Cycling is an adventurous sport: every time you ride your bicycle you are in for a journey. With each turn of the pedal, we physically and mentally change and we choose to ride for many reasons. Whatever your reason: to continually do an activity with the intention of a result (be it health or a race result), is an intention of riding to your potential. Over the years I’ve coached hundreds of cyclists, from elite riders competing at the world championships to beginners who just want to be able to cycle-commute to work and feel safe on the road. While these categories of riders may seem worlds apart, they are in fact the same. Both want to ride to their potential. The elites want to achieve athletic success, while the commuters wanted to get safely to work and enjoy spending their time on the bike in the fresh air before work.
When I started cycling I found a limited number of resources that could help me achieve what I wanted to achieve while studying, working, travelling, and competing. All resources, be it books or internet websites, seemed to cater for the elite rider who could spent a lot of time training, and they all focused on the physical aspects of riding. There was a gap for the time conscious rider, and for a holistic approach that took into account my busy life with work, study, and family. Over one and a half decades of coaching, I’ve come up with a holistic approach that enables my riders to achieve their goals, and their potential and this is the intention behind this book.
That means this isn’t a typical cycling book. You will not find weight training exercises, or detailed descriptions of energy systems – you can find this information in the hundreds of books already available. Instead I am going to focus on the three key areas that have made the biggest difference to the riders I have coached: using exercise physiology, emotional intelligence, productivity, minimalism, psychology, and business. Our lives and our cycling are not separate from each other, which is why this holistic approach is fundamental to achieving your potential.
To achieve your potential we need to take a balanced approach, while also taking an extremely unbalanced one. This contradiction is the key to success. To become good at something you need to put the time in. This continued time and effort needs to be completely unbalanced otherwise the time you spend will be wasted. It is very easy to put a lot of time and effort into something and for nothing to improve or change. The reason for this is that it is an unbalanced amount of time spent on balance. Doing the same thing often does not necessarily stimulate improvement because you are spending an inordinate amount of time (unbalanced), doing the same thing (balanced input). Instead, we need to spend time taking an unbalanced approach, purposefully and consciously doing things differently to instigate improvements. This continual refining unbalances the seesaw and ensures you improve.
At every moment we have a threshold for improvement. By that I am not talking about anaerobic threshold but about a threshold for improvement. In the area before this threshold, our bodies and minds are comfortable and know what to do in each situation that is presented. Beyond the line our minds and bodies do not know what to do. This line can be crossed in many dimensions to ensure improvement, and the three key areas that will help you ride to your potential by crossing that line are:
· Technical
· Physical
· Lifestyle and Behaviour
To make improvements we need to keep ourselves unbalanced in these three areas over our current threshold, and we will go into detail as to how to do this and continue on your path to your potential. Cycling is a sport that is very physically demanding so it is easy to focus on this aspect and forget the gains that can be made from technique, lifestyle and behaviour. In each section I will give you the information you need, but I will not stop there. Information is not enough. I will also give you the process of how to use this information to improve your cycling. This process is fundamental, as information alone does not guarantee change. How many people know smoking is bad for their health, but still smoke?
Every pedal stroke, every bike ride, event and day is a journey, an adventure and an opportunity where we can achieve our potential. It takes a little knowledge and process to work this way so let’s get into it and show you how!
- Amy Taylor
