Top 3 Bike Unlocks At Training Camp

Last week I hosted an athlete in Boulder for a 1 on 1 training camp.

And I want to share 3 huge bike training unlocks he made.

There is nothing like in-person time with an athlete. But even for someone just reading this online, you can steal this progress in your own training.

Let’s get to it.

This athlete has been training with me for 2+ years. We got connected on Twitter back in 2022.

He’s now done 3x 70.3s and is on the cusp of signing up for his first Ironman.

He’s also a new dad (5 month old baby boy), 29 years old and lives down in Austin, TX.

This was our first time hanging together in person.

There was one big adjustment I made with the structure of this camp (compared to the previous two I’ve hosted):

Major bike focus.

We had rides planned for all 3 days with swim and run training kept to shorter sessions that focused on technique and live film review.

This helped us boost the fitness gains, simplify logistics, make the gains we needed on swim and run and most importantly…

Maximize adventure in the mountains.

On to the training tips…

The first thing this athlete noticed when we started riding together was that I spent a lot of time in Little Ring (especially during warm ups).

He said he did almost 100% of his riding in Big Ring.

And right away we realized this set him up to be “grinding” through heavy gears on small climbs and rollers. He was often working harder than necessary (and losing speed in the process).

Little Ring is helpful for finding rhythm and building momentum without putting out more effort.

It helps maintain smooth gear shifting and helps you become more efficient overall.

After just a few minutes of intentional work, this athlete was dialed in on constant micro-adjustments with gear shifting that made him 10x more smooth on the bike.

It was 5 pm, hot as hell and we had already been out for 9 hours.

We were 80 miles (and 7.5k of climbing) into our Monster Mountain Ride.

This athlete’s prior longest ride was 60 (!!!) miles. And he wasn’t letting this opportunity for his first Century Ride slip.

We had a gut-check Aid Stop at Mile 80 for coconut water and Clif Bars and locked in for the final stretch.

Wind was whipping westward on the Front Range as we rode east down Highway 66 from Lyons, CO.

The wind conditions + fatigue made for a perfect end-of-race simulation.

You’re tired. It’s hot. And the body defaults to grinding through it.

But there’s another way…

Here’s where my athlete got an incredible learning lesson in aerodynamics.

I saw him seated upright and slogging away on the pedals. So I made a suggestion to change approach.

“Shift to an easier gear, lighten up on the pedals and just get more aero.

Think about cutting through the air rather than trying to overpower it.”

A few moments later we were flying down the highway at 22 mph pushing less than 150 watts.

Boom. Free speed.

The #1 unlock for every Tribal athlete that has come out to camp:

Getting better at descending.

And breaking before turns is a big hack to that process.

Many guys come out having never gone more than 30mph on the bike. And they’re scared shitless of going any faster than that.

So the whole time they’re riding the breaks. Especially on descending turns.

I bring them to a few intentional spots where we get descending practice in places where the road is smooth, traffic is limited and there are enough turns that we aren’t just bombing straight downhill.

This athlete absolutely crushed descending (he went 44mph, 10+ faster than ever before, on our first descent).

And he did it by learning to break before turns.

Here’s why that’s important:

When you pull on the breaks, the bike wants to stand straight up. That’s how the geometry of the bike works.

So any time you are breaking in the midst of a turn, the bike stands up and goes counter to any attempt to lean into the turn and flow through it.

This athlete started by breaking in turns. Then progressed to breaking before them.

Then made a huge jump to staying in aero right through them.

Overall, just huge leaps for this athlete on the bike in a few short days.

There is no progress like the progress that gets unlocked with in-person time together.