Our Coaching Philosophy
Each athlete has their own specific goals, needs, and experience levels within cycling, but here are some overarching principles which are important to us in to make decisions for training.
Long Term Enjoyment / Sustainability
Week to week training for athletes should be genuinely enjoyable, as to promote a healthy relationship with the act of training and keep it sustainable long term. This doesn’t mean that every moment on the bike will be a complete joy, but rather that long term fulfillment is our primary goal, long before we look at other metrics like specific power numbers or race results. If athletes are enjoying the process, we are doing something right.
Flexibility and Adherence to Sensations
We do not believe that an athlete failing to complete the assigned training on a given day is necessarily a failure on their part. If a highly motivated athlete is struggling to find the drive to ride, or a certain pace feels strangely fatiguing, these could be indications of fatigue rather than a lack of discipline on the part of the athlete. The ability for an athlete to know when to pull back on their training is incredibly useful, particularly in preventing chronic overtraining and burnout.
Importance of Fueling
Patrick would much rather an athlete slightly overfuel their training than underfuel it by any degree. Time and time again the benefits of routine high carb fueling have been observed for endurance athletes on all rides at endurance pace or above. Being able to have healthy routines around fueling allows athletes to be more resilient, recover faster, and train harder with less fatigue.
Intensity Periodization
In order to maximize the improvement of certain energy systems, dedicating blocks of time to focus on certain intensities is quite useful. Typically this is done during the offseason, where on bike stresses can be meticulously planned without the need for race day freshness. This can look like focusing on endurance and sweet spot during the fall to improve upon time to exhaustion (TTE), or a VO2 block during the winter to bump up threshold power.
