Empirical Cycling Podcast

Billy Ryan of Aware Performance joins to discuss performance psychology. He gives practical guidelines and skills for training and racing, while uncovering their underlying methodology. We cover negative thoughts and feelings around performance, being rigidly flexible, mental focus, confidence vs competence, shaken confidence, and much more. Then we go deep on listener questions. This upload fixes the audio cutoff problem from the previous upload.

Dr. Traci Carson joints to discuss low energy availability and relative energy deficiency in sport, or LEA and RED-S. We consider their origin in the female athlete triad, some differences in female and male physiology and symptoms, the fuzziness of energy intake, symptom overlap with fat loss diets, the need for carbohydrates, the relationship to similar conditions like overtraining syndrome, social considerations and assessing cycling's broader awareness on these issues, and much more. Be sure to check the podcast notes to read the linked papers at https://www.empiricalcycling.com/podcast-episodes/perspectives-36-the-consequences-of-chronic-underfueling-with-traci-carson

This episode plays out one of Kolie's coaching thought experiments: what's the simplest training plan possible that would probably be effective for the largest number of people? We each present our plan and then critique them, once again realizing how difficult it is to create a plan without our usual tool of athlete feedback. This starts a discussion about the best potential audience for each plan, the different needs of beginner, intermediate, and advanced athletes.

We discuss everything sweetspot. How do we define it, what kind of training is it, what's the nature of progression, how much is too much, upsides and downsides including time efficiency, fueling, over/unders, and more. We also answer tons of listener questions, like if it can raise FTP, if it's overrated or underrated, sweetspot for sprinters, how long you can hold it relative to your FTP, and much, much more.