3 LIES Holding You Back as a New Cyclist

as a new cyclist you're extremely vulnerable to bad advice and even lies that are slowing you down I remember being a new cyclist it seems like every ride you go on no matter how hard you pedal an experienced Road cyclist with the calves of a Greek god and the arms of a T-Rex flies past you like you're standing still and in that moment all you want in the world is to be like them fast and unable to carry more than one grocery bag at a time but the path from slow to fast is a tricky one and just because the cycling industry or your friends tell you something that doesn't mean it's true in fact you might even be lying to yourself and you don't even know it yet so as a newly certified above average cyclist I'm going to tell you the hard truth I wish someone had told me starting with the most seductive lie all new road cyclists are told you don't have to wear spandex your cycling friends are likely telling you this for one of two reasons the first possibility is they don't want to scare you off which seems benign and it does come from a good place deep down I think we remember the only people who think cyclists look good in tight clothing are other cyclists but if you want to get faster they are doing you no favors by delaying your inevitable Journey to the tight side the other reason your friends may be telling you you don't need to wear a proper Road cycling kit is much more dangerous you might want to sit down because your friends are actively trying to slow you down and I can prove it think about the last time you held your hand out the window of a car with your palm down you barely feel the wind but the second you put your palm up a lot of wind maybe even pushes your hand back that is drag now take a look at that now take a look at your bike now take a look at this this is you this is your bike which one has more drag Bingo like it or not you are a drag on your bike remember that because we're going to revisit it in the final eye but right now we're going to take advantage of some lwh hanging fruit if you are the biggest point of drag on your bike then obviously wearing baggy clothes makes your surface area even bigger so wearing tight fitting clothing is going to reduce your drag and make you faster immediate after finishing that sentence I can hear the tippy tappy of keyboard Warriors so I have to squash this mini lie that comes up which is Arrow doesn't matter unless you're a pro or you're fast but that is a lie at 9 M an hour just 9 mph that's 15 km an hour air resistance becomes the dominant force of drag and from that point air resistance grows exponentially but what about uphill on a climb let's do this little thought experiment you could be going 5 mph up a hill but if there's a 10 mph headwind aerodynamics matter and just like the wind holding you back your own personal reservations may be holding you back from embracing the Lyra but I have good news for you the J curve if you're not familiar with the J curve this is what it looks like you often see it in a lot of large population studies for a myriad of reasons which we won't get into because today we're going to use it to predict your future you see before becoming one of us your view of the Lyra clad Road cyclist and and how appealing it is probably here zero or maybe a little below zero but as soon as you join us your opinion on how it looks drops sometimes substantially now I have a theory on this and the theory is very simple it's that now you realize you must wear it you're afraid of how your body is going to look and all a sudden you don't want to wear it but don't delay just embrace it because as you see as time goes by your opinion of how it looks will start to rise to the point where you not only surpass the point of ignoring or mild distain you'll begin to think that it looks amazing Bliss you'll still experience pain but the pain will come from things called intervals not from fear of how you look in Lyra you'll forget that it even looks weird trust me maybe I'm just living in this land of delusion now but I honestly believe there are some good-looking kit brands one of my favorites and the brand I decided to partner with with is attacker you don't have to necessarily buy from them and you don't have to splurge on the fanciest most expensive one piece speed suit because just going from normal baggy clothes or even not even baggy just normal clothes to a jersey and bib shorts that fit you is going to make you so much faster it's ridiculous it's way more comfortable it Wicks sweat it's just it's there's like a win-win win okay now that I've convinced you to cover your body with skin tight fabric I have to talk to you about what you're putting in your mouth because the second lie that is slowing you down is protein bars are good fuel protein is good for General Health but if you eat a lot of protein on your ride it will prevent you from performing at your maximum potential and I've got the receipts your muscles use a molecule called ATP every time they need to contract no ATP no pedal also no ATP no Li but you know that's a story for another day because it's so important your body can produce ATP in a bunch of different ways but primarily it does it by oxidating Fats and carbs this is an oversimplification but I'm going to say it anyway converting fats to ATP is slow and converting carbs to ATP is fast it's so fast in fact that your body keeps a reserve of carbs in the form of glycogen all over your body inside of your muscles and your liver that's why it's possible to wake up and immediately start sprinting without eating breakfast first but as soon as you deplete your glycogen stores you're GNA slow down if you've ever bonked congratulations you've depleted your glycogen energy store if you don't know what a bonk is it is different from a boink basically you feel like you hit a wall and you can't pedal any further not going to be able to do anything until you eat some food interestingly that's also the way you avoid bonking you avoid it by consuming carbs so your body can then rapidly convert those carbs to ATP the body will also be in the background converting fats into ATP but remember it's a much slower process everybody's body's different some people are more fat adapted which means their body is just really good at converting those fats to ATP even the most fat adapted athlete still needs carbs and they need a lot of them when you're sitting still you're doing nothing but breathing 40% or more of your ATP production comes from carbs and that number 60% fat 40% carbs starts to shift the more intense the activity gets as you pedal faster and faster your body uses less fats and more carbs to fuel itself until finally it hits a point where it stops using fats alog together and only uses carbs 100% carbs Pros know this that's why nowadays they take in 90 to 120 g or more of simple carbs per hour and that's because they know the body can only digest so much at a time and if you're going to go fast and you want the most efficient fuel you can't afford to slow down your ATP production by clogging your digestive system up with proteins and fats which coincidentally is exactly what you'll find on the back of a protein bar in addition to carbs look protein is important for Muscle Recovery after the ride fats are an essential macronutrient but they don't belong on your bike ride eat simple carbs on your bike ride and I promise you you will last longer and be faster and if you're worried about weight loss like maybe that's one of the reasons you started to ride your bike is to like get healthier or maybe lose weight fueling your ride properly will let you train more which will help you lose weight I personally have lost over 10 lbs that's like 4 and 12 kilos in the last 3 months while still consuming a bunch of carbs on my bike rights I'm working on a video that will come out in a few months talking about how important diet and lifestyle are off the bike but right now let me share the simple formula my coach has given me for the number of carbs to consume on a ride it's very easy and it might even bust a bonus lie that you've been telling yourself true or false every ride should be a Max effort look I get it it's really fun when you start riding to just like go as hard as you can you're getting new like personal records every single time you're watching like your average speed go up but going as hard as you can every single time is a good way to burn yourself out and even if you don't emotionally get burned out eventually you're going to hit a wall or Plateau you're going to stunt your growth which will prevent you from being as fast as you could be I'm a big believer in having a coach or a training plan for everyone including beginner cyclist but if you're not ready for that let me give you some simple training advice and then I'll share the fueling strategy my coach Ryan Thomas at the RCA gave me here's the training advice for every One Max effort ride you do the next two rides should be easy rides and when I say easy I mean easy you might hear these rides described as endurance rides or base rides or everybody favorite buzzword right now Zone 2 rides there are lots of videos here on YouTube you can find describing how to do these kinds of rides but basically rid slower than you think you should and keep constant pressure on the pedals that comes from my coach not from me constant pressure means keep pedaling even when you're going downhill so going uphill you're pedaling going downhill you're pedaling flat you Coast no I'm just kidding flat you pedal you don't need a heart rate monitor you don't need a power meter just try to keep constant pressure and that's going to do a lot to make your easy days super effective now here's the fueling strategy on those easy days aim for 40 G of carb per hour so if you're out for 2 hours 80 g of carbs if you're out for an hour 40 gam of carbs if you're out for a half hour on an easy day you could probably do without the carbs because you have enough glycogen stores in your body but you can have the carbs if you just want to you know maintain that habit on your hard days aim for 60 Gams to to 90 grams of carbs per hour now 90 grams of carbs an hour is a lot your body might need some time to adapt to that so start with 60 like I said before some pros take into like 120 grams an hour or even more there is still bait on debate on the efficacy at that like high level but you're just starting out so you don't have to worry about that 60 to 90 grams an hour on your hard days it's going to be more than enough how do you get it well there are a lot of sports drinks out there I love gummy bears some people Al pour sugar into their water bottles a really affordable drink that I sometimes like to use is a Formula 369 the important thing is to find the fuel whatever that is that works for your body so you might have to experiment with a couple different things until you find the the sugar I mean fuel that works best for you and look at you you've progressed so far down this path to speed I can barely recognize you anymore you wear the kit you're fueled by Sugar like a hummingbird you can taste the next level of speed just right there on the horizon but be careful this next lie is the most expensive one and it doesn't just get new cyclist even experien cyclists fall for this one and we fall all the time it's the lie you need a new bike to get faster a new bike might actually make you faster that's not the lie it's more subtle than that if you've optimized your training and your fueling and now you're looking to buy speed buying a new bike is just just about the least coste effective thing you can do there are a lot of things so many things you can buy that will make you faster for Less including our friend from the first lie Lyra remember that at 9 mph wind resistance becomes the primary form of drag but lucky for us there are plenty of other things that you can buy to make yourself more aerodynamic before resorting to a brand new aerobike here are just a few of them narrower handlebars because they reduce your frontal area and that's going to make you much more arrow and faster you can buy Arrow socks I like the silica Arrow socks that don't require hairspray to keep them up yes hairs spraying your socks is a real thing you can get an aerodynamic helmet uh but you may begin to realize now that buying aerodynamic gains is a dangerous slippery slope into looking like Rick Moranis from space ball so proceed with caution Carbon wheels are another place where you can buy an aerodynamic gain and with so many manufacturers these days it's becoming a more and more cost- effective way to buy speed but if you look closely here there is something else in plain sight that's an even better way to buy speed and I think it's perhaps the very best upgrade that you can make to your bike tires most bikes come with tires that are me at best upgrading to a premium Tire with a lower rolling resistance will not only make you faster it will also give your bike more grip and more Comfort Victoria Corsa Pros Continental GP 5000s and schwall pro ones are all premium tires I've ridden and I would recommend yes they cost more and they wear out faster they're more likely to get punctures but buying new tires is still much much cheaper than buying a brand new bike and the first time you ride them your bike is going to feel like a new bike if getting faster is your goal wear Lyra eat carbs and buy upgrades before upgrading your bike of course once you run out of upgrades you might want a new bike which obviously you'll have to upgrade welcome to Road cycling

Channel: Mitch Boyer

Views: 133,092

Keywords: cycling, bikes, road biking, mitch boyer

Id: pNAyghaLA1g

Length: 14min 15sec (855 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 01 2024