RIDE FASTER NOW WORDS Jamie Ewbank
Is there a quick fix to boost your performance? We talk to the experts to find out
Free speed, instant gains, low-hanging fruit - everybody has a name for the magical tweak that will have an immediate effect on your performance. And like the curmudgeons so many cyclists are, we tend to ignore them in favour of the relentless pursuit of miles, junk or otherwise.
There are plenty of sports where a little finesse here or there can make a big difference, but so much of cycling comes down to physical fitness, which can only be built through sustained effort, that any promises of instant gains are usually dismissed as a nostrum or, worse, a precursor to being offered the sort of chemical
assistance that doesn’t come from the coffee shop.
Cynicism aside, there are plenty of coaches, physiologists, mechanics and data-bashers who believe that there are substantial gains to be made for most of us. Even the fittest rider can tweak their equipment; the best-equipped rider can adjust their training; and, more contentiously, the most profligate can find a free improvement, while the pinchpennies can buy speed.
Whichever peg you hang from, our experts are sure you’ll find at least one thing here to give you a performance boost without demanding any more than half an hour of your time or draining your bank account.
01 Go low
“The most effective way to gain free speed is to become comfortable riding for extended periods of time in the drops. Most club cyclists spend the vast majority of their time on the hoods and very little in the drops. This is usually due to a lack of flexibility and core strength to maintain a stable posture and position in the drops.
“The difference in aerodynamic drag between the drops versus the hoods or the tops are enormous and fixing it with core exercises (see step 8) is the best path to free speed,” explains Brock University’s Professor of Kinesiology and author of Cycling Science, Stephen Cheung
Rob Kitching of data analysts Endurance Analytics agrees. “If you’ve got no more than half an hour a week, put that time into strengthening your core. It makes such a difference to the way you bear weight on your upper body. You’ll find that in no time at all, aggressive positions that once felt impossible will be within reach.”
02 Up the intensity
Almost all of our experts’ clients, from beginners to elites, have an old-fashioned excess of base miles. “Many amateurs spend too long in the grey zone riding hard but still w within their comfort zone,” says Rich Richard Mellik, bike fitter with FreeSp FreeSpeed. “You should pick one session a w week and include some short anaerobic int intervals that leave you begging for mer mercy. You should come to dread this session ses but enjoy the gains in your pow power.” “So m many riders lack intense traini training,” agrees Matt Rowe of Rowe an and King Coaching. “Most riders are good at riding ‘quite hard’, in zone 3 [75-83 per cent of maximum heart rate, brisk effort], but don’t give any focus and attention to the anaerobic aspect of their cycling, where our type II muscle fibres are used most. “You should factor in some 1min aerobic capacity efforts and hit your neuromuscular max power by doing some sprints. There are opportunities for all riders to improve, get faster and gain ‘free speed’, by increasing the quality, not the quantity, of their training. “For a new rider, simply completing some specific intervals and high-intensity interval training will stimulate your type II fast twitch muscle fibres. And that’s important because that’s where we see the greatest adaptations.”
03 Skills without bills
“There are so many ways that the typical club or recreational cyclist can enjoy free speed without buying anything or without any significant extra time investment,” says Professor Cheung. “Learn to ride in a tight pack. Being comfortable riding near others is essential, along with reading the wind to know where to find the best draft.”
The best method for doing so, according to Professor Cheung, is one that will be more familiar to schoolboy BMXers than road cyclists. “Do regular skills days with your mates, on old bikes in a grassy park – learn to bump elbows, bash shoulders, rub wheels and lean on each other.” As well as learning to stay upright in a tight, aero group, such rough and tumble skills have knock-on effects.
“You’ll have the confidence to really attack a corner on flats and descents without just riding the brakes. You learn how to let your bike and tyres move under you. This can give you free speed because you won’t be always slamming on the brakes at every twitch.”
04 Bike fit
“Free speed is elusive,” says Mellik. “Expensive speed is easier to find - better wheels or aero helmets will make you faster with no extra effort apart from opening your wallet. True free speed can be found by optimising your bike fit, as the faster you’re riding the more impact drag has on your speed. Getting more aerodynamic, more efficient, less injury prone and generating a better pedalling technique are all positive outcomes from a good bike position.”
05 Indoor training
Beyond bike position, Mellik suggests that the next most important free change that riders can make is to put aside posturing and junk miles in favour of repeatable, reliable rides. “I always raise an eyebrow hearing people talk about Velominati’s Rule 9 to ‘wrap up warm and get out in all weathers’. Regardless of weather, it is a fact that most cyclists, especially those living in urban areas, cannot train as effectively outdoors as they can indoors. Smart trainers and the new breed of training software are being used extensively by WorldTour pros because they are more effective ways of doing controlled intervals without being skewed by traffic lights, road conditions or headwinds.”
06 Dress to impress
Nobody wants to look like an overstuffed sausage when dressed for a ride, but Dr Steve Faulkner, Nottingham Trent University’s senior lecturer in sports and engineering, is clear that opting for ‘racer cut’ rather than ‘club’ clothing styles can have a huge benefit.
“It’s a sad truth that money does buy you speed, but how you choose to spend this money means you will get better value in certain areas,” explains Faulkner. “For example, clothing choice and proper maintenance of your bike is likely to give you a bigger performance benefit than shelling out on a new time-trial bike! I would look at your position on the bike and clothing selection. You don’t want to be wearing a flapping jersey and ill-fitting shorts if you’re trying to smash a 25-mile time trial personal best.”
07 Data-driven goals
“Data is your friend – it allows you to train smarter rather than harder. Use a power meter to track your gains and validate your training,” says Mellik.
It’s also important to use whatever data you gather, be it via smartphone app, heart rate monitor or wattage, for more than just Strava bragging rights. Rowe believes that data-driven training is vital for making above-average gains.
“If we’re looking to be smart with our time, I would ‘Power Profile’ clients using Andy Coggan’s Power Profiling technique, which basically tells us where our comparative strengths and weaknesses lie using four measurements - 5secs, 1min, 5mins and 20mins.
“From here, as a coach, you can identify strengths and weaknesses and link them to a rider’s goals. If a rider is good at sprinting, but their goal is endurance sportives, you don’t want to further develop that strength, but work on the identifed endurance weakness.
“Determine your goal, profile yourself and then complete training that’s specific to that goal. By aligning your training to your personal goals and physical makeup, you can train smart and realise superior benefits compared with training like everyone else.”
08 Core values
Pretty much everyone we spoke to had another recipe for free speed – core strength workouts. Having a stable platform from which to put power through your legs is of immeasurable benefit. “I try to get through one set of about six to seven core exercises, such as planks, side-planks and back extensions,” says Professor Cheung. “I have a stable of about 12 I choose from, five times a week. They take me 10-15 minutes first thing in the morning while my coffee is brewing. I find that’s more palatable than a longer 20-30-minute session two to three times a week, as that starts to feel like work.”
09 Weight training
Kitching analyses cyclists’ data, taking into account everything from wind speed and bike weight to the way a rider’s height affects aerodynamics, and he’s clear that there’s one area to gain free speed that everyone knows about and most people ignore.
“If we’re going to be brutally honest, I still believe that the area where a lot of riders don’t or won’t look is at their weight. When you see pro riders in person they’re even leaner than they look on the TV, and it’s a real giveaway as to who is or isn’t dedicated to competing at the top level. Weight, aside from slowing you down on climbs, has to be accelerated maybe hundreds of times in a road race. A lot of people don’t realise that even on a flat road at a constant speed, the power they lose to rolling resistance scales directly with the amount of weight going into the tyres. Then there is an aero angle. Weight has an impact on the rider’s frontal area and excess body fat compromises the kind of positions you can adopt on the bike and your ability to hold them.”
For a hobby that has a twin obsession with cake stops and sports supplements it’s hard to hear, but dietary intervention remains the best way to lose weight – and losing weight is a quick route to free speed.
10 All in the mind
There’s still one area that’s so often overlooked: mental toughness. There are no power meters for the brain, so we pretend we can’t train it but, says Andy Barton, a sports psychologist who’s worked with an array of Olympians, good mental habits can open up new ways of training and tap into physical reserves.
“One thing that can make a great difference to your performance is to mentally programme yourself to perform more effectively. This can be done by using mental rehearsal techniques where you imagine yourself cycling the way you want to. Imagine as vividly as you can what it looks like to go faster, what it feels like to cycle with more power and stamina than you have before, and even imagine how it sounds to get the full effect. When you use mental rehearsal, the mind gets used to a new ‘normal’ and so you train your mind and body to perform more effectively in a way that it feels natural. It’s free and it only takes a few minutes every day.”
Imagine as vividly as you can what it looks like to go faster, what it feels like to cycle with more power and stamina...