HAS TRAINING REALLY CHANGED?

Despite decades of scientific research, getting fit on the bike still hinges on old-fashioned hard work. Are we looking for complexity where the answers remain simple,

- James Shrubsall

It’s been two decades since I last trained under a coach, and in that time, exercise science has moved on dramatically. Sweetspot training, now a staple of many riders’ plans, was barely talked about back then. But it’s not just training methods that have evolved - the science around how we measure training load, fuel performance, and optimise recovery has exploded, offering riders more tools and data than ever before.

Over the years, I’ve experimented with plenty of approaches, but I keep coming back to what works best for me - and, as it turns out, it’s not far off the routine my coach gave me two decades ago. The big reveal? Two hard sessions during the week and a long ride at the weekend. Sound familiar? If so, refer back to the previous paragraph - or simply look at your own training, and that of countless riding mates. Has anything really changed? Let's take a closer look.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat, as the saying goes - and just as many ways to build fitness on the bike. Ask any group of cyclists and you’ll find no two training routines are exactly alike. Even Adam and Simon Yates, identical twins competing at the very top level of the sport, don’t follow the same programme - not least because they ride for different teams with different approaches. This uniqueness is interesting but also perplexing: are we each doing our best guesswork?