Breaking down sports science studies to help you become a Faster Cyclist and Endurance Athlete
How You Warm Up, and the Effect It Has Can Differ Based on your τVO2 and Event Duration Recent studies show that doing an active “warm-up” before an endurance event may improve how you perform. Scientists call this the “priming effect.” A warm-up changes how fast your body adapts its oxygen use when you start … Read more
Diet or Exercise: The Classic Question Gets a New Answer? A new article discusses a recent study that compared the effects of exercise and caloric restriction on reducing visceral fat in people who are overweight or obese. Visceral fat is a type of fat that accumulates in the abdominal cavity and surrounds vital organs such … Read more
Increased Capillaries , VEGF, eNOS and Potential Higher Oxygen Deliver and Waste Product Removal A recent study found that ketone ester supplements may help cyclists improve performance by boosting their body’s ability to deliver oxygen to muscles during intense training. Researchers studied 18 healthy and fit male volunteers, including cyclists, over 3 weeks of endurance overload cycling – … Read more
Can Cyclists Maintain Gains After Stopping Strength Training? A recent study explored if competitive cyclists could retain performance and strength improvements achieved from concurrent resistance and endurance training after stopping resistance training. Researchers studied nine well-trained competitive male cyclists over 14 weeks. For the first 8 weeks, the cyclists did periodized resistance training for their legs and core in … Read more
Competitive endurance athletes are always seeking ways to improve their performance. A recent study investigated the effects of changing the race distance on an athlete mid-race. The study looked at the Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) and how they coped with this manipulation. RPE is a measure of how hard an athlete feels they are … Read more
How much should you vary your efforts in a cycling time trial? Triathletes and time trial cyclists have often heard the pacing strategy, “Push more into a hill or a headwind.” Other wisdom includes, “Make sure you negative split.” But what do the data models say? Does surging into a higher aerobic zone or even … Read more
Endurance training benefits an endurance athlete because it places a progressive load on the athlete’s physiological systems that allow them to improve via adaptation over time (physiological adaptation). Measuring the load of a given session is important, as is the cumulative load over time. Fatigue scoring is computed on mostly external factors like: These measure … Read more
While many of us compete in sports that are straight-up repeated sprints, the varied, or stochastic, nature of a triathlon, bike race, or even a 5K where you must cover moves makes these studies more relevant to racing. STUDIES SUMMARY Research shows that New Zealand blackcurrant (NZBC) extract can improve performance in high-intensity interval and … Read more
Jumping Meta-Analysis Summary Two recent studies analyzed the effects of jump training on endurance athletes and found notable performance improvements. The systematic reviews and meta-analyses examined controlled studies involving healthy endurance runners of any age or sex. Jump training led to a significant moderate improvement in time-trial performance for distances between 2 to 5 kilometers, equal … Read more
The well-known ramp test or ramp workout is frequently used by endurance athletes either to measure progress (test) or elicit progress (training session) or both. The athlete increase power (cycling, rowing erg) etc. or pace (running) every certain amount of time (1 min blocks, 3 minute blocks, 5 minute blocks etc.) But what about a … Read more