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80 posts in Training science
Training with a heart rate monitor only: a complete guide
Heart rate is the most misread number in cycling — it lags, it drifts, and it moves with heat, sleep and caffeine. How to set zones properly, and where heart rate beats power rather than merely substituting for it.
Lactate threshold explained: LT1, LT2 and what they mean for your zones
There are two thresholds, not one, and lactate is a fuel rather than a waste product. What a lactate test actually measures, and how the two turning points map onto the training zones you already use.
Strength training for cyclists: sets, reps and when in the season
Heavy or explosive, how many sets, and where it goes in a week that already contains intervals. The programming detail behind the evidence that lifting makes cyclists faster — including the interference effect.
VLamax: the number that explains why two riders with the same FTP race differently
Your glycolytic ceiling is the other half of your metabolic profile, and it points in the opposite direction to your aerobic one. What VLamax is, how it is measured, what high and low mean on the road — and why it is far less validated than the coaching talk suggests.
Cycling as you age: what changes after 40, 50 and 60
Maximum heart rate falls, recovery slows and muscle needs defending — but the decline in trained riders is roughly half what it is in the sedentary. What changes decade by decade, and what training protects most.
Menstrual cycle and cycling training: what the research actually shows
Phase-based training plans are sold with far more confidence than the evidence supports. An honest read of a genuinely weak literature — and the things that are well established, from iron status to energy availability.
Cycling economy: why the same watts cost two riders different amounts
Two riders hold 250 watts; one is burning noticeably more oxygen to do it. Gross efficiency sits between roughly 18 and 24%, it is largely not trainable, and it decides more about a five-hour day than any interval session will.
Fast twitch, slow twitch: what fibre type means for how you should train
You cannot know your own fibre composition without a needle, the proxies people use are rough, and "train to your type" is weaker advice than it sounds. What is genuinely established about fibre types, and the handful of training decisions it should actually change.
The grey zone: is riding at 'medium' really wasted training?
"Junk miles" is the most repeated idea in amateur cycling and one of the least examined. Where the polarised argument came from, what those studies actually compared, and the case for tempo that the slogan quietly throws away.
Altitude training for amateur cyclists: what actually transfers to sea level
The hypoxic dose that moves haemoglobin mass is bigger and longer than most riders imagine, a third of people barely respond at all, and low iron makes the whole exercise pointless. What a two-week mountain holiday can and cannot do for you.
Lifting and riding in the same week: the interference effect, honestly
The molecular argument against doing both sounds decisive and mostly fails to show up in trained cyclists. Which direction the interference actually runs, how much separation matters, and a weekly template that stops the two from fighting.
Beyond TSS: TRIMP, hrTSS and session RPE compared
Four ways to put one number on a ride, and they disagree most exactly where it matters — the long easy day and the short savage one. What each metric systematically over- and under-values, and which to trust when.
The cyclist's bone problem: why riding alone doesn't build a skeleton
Road cycling is one of the few endurance sports associated with low bone mineral density, and the mechanism is not mysterious. Why unloaded exercise plus sweat losses plus under-eating compounds, and the short list of things that reverse it.
Repeated sprint ability: why the fifth effort is the one that matters
Nobody wins a race on their first sprint. What determines how little you lose across repeated maximal efforts, why the answer is largely aerobic, and how to train the thing that lets a sprinter sprint twice.
RPE: the cheapest, most underrated measurement in cycling
A number you say out loud after a ride tracks training load about as well as a power meter does, and catches things power cannot see — heat, illness, the fatigue you have been ignoring. How to calibrate your own scale so it means something.
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