understanding the metrics and how to analyse your data is crucial if you are self-coaching. I always encourage my clients to ask questions about what their data means, what I’m looking for, and what markers we want to see as we improve. Spending a little time learning how to use your power meter, how to use the analytical software you’re using, and other similar areas, will really help you visualise and focus on the right area.
I can’t stress this one highly enough, but learning to ride your bike is incredibly important! Of course, I’m sure almost everyone reading this can, but do you have correct posture, are you pedalling efficiently, can you climb a hill efficiently, or are you losing loads of time descending or on the flats because you can’t ride well in a group? If you aren’t working with a coach, consider filming yourself and comparing this to “how to” videos. I often use Dartfish or Coach’s Eye with my non-local clients to show them how to correctly perform a given technique or skill.
The last factor I like to work with my clients on, in training, to help them become more complete is their tactics. This can be simple race tactics; breaking away, sprinting, bridging a gap, and so on, but often this is as simple as a pacing strategy for their sportive or gran fondo. It might be a wet weather or winter riding strategy, or it might be as simple as us looking at a course recce video to ensure there aren’t any nasty surprises. A little time spent here will be the icing on the cake as you head towards your events, and it will build positive habits for all your training and competition.
Top focus areas
Summarising what you’ve read above, here are my top focus areas for becoming a “complete” cyclist, in training:
- Nutrition
- Hydration
- Recovery
- Mentality
- Data analysis
- Technique
- Tactics
Becoming “complete” in your events
Unfortunately, you can’t really skip ahead to this part. You do really need to lay the groundwork in training for any of this to make sense or actually work. Thankfully, if you’ve followed my advice and done all the above in training, actually finishing this last, much smaller section, will be easy.
You can eat healthy and support your training, but if you neglect to be focused on your fuelling of events, you will very quickly pay the price. You should have an idea of how long it will take you to complete your event and how demanding it will be, creating a sportive or gran fondo nutrition plan will make a huge difference. The main point from this is to ensure you spend time in training to ensure your gut is adapted to it.
With dehydration causing decreases in performance of at least 10%, it is wise to ensure that you actually follow your hydration plan on race day too. While relatively similar to how you approach your daily hydration needs, it’s often an area that is easily forgotten in the excitement of your main event.
It is important to acknowledge that you will have dark periods during your event. There will be times where you wonder why you are bothering and if it would be ok to just pitch up at the nearest cafe and wait for the support vehicle. If you’ve been spending some time developing your mentality in training, this should be easy. Utilising visualization and power words (think Jensie’s “shut up legs’ ‘!) will help you push through the darkness.
This is where your warm-up is crucial. Even if you’re going off at an easy pace and there is minimal risk of injury, having a warm-up routine will help you get in the zone and place both your mind and body in a state ready to smash this ride.
Lastly, specific to your event, your tactics will play a huge part. Not focusing on racing tactics, such as breaking away, but more on your pacing plan, wet weather plan, and any other factor that is specific to your actual ride. This really varies depending on the type of event, and might not be too dissimilar to what you do in training, but spending some time ensuring you have the right tactics in place will make the day go a lot smoother. Remember to control your controllables, and not worry too much about the rest.
Top focus areas
Summarising what you’ve read above, here are my top focus areas for becoming a “complete” cyclist, in your events:
- Fuelling plan
- Hydration plan
- Mentality
- Pre-race routine
- Tactics
