This episode looks at all the ways people tend to mess up their rest and recovery days so they're not nearly as restorative as they could be, including such things as riding too hard, lifting weights, cross training, not eating enough. We then suggest guidelines for taking rest days or weeks, getting maximum recovery benefits, individualizing these days to work best for you, and answer your listener questions.

In this episode, 20+ year bike racing veteran Giancarlo Bianchi discusses the tactics of bike racing, and the process of honing racecraft and why people thought his FTP was significantly higher than it is. We cover the chess-game aspects of bike racing like positioning, aerodynamics, wind, reading the competition and body language, course and competitor recon, and a lot of stories from his own race career. We also answer your listener questions like how to practice with few racing opportunities, tactics that might annoy other racers, and much more.

​Kyle makes it back from the desert in time to discuss common mistakes cyclists tend to make when they incorporate strength training. We discuss things like tracking load and fatigue, impact on the bike, recovery, session frequency and where it should occur in the week, max testing.. We also answer your listener questions on explosive lifting, hypertrophy vs strength phases, expected fitness impacts on the bike, alternatives to strength, water weight, and many other things.

When it comes to glycogen, does "train low" actually work? Rory joints to co-host as we examine and dissect the existing literature, and explore the limits of knowledge on p38 MAPK signaling as it relates to aerobic performance. We go through Kolie's coaching experience with these protocols, compare to existing recommendations, discuss why you should always check someone's references, and answer your listener questions.​
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Show Notes
Exercise Stimulates Pgc-1α Transcription in Skeletal Muscle through Activation of the p38 MAPK Pathway
Acute signalling responses to intense endurance training commenced with low or normal muscle glycogen
Skeletal muscle adaptation and performance responses to once a day versus twice every second day endurance training regimens

Pro cyclist and coach Taylor Warren joins for a wide ranging discussion, including how he still finds fitness improvements after a decade of training and racing, balancing rest and workouts mid season, the value of the basics, RPE, and if American racing has gotten easier or harder. We also answer your listener questions on Legion's tactics, the most important power durations for domestic US racing, racing the course vs racing the people, training regrets, how much pros train, and more.
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Show Notes
Taylor Warren bio
Taylor's IG

This is a wide ranging conversation with professional cyclist and Empirical Cycling coach Maeghan Easler. We discuss her successful race season, American vs European racing, and how improving fitness changed her training needs, along with more training and coaching topics like volume, recovery, intensity, trusting the process, 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.

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.​

Show Notes
Chronic activation of AMP kinase results in NRF-1 activation and mitochondrial biogenesis
Factors Influencing AMPK Activation During Cycling Exercise: A Pooled Analysis and Meta-Regression
Skeletal muscle AMPK is not activated during 2 h of moderate intensity exercise at ∼65% ?˙O2peak in endurance trained men
Carbohydrate improves exercise capacity but does not affect subcellular lipid droplet morphology, AMPK and p53 signalling in human skeletal muscle
Effect of exercise intensity and hypoxia on skeletal muscle AMPK signaling and substrate metabolism in humans

Marinus' email
KiloWatt Coaching IG

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.

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.

Show Notes
Kathryn Bertine
STAND
Homestretch Foundation

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