LIKE A PRO…
Liam Holohan explains why it’s important to understand your abilities
Identify your strengths and weaknesses and boost your performance
In professional cycling, teams of backroom analysts monitor rider performance and feedback the areas they should work on. “You need to understand your weaknesses and strengths,” says Liam Holohan, “to train your eventspecific weakness (or ‘limiters’) while racing to your strengths.”
There are three methods for identifying limiters: lab test, field test and subject test. “You want a lab test to assess your underlying physiology, retesting after key mesocycles (training phases); field tracking using a power meter to ensure you’re on the right path, and subjective assessments.”
01 LAB TEST
The gold standard for figuring out your physiological strengths and weaknesses would be a lab test.
ADVANTAGES
There are many different tests available that give you an accurate and measurable account of what’s happening ‘under the hood’. This data can be interpreted to inform you where your physiological strengths and weaknesses lie.
DISADVANTAGES
The drawback of a lab test, however, is that it’s not so repeatable. It could get very expensive and inconvenient to continually re-test to see if the training is having the desired effect.
02 FIELD TEST
This is a far more accessible way to identify strengths and weaknesses.
ADVANTAGES
Using a power meter you can gather objective, and specific, data to assess how you’re performing in certain areas. A good starting point is the Power Profile Chart in the TrainingPeaks app.
DISADVANTAGES
The drawback is that the data can be misinterpreted and it’s quite basic. For example, it won’t take into account your ability to perform when in a fatigued state, an important marker for a Gran Fondo where the critical parts of the event can come after five hours.
03 SUBJECT TEST
Ideally, this should be carried out by a specialist coach.
ADVANTAGES
If you’re doing this yourself without a coach it’s important that you have a good baseline knowledge of your sport for it to be effective. Subjective assessments also help you assess your
YOUR SKILL AND TACTICAL STRENGTHS/WEAKNESSES AREAS IMPORTANT AS THE PHYSIOLOGY
skill and tactical strengths and weaknesses. These are often overlooked but are as important as the physiology.
DISADVANTAGES
It’s heavily subject to interpretation. For example, I had an athlete who felt they needed to improve their sprint power. But after some analysis, this wasn’t the case at all – they had plenty of power, but they couldn’t use it in the final stages of the race as they were too fatigued. If they had done lots of sprint training, it’s unlikely their event performance would have improved. However, with focused training to ensure they got to the line in good shape, they easily out-sprinted the opposition with very little increase in their peak sprint power.