Cycling in Alignment

The paradigm of climbing an endless mountain paints the picture of an athletic journey that at points will be fraught with endless comparisons to other athletes, and devastating setbacks with illness or injury. What if training and racing is more of an orbital journey? Your goal is one point of the orbit. At halfway, you can see your goal on the horizon. 

For the full journey, listen or read the transcript in the show description on https://www.fasttalklabs.com/category/cycling-in-alignment/. 

Greg Choat is a cycling coach and bike fitter with decades of experience, whose bike fitting knowledge traces back to the expertise of Steve Hogg. Understanding the quintessential difficulty of a bike fitter's challenge is most aptly painted in this proverb quoted by Greg in the show, "Man is to bicycle as fish is to elephant." Helping a human body fit seamlessly onto a carbon or metal frame requires mechanical knowledge of the bike as well as biomechanical and physiological knowledge of the human body. Preventing and dealing with injury caused by either poor form or poor bike fit is one of the primary challenges that Greg and Colby face in their work and unpack for you here. 

Website: www.sanussports.com

Instagram: @sanussportsusa

https://www.fasttalklabs.com/category/cycling-in-alignment/

Former guest on the podcast, triathlete and Feet Freex shoe creator, Jessi Stensland is here to unpack more of her evolution as an athlete. Starting as a D1 swimmer, making the Olympic trials, transitioning to triathlon, and finally competing in ultra Mountain Bike races are all a part Jessi's athletic journey. Her continued athletic evolution has a different focus than simply "winning" a race. Creating a long-term health and high-performance lifestyle is now the primary focus for Jessi. The idea of being "kinterractive" as Jessi defines in this podcast, is one of nature, activity, love, and connection. 

The essence of what training in alignment looks like began to crystallize in my mind through an email exchange with a listener of the podcast.

"As you've identified in your show amateurs look at pros for things like training, not realizing that all pros do is ride, sleep and eat. For those of us who race, how much training is too much. Where is the drop off in terms of results? Personally, I'm not willing to train 20 hours a week even if I had the time. Anyway, I'd be curious to know where the curve stops where the curve starts to drop in terms of fitness and health. When does it move?" 

I hope you find my answer to this question useful as you determine your own sport-life balance.

Time Trial position is tricky at best. Contortionism is the most appropriate word to describe the skill you must be able to master if you seek to be the fastest and most aero in a time trial. Riding in a time trial position is an increased functional load when compared to road riding.

The wider the handlebars, the wider the base of support, the narrower the bars, the narrower the base of support. This leads us into one of our first points about time trial, positional challenges and narrow base of support. Listen to the full episode and review the podcast transcript (https://www.fasttalklabs.com/category/cycling-in-alignment/) to learn the nitty-gritty about the idea time trial position. 

Superficial Back Line: https://www.flexibilityrx.com/reclaiming-the-sagittal-plane/

Crank Length https://cyclingtips.com/2017/09/crank-length-forget-leverage-power-fit/

Crank Length http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/2014/07/crank-length-whateverwithin-reason.html?m=1

Tony Martin sand paper story: https://www.stickybottle.com/latest-news/tony-martins-sandpaper-bum-wound-a-most-unusual-injury/

Rohan Dennis https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/racing/im-stay-rohan-dennis-says-change-mentality-delivered-world-championships-victory-438674

http://www.contortionhomepage.com/photolib.html

Paul Chek 90/90 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p6FtlqpAYg

James Wilson is the owner and founder of MTB Strength Systems. He is a mountain bike, strength, and Jujitsu coach based in Grand Junction, CO. He is also the inventor of the Catalyst Pedal. He has pioneered many advanced perspectives on strength training for cyclists, producing content on this topic starting in 2005. Our conversation includes James' thoughts on how power is most effectively made on the bike, how riders should stand more during training, and a model of tension during riding that is broken into four quadrants. Enjoy this discussion which is not only focused on mountain bikes; the concepts discussed apply to all aspects and disciplines of cycling.

https://www.bikejames.com

https://www.pedalinginnovations.com

https://www.bikejames.com/strength/3-bjj-core-training-exercises-to-help-your-mtb-riding/

https://www.bikejames.com/strength/winning-or-learning-learning-or-winninglessons-from-my-bjj-tournament/

The shoes James uses: https://www.somfootwear.com

Moninger the greatest American cyclist to never have ridden the Tour de France. Scott Moninger is a crafty all-around racer who has victories in road races, criteriums, time trials, and state races. He's a versatile rider and a passionate athlete with a deep love for the sport. His characteristically stoic expression on the bike and ruthless competitive nature has earned him the nickname of The Iceman. Hope you enjoy our regaling of old racing stories and that you find our conversation about coaching and training to be useful.  

Velocious coaching site:  https://www.velociouscyclingadventures.com

 Instagram: @moningerscott https://www.instagram.com/moningerscott/?hl=en

So many of my clients have questions and run into issues about saddle sores, and man, when you get a bad one, it can be really bad. I have actually had a couple of clients that suffered so severely, they had to have surgery. 

When you sit on a saddle, that's a lot of weight on a very small surface area. There's the weight of the torso, the weight of the helmet, the weight of the upper body, the arms -- it's all focused into this relatively small point. Then we add friction generated by the movement of the legs. With so many moving parts there is so much that can go wrong which can lead to undercarriage issues for the rider. Today, I've also got a special guest that we'll get to in the second part of the podcast. Don Powell is the creator and owner of Panache Cyclewear. He's been designing and creating his own cycling gear there for 12 years. We'll hear a bit from Don about the construction of chamois and fabrics and technical details in the second part.

RESOURCES: 

https://www.panachecyclewear.com: 

20% discount code: Alignment 

Kaerwell store link for Liposomal Glutathione: kaerwell.com/go/colbypearce 

Code for 10% off: Pearce10

Detox Pathways: https://nutritionsimplified.co/blog-post/5-detox-pathways-that-purify-your-body

Chamois cream: https://www.madalchemy.com

Dr. Bronner's soap: https://www.drbronner.com

Weleda soap: https://www.weleda.com 

Trainer platform: https://www.saris.com/product/mp1

Inside Ride Trainer platform for KICKR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnWv_0YE-fo&feature=youtu.be

Group rides are dead. Unpopular opinion number one. Even in ostensibly safe scenarios, group rides are dangerous. Rides are too big; riders are too brash; vehicles are too numerous, and drivers are too distracted. 

Other potentially unpopular opinions of Colby’s are related to indoor riding. He outlines some of the pros and cons of Zwifting, including the benefits of riding with extremely controlled and focused training, as well as increased blood volume versus the compounding effects of poor posture that the monotony of riding inside can foster. 

LINKS: 

https://lifeinthepeloton.com

http://www.insideride.com

https://www.saris.com/catalog/trainer-premium-accessories

My friend and colleague, Julie Young, sent me an email asking some deep, thoughtful questions about fitting riders properly on their mountain bikes. The central theme was around steeper seat tube angles on many modern mountain bikes and how that it is challenging and sometimes impossible to get a rider's saddle offset far enough back behind the bottom bracket on a mountain bike to match their road position.

This question has a lot of nuance and detail. I asked Julie if she would come back onto the pod to do a sort of Q&A style episode, inspired by her thoughtful question. Then, after laboring over these questions even further, I realized that I needed to bring in mountain bike geek-extraordinaire, Travis Brown, also a previous podcast guest (episode 14.) It was time to unpack bike geometry and rider weight distribution in great detail. \