The program

None of this is new, it's the same program I've run for years. This year the pedal stroke program goes at my pace, which oddly is slower than most because I'm more critical of my own pedal stroke. I never move on until I've mastered the skill I'm working on. Isolation of glutes and quads within their ranges takes on a whole new meaning later on.

Strength training is something that takes place at the gym. I'm more than happy to discuss a strength training program, my concern is about safety. Strength training is about challenging the limits of lifting and tensile strength, there is always the danger of injury. 

Fitness training deals with building cardiovascular fitness and recovery. This is where the order of the program becomes important.  Lots of other coaching programs have zone 2 base mileage, claiming all kinds of benefits which can't be tested. My take on this is simple, it's the endless practice needed to perfect what was learned in pedal stroke - it's the autonomous stage of the learning process, it can't be done before the associative stage is done. 

The real focus for this season

Oval chainrings are nothing new, they've been around in some form for decades. The problem has always been that nobody engineered the pedal stroke based on the two large muscles that fight gravity all day, so the advantages have never been realized.  If you look at the marketing for every non-round chainring, you'll find that they believe there is a "dead spot" at the top & bottom of the stroke.  What I can see is that the glutes extend from the hip, so they are effective from 1:00 to 4:00, and the quads extend from the knee, so they are effective from 11:00 to 2:00. In other words, quads push forward, glutes push down, and you have two legs - where's the dead spot? There is a difference in mechanical advantage, glutes produce more torque with less pedal speed, quads produce less torque with more pedal speed. The ideal gearing system would be one that increased the gear while the glutes are active and decreased the gear while the quads are active - that's an oval chainring. Somehow nobody else has figured out that you have to train the rider to use them effectively... 

The pedal stroke program will focus on isolation of muscle groups and timing. Building a pedal stroke is a lot like learning how to juggle, first you need to become dead consistent with the simplest task, then you do the same for the second task. When both tasks are second nature, you can add them together.  Testing of each muscle group in isolation becomes important. Each muscle will have a most efficient cadence and a most effective workload. Repeated tests will show characteristics of the two muscle groups for workload (torque), cadence and endurance. If we take the ratio of the quad driven cadence to glute driven cadence we will have the aspect ratio of the oval chainring.