Pavcast

Most often the quickest win for my new clients is the way we look at nutrition. I’m an advocate for eating healthy as often as possible. Mostly this consists of a diet high in fruits and vegetables, grains, healthy fats, and lean or plant based proteins. Eating little processed foods, refined sugar, trans fats, and often just drinking water or some form of electrolyte mix is my go to advice.

Typically, the one time I deviate from this is when fueling a long intense ride; something that might mimic a sportive or gran fondo - or, in fact, be the event itself.

Covered in this episode:

- Why fuel differently for long, more intense rides

- The science of fuelling for cycling

- Developing your gran fondo nutrition plan

- What to eat ~3 hours prior

- What to eat ~30 minutes prior

- What to eat per hour of training

- Why you should train with and test out your nutrition plan

Accurately gauging an athlete's commitment is something I’ve been passionate about since I started cycling coaching. It’s often a huge contradiction to the normal “you need to commit 100% to everything you do” kind of advice you might hear, but there’s a reason why you just can’t commit 100%...

Covered in this episode:

- Commitment relates to your ambition

- Top 10 reasons you can’t commit 100%

- Why you should dream big

- The importance of goal setting

- Summary

While chasing perfection is a fool's goal, eating as close to perfect as possible will certainly improve your cycling performance. There are many challenges that we face in getting this right, this article will aim to help you through them.

Covered in this episode:

- The basics of nutrition 

- Macronutrients

- Fat

- Protein

- Carbohydrate

- Micro-nutrients

- Quality

- Common nutrition myths busted

- The best nutrition plan to increase cycling performance 

- Top ten tips

- The best nutrition plan to lose weight while cycling

- Common questions and answers

- The psychology of eating

- Awareness

- Rhythm and balance

Unless you’re a professional cyclist, have aspirations of making it there, or an athlete who needs to divert every fibre of their being to completing their goals, you’d be forgiven for not making your cycling training your number one priority.

If you’ve read my thoughts around accurately gauging commitment, you’ll know that I place a lot of emphasis on ensuring my clients don’t accidentally overcommit; setting themselves up for failure.

Covered in this episode:

- Why being amateur is harder than being a pro

- How to approach your training

- How to fit cycling training into your busy schedule

- Commute

- Train at work

- Involve the family

- Get off your phone

- Anchor your day

Can you benefit from working with a coach? Yes. Do you necessarily need one? Well, this will depend on what your goals are.

Covered in this episode:

- Why work with a coach?

- Knowledge and experience

- Accountability

- Motivation

- Therapy

- Do you really need a cycling coach?

- Top factors to look for when hiring a cycling coach

None of us enter into this incredible sport with a thorough understanding of the basics of cycling training. Often we are fed confusing tidbits of information, ‘bro-science’, or even irrelevant anecdotal information.

Yet, having a general understanding of why we train is fundamental to seeing improvements. Much like being told to focus on the muscle you’re training in a gym, knowing what you’re focusing on in cycling training, will help improve your performance.

Covered in this episode:

- How to train using zones

- Which zone system should you use?

- Zones versus %FTP

- Understanding basic session structure

- Training pyramid

- The basics of adaptation

- Over or supercompensation

- Long term cycling performance

- The ideal training and recovery cycle

- Timing training around events

- How to taper

Why bother getting on the bike? What reason do you have for training? What is your ‘why’? These three powerful questions should be the driving force behind your goal setting. If you’re not asking yourself these questions when goal setting, you’re probably not focused enough on what you want to achieve.

Thankfully, a big part of being a coach is helping my clients accurately and effectively set goals.

Covered in this episode:

- Goal setting for cycling

- Long term goals

- Dreaming big, but keeping it real

- Short term goals

- Process goals

- Five ways to stay goal focused