Crank Cycling

It is essential to know your strengths and weaknesses before adding specificity to your training plan. There are two common approaches, 1) further develop your strengths, and 2) focus on your weaknesses. Riders training to their strengths dedicate time and energy where their skills and abilities already lie; others, focus on their weaknesses in order to develop a well-rounded set of abilities. The Crank Cycling Climbing Camp can help both types of riders.
The Crank Cycling Spring Climbing Camp is where a dedicated rider can harness the power of specificity in order to achieve new levels of performance. After determining a focus area and attaining a base-level of cycling fitness, adding training specificity complementing and stretching your abilities is the next step. If you are a climber, more climbing and specific gradients that mimic upcoming events, including appropriate duration and intensity, is essential. Planning on competing in a century race with a 3-mile climb? If so, then you will want to reflect that exact effort in your training. Do you have upcoming touring century rides? The first goal for specific training is to start with duration barely exceeding your existing limits. To maximize your training, the goal is to incrementally extend that duration until reaching the desired effort level for a given event. Accurately answering the following questions will effectively shape your training program:
1) Does the event have repeated efforts such as a circuit race?
2) Is the event a point-to-point event with continuously rolling terrain?
3) Are there repeated climbs?

After these efforts are added into your training plan you can take specificity a step further
by adding continuous blocks of the chosen discipline to stimulate further adaptation—a training camp is a perfect opportunity for this. Training camps can be as simple as a long weekend with multiple days of riding, or as intricate as choosing multiple specific climbs over 3 to 5 days while maintaining specific power or heart rate output.
Crank Cycling just completed a spring climbing camp in some of the most challenging and beautiful terrain in Southern California. For three days riders enjoyed a FULLY-SUPPORTED experience including a follow-vehicle, food, drinks, spare clothing, mechanical support, expert coaching, and evaluation. Riders climbed over 21,000 feet, sped down winding descents, and pushed themselves to new levels—all developing their riding skills and pushing their physical limits.

“It felt like I was on a 3 day vacation, except I was never more than an hour away from home. I got to push my body over some of the most beautiful climbs San Diego has to offer, while feeling very “pro” the entire time. There is nothing more relaxing than knowing you have a support vehicle near you at all times. A raise of your hand gets you anything you need, water , food, a jacket, a wheel change, sometimes just a word of support, or the directions to your next turn. I will be the first to sign up to Crank Cycling’s next climbing camp!” ~Jose Cepeda~

Summer Climbing camp

Jose and Coach Jesse

Coached athlete Justin Farrar

If you want to take your training to the next level, let the coaches at Crank Cycling know. We can help meet whatever training goals you have!

See you on the road,
Coach Jesse Eisner

I saw this story on Velonews today:   Upcoming from CycleOps: Heart-rate-based power meters and superlight carbon wheelset

I am going to say this as clearly and simply as I possibly can.  There is no way to measure power using heart rate.   It just isn’t possible.   Heart rate is to dynamic.  It changes due to factors such as fed state, level of fatigue, how long you have been exercising, hyrdation level and more.      Power measured via strain gauges is instantaneous,  and any effort put into the pedals can be measured right then and there, but but  heart rate may take several minutes to catch up.    So heart rate is a reasonable proxy  for effort level on long efforts, but  is practically useless for long efforts.

Like I said, I love my powertap,   I have one on my bike, and I have a studio full of powertap stationary trainers.   But don’t tell us you are measuring power when you aren’t.    What PT is trying to do is measure training stress using heart rate, and make it applicable across different types of exercise.   This is nothing new and it can be useful.    You can read a good article on TRIMP HERE.    But there is absolutely  no no way that TRIMP equals power measurement.

-Sean

I personally have been using power meters since 2002, and I love to use power meters to coach athletes. I’m kind of a science geek and I love to crunch the numbers and evaluate the data. I also love that fact that the power data can enhance or even tell a different story from what the athlete conveys. Power meters give truly objective and accurate information that can’t be obtained any other way. They let us track progress more accurately than any other method, and they help us dial in an athlete’s effort level to ensure an efficient use of time, as well as determine when “enough is enough.” There plenty of resources out there on training with power, and there is ever more powerful software available to analyze, evaluate, and plan training. These are all powerful tools, that help athletes track and attain higher levels of fitnes, as well as help coaches communicate and track their athletes better than ever. The problem comes when athletes and coaches become too reliant on the power meter.

The training and coaching of an athlete is not just a simple recipe or formula with predetermined inputs and outputs. Every athlete is different, and every athlete’s response is going to be just a little bit different. An athlete needs to be viewed as a whole organism, not just a set of power data. In fact the subjective feedback from an athlete is every bit as important as that power data. I think some athletes and coaches easily forget that. They just want to open up a book, take training plan from the book, and adjust it for the athlete’s power numbers. It is easy to get caught up in all the charts, graphs, and information that today’s powerful software provides, but all those charts and graphs just don’t tell the whole picture. I would argue that power data in isolation can even confuse the issue. For example in riders look at their power meter data along with a chart that says they are in a Cat 1 range and get frustrated because they are still a Cat 3.

How and athlete “feels” is every bit as important as what that athlete does. In fact there are several athletes I have been training for years that don’t use a a power meter, a heart rate monitor, or any piece of electronic equipment on their bikes whatsoever. We train primarily using RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion), or how an effort feels, and these athlete have reached many of their goals, as well as put wins on their palmares. Power meters have their place. And if i had my way, most of my athletes would train and race on them all the time. But power meters aren’t for everyone. Price, functionality, and even all of that information makes powermeters and training with power undesirable for some.

For those that don’t want to train with power, RPE works just fine. I used to rely heavily on heart rate monitors for athletes without power meters, but now I’ve gone the other way and prefer to use just mostly RPE. Heart rate data can simply change so much from day to day, and RPE conveys both what I want from the athlete, as well as what the athlete should do much better than heart rate.

Power meters have their place and many coaches and athletes love to use them, but they are by no means a requirement for success. Coaching and training is more than just looking at power numbers, and the entire experience of the athlete needs to be taken into account. Rate of perceived exertion and how an athlete feels is just as important as power numbers, and many coached athletes are successful using nothing more than than their own perceptions and some feedback from their coach.

Use the comments section below to tell me what you think.

I personally have been using power meters since 2002, and I love to use power meters to coach athletes. I’m kind of a science geek and I love to crunch the numbers and evaluate the data. I also love that fact that the power data can enhance or even tell a different story from what the athlete conveys. Power meters give truly objective and accurate information that can’t be obtained any other way. They let us track progress more accurately than any other method, and they help us dial in an athlete’s effort level to ensure an efficient use of time, as well as determine when “enough is enough.” There plenty of resources out there on training with power, and there is ever more powerful software available to analyze, evaluate, and plan training. These are all powerful tools, that help athletes track and attain higher levels of fitnes, as well as help coaches communicate and track their athletes better than ever. The problem comes when athletes and coaches become too reliant on the power meter.

The training and coaching of an athlete is not just a simple recipe or formula with predetermined inputs and outputs. Every athlete is different, and every athlete’s response is going to be just a little bit different. An athlete needs to be viewed as a whole organism, not just a set of power data. In fact the subjective feedback from an athlete is every bit as important as that power data. I think some athletes and coaches easily forget that. They just want to open up a book, take training plan from the book, and adjust it for the athlete’s power numbers. It is easy to get caught up in all the charts, graphs, and information that today’s powerful software provides, but all those charts and graphs just don’t tell the whole picture. I would argue that power data in isolation can even confuse the issue. For example in riders look at their power meter data along with a chart that says they are in a Cat 1 range and get frustrated because they are still a Cat 3.

How and athlete “feels” is every bit as important as what that athlete does. In fact there are several athletes I have been training for years that don’t use a a power meter, a heart rate monitor, or any piece of electronic equipment on their bikes whatsoever. We train primarily using RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion), or how an effort feels, and these athlete have reached many of their goals, as well as put wins on their palmares. Power meters have their place. And if i had my way, most of my athletes would train and race on them all the time. But power meters aren’t for everyone. Price, functionality, and even all of that information makes powermeters and training with power undesirable for some.

For those that don’t want to train with power, RPE works just fine. I used to rely heavily on heart rate monitors for athletes without power meters, but now I’ve gone the other way and prefer to use just mostly RPE. Heart rate data can simply change so much from day to day, and RPE conveys both what I want from the athlete, as well as what the athlete should do much better than heart rate.

Power meters have their place and many coaches and athletes love to use them, but they are by no means a requirement for success. Coaching and training is more than just looking at power numbers, and the entire experience of the athlete needs to be taken into account. Rate of perceived exertion and how an athlete feels is just as important as power numbers, and many coached athletes are successful using nothing more than than their own perceptions and some feedback from their coach.

Use the comments section below to tell me what you think.

Ok, You’ve got this fancy doohicky on your bike. Maybe its made in Germany, maybe its built in the US, . This fancy thingamajig may have cost you just about as much as some people spend on their entire first racing bike. It tells you how hard you are going in watts, it tells you you average watts, your max watts, it tells you how much work you’ve done in kiljoules, and more. It gives you all sorts of information, but what do you DO with all this information.

The coaches at Crank Cycling are here to help. We work with power every single day. We sell more Power Tap and SRM power measuring systems than most bike shops. We’ve helped elite athletes analyze their power files, and adjust their training.  We’ve written articles on power for local and national cycling news outlets, and we want to share our knowledge with you with you.

This clinic will cover:

• The basics such as how power is measured, what are the advantages and disadvantages of the different power measuring systems.
• How, when and why you should do field testing with your power meter.
• How to monitor and analyze individual workouts as well as weeks, months, or years worth of data.
• Creating and implementing a training plan based on power.
• Racing with your Power Meter
• and more

This clinic is appropriate for anyone who owns a power meter, or anyone who is thinking about purchasing a power meter.    It is appropriate for self coached athletes as well as athletes who work with a coach (Crank Cycling or anyone else!)*.    Knowledge is power, and the more knowledge you have, the greater your chances for success.

The clinic is scheduled for Sunday November 20^th at 1PM at our downtown training studio and is expected to be 3-4 hours in length.   The cost of the clinic is $99 with discounts being offered to Crank Cycling coached athletes or clubs with more  5 than athletes attending.

Registration is HERE , or use the contact form on the lower right or call Coach Burke at   six- one –nine -865-3389 for more information.

*Athletes that work with another coach may bring their coach with them to the clinic for no charge.  We welcome the company of knowledgeable coaches, and encourage their  participation in the question and answer portions of the clinic.

Ok, You’ve got this fancy doohicky on your bike. Maybe its made in Germany, maybe its built in the US, . This fancy thingamajig may have cost you just about as much as some people spend on their entire first racing bike. It tells you how hard you are going in watts, it tells you you average watts, your max watts, it tells you how much work you’ve done in kiljoules, and more. It gives you all sorts of information, but what do you DO with all this information.

The coaches at Crank Cycling are here to help. We work with power every single day. We sell more Power Tap and SRM power measuring systems than most bike shops. We’ve helped elite athletes analyze their power files, and adjust their training.  We’ve written articles on power for local and national cycling news outlets, and we want to share our knowledge with you with you.

This clinic will cover:

• The basics such as how power is measured, what are the advantages and disadvantages of the different power measuring systems.
• How, when and why you should do field testing with your power meter.
• How to monitor and analyze individual workouts as well as weeks, months, or years worth of data.
• Creating and implementing a training plan based on power.
• Racing with your Power Meter
• and more

This clinic is appropriate for anyone who owns a power meter, or anyone who is thinking about purchasing a power meter.    It is appropriate for self coached athletes as well as athletes who work with a coach (Crank Cycling or anyone else!)*.    Knowledge is power, and the more knowledge you have, the greater your chances for success.

The clinic is scheduled for Sunday November 20^th at 1PM at our downtown training studio and is expected to be 3-4 hours in length.   The cost of the clinic is $99 with discounts being offered to Crank Cycling coached athletes or clubs with more  5 than athletes attending.

Registration is HERE , or use the contact form on the lower right or call Coach Burke at   six- one –nine -865-3389 for more information.

*Athletes that work with another coach may bring their coach with them to the clinic for no charge.  We welcome the company of knowledgeable coaches, and encourage their  participation in the question and answer portions of the clinic.

I just recently sat down with one of Crank Cycling’s coached athletes, James Stout, for an interview about his 2010 season. We talked about RAAM, Superweek, Belgium, soft boiled eggs and Marmite.

We did a little ride before our interview,

Hard Ride!

and then poured a home-brew only to find that my microphone wasn’t working. However we did some planning for the coming 2011 season and had a great photo shoot in the process. We recorded our interview over Skype phone 2 days later.

Home-brew Pour

Planning for 2011

Soft Boiled Egg Cup

Soft boiled eggs with toast and vegimite yum!

Check out the pod cast.
James Stout Interview

I just recently sat down with one of Crank Cycling’s coached athletes, James Stout, for an interview about his 2010 season. We talked about RAAM, Superweek, Belgium, soft boiled eggs and Marmite.

We did a little ride before our interview,

Hard Ride!

and then poured a home-brew only to find that my microphone wasn’t working. However we did some planning for the coming 2011 season and had a great photo shoot in the process. We recorded our interview over Skype phone 2 days later.

Home-brew Pour

Planning for 2011

Soft Boiled Egg Cup

Soft boiled eggs with toast and vegimite yum!

Check out the pod cast.
James Stout Interview

You know you’ve been thinking about the taking the power meter plunge for a while now. We know that you want to quantify how hard you are pounding those pedals into submission (+- 1.5%) It is unlikely that your power meter will make you the as tough as Jens Voight,. Nor will it help you put out enough watts to power a small alpine village like Fabian Cancellara. But a PM can help you hone in your training so that you can see the maximum possible improvement, as well as make the most of your precious training time.
But what do you do with that expensive toy once you get it? Well, the Crank Cycling coaches are here to help. Crank Cycling is an authorized dealer for both Powertap and SRM and we really want to get you on a power meter. More than that….we want to get you into a power meter and teach you how to use it. That’s why from now through the end of October, we are giving you 3 months of coaching with the purchase of either an SRM or Powertap SL. It’s as easy as that. Buy a power meter and a Crank Cycling coach will work with you for 3 months. That alone is a $495 value. So head on over to the Coaches page and check out the coaches. Don’t know which coach is best suited for you? Contact head Coach Sean Burke and he will help you figure out which Crank Cycling coach is the best match for you.

So to sum it up…. Here are the reasons why you should buy a new power meter from Crank Cycling right now:

You’ll get free coaching worth about $500
It will help you make the most of your training time
You want to quantify how hard you are crushing it
They look cool
Jens Voight uses one, and he is a badass
You know you want one
This offer is only good through October 31st 2010

Contact Coach Burke at Coachsburke@gmail.com to get going on your power meter.

In some of the hottest weeks of the summer bicycle racers from all across America congregate in Milwaukee Wisconsin for 14 days of racing. This 2 weeks of racing is called superweek. The fields are big and the racing is fast and technical. If you want to pay your dues or earn your racing stripes you go and race superweek. One of the riders I manage on the Ranchos Development Elite Team has gone over to race for one of those two weeks. Below is an interview I did with him about half way through his race week.

Cheers
Coach Jesse