Training Made Simple

Toggling through today’s training sessions and their associated intricacies is almost as laborious an undertaking as the ride itself. Hannah Reynolds helps us get back to basics

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Our fascination with training techniques and hunting out marginal gains borders on consumeristic excess — the more we spend, the faster it’ll make us, we hope. Many of us spend money on increasingly elaborate training tools, apps and online diaries, as well as obsessively reading research material. Delving into the world of sports science, planning our training and even getting out on the bike to do a session can feel increasingly, even overwhelmingly complicated. Does it really have to be this way?

It wasn’t always so; reports of some of the greatest names in cycling show that training used to be a much more straightforward affair. “Ride as much or as little, as long or as short as you feel. But ride,” said Eddy Merckx. When asked how to go about improving as a bike rider, Fausto Coppi replied, “Ride a bike, ride a bike, ride a bike.”

Dr Jamie Pringle, head of science and technical development at the Boardman Performance Centre admits, “There are people out there whose job is to literally make it more complicated!” Plenty of consumers are willing to pay for this pointlessly complex ‘expertise’ and products. On the flip side, there are many people who dedicate their working lives to translating complicated research into applicable, effective advice — Pringle is one such person. And even he acknowledges, best is often simplest.

“I’ve been through three Olympic cycles now,” says Pringle, who previously worked as head of science for British Athletics, and before that as lead physiologist for the English Institute of Sport. “Keeping it simple was essentially my job. A lot of people would be really surprised at how important keeping it simple is in professional and Olympic sports.”