
117 episodes

Empirical Cycling Podcast Empirical Cycling
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- Sports
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4.8 • 156 Ratings
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Do you want to know how training makes you faster? Listen in. Kolie is a leading expert in endurance, sprint, and strength training for cyclists. Kyle is a NASA scientist and national champion sprinter on the track.
Empirical Cycling is a coaching company specializing in individualized training plans for all cycling disciplines. If you like the podcast, please consider a donation at http://www.empiricalcycling.com/donate.html
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Perspectives #28: Training Takes and Season Retrospective, with Maeghan Easler
This is a wide ranging conversation with professional cyclist and Empirical Cycling coach Maeghan Easler. We discuss her successful race season domestically and with the national team, American vs European racing, and how improving fitness changed her training needs, along with more training and coaching topics like volume, recovery, intensity, nutrition and bodyweight, individualizing, and why she prefers 7 hour rides to 8. Instead of listener questions to finish the episode, we react to your controversial training takes submitted for a now forever-lost episode.
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Watts Doc #45: How High Intensity Aerobic Adaptations With AMPK Do (And Don't) Work
This episode takes a long look at the mechanisms behind aerobic adaptations from high intensity exercise, starting with an early study showing how AMPK activation leads directly to mitochondrial biogenesis, followed by a recent meta-analysis showing when high intensity exercise does and doesn't lead to adaptation. We provide guidelines in terms of exercise intensity, duration, and how well trained you are. Then we give some practical takeaways, plus debunk all the ways "hacking" this adaptive signal chain don't work. Marinus Petersen of KiloWatt Coaching steps in as a guest co-host for Kyle and provides an additional perspective from his coaching experience, and his formal exercise physiology education.
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Perspectives #27: Common Reasons For Fitness Plateaus and Their Fixes, with Rory Porteous
Empirical Cycling coaches Kolie and Rory sit down for an in-depth discussion of the 5 most common reasons that they see for a fitness plateaus. Touched on are reasonable expectations for fitness progression, fatigue management, options for overcoming plateaus, and situations where it's out of your control.
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Perspectives #26: The Cost of Change, with Kathryn Bertine
Former pro cyclist and successful lobbyist for the Tour de France Femmes, Kathryn Bertine joins the podcast to discuss her new memoir about these efforts, STAND, which details what it took, and what it cost. We discuss the writing and publishing process, activism and slacktivism, what people can do to effect change at every level, the financial structure of the TdF and sponsorships in cycling, what the Homestretch Foundation is and its purpose, an unlikely friendship with a raunchy comedian, and much more.
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Ten Minute Tips #29: Training Myths, Part 3: Volume
This episode discusses (and debunks) five training myths regarding training volume, and your listener questions asked on Kolie's Instagram.
Myths addressed:
-You can overtrain on volume but not intensity
-Women can’t do as much volume as men
-You can replace high volume with high intensity
-Easy spinning is junk miles
-You don’t need to train many hours to be fast -
Watts Doc #44: Calcium Is An Underappreciated Aerobic Adaptive Signal
This episode looks at two classic studies illustrating the often overlooked connection between calcium and endurance performance by way of inducing mitochondrial biogenesis through more familiar pathways. We then discuss applicability of these learnings, plus potential pitfalls interpreting this information, and your listener questions.
Customer Reviews
Confession
I listen to this podcast on erg mode
Soooo deep
Kolie (the host) and his sidekick, Superstrong Astrophysicist, go very deep into what the heck happens when you train your body. It is cycling focused.
The backdrop of the show is this: we’re all different people with different current states, so understanding the actual physiology can influence the best path forward, rather than just doing the same thing as your favorite pro or best bro.
Spoiler alert: there is no magic bullet, and if you get lousy sleep and eat terribly, this won’t suddenly make you faster.
Um…..
You can’t host a podcast um and say Um at the beginning, um, middle and end of every sentence um.
You’re brilliant, you don’t need a filler to compensate. If you need a second; say nothing. Break this filthy habit!