Watts Doc #59: A Muscle Glycogen Paradox

This is a critical look at how our coaches use data, like its use in creating a logical framework, the challenging parts of analytics and data in decision making, and how much "the science" can really inform our decision making. Plus we discuss the seeming need for heuristics over nuanced takes, the role of the scientific process in coaching, our favorite metrics, and answer your listener questions.

We dig into a recent study showing a disconnect between equal muscle glycogen recovery and unequal high intensity interval performance due to delayed recovery fueling, despite equal total calories. We start with some background on glycogen's structure and the importance of fueling before discussing the outcomes and conclusions of this double blind, placebo-controlled crossover study before speculating on mechanisms and potential applications to trained cyclists, and connect it to common current nutrition practices.​

To celebrate over a million podcast listens we let you ask us anything, and we answered. You asked training questions about how we would refocus the US's cycling governing body, improving climbing, book suggestions, how long it takes to return to peak form, indoors vs outdoor duration equivalents, partial ROM lifts, if you need to be in a caloric surplus when training, tempo workouts, and more. We also answer more personal questions like our lift PRs and a game of FMK, music and food, plus updates on how and why our own training and competitive goals have shifted over the recent years.

This episode addresses common questions about winter/off-season training, and goes into how we plan and individualize effective winter training. We answer questions like whether it be all "zone two", when and how to include strength training, if you should do intervals and how hard they can be, sweetspot vs polarized, incorporating fun rides or Zwift and other virtual racing, and more. We share our thoughts on what we actually consider when we're planning training for our coaching and consultation clients like off-bike stress, race schedule, fatigue management, training history and personal physiology, dealing with fitness loss and expectations for regain, plus we answer a bunch of listener questions!

Coaches Kolie, Erica, and Gediminas talk about the most impactful training habits that cyclists can incorporate into their routines, and the ways that these habits can be overdone that end up working against us. We dig into consistency, nutrition quality, health consciousness, coaching relationships, focus, sleep, and more.

Our coaches address the common question of why your friend may be faster when doing less training than you, as well as why your experience level or race category probably doesn't indicate how much you should train. We look at the different returns on investment with training volume vs intensity, selection and survivor bias in cycling, a survey of power and training volume with racing cyclists in the US, and why comparison can be the thief of joy, but when it can be a useful tool for goal setting. We also answer your listener questions on genetics, time in zone progression, training time as a limiter, and more.

This episode is one of our deepest dives ever, into the literature on creatine's effects and tradeoffs with cycling performance, and how the results fare against Kolie's standard for being meaningful, noticeable, or measurable. Because individual studies report such varied results, we instead look at a meta analysis on creatine supplementation in aerobic performance, another on repeated sprints, plus a bonus study with a simulated road race. There's also a brief and explicitly non-expert look at a popular paper on creatine and cognition. Instead of recommending whether cyclists take creatine or not as a binary, we discuss the pros and cons, realistic expectations of effects, and in what cases we would consider supplementation. Plus your listener questions!

This episode we start with the old cycling adage "train your weaknesses, race your strengths" as the jumping off point to discuss strategies for diagnosing and training weaknesses in the off season. We decide for whom this would make sense as a strategy, the opportunity cost of training a weakness, low opportunity cost things to train, how race selection factors in, and much more.

This episode we look into the published literature on the surprisingly tight agreement between FTP and RPE and a couple different lab-derived measures of threshold like MLSS and critical power, along with the concept of anchoring. But first we get philosophical about how measurements often become definitions that can lose sight of our valid observations and experience. We wrap up by discussing FTP testing with RPE, plus answer your listener questions on RPE scales and anchors, RPE drift, common mistakes when using RPE, Borg's 6-20 vs 10 point scale, and much more.

This is a deep dive into four papers on hypertrophy and strength training, and use them to find guidelines around how cyclists can improve strength without gaining weight. We evaluate the stimulus and overall impact of eccentric vs concentric contractions, sets and reps, minimum dose for strength improvements, progressive overload, and nutrition.