​If you’re aiming to be at your best for 2025, now is a good time to set some goals.
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Goal setting is sports psychology 101. Of the mental coaching tools used by sports psychologists it’s probably the most valuable and is usually framed around the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound) acronym. The riders I coach who’ve achieved the most with their cycling are those who have a clear sense of why they train and set goals with a purpose clearly in mind. That is, they remain consistently committed to completing purposeful training by establishing goals that above all are meaningful to them.

SMART can be overdone. The mark of a successful goal is not whether it is ultimately achieved (if goals are ‘smashed’ then they’re too easy) but whether it is sufficiently meaningful to keep training on track when motivation dips. Coming up with something useful might involve a couple of deep breaths and allowing the mind to land on the real reasons why cycling has a value to you before putting pen to paper.   
For example, hitting 4w/kg at FTP by 4th Feb 2025 is a SMART cycling training goal but it lacks meaning. It’s a process target, not something that is psychologically connected to why you’re prepared to put so much effort and time into training. Your goals may be to stay fit, weight management, being in shape to do a week in Mallorca or something entirely different so it’s worth spending some time to frame something genuinely useful. Your targets may not have all the SMART credentials of a power to weight metric, but they are probably capable of being made SMART enough to be valuable. Pick goals that mean something to you not ones that fit conveniently in the box.

The right goal gives meaning to hard work, so you train with intent and purpose rather than just going through the motions. This makes training more effective, more consistent and ultimately makes you faster and fitter.

Above all, goal setting represents hope for the future. It demonstrates confidence and optimism about the ability to achieve continued enjoyment and satisfaction from cycling. This self-belief sits beside oxygen and carbohydrates as a vital training ingredient. Set your goals with this in mind.

If I can help with your training, get in touch here. Now is a great time to start the work for 2025. 

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​Rich Smith is a psychology graduate and a British Cycling qualified Level 3 Road and TT coach supporting riders nationally and internationally. He established RideFast Coaching in 2015 to provide effective training to cyclists after being sanctioned at work for proposing a goal of 'doing away with his earthly body and becoming a glowing nimbus of pure energy'.  

We all worship in different cathedrals, some of them built from medieval stone, others are the roads of France, the Crucible or Anfield. We suffer together and make our sacrifices in these places. And we all worship our own God’s, some wear a crown of thorns, others coloured shirts with their names inscribed on the back.   

Playing and watching sport is ubiquitous and engages us at an emotional and spiritual level. Any study of history, mythology, sociology, anthropology or psychology will throw up the reasons why human, particularly male, engagement in sport is endemic. Rules based low risk combat, territorial alliances and defence, shared suffering, family rituals, social bonding, sexual selection, the rush of exercise – the list is endless. Sport is an essential part of our culture and it is culture that separates humans from the other animals we share the planet with. 

I can think of a couple of football related examples demonstrating the cultural and emotional influence of sport, particular over men. First, I know that Trent Alexander-Arnold is not a middle aged, overweight white guy from Telford, yet I was recently in a gym with a man wearing a Liverpool football shirt with ‘Alexander Arnold 66’ emblazoned on the back. In what other environment would one man choose to celebrate another in this fashion? Where else would a male identify with another man so strongly he would wear his name? Secondly, there’s the old joke about a guy finding Alan Shearer in bed with his wife and asking him how many sugars he’d like in his tea. This touches on an ancient a taboo fuelled by eons old sexual jealously that usually inspires men to violence rather than laugher. Mix anything the power of sport and the shape of the world changes.      

However, encroaching commercialisation and mechanisation of sport represents the advance of the profane and a corresponding reduction in value. The amount of money flowing through a sport is not an appropriate measure of its success, it just demonstrates how detached it has become from its followers. Similarly, a mechanical approach to the application of sports rules and laws represents a retreat from the human and the humane. The introduction of Video Assistant Referee (VAR) technology in elite football typifies the foolishness of applying empirical measurability to an environment where interpretation is essential. In an attempt to remove the frailty of human judgement and imagined or real bias, it has amplified it. Endless pouring over super slow motion reruns and the application of laser-like analytics to interpretative rules and laws has thrown up some ludicrous decisions. If anything, the red lines, multiple replays and refereeing reviews emphasise an even greater need for the interpretation of what amounts to no more than ‘data’.  This has certainly not improved the game for players or supporters, nor has it made it fairer. 

I was expecting the machines to take over by marching towards us firing laser weapons. And it looks like they have. We’ve just been lied to by our Sci-Fi movies about what the machines might look like. However disappointing it is that our robot overlords don’t look like the Terminator, we must still resist them for the sake of humanity.

VAR comes from a commercial pressure where winning is judged the number of football shirts sold or TV revenue generated, not by the elation or despair of the players and supporters. The financial implications of a loss or a win in professional sport can be altered with a few keyboard strokes by the club’s accountants but for the devout, the heroic triumphs and catastrophic losses are etched on the soul. The victories are remembered with a warm pride and the losses hurt at depth. They really hurt.  For the money men, a loss shows only on the balance sheet. This is superficial and essentially meaningless to the real value of sport and its multitude of worshippers who will suffer or rejoice at an emotional level.
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The rise of materialism has eroded much of what is truly meaningful for humans and sport has been just one casualty of this. The commercial evolution of rugby is an example where this is having real world consequences for the health of participants. Recall that the game came about by accident but developed into one that could be played by all shapes, sizes and ages. Train on Wednesday, play on Saturday. The infrequency of playing and the physical conditioning of players mitigated injury risk. Now there is a growing litany of young, permanently injured players, performance enhancing drugs and chronic brain damage sacrificed on the altar of those who wear blazers rather than shorts keen to make a few quid. By no measure does this make the sport ‘better’. And of course rugby is not alone.    

So, what’s the moral of the story? Firstly, don’t judge the success of a sport by how much money is involved in it. It’s a poor measure of real value at the best of times and debases sport to the ordinary, rather than the extraordinary. Secondly, however dweeby they look, we can’t let the machines take over control of rule interpretation. Mistakes and all, that needs to be done by humans who you be booed in unison. There’s no point in making up rude songs about machines, because machines don’t care.

The team are currently preparing for the 25th World Transplant Games to be held in Dresden, Germany from 17th to 24th August 2025. The Games, and GBTx Cycling team, exist to demonstrate the success of organ donation and transplantation and increase awareness of the importance of joining the organ donor register.

The next training session for this latest edition of the games will be held on Sunday 8th September 2024 at Stourport cycling circuit.

The selection criteria for the team (in addition to having a life supporting organ transplant) are as follows:

1. Performance against age group peers at British Transplant Games (and European or World Transplant Games if relevant) or demonstration of potential to reach a competitive level at European or World level.
2. Demonstration of relevant cycling performances outside of transplant related cycling competition.
3. Attendance at the minimum number of the Team Briefings for WTG (and/or attendance at Cycling Coaching sessions).
4. Remaining sufficiently fit and healthy and committed to regular training and racing.
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It is the intention the team time trial teams (2 riders for women’s teams, 3 for men and 3 for mixed teams) will be selected from those riders who attend the training sessions or have the known technical, tactical and physiological performance characteristics to compete for podium positions. It is likely the Games organisers will limit the number of team time trials teams each country can enter.

You can follow the team along the journey here, on X @GBTxCyclists or on our Facebook page 

​Rich Smith coaches and rides for the GBTx Cycling Team after receiving a liver transplant 31 years ago competing in 10 editions of the Games from 1999 in Budapest to 2019 in Newcastle, winning 15 gold medals. He never stops going on about it either. Follow him on X @ridefastcoach 

​If you think you might be suffering from a common mental health disorder such as depression or anxiety, consider this before hitting the pills.

Mental and physical health are inseparable. Similarly, the 5 pillars in the diagram are inseparable. Daylight, activity, sleep, purpose and food are human essentials although, because they are ubiquitous we fail to recognise them as such. A deficiency in one will lead to a deficiency in the others. Improve one, and it will positively impact the others. It’s a vicious or virtuous circle. The choice as to which way we spin it is ours.  

Daylight – It sets our body clock, our circadian rhythm, which governs everything bodily including physical and mental recovery, digestion, hormonal response, metabolism and mood. Exposure to daylight sets and regulates all our operating systems so getting outside for 30 mins per day minimum even if the sun isn’t shining is vital, better still take exercise outside because…

Activity – Humans have not evolved to be sedentary or spend most of their time sitting down inside. To be physically and mental well we need to build and use muscle and be aerobically fit.  The NHS recommends a minimum of 2.5 hours of exercise per week and there is a stack of clinical evidence on the efficacy of physical exercise on health.  The combination of activity in daylight means you’ll get to…

Sleep - Ask yourself why we spend a third of our lives doing it, it’s vital for  creativity, trauma processing, brain cleaning, mood regulation and a myriad of other things. No animal, despite its potential survival advantages, has evolved the ability to do without sleep. Less than 7 hours per night sleep and you’re deprived, go without it for a month or more and you’ll die. It’s that critical but, like daylight, it’s ubiquitous so we don’t give it the prominence it deserves. Of course, creativity, problem solving and better mood regulation means we’re more likely to develop…

Purpose – There is a deep seated human need to be useful and to have a strong identity. Just ‘being’ isn’t enough for us. Cast aside the desire to be ‘happy’ – that’s the 2 minutes of emotion you get when the car passes its MOT. Aim for fulfilment, satisfaction and contentment, for that we need to understand who we are, what we stand for and what we have achieved. Doing something that leaves a legacy means we’re less likely to reach for life's harmful addictions, in particular…     
 
Food – The modern diet is laced with additive substances and chemicals that have cause the obesity crisis, notably added sugar, processed carbohydrate and Ultra Processed Food. 70% of the stuff sold in supermarkets, even bread, is made from ingredients you would not find in the home kitchen. The UN recognises the food industry is the new tobacco industry. A natural, varied diet with whole foods is essential to support the other pillars and promote, you guessed it, health and wellbeing.  
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The closer we get to these pillars, the closer we are to living to a point we have evolved too. It’s the best chance we have achieving mental and physical wellbeing without reaching for the pills because, as a wise man once said, ‘the drugs don’t work’.   

Not content with telling people how they should ride a bike, Rich Smith is now dabbling in mental health counselling as part of his MSc Psychology studies. Flush with meagre academic success, it seems he's now expanding his remit to tell people how to live their lives. No good can come of this. 

There has been a lot of noise in the cycling media about training at 'Zone 2'. Inspired by a question from one of my riders (thank you Rich) I thought I'd have a dig around to find out what all the fuss was about. This is what I discovered.

​Take away messages
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• The 'new' Zone 2 definition best equates to 70 - 80% of max heart rate or approximately 75 – 85% of FTP
• Zone 2 power is less intense than Zone 2 heart rate. The distinction between power and heart rate measurement is important because they do not equate 
• Rides of 60 mins to 2 hours in Zone 2 measured by heart rate, power or breathing should you wish to try that approach, remains an effective way to build aerobic endurance 
• The 80/20 principal is tried, tested and effective in terms of training load
• Zone 2 does not train the body to use fat as an alternative fuel source to carbohydrate and fasted training is a waste of time
• Zone 2 training is not new. The principles are tried and tested and it’s proved to be effective in developing fitness when augmented with high intensity efforts

Introduction

It makes sense to trust the training methods we know work, so novel approaches or new framings of existing training protocols should be welcomed but examined with a critical eye. Accordingly we should be rightly cautious about claims of efficacy of the latest training fad or the promise of quick fixes if they’re being sold without good evidence. Recently there has been a repackaging of ‘Zone 2’ training as all that is needed for race winning fitness. With training advice awash with ‘bro science’ this is, as you might expect, bollocks.

Tadej Pogačar’s coach, Iñigo San Millán’s message about the importance of Zone 2 training has been widely misinterpreted and misapplied. Whilst it is tempting to believe race winning performance emerges from a few hours of relatively easy riding measured by conversational breathing, it does not. However, Zone 2 is a vital component of a training mix to develop fitness but the nuance of the message has been lost. This piece will therefore address
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• Why the big fuss right now about Zone 2?
• How Zone 2 is defined in terms of intensity & what this means for duration and frequency
• What training in Zone 2 does and, importantly, does not do
• How it can be effectively implemented and measured

​Why the big fuss about Zone 2?
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Most of those involved in endurance training understand the value of longer endurance rides at relatively moderate intensities. Amassing base miles as part of periodised training over the colder months as preparation for cycling or racing in the warmer ones is not new so why the fuss now?
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• The celebrity of Iñigo San Millán, coach to Tadej Pogačar and other riders in the top 20 world rankings who is credited with the current hype around Zone 2. Cycling content creators have jumped on this and produced the usual ‘this is what you should do this week’ stuff
• A genuine counterpoint to the lack of performance gains from the Zwift generation characterised by short, hard training sessions and virtual races.  
• A questioning of whether the data produced by wearable technology is actually useful. Heart rate and power measurement is now ubiquitous but recently use of CGMs, HRV, sleep monitors and AI coaches has increased. The ‘Zone 2 by breathing’ message harks back to simpler days.   
• It sounds like an easy fix. By the time the advice has been filtered by the content creators and social media, the message is one of high performance without the hard graft of interval training.

​Defining Zone 2 – Intensity

How Zone 2 is defined depends on what is used to measure it.

The ‘San Millán’ definition of Zone 2

When interviewed San Millán defines Zone 2 intensity with reference to breathing, training whilst being able to hold a conversation or breathing through the nose. This is a very broad ‘measurement’ open to interpretation depending, amongst other things, on the nature of the conversation and the size of the nose. However, San Millán agreed with a question put to him by Dr Peter Attia that 70-80% Max heart rate is probably about right.

Zone 2 power

Andy Coggan (in Training and Racing with a Power Meter) who developed power zones based on a measure of Functional Threshold Power, defines Zone 2 as 56 – 75% of FTP. Joe Friel (in The Power Meter Handbook) says the same. Interestingly, Training Peaks rounds this up to 60-80% of FTP which, at the top end makes quite a difference, and Zwift in their Blue Zone 2, call it 60-75% of FTP.  

Level 2 heart rate

Peter Keen who worked with British Cycling and Chris Boardman in the 1990s who pioneered heart rate and power measurement for cyclists defines Level 2 heart rate as 70-80% of max HR. This aligns with Dr Stephen Seiler’s Green Zone training which suggests an intensity not exceeding 80% of max heart rate.

Lactate threshold

There are 28 different definitions of lactate threshold and it’s not something that can be routinely monitored outside of the lab although, as you can imagine, a ‘wearable’ is being developed. For our purposes, the body will clear the lactate it generates at an intensity below 80% of max HR.  Fundamentally, this is steady state riding and, for our purposes Zone 2.
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In summary, in my mind at least, San Millán’s breathing/metabolic measured approach translates better to heart rate (an effort metric) than power (an output metric) and his Zone 2 does seem to equate broadly to 70-80% of max HR. The distinction between power and heart rate measurement is important because they do not equate. Zone 2 power is less intense than Level 2 heart rate. 

Defining Zone 2 – Duration

Using power as a metric, it’s unlikely you’ll find cycling coaching advice that recommends more than 6 hours at the bottom end of the zone 2 in one single session or more than 4 hours at the top. The possible exception being Ironman distance related. Boardman reckoned he would spend no more than 2 hours at an intensity of 70-80% of max HR at any point. However, all training is on a curve and the lower the intensity, the greater the potential duration and vice versa. San Millan talks about rides of 90mins or so in duration being effective which indicates to me Zone 2 based on power measurement is likely to be too easy to match his definition.

For practical purposes, rides of less than an hour are likely to be too short, more than 4 hours and it’ll drift into Zone 1. It seems to me durations of 60 mins to 2 hours in Zone 2 measured by heart rate,  breathing (should you wish to try that approach) or power at 70-85% of FTP is an effective time frame.

Defining Zone 2 – Frequency  

San Millán talks about riding at his Zone 2 for between 2 to 4 days a week. 2 days a week in the cycling season (on the assumption racing or events are happening) and 4 days a week during the training phases of the year.  This is a repackage of the 80/20 rule. A 5 hour training week would break down to 4 hours Zone 2 and 1 hour at higher intensities. The intense hour may itself break down to 80% Zone 2 (warm up, cool down and rest periods) with 20% at Zone 5 during interval training.
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This makes sense but is nothing new. The 80/20 principal is tried, tested and effective. Most balanced training programs allowing time for recovery and ‘real life’ will broadly fit into this healthy mix. 

What Zone 2 training does, and doesn’t do

At its core it’s bike riding and is essential for all those adaptions, muscular, metabolic, cardiovascular, technical, tactical and psychological on which high performance is based. It’s base miles and you can’t build high performance race winning intensity without it. However, there are some misleading claims about what it else Zone 2 does.

1. It trains the body to burn fat as an alternative energy source. Sadly not. The claim is the body is being trained to use fat, as opposed to glycogen, as a fuel to spare glycogen stores for later use. However, it has been demonstrated that any type of aerobic training, including HIIT, increases fat oxidization at a similar rate.
2. It helps as part of ‘fasted training’. It doesn’t. Fasted training is an uncomfortable waste of time. Carbohydrate is an essential fuel for endurance training and is readily available even on the move. Training without it on a regular basis is ineffective and potentially dangerous.  It’s ‘bro science’ at its worst.
3. Fat burning for weight loss. No, again it doesn’t work partly because exercise in general doesn’t support weight loss but also because more fat is burned as higher intensities only the proportion of fat to glycogen changes.
4. It generates high performance. Not really, at least not in isolation. It’s an essential component but it needs to be supplemented with a mix of high intensity training or one becomes adapted to Zone 2 and nothing more.   

How Zone 2 training is implemented and measured 

When asked ‘how much should I do?’ San Millan is cautious, with good reason, about being too specific on intensity, duration and frequency. Of course, each athlete is different so maybe it’s an impossible question, but it also maintains an air of mystery. Bringing together what I’ve heard him say about intensity, duration and frequency, it boils down to 2 to 4 days per week at 90 mins per session with conversational breathing as a measure of intensity. In fairness to him, I think this is about as close as you can get to saying something helpful and it's more informative than 'it depends on the individual'. However, it raises as many questions as it answers about how precisely it should be applied.

Conclusion

For what it’s worth, I think San Millán’s Zone 2 definition equates broadly to 70 - 80% max HR. This is a really effective training zone and, however measured, we definitely need a proportion of it and 80/20 is not a bad starting point for mapping frequency and duration. Precisely how much, when and how often is going to depend on the goals and physiology of the individual rider. 

Whilst it might sound like pedantry, the subtle differences are important to get the benefits of training at Zone 2. Undercut it and it’s ‘junk miles’, overdo it and it risks over training and fatigue. Heart rate and power zones don’t match well but, using power as the measure, I think it equates better to 70-85% rather than the standard parameters of 56 to 75% of FTP. This is over the mid-point of Zone 2 power potentially merging into sweetspot (88% FTP) for a duration for 60mins. For rides up to 2 hours in duration 70% of FTP feels about right. Heart rate and power measurement used in tandem provide powerful metrics so try it and see? Do a 20 minute warm up and an hour at 70-80% max heart rate and see what Normalised Power is produced. Also, see how it feels and be conscious of your breathing - it's not easy riding. 

If you’ve fought your way through all this (well done and thanks) and have come to a big ‘so what?’ that’s pretty much where I got to too. To get fitter, doing a proportion of training at Zone 2 is great advice but it’s nothing new. That it needs to be programmed carefully and sustainably in combination with more intense work should come as no surprise either.
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Good old Zone 2 has just had a glow up, it’s been framed with a little mystery and accelerated with a sprinkling of celebrity stardust. The risk is that it is misinterpreted as it’s all that’s needed to generate high performance. I don’t think Tadej Pogačar is getting race fit with 6 hours a week riding whilst chatting and his coach does not make this claim. However, the power of his message and its attachment to Pogačar has become amplified by celebrity and distorted by influencers.

A casual flick through social or main stream media will leave the reader in no doubt the prevalence of mental illness is on the rise in the UK. It’s hard to avoid news and commentary programs on television that don’t frame stress and anxiety as part of the ‘permacrisis’ that seems to be integral part of everyday life. Indeed, a survey carried out by the NHS in 2014 revealed 1 in 6 people in the UK are experiencing a common mental health disorder, most commonly anxiety or depression. Now, NHS figures show this has risen to 1 in 4. 

The figures are alarming. Ironically stressful and depressing in fact, but they do require a certain amount of unpacking before they can be unquestioningly added to fuel the bonfire of worry engulfing the UK. In particular, questions about how anxiety is defined, about how it is experienced and about how it is treated both by health care professionals and addressed at a policy level by government should be addressed.  
 
The Oxford Dictionary of Psychology defines anxiety as a feeling of dysphoria (unease and dissatisfaction) together with symptoms of tension such as elevated heart rate, a tightening in the stomach and a dry mouth. This is a useful start, but it does little to explain the emotional impact and crippling dysfunction this can have on individuals and how it can make everyday life an insurmountable challenge for some.

 
How anxiety is experienced in the real world, and why it is a problem unique to humans is helpfully illuminated by Mark Williams, a Professor of Clinical Psychology at Oxford University. He asked an audience to imagine a scene from a wildlife documentary where a lion was circling a herd of gloriously oblivious impala. Gazing calmly, seemingly without a care in the world, when the impala become aware of the lion’s presence, they stop grazing and look up to locate the danger. As the lion charges, their natural ‘fight or flight’ instinct kicks in. Eyes widen, heart rate increases, muscles tense and the impala run flat out to escape unenviable prospect of being lion lunch. However, whether the lion is successful or not, it is only a matter of minutes before the impala resume their calm grazing. Seemingly oblivious to the recent attack and unconcerned about its inevitable reoccurrence.

​​Thankfully, most humans don’t have to deal with lion attacks but they do have to deal with attacks of different kinds all the time and, unlike the impala, have evolved a mind that is capable of remembering past traumas, projecting future ones and conjuring up the prospect of imagined ones, however fanciful, and adding them all to a complex social world. It seems humans don’t have the luxury of returning untroubled to peaceful grazing.  
  
This raises the question of whether anxiety, however unwelcome, is a natural and necessary state, an essential survival mechanism and something that should be accepted and managed as part of being human.

For those dealing with intrusive anxiety, a visit to the GP is often the first, and entirely sensible, point of call. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a doctor is likely to frame this as a pathological problem – an illness that needs to be treated and will respond by either.
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• Prescribing medication –The drug most commonly prescribed for anxiety is an antidepressant. The guidance used by doctors for diagnosing mental illnesses via symptoms described by patients, DSM5 now has 12 competing definitions for various types of anxiety and contains a list of symptoms open to interpretation. Psychoactive drugs alter brain chemistry to suppress symptoms rather than address causes and whilst they can be effective, challenges have been raised about their long term efficacy. 

 

• Recommending a talking therapy - Most commonly a type of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). This aims to investigate the underlying thinking and feelings generated by anxiety and take practical steps to address any resulting unhelpful behaviours. Talking therapies for anxiety have been shown to be effective. However, questions have been raised about whether short course psychotherapy is really focused on making people economically productive by returning them to work rather than dealing with underlying problems

Importantly, the prescription of drugs, psychological therapy, or a combination of both, treat anxiety as a problem or deficiency centred in the individual. This frames the experience as a personal failing of biology or cognition and, by extension, something that is the responsibility of the individual to address, albeit with help.  

However, there is a growing recognition that humans are social animals and, unlike impala, live in a very complex social world. A study in evolutionary psychology indicated, when compared to other primates, a disproportionately large part of the brain has evolved to deal with negotiating our social structure, thinking about others, what others might think, what others might think about us and even what others might think about others. It’s perhaps unsurprising that, although our minds are adept at dealing with the social affairs of those we are intimate with, when faced with multiple social triggers, often delivered with urgency implicated in the bleeps and flashing lights by a treasured hand held device, we struggle to cope. We live in a world where it seems everything is after our immediate attention.

There is a body of evidence suggesting that poor mental health generally, and anxiety specifically, is influenced less by biology or cognition and far more by our social circumstances. Particularly relevant in a post Covid, cost of living crisis dominated world, studies have shown inequality, characterised by a growing gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’, together with increasing individualism and materialism have significant negative impact on a sense of well-being and a healthy mental state.

The medicalisation of anxiety (and depression) also sidesteps a growing body of evidence showing that training and physical exercise is effective in relieving the intrusive symptoms of both. Simply, a daily 30 min walk outside can help but weight training and cardiovascular training is even better. However, drug companies don't make money by telling people to go for a walk. 

Arguably, against a background of the breakdown of the family and the erosion of trust in institutions, it is reasonable to question whether anxiety really is a problem that can be solved by medics, drugs and therapy or whether changes in public policy would be more effective. Whilst medical professionals should be the first port of call for those struggling with serious mental health problems, including anxiety at a debilitating level, it is inexcusable to ignore the evidence of a strong societal influence and the positive benefits of reconnecting with our environment through exercise. 

Rather than drugs and therapy, perhaps a more equal and accepting social landscape coupled with a daily walk would be more likely to support our return to peaceful grazing.  

I know right, disappointing.

Here we are doing all this riding and training, bashing out the endurance miles but our weight remains stubbornly the same. Shocking isn’t it? Feels like a betrayal for those of us who ride whilst watching what we eat but remain bewildered and frustrated that we carry more fat than we want despite mammoth efforts.

Why might this be?

Being charitable, it appears we’ve been misled about the contribution exercise has for weight loss. A cynic may say we’ve been lied too about how exercise and weight loss works by clever people in the food industry who are after our money. Some myths are busted below. 

We don’t burn as many calories as we think

A power meter will give a very accurate measurement of how many kcals a rider burns during training. A heart rate monitor will provide a decent estimate too. Logically we should be able knock this off daily calorie count, have a couple of biscuits and still be well under. Not so fast. A thing called the Energy Compensation Effect means because, knowingly or not, we take more rest after exercise so that consumption figure is reduced to 72% on average (Careau et al, 2021).

We’ve adapted to our energy expenditure

A seminal study on a hunter gather tribe, the Hadza in Tanzania, showed despite their very active lifestyle, they range over huge areas to collect food fundamentally taking a huge amount of exercise, their actual energy expenditure was no greater than people in developed Western societies. They adapted to the activity and have become efficient at a metabolic level. What makes them slim and have low body fat is the amount of food they eat, not how much they expend (Pontzer, H et al, 2012). As cyclists, we have also adapted to our way of life and have rebalanced our energy expenditure. 

We take energy from other biological systems

Train frequently and, yes, the energy will come from readily available stores – glycogen from the muscles and liver and an element of fat. However, it will also take energy away from the immune system, the brain (the biggest burner of energy at about 20% of all the energy we ingest), the reproductive system, the menstrual system in women and the digestive system. If you’ve ever tried riding hard after eating something significant, or tried to eat too quickly after a hard training session, you’ll probably be familiar with the uncomfortable consequences. The blood that should be in the gut digesting food has been diverted to the muscles. The rise of Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S) can affect both sexes but is particularly pernicious in women athletes who risk the effects of amenorrhea and a reduction in bone strength. A good reason for making sure we're properly fuelled when training.   

We probably eat more than we admit

Consciously or sub-consciously, we eat more than we should because we’re being healthy and righteous and therefore deserve a treat. Alternatively, we’ve done a lot of riding and we crave more calories because our biology tells us to return to homeostasis – to refill our valuable energy stores for future emergencies.

It's easy to drink a lot of calories without really noticing too. 

We eat the wrong things at the wrong time

Fast sugars like gels, bars, even bananas rapidly increase blood sugar levels and trigger an insulin response. Insulin removes unused glucose from the blood and stores it as fat. It does a cracking job at this which is why we have an obesity epidemic, a huge rise in type 2 diabetes and far more cases of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. 

To make matters worse, we put the body under stress when we exercise which triggers the release of cortisol. This is useful because we interpret that positively as excitement when exercising but the body doesn’t get the mental model and it will use cortisol to store fat if it can.
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Eating sugar rich food in the evenings or first thing in the morning – the worse culprits seem to be breakfast cereals and fruit juices - and there a good chance it will be stored. Bottom line is aerobic exercise like cycling requires carefully planned fuelling to ensure we get enough of the right stuff at the right time to help the system work optimally but no more than that.  

But, calories in equals calories out, right?
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Yes and no. This is the partial truth the food, fitness and health industries rely on. ‘CICO’ still holds broadly true insomuch as if you take in more energy than you expend it will be stored as fat, eat less and weight will be reduced. However, the effective variable is food, not exercise.

Research suggests how we take the calories in is increasingly important. Nutrient dense whole foods – foods that don’t have ingredients labels like chicken, fish, fruit, vegetables, salad and nuts are more filling so we tend to eat less of them. They are the original healthy alternative to Ultra Processed Food as nutrients enter the body more slowly in the transport system matched to our digestive system, not stripped to their raw components and effectively injected in the form of sugar rich liquids.

By way of example, measured by a boffin with a calorie bomb, 100kcals worth of pure white sugar has an actual absorption rate of about 95%, meaning the ingestion of 95kcals. Measured in the same way, 100kcals of almonds has a bioavailability of about 80kcals because some of the fats go undigested. Each food has it’s own bioavailability level when it makes contact with the human digestive system.
   
So, we’re screwed then?

If we’re aiming to lose weight by training it off, yes, we’re wasting our time although it does help maintain any weight loss already achieved. However, there are so many other benefits to cycling, and exercise generally, that it’s a no brainer to either continue or to start.

Activity is a vital part of human health – mental and physical. You almost certainly live a longer, happier life by taking regular exercise, just don’t rely on it as a weight loss mechanism.

​I’ve be accused of being a nutritional Luddite on a few occasions. I guess this stems back to being told firmly during my coaching qualifications that I was not a nutritionist and that, when asked for a sports nutrition recommendations, I should refer to a ‘healthy balanced diet’ and make a swift exit.
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I haven’t moved from this position and the more I find out about the food industry generally and the sports nutrition industry specifically, the less likely I am ever to do so. Academically I’m an evolutionary psychologist, interested in how & why humans have come to be what they are over the last couple of millions years so Luddite is an underestimate. Neolith more like. All this might seem a stretch for a piece about performance nutrition for cyclists but bear with me, at least I’m not starting with ‘first, the earth cooled’.
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We’ve been cooking food and combining ingredients to make tasty things for a long time. Research shows fire was first used to process food about 1.4 million years ago and has been in daily use for 300,000 years. Cooking allowed us to expand the things we could safely eat, helping us reproduce and spread across the globe. We evolved mainly eating the nuts, berries, meat and eggs that were naturally available to either hunt or gather. About 12,000 years ago humans began to domesticate wild crops to produce wheat and oats and animals (pigs and cattle) so we didn’t have to hunt or gather it just look after it, cook it and eat it. Evolutionarily it worked. There are now 8 billion of us.

All babies are born with the ability to digest their mother’s milk but this fades as they grow out of childhood. Adults developed the ability to process lactose (lactase persistence) about 5000 years ago because it was evolutionarily advantageous and genetically selected for. This means we are now able to drink milk and digest dairy foods without shitting ourselves to death or being sick. Milk is a readily available food source rich in protein, fat and minerals meaning a human with the ability to tolerate it had a better chance of surviving and reproducing than one that didn't. It is also sustainable provided we don’t eat the cow and turn its skin into shoes.

The reason for troubling you with this prehistoric lesson is to emphasise the human digestive system has evolved over millennia. If the fundamentals change, they change slowly. We need to reframe ‘performance nutrition’ because if we want to thrive as athletes we first need to be healthy humans and sadly, many of us are not. This means eating more whole, unprocessed foods without additives, particularly sugar and calorie free sweeteners. Whilst we desperately need to pay more heed to a digestive system attuned to dragging big stones around and have a knees up in mid summer, Ultra processed food (UPF) now makes up the majority of our diet. On average 73% of the food sold in supermarkets is UPF.  In the UK 1 in 4 adults are obese and a further 1 in 3 are overweight because of this. 

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​So, what’s to be done to ensure our diet supports rather than hinders performance?
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​Reduce consumption of Ultra Processed Foods - The food industry, of which sport nutrition is a microcosm, morphed from the mid-1970s from supplying food to producing consumables that look like food. We are now faced with clever, well financed corporate entities trying to persuade us to stuff our finely tuned system with chemicals that shouldn’t be there in quantities we don’t need. A study by an agency of the The World Health Organisation says Ultra Processed Food (UPF) is responsible for increases in cancer, heart disease and diabetes as well as encouraging over eating. Bread has historically been made from wheat, flour water and yeast. However, the ingredients list for a Sainsbury’s wholemeal loaf is wholemeal wheat flour, water, wheat gluten, yeast, rapeseed oil, salt, spirit vinegar, soya flour, calcium propionate, caramelised sugar, mono and diacetyl tartaric acid esters of mono and diglycerides of fatty acids, palm oil and ascorbic acid.  

​Eat whole foods - As sad as it seems, it is necessary to critically look at those things claiming to be food to see what emulsifiers, flavour enhancers, preservatives and sweeteners have been added to them to understand the effects they have. For example, sugar substitutes like aspartame prime the gut and hormonal response on taste to expect sugar or a nutrient that contains it. When the 2 million year old reward centre of the brain doesn’t get the calorific and nutritional content it has been conditioned to expect, cravings develop and temptation is to hit the biscuit barrel. Perhaps even worse, deprive the amygdala of the sweet treat is has been promised and it will become stressed and release cortisol with the doubly whammy of anxiety AND a greater propensity to store fat.  We’re better off just eating the sugar. A link to Dr Robert Lustig’s excellent summary of the effect of sugar and UPFs is here if you would like more detail. 

​Don’t fall for sports nutrition marketing - Humans can’t absorb more than 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour no matter how soft the cushion one sits on or how persuasive the marketing campaign. Evolution has given us a very effective mechanism for storing excess carbohydrate for later consumption - fat. Many of us have discovered building a fat store up is effortless, reducing it very difficult. On average we carry 1600 kcals worth of carbohydrate in the liver and muscles, enough for about 4 hours of Zone 2. Short training sessions do not need to be additionally fuelled. 

Beware of the zeal of the recent convert – Leave a packet of Mr Kipling’s Cherry Bakewells or some sherbet lemons within my catchment and there would be a good chance they’d go mysteriously, but rapidly, missing. Much of the information about Ultra Processed Food and sugar is new to me and I’m experimenting with changing my own diet. I’m acutely conscious of the zeal of the convert and I don’t want to join the ranks of the nutrition Nazis. However, maybe highlighting the struggle our prehistoric digestive system and brain has to extract anything nutritionally helpful and psychologically fulfilling  from the stuff provided by modern food industry will provide some (whole) food for thought.
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There is an excellent Royal Institution lecture by Dr Chris van Tulleken on YouTube here if you’d like to know more about UPFs.   

A biscuit snaffling nutritional hypocrite, Rich Smith is a psychology graduate and a British Cycling qualified Level 3 Road and TT coach supporting riders nationally and internationally. He is coach to the Great Britain Transplant Cycling team. He launched RideFast Coaching in 2015 to lecture people on what they should eat despite being unqualified to do so.

Consistency is not the most glamorous or motivational word is it? It's not the kind of word the health and fitness industry use to conjure up the image they’re selling. There’s lot of fitness, weight loss and beauty programs at this time of year that promise spectacular results within a matter of days. They show toned, happy and glamorous models eating probiotic naturally sourced Icelandic whale yoghurt and working out in a beautifully lit quiet gym. The association they’d like us to make is ‘buy our stuff, look like this’. In technical terms this is, of course, complete bollocks.

Truth is, a healthy dose of reality is a necessary precursor to making progress. Part of this is recognising the value of consistency in training. I know, boring isn’t it? But 4 out of 5 people who start exercise programs at this time of year quit within 5 months. Actually most stop after a 6 week period characterised by an initial flush of enthusiasm followed by rapidly declining attendance and abandonment, it just takes 5 months to cancel the subscription. For new runners, Strava data shows most won't make it past 19th January 
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In the fitness industry, the 2nd Friday in February is know as ‘Quitters Day’. The vast majority of people who have started something in January have packed it in by then. Pity really, because 6 weeks regular exercise is about the minimum period to see some meaningful improvement. 

​It doesn’t matter how tailored the training program, or how nutritious the yoghurt. If you don’t turn up and do it (or sit down and eat it I guess) consistently, it’s not going to work. Certainly, the most successful riders I coach all have consistency of training to thank in some part for making resilient long term gains.   

So, a few pointers and a hard truth.

• Set realistic, meaningful goals and track them. This will keep you going when things get tough. And things getting tough should be an expectation, not a surprise.  
• Don’t skip sessions. The only failed session is the one you don’t attempt. Try! Get on the turbo, get down the gym, whatever, but stick at it, it will pay off.
• Consistency trumps content every time. Even if you don’t hit the training parameters, something is better than nothing. Always.
• When motivation fades, rely on commitment, if necessary use ‘brain out’ delivery. Just do it! (somebody stole that from me).
• Training with a friend, engaging a PT or getting a coach helps accountability, consistency and adherence to program. Get one if you’re serious about making lasting change.

The hard truth is, be honest, if there’s a history of quitting health kicks or packing things in after a few weeks, don’t start. The gym subscription will go to waste, the Christmas gym kit will languish in the cupboard and the yoghurt will go out of date in the fridge.
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Happy New Year! 

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​Rich Smith is a psychology graduate and a British Cycling qualified Level 3 Road and TT coach supporting riders nationally and internationally. He is coach to the Great Britain Transplant Cycling team. Not quite as miserable as he sounds, he launched RideFast Coaching in 2015 to deliver one to one, rider centred training that is physiologically effective and psychologically sustainable.

​I came across an anecdote by the actor Michael Caine recently. Usually I’m reluctant to take any notice of pronouncements by actors because it’s their job to be convincing whilst saying things written by other people. However, Caine was talking about an incident whilst he was working as an actor and, far more importantly, he was Charlie Croker in the Italian Job. 

​He recounted a time during an improvisation where he had to enter a room whilst a couple were arguing. He was about to do his bit when a chair became stuck in the door and stopped him in his tracks. He froze. Something unexpected had occurred and it threw him. The director called a halt and explained that he should ‘use the difficulty’. He expanded, if the scene playing out is a comedy, fall over the chair or if a tragedy, pick it up and hit something with it. Fundamentally use what has happened, however challenging, as an opportunity to learn and progress.

For our purposes in a training environment, the difficulty could be as important missing a season’s goal, simply not hitting a power target in a single training session or something as prosaic as missing a planned ride. In fact anything perceived as missing or falling below set parameters.

Michael Caine's anecdote illustrates a process known as reframing. It’s used in sports psychology to alter performance affecting stress to useful excitement and in clinical settings by psychologists in cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to reframe unhelpful thoughts into ones that can be processed more positively. 

It's a process of using events and the information gathered from them dispassionately whilst disentangling the negative emotional element of unhelpful self-criticism. In essence to reframe an effort that has fallen short as a necessary and therefore successful failure. Provided we are prepared to persist, we learn far more from the things we get wrong than the ones we get right, we just have to frame the experience as essential part of progression and and not treat it as a personal disaster or a reflection of self-worth. Matthew Syed in his excellent book about the power of purposeful practice 'Bounce' wrote 'success is built upon the altar of necessary failure'. Simply we must try to do things just beyond our reach, fail, and keep trying. That way, we will ultimately succeed. 
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The best athletes, with best minds, understand this and apply it to their purposeful practice. See a mistake as a failure, the temptation is to stop trying. Reframe it as an essential part of the learning process and ‘use the difficulty’, and there'll be a better chance of blowing the bloody doors off.