This particular ride is written to be performed as much as it is to be coached. The instructor takes the position as a guide on a Haunted Bike Tour past a graveyard, through Halloween Town, into the woods, past a second graveyard, and concludes with a steep ascent to Dracula’s castle. The more theatrical—the better! Might I suggest ridiculous glasses or a witch/mad hatter hat…and a fog machine?Read more…
There’s a funny fable about a chicken and a pig who wanted to make a bacon-and-egg sandwich for the farmer they liked so much. The chicken said, “I could provide some eggs.” The pig replied, “that’s fine, but while you’re making a contribution, I’m making a real commitment!”Read more…
There comes a time during a workout when we inevitably sneak a peak at the person beside us and engage in one of the strongest motivators of all—competition. Dr. Haley Perlus proposes leveraging the power of competition in a healthy and supportive manner to empower your riders.Read more…
Studies prove that when you take twenty athletes of equal ability and give ten of them mental training, they will outperform the ten without it every time. Of all the various mental training techniques used today, visualization is the single most powerful one used to optimize performance. Here are three ways top performers harness the power of visualization to perform at their peak and how you can too.Read more…
In this final chapter of the Power Training e-book, Gene leaves us with this message, “This is why this book was written. This is why this is my full time occupation–creating resources for indoor cycling–because to train properly with the objective of wasting no time, insuring results, and having fun along the way takes time and dedication to get right. Not only are we spending time to get it right, but we are also making sure we can repeat the process, and thus reap the benefits multiple times over. That seems worth it to me. What about you?Read more…
What turns a workout into a power workout is simply the overall objective of that ride. While we can call these ‘power’ workouts, they will also improve your cardiovascular performance. The physical systems that produce energy in your body are all connected, and it is hard to affect one without impacting the other. We can target our workouts for specific applications of power, and this chapter will provide examples of this.Read more…
Are you a cycling instructor that hasn’t yet discovered the incredible joys of riding outside? Or perhaps you want to convince your students to consider riding outside. Robert gives you some tips on making the decision to become an outdoor rider. Don’t worry about cannibalizing your class numbers; in a sense, you are creating an even more committed client when you introduce them to outdoor cycling!
Read more…
As a way of establishing a sort of profile or fingerprint of your metabolic efficiency and rate of decoupling, you can establish what power you are able to generate at the top of each zone. The reason we look to the top of each zone is that in at least two of the five zones, this represents the point right before you ‘cross over’ into an area of more costly power generation. In other words, you are likely to get the most ‘bang for your buck’ if you can keep the effort just short of the threshold crossovers. Read more…
This chapter discusses how you can raise your limiters (what is holding you back…VO2? LT?), how your body responds to power generation (metabolic load) and proposes which zones you should work in. It’s all starting to come together in this amazing e-book on power!Read more…
This is the money chapter in this e-book on teaching with power! Even though bikes with power are increasing, instructors aren’t receiving the education they need to teach with power properly. Gene gives six “Dos” and six “Don’ts” when teaching with power, and lists numerous tips and tricks to increase your effectiveness when teaching with this amazing tool. (Part 2 of this chapter will post tomorrow)Read more…