Fine-Tune Your Bike Fit (On Your Own!)

TriDot Podcast Episode 308

Fine-Tune Your Bike Fit (On Your Own!)

‍

Andrew Harley: Welcome to the TriDot Podcast. Today I have coach Sion McIntosh. He coaches for the Precision Race Team, a top ranked team in the EU. And we have coach Jeff Raines who is the lead coach of Team Raines. They are joining us to talk about how to dial in your bike fit on your own. We always advocate for working with a proper fitter, but reality is there are times your fit may need some tweaking, it may need some attention, and you may not always have the time, budget or accessibility to get that property proper fit. So hopefully this conversation helps you out with that fit on the bike.

I'm Andrew, the average triathlete, voice of the people and captain of the middle of the pack. We treat the show like any good workout. We'll start with a warmup question, settle into our main set conversation talking about how to tweak your own bike fit and then we'll wind things down by having our coaches answer an audience question as our cool down. Lots of good stuff. Let's get to it.

Announcer: This is the TriDot Podcast, the triathlon show that brings you world class coaching with every conversation. Let's get started with today's warm up!

Andrew Harley: Coach Sion, Coach Jeff, for our warm up question today, I want to know, out of all the triathlon events you have raced, what individual bike split are you the most proud of? So this doesn't have to be like where the whole race clicks just like the individual bike split. What's one you think back to and you're like, yeah, that's the one I smashed. That's the one I want to tell friends and family about and brag on myself on. Take a second. Brag on yourself. Tell us about your best bike split. Coach Sion, welcome to the Podcast. The first time I'll kick this over to you.

Sion McIntosh: Awesome. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I actually think if we're talking about my own bike split, it was probably IRONMAN Mallorca three or four years ago. I actually didn't have a great day that day, but I had spent a ton of time doing some wind tunnel testing beforehand and optimizing my bike fit. And my numbers on the day were actually really down on what I would trained and hoped for. But it was one of my best bike splits. I think I went 4:52 on a course. For anybody who knows Mallorca, it's got a fair bit of climbing on it and yeah, the numbers probably didn't look that great, but it showed that actually having my bike fit really dialed and having spent that time on optimizing the equipment in the tunnel beforehand. Speed that wins the race, right? Not, not power at the end of the day. So yeah, I was happy with that.

Andrew Harley: I think, Sion, we're going to have to bring you back on the pod just to talk about that wind tunnel experience. I'm curious to hear what that was like and what you learned from it and all of that. We definitely have some folks in the audience who are at the pointier end of the spectrum that might love that kind of an opportunity and hear how to go about it. But yeah, love this answer. Um, just to show the delta between me and Sion as cyclists. Sion went for what, what was it?

Sion McIntosh: 4:52.

Andrew Harley: 4:52 in Mallorca. I went like 6:17, I think in, in IRONMAN, Waco. So yeah, there's, there's about an hour plus delta between our cycling abilities. Coach Jeff Raines, same question over to you. What bike split are you the most proud of?

Jeff Raines: First, I just want to say welcome Sion. Sion is a, is a valued member of our staff on the coach onboarding team. So I've had the pleasure to Sion and work with him behind the scenes.

Andrew Harley: And we finally got him on the Podcast. Finally got him on the Podcast.

Jeff Raines: Welcome Sion. And you know, I'll say that the coveted sub 5-hour IRONMAN bike split is something I've been shooting for and a 2:20 half. And so I'm, I've gone 2:20 and some change in four different half irons. That's in the States. Miles per hour. Right. Is 24.0 miles per hour average bike split. If you can dip under 2:20. Well, I've gone 2:20 and change in four different races. 2:19. I haven't done it so I'm, I'm trying to do it at Michigan coming up here soon next month also. I'll just say one of my proudest bike splits is Nice. France.

Andrew Harley: Gotta be.

Jeff Raines: Yeah, I had a great time. I trained well. I took it easy out there. Didn't have a time goal, but just felt good the whole time. So I was proud of myself for that.

Andrew Harley: This one for me was, was pretty simple. It's, it's my, my personal best when it comes to the half iron distance. And in 2020, a bunch of us from the TriDot team went and raced Challenge Daytona. It's now been rebranded as Clash Daytona, but in 2020 it was challenge Daytona and my bike split that day. I had to pull it up on Strava to verify the exact time, but it was 2:38:27. I'm usually like a three hour flat guy when it comes to the half iron distance. Now that Daytona course is flat and fast. We had great weather that day. There was some winds, but not, you know, like, like a, like a monstrous wind that threw you off your pace. That was a 20.8 mile an hour average is the first time and only time at the half iron distance I have held an over 20 mile an hour average speed. I've never come close to touching that again. And what it showed me as a triathlete is I remember Jeff, Sion, when I got off the bike and started running, I felt so freaking good. And I was like, man, I've never, I, I, I, I've never felt this good at the start of the run. What's going on? Oh, I was on the bike 22 minutes less than usual. And so it was so illuminating for me on, if you improve in one discipline of the sport, like your swimmer bike, and you get out of the water quicker, you get off the bike quicker, that's less time on your legs in that discipline. So you're that much fresher for the run and now your run is benefiting from it. So, so any, any improving you do in your swim bike and run, it also helps you improve in the other disciplines because it keeps you that much fresher for the other disciplines of the race. So anyway, it was, it was super fascinating. That's still my best bike split to date and I would, I would love to get my fitness back to where I can go that, that fast again at the half iron distance.

We're going to throw this question out to our audience. I want to hear from you. What is the bike split you were the most proud of? Maybe it's because it was something like IRONMAN Nice where you're like, man, it wasn't my fastest, but I conquered a really cool challenge. Maybe it was just a time you smashed it. We want to hear from you. So find our posts on all of the socials asking you, what bike split are you the most proud of? I can't wait to hear what you, our listeners, have to say.

‍

Andrew Harley: On to our main set and I want to remind all of our listeners we are now a video Podcast. We finally got with the times and our are filming ourselves and editing ourselves and putting it out on the YouTube. And so if you consume your Podcast as audio, you can absolutely listen to us wherever you want to listen to us. If you like video Podcasts, our video Podcast is on YouTube and it is on Spotify for you to watch me having this conversation with Coach Jeff and Coach Sion.

Coach Jeff, Coach Sion, thanks so much to the two of you for jumping on this, this Podcast episode today. You both coach your athletes, you both work with triathletes, you know, those pesky triathletes that have a lot of questions. You, you, you coach us, you help us. How often are you, are you bringing up with your athletes their bike fit? How often are you visiting this and making sure that they're updating it? What, what reasons will you maybe prompt them to make a tweak in their fit, whether it's with a fitter or not? Coach Jeff, what do you think?

Jeff Raines: Oh, God. All the time, Weekly, multiple times a week. Just especially uncharted territory or going into our race prep stamina. Right? If you've got a long course race and you're spending more and more time than the week before on your long session, so, you know, really just so much time is spent on the bike and being confident on your bike, comfortable on your bike, you just going to help you training and racing, right. And a good fit is going to help you be more comfortable and, and more importantly, I would say it prevent injury. And then kind of like what you were saying, right? If you're fitter, you spend less time on the bike and you go into the run fresher. Right? But also inside of that, if you're confident and super comfortable on the bike, it sets you up for a better run as well. And so you're able to ride harder, faster, longer, all the things. Right? And it also, the bike that will also help you know what size bike to buy, right. In certain makes and models. And you'll make smarter purchasing choices as well. But I would just say, you know, the athlete being constantly aware of how they feel while they're on the bike is, especially after those big sessions, needs to be addressed. And so I always have my athletes after those big sessions, leave me the session notes. On Monday, way before and after, how many grams of carbs did they average per hour? Milligrams of sodium fluid ounces. And then how do they feel on the bike? Right. And there's a lot of detective work that needs to go in.

I think talking to my athletes about the bike and the bike that it's usually whenever we see or hear of an ache or pain, right. Or they're reporting, hey, my hip was a little tight or my lower back this or that. And, and usually I start with the bike. Have you made any tweaks? When was the last time you checked the legs on your, you know, wahoo kicker right here. I got one right here behind me. Right. Is one leg taller longer than the others? The bike leaning, is it creating a hip drop?

Just little things like that? Oh, yeah. I moved my smart trainer from the garage into the office. Right. And so little things, there's always detective work that needs to be done. And so a lot of times when, when you are intentional in that regard, that little ache or pain goes away if you dress that. I find that. And I'll just say like, like, for example, like if, if the athlete is cons, you know, maybe reporting that the back of the knee is bothering them, then it could be the seat is too high. Right. Too tall of a seat. Usually there's pain in the back of the knee. Or, or you know, that that seat is too high and the knee angle is too obtuse. Right? And then simply lowering the seat a centimeter or so, closing that knee angle 2 to 5 degrees can help. Right? And so there's just a lot of those little nuances that, that you can do and tweak to, to diagnose.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, it sounds like bike fit comes up regularly between you and your athletes and for a number of reasons. You outlined there, Coach Sion, is that the same for, for your experience between you and your athletes?

Sion McIntosh: Yeah, 100%. I mean, particularly in the early days with clients as well. Like, one of the first things I want to gauge when I'm working with a new client is one, how many different bikes are you riding on? And then two, on all of them.

Jeff Raines: N plus one.

Sion McIntosh: Yeah, n plus one.

Jeff Raines: Right.

Sion McIntosh: So I think I tend to find that a lot of people will be like, oh, everything's fine. And sometimes the issue is that they've thrown a new bike into the mix or a bike that they haven't ridden on in a long time, or in particular, maybe clients have taken the measurements off one bike and assumed that that just naturally translates over to another bike. And we know that's just not the case between brands these days. And so they might say, oh, well, I, you know, I, I took my saddle height off my TT bike and, and transferred it over to my, my road bike or my mountain bike. But the offset on that bike is completely different, so it's not going to feel the same. They could be overextend, overextending that those angles could be. The hip angle could be closed off a little bit too much. The back of the knee, like Jeff says, could be wide open. So I try to regularly have those Conversations.

And particularly if, if niggles crop up, like Jeff says, that's when I usually revisit it quite often and say, well, hey, have you been doing something different with your bike? Have you changed something? And also on race week, I don't know about you guys, but for some reason, everybody thinks the best time to make changes to a bike is on race week. I always revisit on race week and make sure they don't change anything.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, no, that's. Yeah, I'm glad you said that. Yeah. Cause that's. I think a large majority of our folks at home would think, oh, let me make sure this is right going in the race day, hey, at this point, just dance the dance. You practice dancing with the bike that you've practiced the dance with. That doesn't make sense, but you guys get it. So I'm curious, when it comes to our fit, is a bike fit it in terms of the impact it has on our riding experience, is it more of a comfort thing or is it a performance thing? Or is it a bit of both? Coach Sion?

Sion McIntosh: Oh, both 100%. I think biomechanically, we have to be within certain parameters when we're riding a bike in terms of those angles we talk about and those, those. We have kind of levers and touch points in cycling. So it's. Your three touch points are your cleat setup, your saddle set up, and your bars on the front end. And if one of those things are off, it can throw everything out of kilt for, for an athlete. And that's where the issues are going to come up. Because if a hip angle is closed off too much, well, you're not going to generate power the same way, because those glute muscles that we want to rely on in cycling aren't going to be activating in the same way. Equally. Comfort is a, is a huge thing. And so I don't know about, about, you know, you guys, but I found that there used to be a very old school style way of sort of bike fitting, particularly on tri bikes, where you would go really low on the front end and as high as possible on the back end. And that means I'm going to go fast than it looks.

Andrew Harley: Aero, Sion. It looks aero. Yeah, it looks it.

Sion McIntosh: And if we look the part, that's half the battle, right?

Andrew Harley: Yeah.

Sion McIntosh: But we actually know now that you can actually be relatively high on the front end and long. That's much more comfortable and it's more aero as well. So, you know, it's trying to shift those, those old School conversations into the new era of the sport and show people actually like arrows meant to be comfortable as well.

Andrew Harley: Yeah. Jeff, I'm curious. This isn't a question on our script for today, but I'm just thinking, thinking about it as we're talking a lot of triathletes, like, the focus of this conversation. We're talking about like how to, how to tweak your fit at home on your own. Right. For a variety of reasons. And, and already I'm hearing from you guys how important the right fit is, how it's important for our performance, it's important for our comfort and, and I mean, the, just one angle being off just a little bit. You know, Sion just said our hip being a little too close, for example, our glutes aren't firing like, like it, it. I feel like sometimes when I'm looking at my bike and I'm, I'm questioning the fit, you know, thinking about tweaking something, thinking about changing out elbow pads or changing a saddle or, or it's almost like I don't want to touch it myself because I don't trust myself to get it right and I don't want to like, ruin my bike fit. Jeff Raines, is, is, is bike fit something that, that we, we can feel confident if we're doing things the right way, we can get right at home on our own, or should we be scared of this?

Jeff Raines: You know, that's the million dollar question. I mean, you can make tweaks at home, but what I would do is, is honestly make sure that you know where that original position was. Right? So, so you can always refer back to that if you make one little change. I also recommend not making 5 different changes and then going out and just riding an hour in your neighborhood and then coming home and basing everything on that change, one little thing. So if that one discomfort goes away, you know, that's probably it. Right. But also test it on an interval session, a quality session. Right? And then also a long session before you're just set in stone. Because just because you feel good, you know, in a neighborhood loop, doesn't necessarily mean you're going to feel just as good six hours into a long ride. But, you know, I, I, I just want to echo kind of what Sion was saying, that, you know, comfort always trumps aggressiveness. I, I always say that. I also agree.

Andrew Harley: Would you say, Jeff, even for like, short course, you still want your athletes to be comfortable for a short course event?

Jeff Raines: Yeah.

Sion McIntosh: Yeah.

Jeff Raines: And I think it goes back to even what you said because you know, you're going to have a better run off the bike as well.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, true.

Jeff Raines: Now, like, I would just say this, that there you should consider getting a new bifid or making that little switch if you feel like something you might want to try. If one of three things changes, it's not just if you got, you know, you're done with IRONMAN and now you want to do sprints for a year and you want to go more aggressive. But I would say that like, if your power output significantly changes your body weight, right, or even that walk per kilo changes significantly or, or your, your goals in general, right. Are significantly changed, that's when you might want to consider making an adjustment. And you know that that proper bike fit, it improves whether you're especially the comfort aspect. If you are comfortable, you're going to do better, right? But the biggest thing is if you're comfortable or you have a good bike fit, you're gonna have better power transfer. And that's the whole goal of it, right? You want to reduce fatigue, you want to enhance speed and endurance. That's it. And incorrect bike fits can lead to knee, back, neck pain and reduce your efficiency. I mean, that's, that's what it all comes down to.

Andrew Harley: Okay? So we, we don't have to be afraid entirely of tinkering. We just need to tinker intelligently, not change too much at once. Really evaluate how it feels, what it fixes, what it hurts. A question I've had when it comes to bike fit, because I've, in my time in this sport, which, which now is coming up on, gosh, you know, 11, 12, 13 years that I've been a triathlete. You know, I've, I've worked with a couple different fitters and I've always felt like, like they did a good job. They, they were attentive, they knew what they were doing, they were qualified. But they all did kind of different things and they all had like some different approaches to the end fit they were trying to get me to. When it comes to like a romantic relationship, right, There are some people that believe there is just one soulmate out there for me, and if I find them, great. If I don't, it's never going to happen. And there's some people that think, oh, well, you just find somebody and, and you, you make it work with that person. You could have a. There's a bunch of the ones out there, not just the one. I had this question with bike fit. Is there like one proper bike fit that, like, that Is the ideal, that is the scenario that's going to work best for you, or are there kind of some, some variability on, in terms of what types of bike fits or measurements or angles could work for an athlete? Does that make sense? Am I asking a smart question, Coach Sion, please help me out here.

Sion McIntosh: Yeah, totally. I think that's a great question and I think it's really important that you fit the bike to the person and not the person to the bike. I think that's where, you know, some people can really go wrong. But there is no one size fits all. I think a great example of this I remember speaking with, with Sir Dave Brailsford. He used to run Team Sky and Team INEOS and he said it was really interesting. You had riders like Tom Pidcock, who is like a, for those who don't know, is like a pro Tour de France world rider, who, let's say if he had an accident or a mechanical on his bike, halfway through the race, you could throw a bike at him, another person's bike, and it didn't even have to be his bike or the same size, he would get on it and as long as the saddle height was relatively okay, he would ride it and he couldn't tell you a difference like that there was anything different about the position. You'd have people like Geraint Thomas, who would jump on the bike, who's a Tour de France winner, and he'd get on and go, no, my saddle's 2 millimeters too high. I can't ride this. It's not comfortable. And so you get these, these fluctuations which you call like macro and micro adjusters within bike fitting. And I think that's the same for the general public. You'll get some people who are really, really in tune with their bike fit and they can tell you if the nose of their saddle has maybe dropped a, you know, a degree. And you'll get other people, you can drop their saddle by a centimeter or 2 centimeters and they wouldn't tell you the difference. They'd be like, yep, still feels comfortable. So highly individual.

I think it's really important to note as well that it's an evolving thing. So a bike fit that works for you right now might not be the bike fit that works for you in six months time. And that could be because you're coming back into training, you could be coming back from an injury, or it can just be that you're naturally getting fitter and spending more time on the bike. And over time you want to make that a little bit more aggressive. Likewise, we spoke about comfort before. It could be the opposite where we want to change a position that was, we were once really happy holding, which was maybe a little bit more aggressive as we deem it. You might need to come out of that because you've had a little injury and you need to be more comfortable around the injury for a while to allow you to get that training in. So I think it's important to understand that it's not a one time thing. It's something that you do regularly want to revisit as an athlete, even if it's from home.

Andrew Harley: Yeah. And Jeff said a couple of things earlier, right. Of signs that you might, things that might prompt him to revisit a bike fit with his athletes. Things that, the one I had never heard before, Jeff, was if, if your power has dramatically increased or decreased, like if you're, if you've become through your training and in the last couple months just a stronger cyclist. Okay, well, maybe you should revisit your, your, your fit. I hadn't heard that one. That was really interesting to me. But anyway, last question I want to ask before we actually coach our folks at home on how to tweak their fit. Both you guys have given a couple things here, but, but I want to talk about just in our body, when our body's on the bike and we're riding our bike, whether that's on the trainer or whether that, that's outdoors, what are the signs in our body that we are fit, might need some adjusting. We've kind of referenced pain, we've referenced some discomfort, but, but as we're going through and making tweaks ourselves, what are the exact kind of areas, places we should pay attention to that. Okay, something's working or something's not working in the way our body feels? Coach Sion?

Sion McIntosh: Yeah, that's a really good question. And I think there's, there's some telltale signs, you know, if we're talking about triathletes specifically and tri bikes, a real good one is that feeling of not being able to get a breath in fully. So you can feel like you're, you're working hard, but you just can't, you almost can't get the breath in. That's usually a sign that somebody's a little bit too closed off on the front end so they, they can't contract the diaphragm and get their ribs to expand in the right way. Particularly in female athletes, I think this is more common and perhaps that's because, you know, bike fit in general is a, is a male dominated industry and perhaps we don't give the respect needed to female athletes. So they need to be a little bit wider on the front to be able to breathe. Tenderness on the saddle. If somebody's regularly shuffling, and by regular I mean almost every minute they're needing to shuffle round or they can't get into their bars as well and feel like they need to get up out of it a lot, it probably needs visiting if you're just not overall sort of, if you don't feel at one with the bike, I would say. And some people don't even realize that they're meant to feel comfortable on a bike. Right? It's quite often I do a bike bit and somebody goes, wow, I didn't know it felt this comfortable. I just assumed it was okay or I was meant to feel uncomfortable on the bike. No, absolutely not. You shouldn't feel uncomfortable on the bike.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, it's funny to say that when I first started cycling I just thought it was normal for like your, your feet or your hands to go numb or get tingly here and there. It's like, ah, it's just part of riding a bike. Right. Like to your point, there's only a couple touch points. The only thing touching the bike is my, my hands, feet and butt. So yeah, I, I guess every now and then my hand's gonna go to sleep and I gotta shake it out. Oh, I got my first proper bike fit and when I was telling the guy that that was a big red flag for him and it was like, oh, really? That shouldn't be happening. That's really funny. Coach Jeff, same question over to you. Anything additional that you, you would put prompt an athlete to just think about in terms of how their body's feeling on the bike when they're riding?

Jeff Raines: Yeah, Sion, nailed it. I mean, I'll just add one thing is that once you have that discomfort or pain or something, I want to refer back to that detective work. So just because you go out and you do a two hour ride and your knee is bothering you, you've got to do the detective work and you've got to make sure. Oh well, I did yard work for four hours the night before. Well, your knee is hurting from the yard work, not because of the blindfit. So do that detective work. And when you've honed in on, you're pretty sure it's a bike related issue or a bike fit related issue. The next step is to go see a professional, get a professional bike fit. But I know that there are instances where people can't, they're expensive to travel. So I know that's what this Podcast is for. So I just wanted to disclaimer that. But I love that we're diving a little bit deeper here.

I think that when, you know it is a bike fit related issue. You know, I, I think for, for a lot of athletes I talk to, like if, if you have to shift your weight or you don't want to go, like you just said, you don't want to go into a bike ride. Thinking like you said, it's only, it's my hands, maybe your elbows and the aero pads, you're butt and your feet, right? That's the weekend I'm going to get outside and ride. I'm gonna have a saddle sore next week or you know, my hands are gonna go numb halfway through. Like that's just normal. You don't want to go into it, right. Fearing that one thing or that thing that's going to come back or resurface. So, you know, it is possible to go on a six hour ride and not have one issue. Not one acre, amazing, nothing. And so that's, that's the goal, right. I would just say that something that I, I look for, it's a lot of lower back and knee pain, really. The lower patella in the front is usually your seat is too low or too far forward. Right back of the knee seat is too high. Lower back is that hip angle the seat, the saddle's too far back or your hip angles close too far under maybe 88 to 90 degrees. And I will talk a little bit about that in a minute.

Something I see, and I'll end with this is, this is a big one and this is one I think people ignore a lot. Sion, I'm curious here for you and your athletes, but halfway through a ride, if you're noticing that your knee is tracking up and wide at the top of the pedal stroke, that could be a sign that your hips and lower back are getting really tight and your pelvis is tilting. You want your knee to trap over the middle and widest part of your foot. I see it a lot of times on group rides, outdoor rides or two hours into a ride and you know, a group passes you and you're, you know, maybe you're, you're drafting a little bit off of somebody, but their knees are coming in diagonal, right. And so a lot of that is hit tight hips or a bike fit that's too aggressive and at the top of the pedal stroke, the knee comes up and wide. And we don't want that. We want to stay about that inch and a half, two inches off the top tube tracking with that knee. And so that's something to look for as well, is if you're just randomly looking down and your knees are tracking wide.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, I'm sure we all do the thing where when you're out riding and people go by or I taken my daughter to school this morning, there was six or seven cyclists out that I saw riding just in that 15 minute drive, round trip. And you know, you look at their gear, oh, what are they riding? What bike do they have? And you can you look at their bike fit? Like, is there anything wonky going on with them? It's the same thing. When I see a runner, you know, I'll make comments on, oh man, look at the vertical oscillation on this guy. And my wife's like, please just leave them alone. I'm sure we all do that just a little bit. The more you get into the sport and the more, you know. Right, okay, so, so let's get into, for our folks listening, the measures they can and should take when they actually need to make some tweaks. I think we've really identified why someone should make a tweak. You know, what, what you're feeling when you should make a tweak, when in your season you might need to make a tweak. So how do we actually adjust our bike fit at home and get it right without a proper fitter? And I, I see two ways of doing it. There's what I'm gonna call the low-tech way, which is just, you know, you're not gonna download an app, you're not gonna rely on, you're not gonna video footage yourself, you're not gonna do anything fancy. You don't have any access to sensors or whatever. You just wanna get on, maybe use a tape measure, maybe using a protractor, I don't know. But so the low-tech way and then the high-tech way are the two different ways we're gonna talk about here. Right. Um, so for folks doing their fit at home, they're going to do it as manual as possible. They're not going to employ any technology. They're just going to go off of fit and feel and the way it looks. What, what is, what is kind of maybe a mirror? What is the low-tech way to just making some tweaks to your bike fit at home in a way that is smart. Coach Sion.

Sion McIntosh: Yeah. Okay. I think if we, if we go over the low-tech way, it comes back to what we mentioned earlier, those, those touch points. And so I always like to start, provided that you've been riding the bike already so you know your saddle height isn't miles off. Let's just say it's within the right range. I would always start with your, with your cleats at first so your pedals. I'm a big proponent and this could be an individual bike fitter thing. I totally understand, but I'm a big proponent for having more of a mid foot cleat position for athletes. So the first thing I like to get my athletes to look at is having the cleat, quite frankly far back on the foot and in the middle. The reason being is if you think of somebody who's going to do a five, six or even seven hour bike leg and an IRONMAN and they've got a cleat all the way forward on their foot and the foot is almost in this position where the heel is elevated, that means they're going to run with their Achilles tendon and the gastronemis the calf in this tense position for seven hours. And then you think you're going to go and run a nice easy marathon off the bike with that calf. Nice, intense and the Achilles nice and short. If you do IRONMAN Leads, for example, just being this weekend you go straight out into a nice uphill run out of transition. I don't know about you guys, but my Achilles would be screaming at me if I went straight into an uphill run off a six or seven hour bike. So that's the first thing I would look at for anybody, I think some simple advice that, you know, most people can take and that'll serve them good.

Then we come on to the saddle height. Saddle height. I say the easiest way to do it without getting, you know, a tape measure out or any apps and looking at your angles is you want to feel like you're in that slight semi squat position. So when you sit on the saddle, you should still be able to place your heel on the pedal, not the middle of your foot, your heel bang on the pedal. If you can do that, sit on the saddle with your heel on and your leg's not completely locked out. In that position you're in the right range. So you just want to feel like it's touching and you've got a slight bit of give there. It's okay if it's completely locked out or you feel yourself reaching for the pedals, then that Saddle needs to come down a little bit. And then when we come to the front end of the bike, I would say if you feel like you're overreaching and you can feel that your neck and the top of your back is almost tense, still falling forwards, then you probably want to look at the length of that stem and maybe bring the stem a little bit closer towards you. If you're getting wrist pain, maybe look at just elevating the bar angle slightly so that your wrists can kind of lean into the bars a little bit. They would probably be my start points for low tech bike fitting coach Jeff. I don't know if you've got anything to add on to that one.

Jeff Raines: Yeah, I mentioned earlier that I kind of use or have these safe when in doubt ranges and then where you fall inside of those ranges, it depends. And so everything you said is spot on. And I agree. And so if someone's at home and they're listening, well, okay, where are some. Give me some exact numbers or something just to play around with. With some of that, I'll, I'll throw a few out and first I'll say the low tech way. There are free apps out there that will help you. There's zero cost. You can, you can draw angles on it, take screenshots and all of those things. And so I would just start with your stem. 90 to 120 millimeters is a safe stem range. If there's one way too long or way too little. Like you were talking about the reach, right? If that reach, you feel like you dialed it in and or you can't get it perfect, let's say then maybe you need to adjust your stem length.

The spacers. Right? Usually zero to 22 millimeters are kind of a stack safe range. If you're just elevated 6 inches higher than your brake levers in the aero position, you might want to adjust something. Right? So those are a couple for that front end knee angle. 140 to 150 degree knee angle is just a safe start point. There's an equation I'm going to throw out there that again, it's a win in doubt start point. It's not for everybody but. But here's an equation you can use. 0.883 okay, that this is the 0.883 rule. But you can take when in doubt to find a perfect saddle height for you. Right? What you do to find that saddle height is using the 0.883 rule and it is 0.883 times your inseam in centimeters and that is a good safe starting point, the inseam.

So. So Sion mentioned the cleat position. Starting with the cleat. And then I would argue the next important issue in seam, right. That saddle height. Start with that hip angle. For most, a more open hip angle than too acute will yield the most comfort and best performance. It may not be the most aerodynamic, but if you're new to long course, then I would use kind of an 85 to 105 degree hip angle. When in doubt being more obtuse or kind of around that 90, 90 plus. It's just a safe starting point. Beginners are, you know, we see some in that 105 to 120 degree right. Hip angle, which is a very open hip angle, which is great. Right? If you're less flexible, you're carrying extra belly weight or you're new to a long course. Finally, that elbow angle on the pads. Right? Kind of drawn from that deltoid down to the elbow out to the wrist, you know, an arm angle. I call it 90 to 120 degrees. It's just a safe when in doubt starting point as well.

Andrew Harley: So Sion, when you hear Jeff kind of giving us some guidelines there, right. Like kind of giving us some ranges on these angles, do you agree with everything he said or does anything in there make you want to fight them?

Sion McIntosh: I agree.

Jeff Raines: Truly. Every bike fitter has, has their starting points and their reasons why. Yeah, but. But it depends. Yeah. On their story.

Sion McIntosh: Absolutely. I think they're, I think they're real safe bets and safe ranges. And you know, we're talking about the general population of triathletes here and I think most people will fall within those ranges. I think another probably caveat to add is that we haven't actually spoken about. There is setback. So in terms of where your saddle lies over the bottom bracket of the bike. Just for those who don't, don't really understand the technical elements of the bike. The bottom bracket is where your cranks and your pedals, the middle part through the bottom of the frame, where it goes through. If we're on a tri bike, you probably want to get yourself nicely above that. So you probably want quite a forward facing saddle position in terms of the rails bringing the saddle relatively far forward. The little bit of a negative angle on the nose. I tend to find over the years the soft spot has been around negative 3 degrees is, is what works well as a saddle angle for most people. If they're on a road bike. Then you want it a little bit further back it's not quite over the bottom bracket. And that's just because we're in a more upright position. It's a more quad dominant cycling position. But yeah, I totally agree with, with all that. I think that's a real good, safe place to start with your bike fitting without having to use any, any apps or anything.

Andrew Harley: Yeah. And so, and so it's just taking the measures you guys said to get those kind of major touch points in the right range and then going out for a ride and paying attention to your body cues. Right. And how does your body feel with those cues? And if you need to make some adjustments manually, come back, make one adjustment at a time, see if it fixes a problem. So that's, that's the low tech way. And there are people that you might just not have a fitter near you. You might not have it in the budget to get a proper bike fit yet. And for whatever reason, you just need to take that route on your own. Totally okay. Totally okay. If you roll down to a local, local triathlon, if you roll down to an IRONMAN, there's going to be a decent percentage of the field that has not had a proper bike fit and they're going to get through the ride just, just fine. Maybe not, maybe not just with their body feeling perfect, but you can do it. Don't, don't let how complicated this can sound scare you off from getting on that bike and having a, having a good race.

Guys, for folks who are willing and interested in employing a little bit of technology to help them get this even more right at home, what are the more high tech ways to examine our bike fit at home and make some tweaks? Coach Jeff.

Jeff Raines: Oh man. First of all, there's static fits and then there's dynamic fits. Obviously, again, the best would be an in person static fit with a professional, but also the dynamic one where that professional kind of knows your story, what you're looking for. And also including a functional movement screen and just knowing where your limitations are or if there are any deviations. Right? But if that cannot be done, and again, there's some at home ways to do it, but you want to make sure that they're including that mobility assessment that I was mentioning. And, and there are some. Right? All right, so, so, so if you can't go see that professional there, there's quite a few awesome apps and I was doing a lot of research too as well, just kind of seeing what they're saying, what's included and not. There are even now some AI based apps and you don't need any body markers. You just film yourself, send it in a 15 second video, you just take it yourself, you send it in. And some of those apps include a mobility assessment that you can do as well. Send it all in. Some, the AI gives you results, but you could send it in to a professional to all also put eyes on it and give that feedback. So that's pretty cool.

There's one called My Velo Fit. Their slogan or headline is Record Ride, Analyze, Adjust. Right. It's pretty cool. And they have different packages right on what is included. But some have the, you know, ability again to, to submit that footage to a professional as well, which is pretty neat. But yeah, I, I would start with, with an app like that and just make sure that that mobility assessment is included as well because that's a big.

Andrew Harley: Yep. Coach Sion, same question over to you. What, what are some ways you would encourage an athlete to employ tech to get this even a little more right?

Sion McIntosh: Yeah, I think I would echo everything that Jeff said there. You know, that's, that's bang on and there are, there's. Honestly the technology that's available now is brilliant. There's, there's plenty of apps out there that you can use to, to self bike fit. The one thing I would say to anybody is once they have used it and they've done like a whole fit with it, is maybe don't expect for that first ride to be perfect, especially if you've made quite a few tweaks. It can take a good two to three weeks, depending on ride frequency. So let's say if you ride three times a week, I would expect it to take at least two weeks before you, you bed in a fit. Well and it feel like, yeah, it's normal.

And then one thing I would say, if you wanted to take it one step further, for those who are looking at the pointy end of racing, there's also some great apps out there like My Windsock for example. You can connect this to your Strava. You can put in all the, the bike gear that you're using, the weight of the bike, the tires and everything, and it will actually start to calculate your CDA for you every time you ride. So if you're, if it knows you're on that bike and the equipment and you put in the bottles and everything, you can start to really look at the aerodynamics and then you can take that data and you can put it into RaceX, for example. You can then put your CDA into RaceX Optimize your race then to know exactly what bikes bits you should really be aiming for on the day. And no, RaceX is a great example of predicting that. But if you can give it that little bit of help and, and give it, you know to, to point.001 of accuracy what your, your CDA is to, then you can really develop a really strong bike plan then for race day as well.

Andrew Harley: That's interesting Sion. I'm glad you said that. I don't think all of our tried out athletes realize how many tools there are in RaceX to dial in those predicted splits and the pacing plan. Because if you've never gone and looked at it, please go and look at it. There's some really interesting things there you can go and see. You can go and tell RaceX what bike you're riding just like Sion's talking about. You can say I've got this bike. I'm running wheels that are this deep. I've, I've got an arrow helmet or a regular helmet or a bulky like you. You kind of give it, there's a few different settings to basically tell it how arrow you are. And so if you have those exact CDA numbers like Sion's talking about, you can put in your actual CDA numbers and it's going to dial in that RaceX bike split prediction all the more. It might just be that, that you have a, a very nice high end TT bike. It's extremely arrow and the default setting in RaceX is going to be like your average intermediate level TT bike or you might have an entry level TT bike. And so the, the, the predicted split might be a little too aggressive because your gear isn't quite as fast as the, the defaults are. So go take a look at that and you can definitely dial in your bikes a little bit more. You can run some what if an analysis. So maybe right now your, your wheels are 30 millimeters deep and you're thinking about should I buy some, some deeper wheels or should I buy an arrow helmet and you can actually plug in. If I were to buy this and not this, how much faster is my split going to jump? And you can kind of, kind of spend your money wisely. So really nice plug there for race Sion. I'm glad you brought that up because there are some really, really advanced things you can do with your CDA values if you know them or even some ways to get it a little bit closer in the setting. So really interesting there.

Coach Jeff Raines. Something that I know you used to do and I'm curious If you still do this with your athletes or not, maybe you encourage them to use an app on the, on their own instead. But if they would send you footage, I was with you sometimes, you know, at company events, and you would pull, you'd be pulling up footage that an athlete sent you, plugging it into an app that you have as a coach, drawing some lines from ankle to knee to shoulder and kind of seeing what their angles were like on their bike fit. Is that something that you still do for your athletes just as part of the ongoing conversation, or do you just encourage them to do that on their own with some of the apps that have come out now?

Jeff Raines: Yeah, a lot of times there's two reasons I do that and yes, I do still do that is, is if an athlete has a brand new bike and they've just gotten a preliminary quick, easy fit from that, that, that bike personnel who sold them the bike. Right. They might do a 20 minute quick bike fit. Right? So I'm, I'm saying, well, you know, we want to get a real bike fit, but before you can do that, you know, okay, you're gonna go ride it four or five times. Okay, great. Go ahead and shoot me some film. Let's just make sure you're, you're in the ballpark in some of those ranges. So I'll go, I'll draw the angles like you said, and just see if, if anything is red flag or outlier until they can go get that real bike thing it. Right. It's hard to do a real bike fit, you know, remote. But, but I have done that and gotten them pretty close. Like, like this Podcast is about, some people just can't or never will. And so, yeah, if you're never going to get me some film and I'll do the best I can. Right. But, but, but yeah, that I do it then. Or if they're complaining about an acre of pain. Right. Well, let's just see if something's off. Shoot, shoot that over and let me see what have you changed on the bike? So if they got a new bike and they have no idea where to begin, or there's two or three weeks before they're gonna go get the real bike fit, but they need to ride a few times. Let's just make sure things are safe. Right?

Andrew Harley: Yeah. Interesting. And, and Sion, you, you are a, a certified bike fitter. Do, do you encourage your athletes to come get a bike fit with you or is it just whoever's, whoever's closest? Do you do anything virtual with your athletes?

Sion McIntosh: Yeah, absolutely. I tend to, I tend to do virtual fits with all of, all of my athletes. I'm. And yes, absolutely, I encourage them to come and get one. Likewise, we're very blessed, I think in the UK that we have some great world renowned bike fitters and so my guys are close to them. I also have no issues sending them their way and make sure they're seen. And the same with coaches. Quite often our coaches that we work with will send me a message and say, hey, coach, do you mind if I send you this video of my athlete? I don't know enough about bike fitting, but I'd like to get your eyes on it. Absolutely. I'll always take a look and give them some feedback. It's a little bit like, you know, swimming or you mentioned the runner where you could tell the vertical oscillations off when, when you've done it for enough years, you can quite often look at a bike fit. And we've got a game in our house and I get in trouble for it quite often because we'll be out in the car and we'll drive past somebody and I'll go, oh, that bike fits awful. And they're like, there you go again, what's wrong with this one? But I'll say, what's wrong?

Andrew Harley: Leave that poor soul alone. Leave him alone.

Sion McIntosh: Okay. They can't hear me.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so. But before we wrap up the main set for the day, there's, in my personal experience, there's two occasions where outside of how my body feels, there's two different occasions where I've just thought, hmm, I'm doing X, Y and Z. Should I tweak my bike fit because of this? And I want to ask about these two occasions and then we'll move on to the cooldown. And the first one is changing something on my bike. So, you know, I go down the road and I get my proper bike fit. It feels great. I've trained with it, I've raced with it, I'm still happy with it. But then all of a sudden I decide to try a new saddle and I switch my saddle out and you know, saddles are going to vary in how much cushion they have by millimeters to centimeters, which can affect your bike fit. Now your butt is that much higher or lower on your saddle or the most recent one for me, in all practicality, I haven't had a proper bike fit since changing out the arm cups on my bike. It came with some 51 speed shop little, little ergo cups. And I put My TriRig scoops that I really like on there. Okay. So there's probably some differences in how thick the carbon is, how thick the padding is, whatever. So now my elbows are, are a little higher or lower or maybe even forward or back. What are the things in terms of changing our bike? Pedals are another one. You talked about pedals. Sometimes pedal platforms can be a little higher or lower or wider or forward or back. When we change something on, on the bike, I'm starting to ramble and probably say too many, you know, edge cases. But when should we think about, oh, this probably affects my bike fit and how do we do something about it if we're, if we're changing gear in our bike coach? Jeff.

Jeff Raines: If you change anything on your bike, you need to consider how it affects your bike. Anything. And, and you know, people will ask CDA, right. You know, point to, to maybe 0.23 if you're actually trying to pay attention to some of that drag coefficient measurement numbers. That 0.22-0.23 is like an elite or upper level age grouper. I mean, they've got their bike fit dialed in. They're very aerodynamic, but they're also comfortable in that position and they're performing well. So just because you have a great CDA, that, that's maybe that low of a number doesn't mean that you're going to be first, you know, off the bike in that race. You know, a lot of the pros, you know, I, I would say are trying to get to that point two zero if they can or under, but really making those adjustments, like you said, the biggest ones, like you mentioned, I'll just add a couple kind of little rules that I have. As far as bike fit is like, a lot of people are going shorter crank arms. That's a big one. Now, there's many reasons why. Better runoffs, more hamstring engagement, things like that, higher cadence. But that's a whole other Podcast. But if you get a shorter crank arm, right, you're, you're taller or you're higher off the ground at the bottom of the pedal stroke. And so that seat would need to be raised. And that's another selfish reason why people are getting shorter crank arms is because they can raise the seat and close the hip angle a hair to get more aerodynamic to help the CDA number.

Andrew Harley: But to look cooler in the pictures.

Jeff Raines: Yeah, yeah. And you got to be careful. I'm going to add two more little rules or fun things that relates to this, and then I'll be done. I have kind of the seat tilt rules for myself. I tend to like a flatter seat, but if Your seat is 2 inches higher than your elbow pads or greater, you can start to tip the nose down. And I usually go about a degree or two for every inch that the seat is higher. Right. So, so if your seat is three inches higher than your arrow pads, Right? That's one inch above my, my two-inch roll. So you might go one to two degrees nose down on that tip. But just little things like that, again, it depends.

And one more big one for, for bike fit, Sion was mentioning the seat post angle and road bike versus more of an upright tri bike and how far you are from that center or plumb line of the bottom bracket. A good rule of thumb is if your feet are flat and at 9pm and 3pm, right, they're not up and down, they're, they're forward and back and you're holding that static position, your lower patella, if you were to drop a string, right, you, you, you, you want that to be just in front of that bottom bracket. Right. Just one line in front of that crank barely. And so if you're too far forward or back or you could adjust the seat forward and back. Right? And then kind of see how that affects the hip angle and do you need to get a longer or shorter stem? So you, you, you adjust one little thing and it affects five others. And so when you buy that new piece of equipment, that new seat, you have to take into account what has changed and how it relates to all of the other things.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, yeah. And just probably go back through the motions that you guys talked about in the manual and high-tech fits. Right? And, and just, you know, get all of the ranges back, close where they, where they were before making that, that change. So Coach Sion, any, anything additionally there from you?

Sion McIntosh: No, I think, you know, it's all being covered there. It's absolutely, you don't just change one thing and leave it. I would. That's where maybe one of those, those free apps come in. And if you're going to change that one thing, just, just have that app where you've got all your measurements in it and you can just do that quick look over to see. Oh, actually maybe I need to alter my, my saddle height slightly around this or the fore and aft of the saddle. But yeah, I think as long as you don't go too wild and start changing multiple things at once, you'll, you'll be okay. And just bed it in once you, once you've made that one change. Stick with it for a few rides first to feel it out before changing anything else.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, very, very good. The, the, the second time in my experience where I, I've, I've, I kind of think to myself like, oh, should I adjust my bike fit because of this is in my season when I'm going from like, you know, a short course focused to a long course focus, right. I, I go from oh my, A race this year is a 70.3 and the next year my A race is an IRONMAN. And then after that I'm taking a break from IRONMAN. I'm going to do a bunch of local sprints at Olympics, you know, when I'm kind of tweaking my focus. Right. Shifting my focus, I guess. Should I revisit something in my bike fit at that point? Coach Sion?

Sion McIntosh: I think with where bike technology and bike fitting is at now, no. Realistically there shouldn't be too many changes that you need to make. And maybe if you'd have asked 10 years ago with just our limited knowledge of bike fitting, the answer most people would have said was yes, that you need to be much lower on the front end. But I know here in the UK I don't think time trialing is as big a thing in the us but in the UK it's a real big thing where you rock up to side of a road, you all pay a few pounds and you all go and do a five mile race or a race and we're quite blessed here that we have two or three a week. And if I'm doing a five mile time trial or 100 mile time trial, I don't change anything on my position because if it's, if it's comfortable it's powerful and if it's powerful, it's fast.

Andrew Harley: Interesting. Jeff, same question to you.

Jeff Raines: I, I would agree, but, but just for devil's advocate, I would say, you know, if, if, if you're going, let's just say short course to long course. So now you're eating and drinking more while in that arrow position, right. Short course you may not drink at all. You can get away with it maybe, but I would just say if, if you're having to shift your weight a lot of, to switch a change of gear, click that button or that mechanical lever or if you're having to shift your weight, sit up to grab that straw and take that drink, right? So every single time you do that, you're shifting your weight or sitting up and it's uncomfortable. You can't do that while maintaining your bike fit angles. Then, then, yeah, you, you might want to consider changing something from a nutritional aspect, right, to get that nutrition in. Better not shift your weight, not lose your CDA while you're doing those things. Might just be something to consider. But yeah, you want to be comfortable in aero and you want to be able to eat and drink without having to shift your weight. And so if you're constantly having to do that, you might want to consider adjusting something shorter, shim, whatever, a different between the arms bottle or whatever that is so that you can eat and drink comfortably. Because now you're going to eat and drink more often. You're also not going to lose your aerodynamic position while doing those things and hence a faster bike split. And again, a better drop.

Andrew Harley: Last question I have for you guys. Great, great stuff there, guys. Thanks for answering that because again, that was just for me personally, the times in my career where I'm like, should I go get a bike fit or am I okay, so you kind of helped answer that for me. But the last thing I'm wondering, I want to hear some of the trends and patterns that you guys have seen because we kind of established you work with your athletes on their bike fit. You know, Jeff, you've done some virtually before they can get to a proper fitter. You know, Sion, you've done some virtually and in person for your athletes and other athletes. When triathletes come to you and they need a fit, what do you find yourselves most often fixing on their bike? Like, is it just extremely variable person to person, or are there some trends and patterns where, oh, everybody always has their seat height too low or too high.

Jeff Raines: Is it.

Andrew Harley: I see a lot of X, I see a lot of Y. Because I think we can probably learn from that as well because those might be the first things for us to question our own fits. Like, oh, do I have that right? If everybody else is getting that wrong, Coach Jeff, I'll send over your way first.

Jeff Raines: I think saddle height is usually a little low for most. When in doubt. When in doubt, 2 degrees higher, 5 degrees more slightly obtuse. When. When in doubt. I would say something I see is most seat heights are a little low. Another thing is indoor versus outdoor and seat saddle discomfort. That's probably the biggest. Do not judge your bike fit or your saddle off of indoor rides.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, yeah, right.

Jeff Raines: So I mentioned a static and a dynamic fit. You need to go outside and like Sion said, ride it three, four, five times earlier. I mentioned do an hour zone two indoors, do a quality Ride outdoors and then do a long session outdoors before you go buy a new saddle. I get it all the time. When you're indoors, people tend to ride a little bit further back on the seat. You sit up a little bit more, you're watching movies, things like that. And when you do that and when you ride indoors, you're further back on the seat. When you're further back on the seat, the seat is typically wider. The further back you go, the wider, the more surface area. The more surface area. Right. The more friction, the more friction. Saddle sore discomfort. I could do a five hour ride outdoor, have no issues. But I do an hour and a half ride on this bike right here. I get a little discomfort sometimes sore, little pinching. So don't judge yourself solely on a ride. So that's another big one I see very often.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, no, very, very, very good point there, Jeff. That came 58 minutes into the episode and it is a really good point. Uh, so hopefully people stuck with us all the way through this one. They hear that alone. Uh, Coach Sion, to, to close out our main set, same question over to you. What are the, what are the patterns you see when you're fitting triathletes?

Sion McIntosh: Really interestingly and I wonder if this is a, a US vs European fitting style or just the perception. But actually the most common thing I see here is that saddles are too high.

Jeff Raines: Right.

Sion McIntosh: Which is really interesting. And it's, it's always the same thing. And I think it maybe again stems from that British heritage of time trialing, being super high on the back and being really low on the front end. And then that second point is onto that is you're not a pro. So don't emulate what you see a pro cycle is doing thinking that will work for you. Because those kinds of positions that we see the top end guys doing takes hours and hours a week of practice to, to learn to hold those kind of positions. And that's a whole lot of the Podcast in itself, learning to hold a fast position. So yeah, work around yourself and not what you see others doing.

‍

Andrew Harley: Moving on to the cooldown for today's show and we've got one audience question for our coaches to answer and then we are done for the day. And Jeff, Sion, today's question actually comes from a triathlon coach. His name is Matt Sommer. He was a guest on last week's podcast and Matt submitted this question and it's a great question. You know guys, whenever I see a coach that coaches their athletes with TriDot ask a question I wonder, I was like, do they have this question or do their athletes keep asking them this question? And so they're asking it because they want to hear what other coaches have to say about this question. And that's probably the case here because Matt, Coach Matt is a pretty sharp guy.

But anyway, Coach Matt wants to know: what is the best way to start implementing non-ERG training so that my indoor riding better translates to outdoor riding, especially since you can't ride on ERG mode outside? So ERG mode, if anybody trains indoors with Zwift or Rouvy or Fulgaz and you have a trainer, the proper trainer set up. ERG mode is basically where the trainer helps you hold a power for you. You don't have to really focus to hold the right power. It's going to shift its resistance to keep you in the right power zone. So you can kind of just mentally check out, keep your legs spinning and do your workout and let the trainer do all the intensity changes for you. You don't get that outside. And so, yeah, great question from Coach Matt. I imagine his athletes ask him this quite a bit and he wants to hear what you guys have to say. So Coach Jeff, if you want to start us off, and then Coach Sion if you want to finish us, take it away, guys.

Jeff Raines: Yeah, I love it. And I've heard Matt answer this question before. So Matt knows the answer. So he's peeking at the answer.

Andrew Harley: He knows his answer. He wants to hear your answer.

Jeff Raines: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, we can start with smart trainers are smart enough, right, to sense a power change in real time per second and adjust that resistance. So when to ERG and when not to ERG. ERG mode is great because you just don't stop pedaling for an hour. It automates for you. You get 100 TrainX score. You executed the session perfect. Right? That's great. But too much ERG mode and especially too late into that stamina race prep can create bad habits.

So I like to have my athletes lean off of ERG mode a little bit as they're ending their developmental phase and starting kind of the second half of the season - that race prep, stamina build phase. And so as you start to leave the developmental phase... Because in the developmental phase, you know, it's nine months out from your race, maybe it's winter, you're not getting outside. So it is good to ERG mode a little bit more often. We want to raise that long tent pole, improve upon what is our functional threshold. So a little bit more ERG mode - you can't cheat, makes you work a little bit harder. Maybe you build a little bit more power and strength. But too much of that and too late into the season, it can create bad habits.

And I have found that too much ERG mode is you're watching movies, your mind is drifting, and when that happens, your cadence drops. I have seen many athletes start to become low cadence riders because they're using too much ERG mode.

And so towards the end of developmental, if you're just biking three times a week - Tuesday tends to be the hard quality ride, Thursday's a little bit easier, and then the weekend is your long ride for most - towards the end of developmental, I have my athletes ERG mode Tuesdays always (excuse me, ERG mode Tuesdays always), because that's their hard quality threshold session. Thursday, can they get a 100 TrainX score without automating, without ERG mode? And then maybe every other weekend indoors, you're doing free ride versus the ERG mode. And then getting into that stamina phase, Thursdays and Saturdays always either outside or free ride. And then continuing the Tuesdays, ERG mode. That's kind of what I do.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, really interesting. And Coach Sion, same thing over to you.

Sion McIntosh: Yeah, really interesting. And I think this shows the individuality in terms of coaching approaches as well and how everybody has their own styles. Because I'm a little bit different on this.

I like to, for athletes who are relatively new to the sport and learning to train - as we say, they're in that phase of "learn to train" and then understand what different efforts feel like - I do like them to use ERG mode, particularly on the harder sessions, so that we know what an 8 out of 10 in terms of effort feels like and when we should be, what zone four should feel like, what zone one and zone two should feel like.

But as they become more experienced, I go the opposite direction where I go a little bit cold turkey. And I don't want them using ERG mode at all. I would like for them to actually load up maps onto their trainer, learn what Zone 2 feels like when you're going uphill and downhill at varying cadences, for example, to learn how to talk the pedals properly. Likewise on their harder efforts, if they're doing 30/30s or 30/90s or even long zone four sustained efforts.

I want them to be able to control that and know exactly how it feels. Because on race day, if your equipment fails and you don't have your heart rate monitor or a Garmin to follow and it's not working properly, I don't want them to finish and go, "I didn't know how hard I was pushing. I didn't know if I was going right."

You should be in tune with your body enough to know what a zone four effort feels like for race day or zone three for a 70.3. So I'm a little bit the opposite. I'm completely cold turkey for experienced athletes. For new athletes, I think it's good because it teaches them how to train.

Andrew Harley: What I'm learning from both of you - not opposite approaches, I mean, similar vein, right? Very much pointing out, okay, don't ERG mode too much. I'm learning that I ERG mode too much and I should do a couple of them a little more manually. So thanks for that challenge. Thanks for asking the question, Matt, and everybody will see you on the podcast next week.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to the TriDot Podcast. Help us out by leaving a rating and review on your listening platform of choice. For more opportunities to learn from our coaches, check out our YouTube channel and follow TriDot Training on social media. Ready to train with us? Head to tridot.com and get started for free. Until next time, happy training.

‍