Road Cycling Academy Podcast

This episode explores the differences between indoor and outdoor cycling, examining research findings, muscle activation, and practical tips for optimizing indoor training. Hosted by Cam Nicholls with expert insights from RCA coach Ben Trevill, it offers valuable guidance for cyclists aiming to improve performance and understand the nuances of training environments.  
Stannards: https://stannards.com.au/ 
RCA: https://roadcyclingacademy.com/ 


 
key topics Indoor vs outdoor cycling differences
Research findings on power output
Muscle activation during cycling
Practical tips for indoor training
Equipment and setup considerations

 
 
Chapters 00:00 Introduction to the episode and guest
00:27 Why are we discussing indoor vs outdoor cycling?
01:20 Research insights on indoor vs outdoor power output
02:09 Adjusting power zones for indoor training
03:00 Power meter differences and calibration
04:19 Key research findings on power output differences
06:43 Muscle activation differences between indoor and outdoor cycling
08:01 Summary of research and individual differences
09:52 Variability in power output and environmental factors
11:42 Practical tips for indoor training setup
14:07 Why indoor feels harder and how to adapt
16:44 Muscle activation and fatigue in indoor cycling
19:52 Key takeaways for indoor training optimization
 
Transcript: 
Cam Nicholls (00:01.804)
Welcome to the RCA podcast designed for recreational and amateur road cyclists with a focus on performance. We dive into cycling training, nutrition, strength training for cyclists and even bike fitting tips all designed to help you train smarter, ride faster and hopefully tear your mates legs off. So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode.
Cam Nicholls (00:27.746)
Welcome back to the RCA podcast where today I'm joined by RCA coach Ben Trevill. We're in a hotel room in Sydney. Why are we in a hotel room in Sydney, Ben? What are you doing here?
Ben Treble (00:38.411)
I'm here supporting the RCA Pro Velo League team for the Sydney Harbour City GP races.
Cam Nicholls (00:45.602)
You're doing the DS, the director's sporting.
Ben Treble (00:47.667)
Yeah, filling in for Ryan who's getting on the pedals.
Cam Nicholls (00:51.308)
Yeah. And I'm here attempting to make some content and I thought we'd use this opportunity to get together face to face and, you know, talk about some relevant topics for the audience training related, of course. The first one that I wanted to talk about is indoor versus outdoor cycling and the differences in, I guess, sensation and power output. Because I know a lot of RCA members that I've dealt with in the past and I know that you deal with do...
tend to not struggle more, but they feel it's a little bit more difficult on the indoor versus the outdoor. But Yona, you've had a look at the research and the research may suggest something a little bit different. So I wanted to dig into that and hopefully we can come to some sort of conclusion at end of this discussion. I'm not sure if we will, but what's the research telling you when it comes to indoor versus outdoor?
Ben Treble (01:41.486)
Yeah, I think I will start by saying often when we look at research to practice, we find differences. So yeah, in practice, it's exactly what I felt personally, the feedback I get from my writers, what you've heard is that yeah, indoor training feels harder and it's kind of the perception that people even go as far to say you need to test indoors and outdoors and have different thresholds for indoors, outdoors and different zones or down adjust your zones by 5 % for indoors, for example.
Cam Nicholls (02:09.198)
Is that what you do with your members?
Ben Treble (02:10.765)
I do not know. Okay. If they need to down adjust it a couple percent for a certain session, like I'm not against it if it means they get through it, but generally, no, I don't set up separate zones for indoors outdoors. would only be if someone said to me, I'm going to do three months entirely indoors, or I want to do Zwift racing. That was their main goal. Then I would test indoors, train indoors and set zones based on indoors.
Cam Nicholls (02:35.598)
Okay. And what about the, this is a kind of like a, I guess a side note, but quite often, you know, people using different power meters as well. And, know, there will be even outside of the fact that the sensation feels maybe a little bit more difficult on the indoor, the indoor trainer reads a little bit lower as well. You know, like the kicker trainer or the indoor bike versus, you know, the Asioma power pedals, it might be 10, 15 Watts. So what do you do surrounding that?
Ben Treble (03:00.888)
first tip I give athletes when I have an onboarding with them and we chat about equipment is do you use your kicker's power meter or your trainer's power meter or do you connect your bike's power meter and use that as the power source when you do indoor training. that's what I would ask my athletes to do because then they want the same power source, you want to use the same power meter, indoors, outdoors. Where that's getting tricky though is a lot of people are moving to these sort of the Wahoo indoor bikes and the Zwift indoor bikes.
Cam Nicholls (03:27.896)
Got one myself.
Ben Treble (03:28.78)
where, you know, unless you're going to swap over your Asioma pedals or something, yet you don't get that choice. So it's important to know there are differences in power meters and a couple percent when you're doing high intensity efforts can make a big difference. Yeah.
Cam Nicholls (03:42.062)
Okay, so the conclusion of that is ideally use the same power meter if you can, if you can't know what the differences are and adjust accordingly.
Ben Treble (03:48.782)
Absolutely. So back to research, I sort of assumed I was just going to search the journals and find papers that prove that indoor and outdoor there's differences and we should have different thresholds. Fully aware I would have confirmation bias that that's what I was looking for. It's not what I found. So I was a bit surprised. Caveat, again, there's not actually a lot of research on this topic and I've only spent probably half a day digging. So there's probably a lot more out there still. But from what I found, there's a paper, a lot of people have, you we've referenced in our newsletter in the
Cam Nicholls (04:17.3)
Seems to be the main paper people point to.
Ben Treble (04:19.214)
Exactly. There's a 2022 paper from Lipski. There's two points I find interesting in this paper. One, they looked at mean maximal powers and threshold tests, indoors versus outdoors. That's probably the main component of the paper. They only looked at males. It's a small sample size. I think it was 12 and they're elite, you know, essentially world two or level athletes. So, pretty specific population group. And they found differences where...
they could do better power essentially outdoors than indoors. There was a significant difference enough where they would say, yeah, this is worthwhile looking at. I think it was about 20 Watts, give or take.
Cam Nicholls (04:53.39)
Is it around 20 watts?
Cam Nicholls (04:58.072)
I'll pull it up while you keep talking then.
Ben Treble (04:59.822)
Yeah, so the two points I really wanted to touch on, one, the population group people need to be mindful of. It's probably not relevant to 99 % of our audience.
Cam Nicholls (05:08.418)
Yeah. Amateurs and recreational pro athletes. 19 watts.
Ben Treble (05:11.294)
Absolutely. Yeah, 19 watts, which is measurable and that's fine. But I think this is the next bit. When you dig into that paper, there's a statistical piece of analysis that they used, which it's appropriate, but I don't know if it's appropriate when we know this is high performance in small samples where individual differences matter. So we always say these people use group mains, for example, in this paper, what they did is they used a trimmed main.
And they used a pretty high percentage of trimming, 20%, which means that they cut out the top 20 and the bottom 20 % of data points and their group means are only based on that middle 80%. Now, I know I looked at individual responses out of the 12, two of them did better indoors, but those data points got cut out because of the trimming. Already, if they had used total group means, like you would have had a different outcome. So, this is...
Cam Nicholls (05:53.153)
Okay.
Wow.
Ben Treble (06:04.248)
just a bit of a mindful thing, I think, for people when they quote. This paper gets quoted a lot and like all papers, you get a lot of individual difference and that's probably going to be our main discussion point.
Cam Nicholls (06:14.872)
Yeah. Okay. So what, was there anything else that you found that was worth referencing? think the one that came to mind, which isn't so much about results, but it was more so relating to, was a paper done just recently and it wasn't, it wasn't a super comprehensive paper, but they looked at muscle activation and how your muscles respond differently on the indoor versus the outdoor, notably our calf, quadricep and shin. I'm not sure why they're measuring the shin muscle.
You may have a better understanding why. I don't really think of my shin muscle and I think about cycling and the paper didn't look at glutes at all, which is probably a major oversight and probably a cost reason behind it. But it was interesting to note that a lot of people feel a different sensation when they're on the indoor and that paper is basically shining the light on, yeah, you are activating the muscles in a different way.
Ben Treble (07:05.25)
Yeah. think, can we finish on that paper? Cause I think it's a good way to wrap up the summary to some respect in the discussion. So when I did my little digging in the journals, I found a couple of papers and in summary, they all had a similar conclusion, which there's no measurable difference between indoors and outdoors when they looked at true threshold testing and mean maximal powers. Again, they're finding individual differences. So in the discussions, they talk about people who had more
experience in indoor training, trended towards doing better on indoors than outdoors, which makes a lot of logical sense. And the people who, you know, spent 90 % of their time training outdoors, put them on indoor trainer and yeah, the RPEs went up higher and they couldn't do as, do as well as they do outdoors. So that makes sense. The papers are, if you are wondering, there's an unpublished paper coming out later this year at, science and cycling conference at the tour.
So this is pre-publication paper, 2026 from Lee Inn, comparison of indoor outdoor writing ability. They looked at 18 males and 12 females. They're trained, but unprofessional. They found a moderate to high correlation between FTP results across indoor outdoor tests was 0.83. So not, I wouldn't call it a very strong correlation, but definitely not pointing the other direction enough to say there is a difference between the two.
It's pushing you much more to a direction to say there's no difference. The other paper was from 23. It's a comparison of mean maximal powers. This one's probably slightly more nuanced because they looked at mean maximal powers across indoor outdoor testing. They also looked at recorded maximal powers from training data and competition data. This paper's from Sebastian Doock et al. They only looked at seven male amateurs. So again, very small sample size.
Notably, the only power durations they ever really found measurable differences was a five and 15 second. So sprint power, very neuromuscular. No real measurable difference in the five and 20 minute power durations across all four of those environments or contexts. So yeah, and no significant difference in mean maximal powers for the indoor and outdoor testing at all. The only differences they really found was in within the training data, they often found higher.
Ben Treble (09:24.46)
sorry, lower maximal powers. And it was the race data where they were doing some of their peak powers outdoors. Okay. So a lot of context to that one. The third paper I looked at was a 2019 paper. So a bit older than the others. They did an analysis of it's the variability in power outputs. So that's where we're coming to our last discussion. During indoor outdoor cycling time trials, 20 male cyclists, no measurable difference in 20 minute time trial power between indoor and outdoor. However,
What they did find was there's a greater variability in the power across the two. So in simple terms, they're finding no measurable difference in the average power for the 20 minute time trial. But if you were to look at the normalized compared to the average, you're going to expect a higher normalized for outdoors. So a greater degree of fluctuation in the power versus indoors where it's more steady state.
Cam Nicholls (10:14.082)
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to their business in the podcast description and let's get back to the episode. Yep. Okay. Makes sense.
Ben Treble (11:42.446)
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
Cam Nicholls (11:44.302)
I'm just a bit of a side note. I'm one of those rare crazy people that has actually done that one hour test. Really? Yeah. On the indoor and outside. And I did it within like a two week period. So I gave myself like a couple of weeks because I was pretty fatigued. Yeah. So this is just an interesting anecdote. So I did three, this is when I was in better form than I am now, 365 Watts for an hour.
Outdoors, that's average power, it's not normalized power. And 300 and think it was 336 watts or 335 watts, somewhere around that. This is about 30 watt difference on the indoor going all out for an hour. Don't recommend it to people at home. It was the worst thing ever. My physiological stress though on the indoor was a heat. My heart rate was just going through the roof. I think I hit an all time best heart rate number. So just dropping that one in there as you're going through the research paper.
Ben Treble (12:35.222)
Yeah, I think, I mean, that's where the discussion is going to lead us, right? It's one thing for the research to say, here's what we see. It's another then kind of confirm or validate why is it different to what we see in practice? So currently, like from the research I've found and seen, I wouldn't expect within testing, like you should be able to do the similar power indoor outdoors. There's no difference. So then why in practice are we seeing reasonable differences?
And a lot of the papers still talk about this, it's, it's again, it's environment and context, including bike setup or equipment setup. Even if you were just, for example, to go within outdoor cycling, you can change the environment and see significantly different, you know, test results. You could say, go do a one hour effort up climb and go do a one hour effort on the flat. If you go take a climber and say, go do one hour on a climb and then try to do one hour at the same power on a flat.
you're probably going to see just as big variation in power output as you did with indoor outdoor. And I think that's where the discussion is going to go. So why do we see this difference? Because you do have a lot of context. How much training are you doing indoor versus outdoor? That's probably the first part. And then we're going to talk about setup. Have you got fans? Have you got air conditioning with your indoor trainer? Core body temperature slowly rising up on indoor training is probably one of the biggest key factors.
as to why the RP starts to go up as you experience heart rate starts to go up, especially during maximal longer efforts. And of course the RP is going to go through the roof as a result, like your power is going to drop off.
Cam Nicholls (14:07.214)
Yep, that's what happened.
Ben Treble (14:09.398)
Yeah. I mean, what is your experience, Cam, like with some of your writers who say indoor feels harder?
Cam Nicholls (14:14.87)
It's probably like when I reflect, they're probably less focused on indoor training. Maybe they're just getting into it. A lot of our, you know, as you would know, a lot of people that come on board to the RCA don't necessarily, there were a lot of indoor training initially, but then they start embracing it because they recognise the benefits, particularly around doing structured training, being able to hit your targets and being efficient as well during the week. So I think a lot of them are inexperienced on the trainer and thus struggle with it a bit because they're not used to it. It's a different adaptation.
But then conversely, you know, we've got some members and Thomas Martinez, the cycling tattooist on YouTube comes to mind who train with us for a bit. And he's actually stronger on the indoor trainer. His power numbers are better and he prefers the indoor, but he does most of his riding indoor. It does make a lot of sense.
Ben Treble (14:59.678)
That makes a lot of sense. This is back to that paper you briefly mentioned earlier. Why else would there be a difference indoors and outdoors? I think if you're a newer rider, of course, if you've never done indoors, again, one of the biggest differences, those Ergo trainers, especially if you turn Ergo on and for people listening, if you haven't done it, Ergo holds you to a certain power. So if you turn it on, it forces you to push that power.
And not only do you have to push, let's just use 200 Watts as an example, it forces you no matter what your cadence is, you have to push 200 Watts evenly through the entire pedal stroke. And even if you get a very well trained cyclist and you say, do a steady state effort outdoors, if you look at the power production through the pedal stroke, it'll never be like force applied evenly through the full stroke. They might get it very good, but it's not going to be perfect. And then if you look at the indoor training,
It forces you to hold it through the full pedal stroke. So what does this do as a result? Well, if you haven't done it very much, it's going to feel significantly harder because you've got to apply force evenly through the entire stroke constantly. There's no point at which you can just have that little back off at the top.
Cam Nicholls (16:12.086)
Yeah, or coast down the hill or like what most people do when they're outdoors.
Ben Treble (16:15.31)
Yeah. So suddenly this accumulates even a one hour zone two feels significantly harder than zone two outdoors. So this paper that you brought to me that started this conversation is pretty recent, 2025 or late 2025. I'll probably pronounce it wrong. Why Chi Tasi at all? Again, it's from Journal of Science and Cycling. Its focus was on not if there are differences in power necessarily, but it wanted to understand more about why is there a difference in the variability of
power, which brings us back to that other paper I spoke about where they found no difference in power output. The difference they found was greater variability in power with outdoor riding. So these guys, went and did indoor outdoor testing. They've gone and essentially struck, you know, electrodes on different muscle groups to work out which groups are activating more or less at different points. And what they were finding is ultimately the quad and the calf had significantly higher activation during indoor cycling.
So if you're pushing the same Watts, but you're your quads and your calves a lot more, that means you're using other muscle groups less. So you're essentially just going to work the quads, these big muscle groups more earlier and faster, which will lead to fatigue faster earlier and RPE higher. Makes a lot of sense. mean, they don't really, you know, they don't propose too much like why is that the case? They essentially just summarize with a needs more research, of course. Yes. Love our labs.
Cam Nicholls (17:29.432)
Yep, hiya.
Ben Treble (17:41.986)
I don't know what's your hypothesis.
Cam Nicholls (17:43.842)
I mean, I'm surprised it didn't do the glutes, but it made a lot of sense to me because it's the feedback we get from lot of amateurs that, just feels a bit more challenging on the indoor, feels harder. So yeah, I think there's a lot more to it, which we've sort of discussed during this chat. For example, know, cooling and high heart rates, but the activation side, which is what that paper is about was, yeah, just validating what I already assumed. Yeah.
Ben Treble (18:08.718)
And I think it's too easy on the indoor trainer. lot of people, again, this is a hypothesis. I don't have any data to support this, but N equals one. And you know, my glutes turn off. I already have glutes and I struggle to activate them on the bike and that's outdoors. And as soon as you stand up, even a couple times in a ride, you're going to activate your glutes a little bit and it just turns them on. And in indoor training, you have a tendency to sit down a lot more and you can put a lot more weights and hold your body up just using your arms and by sitting a lot easier.
And you just rely on the quads and as a result, also the calves to pull through that stroke. Cause you're trying to get this, you've got this applied torque through the full stroke. So you're going to be turning off your glutes. And also I think your quads. So I think your upper body, which does take, you can be able to push some force through moving the bike sideways, which we all know. So it's just contextual. think you can't do that, which means you have to rely on these major muscle groups more. They fatigue earlier and therefore ergo, feels harder. The guys who train indoors more.
They're just used to this. Yep. So they can still push the same power. It's the same quad muscle. The muscle hasn't changed. is power. Power's not changing in the same power meter. So yeah, I mean, if you get the air conditioning and the airflow with the fans right, and the context in the environment is similar, I don't see why you can't push the same output, but it's just like practicing. You give someone a bike with a different bike position where they activate the muscles slightly differently, it's going to feel totally wacko.
Cam Nicholls (19:32.994)
Yeah. So what would you say the key takeaway is? Because I would have thought a lot of people that are listening to this, particularly the end of the podcast, may struggle a little bit more indoors. So they've just heard all the research and they've heard some anecdotes. If they're struggling a little bit, what's the key take? And I'll start with takeaway one, make sure you're using the same power. Yeah.
Ben Treble (19:52.672)
That's one. Two, if you're new to indoor training, don't be afraid to down-regulate the power a couple percent. It's easy to just, I would pop the percent down a little bit if you need to. That's one until you get used to it. Now it does get easier the more you do it, but you have to do more of it to get used to it. And the third tip, which I would do actually is if you want to make this a bit easier, it'd be an interesting experiment is before you do your warmup on the bike with the indoor trainer, get an exercise band and a yoga mat next to your trainer.
and spend even just five minutes, 10 minutes doing some glute activation exercises with the bands to turn your glutes and do a little bit of core work to turn your core on before you get on the indoor trainer. Okay.
Cam Nicholls (20:36.466)
interesting. might try that myself. I haven't heard of it. Haven't heard that one. And the fourth one I'll say is, you know, I think a lot of people get on Zwift or, you know, these indoor platforms and go, oh, that looks like a fun ride. Cause it's like they're seeing all these bars popping up and down, but it's probably a brutal ride. So, you know, as you kind of said, ease into it, start progressively on the trainer. Don't do really difficult workouts upfront. You know, pick something that looks a little bit easier and work from there. Yeah. Cool.
Ben Treble (21:02.51)
Definitely.
Cam Nicholls (21:04.398)
All right, thanks for time, Ben. Much appreciated. If you're out there listening and you're looking to integrate indoor into your training a little bit more strategically, make sure you check out the RCA's website, One-to-One Coaching. You can work with one of our coaches and get that down pat. That's at www.roadcyclingacademy.com. We'll catch everyone in the next podcast.

Summary:
 
What if the best VO2 max workout… isn't the one everyone's doing?
In this episode of the RCA Podcast, Cam Nicholls sits down with Head Coach Ryan Thomas to break down a lesser-known, research-backed VO2 max protocol from 2020 — and why it's been delivering serious results with RCA riders.
Instead of traditional intervals like 30/15s or sustained 3-minute efforts, this session flips things on its head:
👉 Decreasing intervals 👉 Incomplete recovery 👉 More time above 90% VO2 max
And that last point is key.
Because in the research world, spending more time above 90% VO2 max is strongly linked to greater aerobic gains — and this workout gets you there faster, and keeps you there longer.
In this episode, we cover:
The 2020 research paper and what it actually found
Why this "reverse" interval structure works so well
How RCA adapted it into a practical workout (without destroying riders)
Exact structure, power targets, and execution tips
When to use this session in your training (and when NOT to)
How to integrate it into a 6-week build toward a key event
If you've been stuck rotating the same VO2 sessions and not seeing progress, this could be the new stimulus you've been missing.
 
Research paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00421-020-04463-w 
🎯 Who this is for: Recreational and amateur cyclists looking to break through a plateau and train smarter — not just harder.
📈 The takeaway: It's not always about doing more… sometimes it's about doing it differently.
Transcript: 
Cam Nicholls (00:01.454)
Welcome to the RCA Podcast, designed for recreational and amateur road cyclists with a focus on performance. We dive into cycling training, nutrition, strength training for cyclists and even bike fitting tips, all designed to help you train smarter, ride faster and hopefully tear your mates legs off. So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode.
Ryan Thomas (00:24.91)
you
Cam Nicholls (00:26.124)
Welcome back to the RCA podcast, which is also on YouTube. So if you're listening over audio, please excuse any visual references. Today I'm joined by the RCA's head coach, Ryan Thomas, and we're going to be talking about a different way to boost VO2 max. And it's based on research and it's a workout that's been going through the RCA ranks in recent times. We've been utilizing it with a lot of our members with great success. So Ryan, maybe we first start off by talking about the research paper. What did it say?
Ryan Thomas (00:51.564)
Yeah, so it's called high intensity decreasing. It was done in 2020 and they were comparing three pretty common VO2, two common VO2 workouts with this new VO2 protocol. guess what they were trying to achieve is what workout got you the most time above 90 % of VO2 max. Within the research world, if you've read research papers around VO2 max, they're trying to get to that mark. They're trying to spend a lot of time above 90 % of VO2 max.
Cam Nicholls (00:53.966)
Yep, we'll link it below.
Cam Nicholls (01:18.52)
because that's where they say the biggest gains for people.
Ryan Thomas (01:20.462)
Yeah, and if you're below that, you're kind of just working threshold. So you want to kind of want to get up over 90 % of VFC max and spend a lot of time there. We're comparing 3020s, which is an interesting one, but it's kind of the short intensity is what they call it. So on-off, really short on-offs. So similar to 3015s, but probably not quite as good as 3015s. We've done a bit of stuff on 3015s and I...
Cam Nicholls (01:27.992)
So what were the two workouts I was comparing?
Cam Nicholls (01:44.492)
They were trying to manipulate the paper a little bit. The 3015s were... We did a video on this by the way. We'll link it up there on the 3015s.
Ryan Thomas (01:46.786)
Yeah
Ryan Thomas (01:51.022)
There's probably a research bias there. the, yeah, they compared 30 20s, similar duration against long intensity there to workouts, which was three minute on, two minute off. So three minute VO2, quite a high percentage.
Cam Nicholls (02:05.55)
That's a common sustain VO2 workout.
Ryan Thomas (02:08.205)
Yeah, not a common recovery period. So they've done some interesting things here in comparing the protocols, but I think they were trying to manipulate the time in VO2 and actually about 90%. So they were comparing against those two. So the theory is that they're short intensity, they're really quick on-offs and then they're sustained VO2. Like what's the best with those compared to this new interval workout? And the new interval workout was kind of, was a new theory for me and a new theory for I feel the RCA coaches as well, which is why we've been using it.
It's a much longer interval. that typical 30-15, you're doing like maybe seven to eight minutes there. The three minutes is obviously three minutes. So it's quite different. And this one goes for around 12 minutes, but it's a, you start with a three minute effort, then you have two minutes recovery, then a two minute effort. It's at 50 % of the power you were doing. So it's around zone.
Cam Nicholls (02:54.072)
full recovery though or is it?
Cam Nicholls (02:58.902)
Yes, I think that's when I did the work out of Worked Out About Zone 2.
Ryan Thomas (03:01.566)
Yeah, so it's middle of zone two roughly. So you're not completely off. I think that's why it keeps the oxygen consumption a bit higher is because you're not fully deloading. three minutes on, two minutes off, two minutes on, 80 seconds off, one minute on, 40 seconds off, 40 seconds on, 30 seconds off, 30, 20, 30, 20 until failure. That's what they did in the research.
Cam Nicholls (03:23.374)
Which early 20 till failure. Okay.
And repeat that all that stuff. Just that one. That's it. one.
Ryan Thomas (03:30.798)
Right, so it's a very hard effort going to failure. Yeah, so they're trying to get the most out of it But when what they found was I'm looking at the plot now We can probably put the overlay in here is that the longer the effort that just with the with the recovery periods the vr2 was just staying over 90 % for that one essentially once you get past the two-minute recovery and you into the two-minute effort you're above 90 % and pretty close to 95 % for majority of the remainder of that effort So you're getting close to eight minutes above
90%, whereas the other efforts, it takes about half of that interval duration to get above 90%. Okay, so the theory was here that quickly you're getting up over that 90 % and you're staying there for eight to 10 minutes. The rewards, theoretically in the research, the rewards are much higher.
Cam Nicholls (04:14.486)
Yeah. So was the outcomes more so aligned to just spending time above VO2 or was there a testing protocol?
Ryan Thomas (04:20.77)
They were predominantly just looking at spending time above, they really looking at what the outcomes performance were, were looking at the actual VO2.
Cam Nicholls (04:29.23)
Okay. Yeah, I mean, the thing that I really enjoyed about it as somebody who's been training for a long period of time is you get to a point where you've kind of done all the workouts and, you know, we know through the research that variability in training is key to helping you, you know, extend to the next level to get that new stimulus. So I'd never done this workout before and it hurt a lot, which suggested to me that, this was a new stimulus.
for the body and I think for a lot of people out there that are watching or listening, if you've done the 30-15s and you've done the sustained VO2, this is a really good one to consider for a new stimulus. let's, obviously the workout that's in the paper, it's not practical really to make people just do 30-20s until they fall off the indoor trainer or out on the road or wherever it might be. So you took the protocol and you created...
you know, in an interval session, which I did, which we'll put as overlay on Training Pigs Virtual, that people can actually do. how did you dissect it and turn it into a workout? This podcast is brought to you by the Road Cycling Academy. If you're a recreational or amateur road cyclist and you're stuck on a frustrating performance plateau, feeling like you need some guidance, but you're not quite ready to dive straight into one-to-one coaching, at the RCA we've created something called the 12 Week.
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Cam Nicholls (06:46.702)
head to theroadcyclingacademy.com in the menu system, you'll see our 12 week custom plan and take the first step towards that next level performance. Now let's get back to the podcast.
Ryan Thomas (06:58.926)
Yeah, so was actually Carter Beddell, one of the RCA coaches who brought this paper to my attention and he created the session and we worked on it together to try and figure out. He came to me and said, this is really cool. I've created something. Can you do it just to test it out? I did it. And originally we had same up to the point of 230 20s. So we didn't go to failure. So it was the three, two, one, 40, 30 second efforts. And it was around a 12 minute effort. So we used that and originally
we had it set three intervals. So I did it with three intervals and it knocked me for six. Like I got to the end of that and I was like, I was probably one of the hardest work out to ever done. So in my mind, I was like, I'm as an experienced writer myself, I was like, if I'm giving this to anyone who hasn't done proper VO2 work before, they're going to fall in a heap after it. And it's going to probably take a week to recover from it. It's not practical. So we kind of tailored it back a little bit. We stopped it once the...
interval got to 30 seconds. So there's only one 30 second effort at the end in the session that I give and it's only two intervals. So it's a lot, it's tailored back quite a bit to what the research said, but you're still getting, think we're gonna highlight the effort for most people if they do it in ERG mode at 110 to 120 % of critical power is what we try to get the on bit at. If you're doing that and you're keeping the power around 65, 70 % in the off periods, you're still getting a 10 to 12 minute effort above threshold.
Okay, so it's.
Cam Nicholls (08:27.254)
So you're prescribing it in erg mode for people on the trainer?
Ryan Thomas (08:30.164)
I don't like to do it in Erg personally, some people just like Erg mode because it's easy to execute. They don't have to think about it too much. So either or works. My preference is always non-Erg mode for anything in VO2, but some people it's just easier to do it in Erg mode.
Cam Nicholls (08:44.53)
So let's lay out what the set looks like and I'll put my overlay of me doing it on the Training Pigs virtual. So the first rep is three minutes.
Ryan Thomas (08:53.358)
First rep is three minutes. I think you had it set at 115 % of threshold. Yep. So that's a good place to start. 110, probably if you haven't done much VO2 work and you're trying this out, 110 is a good starting point. You can always increase it in the second rep. Two minutes. Two minute effort.
Cam Nicholls (09:07.788)
Okay, and then the recovery, two minutes, then the next, which is the one that hurt the most. That's the one that really hurt. Your recovery after a three minute VO2 effort and then the two minutes really not at recovery and then back to two minutes. Yeah, that last sort of 90 seconds, I remember it. And then the recovery after that, all the, yeah, and then.
Ryan Thomas (09:25.762)
Yeah, yeah, it hurts.
80 seconds, a 60 second effort, then 40 second recovery, 40 second effort, 30 second recovery, 30 second effort.
Cam Nicholls (09:37.078)
Okay, so there is if you want to do it, but the question is, when should you be doing it? Because I think the thing about these videos is people go, that's interesting. I wouldn't mind trying that. And then they'll try it for a couple of weeks and then move on. And maybe it was the wrong time to try it. Two weeks is probably not long enough to give it a fair shot. So when should people be thinking about implementing this into their training regime and how long should they do it for?
Ryan Thomas (09:59.064)
You want to do it pretty close to when you want to be peaking or your target event. So within that six week window of that event or target or whatever you're trying to achieve. Yeah. Yeah. Using it in within that period. So starting it pretty solid and then tapering it going into, but within that six weeks, yeah, you could do this session once a week for the six week period going into an event. Yeah. There's a good and then doing other stuff around it obviously, but you use it with that or you could interchange it with another type of interval. So what I like to do instead of giving one
This just one every week for six weeks in a row is give this one week and then a different type of VO2 effort the next week and go back to that one. So change your stimulus every couple of weeks, but you don't want to be doing this like 12 weeks out for an event because it's going to get you going pretty good. It's a type of interval that's going to peak your physiology because it's a lot of time above that 90 % of VO2 max. And it's going to really sharpen you up for a testing or a race or whatever it is. So you want to be careful about doing it too far out from whatever that goal is.
Cam Nicholls (10:58.252)
Yeah, and if people are sort of curious as to what would come before this, we had a chat just before this one and that video will be live. So we'll link it up there. It's about periodising through the training zones. So make sure you spend plenty of time, you know, around base zone two work and sweet spot sub threshold before you start tackling this. Because if you do that work before you get to this workout, then this work out is going to yield better outcome.
Ryan Thomas (11:21.758)
Yes, in my opinion, yes.
Cam Nicholls (11:24.194)
Yep. Cool. All right. Thanks for your time, Ryan. Thanks, Cam. Much appreciated. And we'll catch everyone in next podcast.

This episode provides a comprehensive review of supplementation in cycling performance, based on recent research from the UCI sports nutrition project. Cam Nicholls and RCA coach Ben Treble discuss food-first approaches, effective supplements like caffeine, creatine, beta alanine, nitrates, and more, emphasizing evidence-based choices for cyclists.
Research: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12912213/ 
AIS: https://www.ausport.gov.au/ais/nutrition/supplements 
Stanndards: https://stannards.com.au/  (podast sponsor) 

Key Takeaways Prioritize whole foods for macro and micronutrients before supplements.
Use the AIS framework to identify high-efficacy supplements (Group A).
Caffeine can improve performance by 2-5% and should be dosed 3-6 mg/kg about an hour before effort.
Sodium bicarbonate (bicarb) and beta alanine buffer muscle acidity, effective for high-intensity efforts.
Nitrates from beetroot juice reduce oxygen cost of submaximal exercise, beneficial in hot conditions.
Hyperhydration with glycerol or sodium can improve thermal regulation in long endurance events.
Avoid unverified supplements; choose those with third-party testing and certification.
Supplements like ketones currently show mixed results and are not recommended for performance enhancement.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to the episode and guest
00:26 The context of cycling performance and supplement discussion
01:28 Overview of the UCI sports nutrition project and key authors
02:53 Navigating supplement marketing noise and the food-first approach
03:43 The importance of macro and micronutrient intake from whole foods
04:49 Training on 100 grams of carbs per hour and its benefits
05:46 Using the AIS supplement framework to guide supplement choices
07:35 Key supplements in Group A: caffeine, creatine, bicarbonate, beta alanine, nitrates, hyperhydration, exogenous ketones
08:23 Caffeine: dosing, effects, and practical tips
12:24 Sodium bicarbonate: buffering capacity and application in high-intensity efforts
16:40 Beta alanine: muscle carnosine loading and effects
28:59 Nitrates from beetroot juice: reducing oxygen cost of exercise
33:27 Hyperhydration with glycerol and sodium: benefits for endurance in hot conditions
35:06 Exogenous ketones: current evidence and performance implications
39:07 Summary and practical advice on supplement strategy
 
Transcript:
Cam Nicholls (00:01.804)
Welcome to the RCA podcast designed for recreational and amateur road cyclists with a focus on performance. We dive into cycling training, nutrition, strength training for cyclists and even bike fitting tips all designed to help you train smarter, ride faster and hopefully tear your mates legs off. So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode.
Welcome back to the RCA podcast where today I'm joined by RCA coach and science geek Ben Treble and we're in a hotel room in Sydney. We're here supporting the boys at the RCA Bikes Online boys at the Pro Velo. Ben, what are you doing?
Ben Treble (00:40.53)
I'm filling in some big shoes from Ryan, our team manager in DS and playing the DS role while Ryan's on the pedals.
Cam Nicholls (00:47.458)
Nice. And I'm here to try and make some content. So we thought we'd use the opportunity to get together for a couple of podcasts. And today we're to talk about a comprehensive review on supplementation in cycling performance that was released recently, February, 2026. And this was a paper that Ben brought to my attention, I think via Instagram story, I saw you share it. And I was like, that's pretty interesting. And it kind of sort of validates a lot of supplements that are
you know, we know that work, but also highlights an area that I think a lot of people tend to forget about. So Ben, you've looked at the paper in detail. What do you make of it?
Ben Treble (01:28.054)
I love it. My caveat is, I'm, I'm, very biased on this one. So firstly, it's one paper out of, think there's 15 papers that are being slowly released. So they're not all released yet. And it's part of a much bigger project where the UCI commissioned essentially the world experts in all their different topics related to nutrition. And it's called the UCI sports nutrition project. And there are many, many papers on different topics about cycling. So.
Yeah. One of the papers is the sports nutrition paper. It's on the use of sport foods and supplements to improve performance in cycling. One of the key authors is Jamie Whitfield, who was a supervisor of mine when I did placement at a lab in Melbourne. cool. I hold him in very high respect. He's, he's much smarter than myself. I would think of him more of a biochemist, sports scientist actually, but he's brilliant. You know, of course, Burke was a big part of that paper. Who's probably one of the top.
I would argue the number one sports nutritionist in the world. contribution to both research and practice within Australia in a global context is phenomenal. So very good paper, highly recommend. We will link it that paper, I'm sure, for people to have a look in the potty. So what are we doing about this paper? Well, they just really want to dig into, as you all know, you probably all get bombarded on media from a hundred million companies about take this supplement, take this, take oxygenated water. There's so much noise.
Out there, it's difficult for people to navigate what actually works.
Cam Nicholls (02:57.422)
I'm in an ad actually promoting AgeMade. guess a lot of people would have seen that ad.
Ben Treble (03:02.319)
I have received this head many times. I'm in my mid thirties and I've received the age mate.
Cam Nicholls (03:07.926)
Yeah, sorry about that. It's a good supplement though. I did my blasts, my bloods it worked for me. So, okay. I stand by that one. Okay.
Ben Treble (03:14.222)
Cook me up and I'll try it. Back on topic. I'm not talking about age made in my list today, just for the reference. Sorry for your plug. What this paper does is it tries to really break down what's important and what's not for people. And I think the first point that we really want to get across to the audience today is you should really try to have a food first approach, which means try to get your macros and micronutrients from, you know, like
natural whole foods first.
Cam Nicholls (03:45.582)
Feats any supplement, hands down, every day of the
Ben Treble (03:48.152)
Every time the bio availability of all the important things you really need from whole foods is just so much more important than worrying about spending too much money on supplements. Yep. Good. We can agree on the first point. Did everybody hear that? Yeah. Food first approach. Yeah.
Cam Nicholls (04:03.918)
The last training block I did for Grafton to Indoveral, which is a big bike race here in Australia last year, was the first time I properly did train on 100 grams of carbs per hour. And I know that's not necessarily whole food, that's a lot of sugar, but it's part of the macro nutrient approach. And I'd never trained so well in my entire life and I'd never recovered so well as well. Like for example, a five hour ride, hard, on a Saturday.
used to leave me like in pieces in the afternoon, fatigued, tired, grumpy, but training at 100 grams per hour, I was recovering better, I was sleeping better, I wasn't grumpy, and then the adaptation was better, and then you can take that adaptation to the next training session. So just this is one small example of getting my macronutrients right for training, made such a big difference.
Ben Treble (04:49.198)
Yeah, I can think of a new RCA athlete of mine and we've spent, you know, the first few weeks not even talking about power or doing fancy VO2 intervals. The entire focus has been how do we get you eating more food on the bike? And that's what's making the difference. Trying to slowly build up the ability and experimenting with different foods. Is it bars, gels, liquids? What works for her and her stomach?
and what's going to help her get more fuel in to do the effort. There's no point doing the efforts until we know we can get the right fuel in. So yeah, big point on that, but we're not here to talk about that right now. We're here to talk about the juicy stuff, which is supplements. So, the first part of this conversation is what is this paper reference and what do I tell all my athletes when we first talk about food and supplements? And that's probably one of the best resources out there. Firstly, because it's free.
You know, I would argue, you know, they don't have any bias because they're not leaning towards any certain company. It's published from the Australian Institute of Sport. So the AIS has a supplement framework and there's an entire team of sports scientists and researchers who are digging through the research, doing their own research. And they publish a framework where they're grading certain supplements based on their efficacy. Like does the supplement do what it's supposed to do?
If they claim it has a certain performance benefit, does it actually do this? How strong is the body of research behind it that then supports that? How safe is it? And what are the downsides or the risks from an antidoping perspective or a health risk, health hazards? And they factor all that in and then they grade it. Is it an A group, which would be like the highest level? You know, this is the group that you can pretty confidently say it will do what it says it does. It's safe to take and.
That's where your focus should be on this group, group A. Group B would be there's some evidence for it. It's interesting and we're keeping an eye on it. And you'll see supplements move between these groups as the research bodies grow. So an interesting one would be, you know, for example, nitrates, beetroot, that used to be a B group supplement. And as the research has grown to support it more,
Ben Treble (07:06.126)
It's been lifted to a group A. Supplements. That's just, they're regularly updating this framework. So I tell people to keep an eye on it. And then you've got group C and D, which are essentially supplements you should ignore in my eyes. I would just check the list because maybe you want to try something that you've got a marketing ad for. And if you see it in these groups, maybe it's a good sign to just keep an eye on it, but not touch it yet. So today we're going to focus on, we're going to talk about quite a few different supplements that are within the group A category. So I'm just going to...
wrap them off real quick. The ones that we care about. Caffeine, creatine, bicarb, that includes sodium citrate, beta alanine, nitrates, hyperhydration, that's through glycerol, and then exogenous ketones are added to the list. That is a B group supplement. I've just put it there because I know it's a hot top.
Cam Nicholls (07:54.866)
Interesting and it's relatively new in comparison to the other ones as well. So there's a fair chance it might end up at the top of the tree, would you say? okay, interesting, I already saw that.
Ben Treble (08:02.67)
My view is it won't. Well, there's multiple papers now across different sports that show it actually has a detrimental effect on endurance performance. Interesting. Yeah.
Cam Nicholls (08:17.102)
Okay, alright, maybe that's a rabbit hole for another day. We'll leave it at that. I like that, we're on the caffeine right now.
Ben Treble (08:23.672)
I'm on number three for the day already and let's, it's just after nine and we've got races starting at just before lunch. So hot topic. Let's kick it off on caffeine, Ken. I don't think we need to a lot of time on this, but caffeine does what it says it does. know, caffeine at the end of the day, the primary mechanism it's via the central nervous system. It reduces your perceived effort and fatigue whilst improving focusing and pacing strategies.
What I've done for this conversation is I've had a look at what was put out in the UCI paper and I've gone and, you know, cross-checked it with what's in the AIS framework from a dosing perspective. Just as a heads up to listeners, the UCI paper is, from my eyes, is fairly focused on acute dosing. Whereas if you go into the AIS framework, they often provide acute and chronic dosing strategies for these supplements. So I would actually tell people, if you see something in the UCI paper you're interested in,
go check it out in the AIS framework where you can get, you know, they have these great PDF infographics on each supplement with dosing strategies and guides and things to watch out for. So I'm just
Cam Nicholls (09:31.406)
Just conscious a lot of our listeners are European, USA, Canada. So the AIS, which is the Australian Institute of Sport, would you say that their guidelines here would be similar to that in the US and Canada and Europe? Do they tend to be aligned or have you seen discrepancies in the past?
Ben Treble (09:49.8)
Not that I've done a lot of digging, but of all of my American and my European athletes I work with, none of them have ever seen anything like the AIS framework before. Okay. And they don't know of anything in their home countries. Okay. With that available. So whether they hold that information internally, because they think of it as IP or a competitive advantage, would be my guess that they probably do. And they might provide it to certain athletes and teams or performance staff.
But it's probably internal only, they don't publicly share it. Okay. So then, yeah, we don't know if it's the same or not. Okay.
Cam Nicholls (10:23.918)
guess AIS1 though can be trusted because we all know Australians are good at sport. We know what we're doing so it's a good reference point.
Ben Treble (10:31.502)
Yeah. I think we're an over performer in the winter sports as well. There you go. For the size and not being a winter country. Off topic. Back to caffeine. We'll go through this one quick. Cause I think it's, everyone knows caffeine does do what it does. It works well. Main things to be aware of the dose is probably anywhere from three to six milligrams per kilogram of body mass. Ideally you take it around an hour before your exercise, or if you have a longer event, you can stagger it through the event. So you don't have a massive dose.
AIS recommends a max of three milligrams. Caffeine used to be a banned substance on the anti-doping water list. It is no longer a banned substance, but it's just, you you need to keep an on that. This gets updated every year. So who knows if in two years they'd ban it again. Unlikely, but yeah. Other than that, you just probably need to be aware of if you take too much excessive use gives you anxiety, jitters and sleep disruptions, which most people are aware of. yeah.
Cam Nicholls (11:24.194)
Sounds like May every day.
Ben Treble (11:25.87)
What I thought was cool, I've never actually looked at it, but they do reference in the paper, you know, the expected performance improvement is from two to 5%. And that's been proven across multiple sports and distances. So caffeine guys, if you're not taking it, second point on caffeine I would have, I typically get my athletes to switch from coffee in terms of racing to, we call it anodos here in Australia, which would be caffeine pills. So you know exactly how much you're taking for your race if you want to take.
50 milligrams at half an hour before the line and then halfway through the race, you take the other half, whatever you want your dosing to be. Typically large people take a little bit more, but yeah, I would recommend that you switch over to pills because you know, a standard cappuccino, the range and how much caffeine you get from that varies massively. So you don't actually know how much you're taking. True. Let's move on to probably one of the supplements that Kem is a big fan of. And I'm a big fan of as well.
setting by car. Yeah.
Cam Nicholls (12:26.67)
buffering the lactate. Yeah. Just grind at threshold all day long.
Ben Treble (12:31.148)
Yeah. Yeah. So this one's a good one. Sodium bicarb. Cause one it's cheap. It's easily available and accessible. Everyone's supermarket has this within the same group is sodium citrate. They're essentially the same thing for the point of this conversation. What does it do? It's, it improves your buffering capacity of the hydrogen ions. So it slows down the rate of acidity and the shifting pH as the intensity goes up. So at the end of the day, what is it doing? It delays your exercise induced.
acidosis during high intensity efforts. The research shows that the performance benefits are in that like one up to 60 minute efforts, but the research is a lot less supportive the longer you go outside of that range. So when we talk about road racing or a Gran Fondo event where it's anywhere from two to four or five hours, the efficacy for using bicarb gets a lot lower.
Interesting. So would I use it for a road race? Probably not, personally. Would I use it for a crit race or if you do any track cycling or sprint work, would I use it in training for a sprint session? Yes. So is it worth using in training, even if it's not going to be used in your race? Potentially. Yeah.
Cam Nicholls (13:46.54)
I think there's a bit of a gash prone issues that people can experience with this one as well. They need to be aware of. So like slowly dose it in kind of thing.
Ben Treble (13:54.638)
Yeah. So from a dosing and a risks perspective, the biggest risk on bicarb is gastro issues. I mean, at the end of the day, it's almost like the more you can take the better. But at some point you get significant gastro issues, which will stop you performing. So there's a little bit of trial and error for individuals and you can progressively, you know, train yourself to take more to reduce those gut issues. Another tactic you can do is some companies will sell bicarb in pills.
even better and harder to find is they sell it in a slow release capsule. Yeah. Okay. So if you take bicarb, you know, just from the supermarket in a powder and you mix it in water or however you want to take it, it tastes terrible. If you can put it into a slow release capsule, it's probably going to help with the gastro issues. The loading protocol is typically one to three hours pre-exercise, two to 300 milligrams per kilogram of body mass. The chronic dose is big.
which would be 500 milligrams per kilogram for five days. Wow. So big chronic loading dose. They also recommend that if you do that acute dose that you can either take it with fluids or take it with a carb meal. And that will help with the gastro issues. Yeah.
Cam Nicholls (15:10.38)
I know what got me onto it. I was at the Tour de France behind the scenes, 2024, Visma Leesa Bike and Nathan Van Hoede, something like that, who I can't pronounce his surname. He's a very good Belgian rider. He actually had a heart attack the previous year. So he was racing with Visma. He was just in the car. But he was telling me that the number one supplement that the team was using at the time that everyone loved was the Morton gel mix by carb. And I was like,
Pro athletes are saying that it's the best supplement that they're using at the time. I need to get onto this. And think there was a famous scene of a, I think it's, don't know the writer's name. He was the Canadian world champ though, in a road race, actually eating bicarb because their races are like five, six hours, like halfway through the race, having a bicarb gel mix and eating it out of a tub during a race. obviously it's held in high regard, that elite level bicarb.
Ben Treble (16:05.698)
Yep. I mean, it works. Right. And at of the day, one of the biggest things that often holds people back during high intensity racing is, you know, their ability to clear lactate, right. And reduce acidosis. The longer you can hold that back, it's going to give you a performance gain. So cheap, accessible, safe. Just have to do a bit of trial and error for gastro issues and with your loading protocol. yeah, sodium bicarb is a really good one to jump on if you've never tried it.
The other one that has a, it's a very similar outcome via a different mechanism is beta alanine. I think you tried it.
Cam Nicholls (16:40.194)
I use it for years. Yeah, I like that one as well. I love the little tingling sensation you get on your neck when you have it, which is so odd. But it's the only one that as soon as you take it, there's like some not within seconds, but like within five minutes, you get a little bit of a skin tingle, which is weird.
Ben Treble (16:56.43)
Yeah, it's a funny one. So what is beta alanine? At the end of the day, what it's doing is it tries to overload your muscle carnosine levels. And what that does is it, again, it improves the buffering of the hydrogen ions. So it holds back the acidosis. What is it good for? It's good for one to 10 minute max efforts. There's some research showing that maybe it has a better effect for longer durations than bicarb. Interesting. So this is a supplement that...
I used for Grafton to Inveral. The downside to beta alanine compared to bicarb is from the research, the loading protocol to take it, there's no acute protocol because you have to flood the muscle carnivore levels and this takes weeks with very high doses. So it's very difficult because the body is very good at self-regulating these kinds of things. And so it's very difficult to get it to actually increase muscle carnivore through exogenous supplementation.
So that's why the loading protocol is it's around four to six grams per day for at least four weeks. Four weeks. So I remember taking, I split that dose into four doses per day. And that was, I think it was four pills every dose. I had 12 pills to take every day and I did it for six weeks prior to my event. they say once you've done that four week loading, they say the maintenance dose is only 1.2 grams per day.
So that's new since I did it. They're saying you could sort of get away with a four to six week loading protocol. And then there's a maintenance dose once you're in that saturation phase, which is only 1.2 grams per day. As you already brought up, the main downside, there's very little evidence of gastro issues, which is why some people lean towards beta alanine over bicarb. So for those of you who've tried bicarb and get really bad gastro issues, maybe give beta alanine a go. But again, yeah, this side effect is
You get this tingling sort of pins and needles and people get it either all over the body or in different places. I used to get it in my cheeks and my fingertips. I didn't get it in the toes. Some people get it in the toes. You got it in your neck like, it's all, it's quite constant. And if you do this for six weeks, some people can't handle the tingles for six weeks. So maybe before you start this one, be prepared. You have to be ready to have a bit of an unusual sensation for six weeks. I swear by it.
Ben Treble (19:23.296)
I put down a big part of my performance for back when I was racing at Grafton down to beta alanine.
Cam Nicholls (19:30.594)
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to the
starts to come in and your power drops by 10%. I could probably go another half an hour or an hour when I was on better aniline. And that was really, really noticeable.
Ben Treble (21:33.55)
Yeah, I think it makes a big difference. yeah, two, there's two supplements that both work on reducing or buffering the hydrogen ions. So reducing the acidosis or prolonging it, but they're through different mechanisms. There's very little research looking at both of them together. So what happens if you combine them? So I actually think there's a potential big gain to be doing both. Yeah. So it's not well researched, but I'm for certain races. If you have like a hard start race.
Cam Nicholls (21:54.659)
Interesting.
Ben Treble (22:01.624)
I don't see why he couldn't do bike carb to sort of get through the first hour, which is usually a very key part of a race versus beta Alanin. Maybe for our listeners, if you think, for those of you who are in Australia doing a Gran Fondo Worlds at Lawn, where you had a climb, like I think it was in the first kilometre, you go up this like 15, 20 minute berg straight out the gate. Like that's where your bike carb is going to be helpful. But then in the backend of the race, like two hours later, the bike carb's probably not doing anything.
Beta alanine if your muscle carnivine levels saturated that's going to help you buffer the acidosis in the second half.
Cam Nicholls (22:37.518)
Just phase them in though, don't be double dropping both of them. You'll be running to the toilet and tingling at the same time.
Ben Treble (22:43.732)
Yeah, and this was, I mean, for any of my athletes who try this and for the listeners, I trial this ideally, like at least six months prior to an event where they're thinking of using it for the first time. So, we go through a phase where we really test this out and we test it out with a race that they don't necessarily care about, a race we're using for training. And we really test out one, a protocol, and then we know for the race we care about.
Okay. Did it work? Did we have gastro issues? Do we want to tweak the protocol? Did it just not work? Cause you always get some non-responders. Was it worth it? Yes or no. You can make that decision. Don't try this first time at a race you care about. No way. So two very cool supplements. I think, you know, and both of those are in the A group in the AIS framework. So yeah, we'll jump on the next one. Let's talk about creating. Okay. Group A supplement. you on the creating?
Cam Nicholls (23:36.93)
Yeah, I actually take it with my age mate. Splendid, do you? Yeah, so you scoop your age mate into water and then I scoop my creatine, shake it up and I drink it before I have my morning coffee. Then I run to the toilet. Yeah, so I'm on the... because there's a lot of research now that creatine isn't just good for sports performance, it's also good for just general health and wellbeing.
Ben Treble (23:52.684)
Is that a single or a double shot?
Ben Treble (24:03.758)
So jumping on the sport performance side, the paper, you know, essentially what is it supposed to do? It improves high intensity sprint performance and repeated efforts. here we're talking about fatigue resistance. And in my eyes, fatigue resistance is how many times can you repeat your like best sprint power before it drops off a cliff?
Cam Nicholls (24:21.856)
Yeah, it's like watching yesterday's Pro Velo race surround that crypt track. Yeah. Just neurological, you know, if it's neuromuscular, I should say.
Ben Treble (24:29.474)
second laps with a boot up a small hill every 30 seconds for like 60 laps. How many times can you do your best sprint if it's let's say 600 Watts? Can you do that 60 times every 30 seconds for an hour? Yeah. So that's what the paper's talking about. Obviously there's a lot of other benefits to creatine that it's not going into. How does it do that? It increases your intramuscular phosphocreatine stores. And what this does is enhance ATP, which is energy currency.
resynthesis during maximal efforts. What's the loading protocol? It's quite big. It's around 20 grams a day for five to seven days. One of the risks or downside is you do initially get a water retention weight increase. So that's typically from 500 grams up to a kilo. That's in the muscle. Yeah. So as a result of having this increased creatine levels in the muscle, those creatine, you get more water molecules bonding to them.
Cam Nicholls (25:16.514)
muscles, yeah?
Ben Treble (25:25.966)
So just stores more water in the muscle than normal and water weighs. So yeah, your weight goes up as a result. There's some evidence that says once you go through a period, if you continually have a very high level of creating stores, your body will normalize and the water levels will drop back down. But particularly in that first week or two, like, yeah, don't be surprised if your body weight goes up. So if you have a very, very, you know, what's a big kilogram focused event, don't do this five days before probably, if you care about your weight.
The other loading dose you could do is so around five grams, four times a day for five days, or you can do three to five grams for 20 days. So you could do a more chronic dose. And then once you've done that loading protocol, the maintenance dose is three to five grams daily. And once you stop, it takes about four weeks and your body will return back to normal baseline levels. So it has a pretty long, I would say a pretty long efficacy period. Hmm. Good. Yeah. I think it's a simple one again.
Relatively cheap, not as cheap as bike up, pretty accessible. We can buy it in a supermarkets in Australia. You don't need the fancy stuff. I feel like I've seen some marketing branding for like.
Cam Nicholls (26:33.198)
Don't worry, I'm buying the fancy stuff. I've been sucking. Yeah, the pharmaceutical grade, you know.
Ben Treble (26:35.66)
Yeah
Don't do what chem's doing. The only thing that's worth spending money on is making sure you get creating that's, um, you know, like has to test it in Australia or different countries around the world. have supplements that are, you know, tested by third-party labs to make sure there's no contaminants. So for those of you who race in grand Fondo events, any event that falls under UCI regulations or rules, which includes most grand fondos. I know we have a lot of those writers in our listening group. actually fall under the anti-doping rules. So.
Yeah. Highly recommend that you make sure any of these supplements you take are either has to certified or sport integrity tested. They're the two big testing labels that you'll see on, on the brand. The reason for that is the large majority of doping infractions are from contaminated supplements. So they're not people doping on purpose. For example, they've gone and taken some supplement that wasn't tested and they get contaminated because they're made in a warehouse in the same warehouse often where
they're brewing up, you know, pre-workout extreme mix that accidentally got a bit of meth in it. Yeah. Or speed or something. And literally it only takes a minuscule amount of that that was left in the batch tub to go into your mix, into your system. And then it comes up as a positive result in a doping test. Okay. There we go. Kradian, do you want to say anything else on it?
Cam Nicholls (28:01.358)
I think creatine to me is almost becoming as elevated as caffeine, I feel. Like it's really, it's been around so long now. It's so well researched. Everyone knows about it. Yeah, I just take it daily. It's part of my repertoire, whether I'm training or not.
Ben Treble (28:15.981)
Awesome. Yeah, to be fair, I take it. I think it's probably been a lot more common in the gym goers prior to the endurance bros.
Cam Nicholls (28:23.968)
I'm a bit of a gym bro though, so I can gym doing my beach weights and getting the water retention in the bicep
Ben Treble (28:30.366)
Kam's upper body looks as big as his legs now guys. All righty. Let's everybody go take your creatine. So next stack in the A group supplements, they call it dietary inorganic nitrates. What's that fancy for? Beetroot juice. People have probably seen like people doing these nitrate shots, drinking purple juice after races. That could also potentially just be cherry tart, which is a different supplement, but yeah, beetroot juice.
and have you taken it? Yeah.
Cam Nicholls (29:01.306)
I remember it, but I probably didn't do it. I'm assuming there's a loading protocol. There used to be these little, and I think you still get them, the Beat It, which is like a beetroot concentrate. So I used to take when I was racing down in Caulfield, Carnegie, Glenvale on a Sunday, I'd have one of those. Never really knew if it did anything. I think when you're racing on the limit for an hour, you kind of don't know if anything's doing anything down there. yeah, so I've taken it, but not really. Unlike...
you know, other supplements where there's a noticeable effect, like betalain I've noticed, bicarb I've noticed, never really noticed anything personally with.
Ben Treble (29:39.512)
Beats. So Beats is a interesting one because it was a B group supplement and it's moved up to the A level group because the evidence has got stronger and stronger on it. What's it supposed to do? It's supposed to reduce the oxygen cost of submaximal exercise. What does that mean? When you push the pedals and you push watts, you've got to produce that energy somehow. The effect typically you would say like for one watt you need 12 and a half.
Some people might say 13, it's typically 12 and a half millilitres of oxygen. Push that one watt. So what this does is it reduces the amount of oxygen required to push that one watt. How the heck does, when I heard that, was like, how the holy heck does beetroot juice, you can't reduce the amount of oxygen it takes to push one watt. What? That's ridiculous. This stumped researchers for a long time because we kept finding the same result. You get people.
On a metabolic cart, we have gas exchange and we can measure the amount of oxygen in carbon dioxide out. And you have two groups. It could be a blinded study where they think they're taking the placebo or the beetroot. And every time the group who had the beetroot, it took less oxygen to push same Watts. Okay. The math is not adding up. No. The mechanism was quite complex. I'm not going to pretend I know a ridiculous amount about it, but in brief.
It came down to talk production at a muscular level and ultimately reduced, you know, the way we produce, you've got velocity times talk to produce power and the amount of talk that your muscles needed got reduced to produce the same Twitch response. And that's what the nitrates were doing. So reduced this, this level of talk required for the same Twitch response, ergo then less oxygen for same power output. it works. The research is consistent.
What do we need to do? You can do an acute dose and that's six millimole of nitrate. I think it's the equivalent of around two of those beta shots, two to three hours prior.
Cam Nicholls (31:42.68)
I wasn't having two shots. I was just having the one shot probably an hour before.
Ben Treble (31:46.53)
So I would smash two shots like two, three hours when you have that last big carb meal before an event. Okay. Yep. I would be doing that. The chronic dose, three to 15 days duration and taking around 350 to 600 milligrams per day as a minimum. And then three days prior to the event, you do three to 600 milligrams and then you can do two to three days before the event. You can even ramp it up again and do just those six millimole shots.
Yeah. So it's pretty big dosage, but research is good. would be doing it. That is nitrate shots are pretty expensive though. So unless you're sponsored by baited or you have a lot of funding. Roots. Yeah. This is where the AIS framework is really good. Cause they talk about the equivalence and it's, it's a lot like, you know, for one baited shot, it was like two or three entire beetroots. That's. Yeah. I don't like beetroots that much. know, or like 500 millilitres of beetroot juice for one shot.
Cam Nicholls (32:27.81)
What if you just ate a lot of beetroot?
Cam Nicholls (32:39.008)
Yeah, no thanks.
Cam Nicholls (32:46.222)
That's when you go to the toilet and you think you're going to the toilet, blood's coming out.
Ben Treble (32:49.966)
Yeah, the Beat It shots are probably the go, they're just a bit pricey.
Cam Nicholls (32:54.23)
Okay, cool. Yeah. How many more on the list? One more?
Ben Treble (32:57.826)
Yeah, there's two more, but we're just going to touch on hyperhydration quickly. This one got me because I hadn't really thought about it that much until I read about it. It does sit as a group A supplement in the AIS framework and it was in the UCI paper. So they call it hyperhydration, but it was via the use of glycerol with your fluids or sodium. So what you're trying to do is increase the total body water and plasma volume in your blood.
offset the sweat loss during prolonged exercise. So it's good. This one is good for the long endurance events or hot conditions, less useful for your short high intensity sort of think track, crit racing. It's improving your thermal regulation and performance by two to 5%.
Cam Nicholls (33:44.258)
Wow, this is a good one for I live in the sunshine ghost where it's quite hot and humid doing these four or five hour rides where I'm cooked at the end. So that's where this sits quite nicely or a big long hot road race. Fondo event, big long Fondo event. Peaks challenge is happening today. Those guys should be doing this.
Ben Treble (34:01.304)
Big time. this kangaroo is on the golf course. Sorry. I'm easily distracted guys.
Cam Nicholls (34:06.382)
We have a lovely view from this hotel room by the way.
Ben Treble (34:09.101)
You have gone all out. The glycerol loading is one to one and a half grams per kilogram of body mass with fluids, or you could do that with sodium. So you could do sodium one to one and a half grams per kilogram. And you just do it pre-exercise. The risk is some people do get GI issues. So you probably want to experiment with this one in training first to find out what works for you. Some people get a body mass increase. I mean, obviously if you drink a liter of fluid.
your weight's going to go up, sorry. So maybe just keep that in mind. But other than that, it's a very simple one. The performance benefit is measurable. It's cheap and accessible. So, yeah, have a read of that one, guys. I would definitely check that one out. That would be high on my list.
Cam Nicholls (34:53.535)
Okay, good. And what's the last one?
Ben Treble (34:55.658)
Last one, caveat, this is a B group. So there's mixed scientific support. It's an emerging supplements. It's probably been a hot topic. I feel like it's not that new anymore, but ketones. Yeah. Exogenous ketones went nuts a few years ago until some of the research started coming out. You know, the first papers that came out were all sponsored by, you know, the companies themselves that were selling these supplements. So in my eyes, I just don't even almost bother reading the paper. just write it off.
Cam Nicholls (35:06.732)
three years ago it was going nuts.
Ben Treble (35:23.03)
And once some actual third-party labs started looking into it, you know, the results either became so mixed that you had to really question it until they did some better repeated studies that were far more controlled. And they started finding detrimental effects of taking escogenes, ketones for endurance performance. So, I mean, why were people taking ketones? The idea is if you go into a ketatonic state, which is like a fasted state, instead of it preserves your glycogen stores for longer in the note that
you you would be using more fat or ketones for energy production instead of glycogen, is your sugar stores, saving your sugar stores for later in the race. The logic makes sense. One of the problems with it is if you're in a race and you do a high intensity effort, your body can't selectively go and use ketones. It's still going to go use glycogen because the way it works is these things have a rate of synthesis to produce ATP. And, you know, when we want to do a high intensity effort,
It uses an anaerobic system with glycolysis. You can't really avoid that. There's no way for your body to go use ketones to produce 400 Watts in a few seconds. Right. You've got to use phosphocreatine for the first five seconds. And then you run into your anaerobic and your glycolysis system to produce energy that quick. So, I mean, we started to have repeated evidence that shows actually people perform worse when they're taking it. So they've done blinded studies on race walkers.
and Maranfonas, I think they've also now done it on cyclists and had the same result where the group that was on the ketones performed worse in their time trials.
Cam Nicholls (36:58.926)
us in
Ben Treble (37:04.686)
Cause there's still some studies that show mixed results. Like some individuals do still do better with it. And there's still, know, we're talking about small sample sizes here where there's, know, probably two, three studies that show it has a bad, a negative effect. But then there's still arguably, you know, four or five papers that show inconclusive results. And there's a couple of papers that were sponsored by the companies that showed positive results. So, so it still sits in this mixed outcomes.
Or it's an emerging supplement. So we still want to keep an eye on it because it's still logic says we need to do more research. It's safe to take, it's accessible. And maybe if we do more research, we'll find something out, but I'm certainly not hopeful and I'm not taking ketones. Yeah.
Cam Nicholls (37:49.334)
Interesting. think when I was kind of, so I was over in sort of France the last two years with Ketone IQ actually, as a sponsor of Isma and from what I could gather, you know, that they do hold their cards slightly close to their chest, but ketones were taken more as a recovery drink than actually a performance enhancing drink.
Ben Treble (38:10.542)
think that's where this paper, you gotta be mindful this paper is all about performance and they're not really focused on recovery as much. So that would be also what I may expect in the future that we find out if you're doing multi-day events where recovery is really important, maybe there's a very marginal gain to be had in terms of recovery from taking ketones post-race, but not in the race or loading pre-race, expecting high power output in the race because you took ketones.
The only reason you'd have this performance benefit is if it lets you recover a little bit better every day in a three week grand tour, by the end of the third week, maybe you can do a higher power output because you've been recovering better a little bit every day accumulated for three weeks. Yep. So that would be my guess as to why Yumbo taking it. Maybe it's also cause they're probably getting a lot of funding from them to take it. You know, there's always that bias. Cool. Yeah. You don't see them downing shots anymore in the ProPello. You used to see teams.
smashing shots mid event. Yeah. And don't see teams and teams used to take it who weren't sponsored by ketone companies. And I think the biggest proof in the pudding here is you no longer see that happening. Or I don't, I haven't seen it. I don't see pro writers who are not sponsored by ketone company taking ketones anymore or spending their money on ketones.
Cam Nicholls (39:27.182)
Yeah, no, I think it's, you know, from the because we need to have a chat with the nutritionists from Visma last year. And I think they're so drilled in on calorie intake and carbohydrate intake during the race that ketones don't make the carbs are better for performance. You know, going back to the start of this conversation, get your macro nutrients right. If you want to perform in a race, know, carbs is the focus.
That's a really comprehensive list, Ben. I think we'll end it there because we've been on this topic for quite a long period of time. But I think what it does shine a light on is, you if people are out there listening and they want to start, you know, implementing some supplements into their regime, do it strategically. Don't just start, as you said, grabbing anything that pops up in your marketing feed. Look at credible lists and maybe we can dump, you know, the AIS list or link.
in the podcast description as well as the link to the research paper. But I think as well, like if you know, if you're working with a coach, know, Ben's an RCA coach and you know, he's working with his members, not just on training, but also on supplementation and when to bring it in and how to bring it in. So if you're looking to bring supplementation into your training, you're interested in working with a coach, make sure you check out the RCA's website, www.roadcyclingacademy.com. Check out One to One Coaching and you can find a coach there. We'll catch you all in the next podcast.

This episode explores a research-based strategy to boost FTP for cyclists by focusing on physiological system training and periodisation. It emphasises proper zone training, avoiding overtraining, and implementing structured blocks to achieve sustainable performance improvements  
RCA 12 Week Custom Plan: https://roadcyclingacademy.com/cycling-plan-custom/ 
Research Paper referenced: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9299127/ 


 
key topics FTP and critical power explained
Importance of physiological system training
Periodisation and training blocks
Research insights from running studies
Common mistakes in cycling training
Structured training plans and recovery
Training zones and their physiological basis

 
Chapters 00:00 Introduction to the RCA Podcast
00:25 Understanding FTP and Its Importance
01:42 Common Mistakes in Training for FTP
03:14 The Role of Training Zones
04:42 Periodization in Training
05:39 Research Insights on Training Protocols
08:12 Implementing a Structured Training Plan
10:17 Blending Training Intensities
12:30 General Framework for Periodization
13:06 Conclusion and Next Steps
 
Transcript: 
Cam Nicholls (00:01.804)
Welcome to the RCA podcast designed for recreational and amateur road cyclists with a focus on performance. We dive into cycling training, nutrition, strength training for cyclists and even bike fitting tips all designed to help you train smarter, ride faster and hopefully tear your mates legs off. So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode.
Ryan Thomas (00:25.313)
you
Cam Nicholls (00:26.606)
So welcome back to the RCA podcast, which is also on YouTube. So for those audio listeners, please excuse any visual references. Today, we're be talking about a simple way to boost FTP. We're not talking about a specific workout as such, we're talking about an overall overarching strategy. But before we talk about this, which is research-based.
Let's talk about what is FTP. For some people, particularly if you're new to cycling, you may still be trying to figure out what FTP is. So, Ryan, we don't actually use FTP at the RCA. We use critical power where you can get your FTP. But for those who want to know what FTP is, how you best describe it.
Ryan Thomas (01:02.062)
It's essentially the maximum effort that you can sustain without going over your limit. And that can be anywhere from 40 to 60 minutes, depending on what sort of testing you use to find it. But essentially we're trying to find a maximal steady
Cam Nicholls (01:15.918)
And we don't typically test for 40 to 60 minutes do we? We test for 20 minutes or there's a ramp test or there's an eight minute protocol. There's all sorts of variations to get your FTP. So we don't have to send somebody out and yeah, ride as hard as you can for an hour, but it's not the be all and end all, but it's important, particularly if you're trying to work out your training zones, which is what we're going to talk about shortly and target physiological systems to understand your FTP. And it's also, know, it's like we're
You know, there's a gym setting behind us when people go to the gym. What's the thing that you want to promote the most? Well, how much can you bench? I guess MTP is very similar to that. So that's why people like to talk about it. When people are trying to increase their FTP for whatever reason, Ryan, where do you feel like they go wrong?
Ryan Thomas (01:57.976)
specific threshold testing to begin with. So setting your zones properly is the first.
Cam Nicholls (02:02.7)
They're an average off Garmin or Strava or one of these apps.
Ryan Thomas (02:06.67)
Yeah, and then most of the time I see people are training to either a threshold that's too high and it just burns them out. So you need to have that threshold set lower, even if it's a number that you might think is lower than what you want, it's accurate. Okay. you're doing the proper testing. So have that setting first. The other point is that people aren't training a physiological system. They're just training. They might go and do bunch rides or they might do a sporadic, the threshold effort one week and a VO2 effort the other week and then a tempo effort. And it's like, well, what are you actually targeting? There's no...
You need a physiological target. You need to train that physiological system to see changes over time. So minimum sort of stimulus that you want to do is like, when the training peaks is set this, there's their chronic training load is based on a 42 day rolling period. when we did our training peaks university course, and we saw the training peaks in person when they came to Australia and the whole theory is that.
any one physiological stimulus, takes about six weeks to see a change. You need to do that for six weeks. And if you're doing random stuff or bunch rides, it's no one physiological strong stimulus. It's just random little bits here and there that aren't really enough to see meaningful change.
Cam Nicholls (03:14.158)
And as the inquiry guy at the RCA still, you know, speak to lot of recreational and amateur road cyclists before they join the RCA. And the biggest thing is just training too hard too often. So it's like, it sounds so simple, but it's just the most common. It's like, I want to increase my fitness. So I'll ride harder and I'll ride more and they'll end up, you know, not only overstimulated by working all their systems, as you said, but they're also just end up in a fatigue state.
Ryan Thomas (03:37.984)
Yeah, usually the first thing they do is rest and take the intensity up.
Cam Nicholls (03:41.344)
Yeah, have a week off. People are I can't do that. It's like, no, just trust us. Yeah. What happens? They freshen up. So targeting the training zones. Why would we want it? Cause I think when people think about zone training, they just think about, well I should do a zone two ride today and let's just do zone two. And cause it's, heard about it online and it's, know, zone two it's space fitness, but it's actually rather than thinking of it as like zones, it's more like you just said, physiological systems. like why have the seven training zones?
Ryan Thomas (04:09.518)
That's literally why they were created is to make meaningful change of what's happening physiologically.
So if you go back to when the zones were first created by Andy Colgan and Joe Friel and all those people who created, started training peaks and all the specific training physiology, was like, they knew these markers, right? They knew lactate threshold. knew like there was a fat max and a steady state area. they were like, well, how can we make this deliverable to people who don't know much about it? So they needed zones and described zones and to set training in these areas around based on physiology.
Cam Nicholls (04:42.86)
And what we're going to talk about as an overarching strategy is, you know, periodizing through the zones. And what is periodization? It's taking blocks and increments and improving your fitness over time. And then obviously taking a step back. But when a lot of people think of that, they don't necessarily think of it as when I increase my intensity and volume, have a specific focus on a specific physiological system or a specific zone. So before we talk about the details of what that could look like, there is a bit of research in this space.
that not in cycling but in running that looked at this.
Ryan Thomas (05:16.002)
Yeah, so they were looking at, it was a short time trial, I was a 5K running time trial, but it's still 5K still in endurance. They looked at two types of protocols. went from polarised to pyramidal, was the first training protocol they used over a 16 week period. And then the other protocol they compared it against was pyramidal to polarised. So they were doing a lot of three, zone three, four, two, and then they went into really hard stuff, polarised training.
Cam Nicholls (05:39.598)
And as a breakdown for those that may not be familiar with those two methods, Polarized is 80 % like Zone 2, like base training relatively easy and 20 % quite hard, sort of over threshold and above. And Pyramidal is more of a 60-20-10 split, so 60 % easy base, 20 % in the middle and 10 % hard.
Ryan Thomas (06:03.31)
Yeah, that's pretty close. So they looked at that protocol and the other protocol and they found that the best protocol to see a change in this particular cohort was going from pyramidal to polarize. So going from, I would call it moderately hard training in that under threshold predominantly. then you're going into polarized training, which is really hard and really easy. And they saw that's, that is the protocol that saw the biggest change in time or performance in that 5k run.
Yes, we're talking about running, but it's kind of a basis for what a lot of coaches have used for forever is just using base fitness, going through the zone, zone three, four, progressing in the threshold and above threshold, the closer you get to your target or your target event.
Cam Nicholls (06:46.296)
This podcast is brought to you by the Road Cycling Academy. If you're a recreational or amateur road cyclist and you're stuck on a frustrating performance plateau, feeling like you need some guidance, but you're not quite ready to dive straight into one-to-one coaching, at the RCA we've created something called the 12-week custom plan, which we believe would be your perfect next step. It starts off with an upfront deep dive call with your coach who will understand your goals, your riding preferences, what your not negotiable rides are.
and where you want to go, then they'll create a fully tailored 12-week custom plan that is supported over the 12-week period. We believe it's the perfect intermediate step, giving you a taste of working with a coach and experiencing a customized plan without committing to full coaching. Our writers are seeing real results too, and you can go to our Google reviews to see this. Marvin recently shaved over 30 minutes off his graft into Imburel time from doing the 12-week custom plan.
Adam gained 20 watts on his FTP in 12 weeks and 40 watts on his five minute power. And we have riders completing rides that they've failed in previous attempts like Peaks Challenge, all from doing this 12 week custom plan. So if you're ready to break through, head to the roadcyclingacademy.com in the menu system, you'll see our 12 week custom plan and take the first step towards that next level performance. Now let's get back to the podcast.
So this is when I actually worked with you many years ago and we started to do it. was like, I've actually, it was a new stimulus for me. So sometimes, you know, these things are just a new stimulus for people. And by no means are we saying this is the silver bullet to increase FTP, but it's a really easy way to consider a framework on how to increase your FTP. And that is when I started working with you, I like, all right, Cam, I'd done zone two training before, like a lot of it, you know, under the polarised method of 80-20. So I'm going to spend a lot of time on in zone two, but I'd never spent.
a focus block on tempo work, which is zone three. So we might've spent three to four weeks on tempo and might've played around a little bit with sweet spot and some threshold, but really sort of got that zone under control. When I say under control, like my rate of perceived exertion all of a sudden was lower for the same output. My heart rate stopped drifting as much in a tempo effort and started to reduce in terms of my average heart rate for that particular workout. And then we moved up to the next zone and we mastered that. And then we moved up to the next zone.
Cam Nicholls (09:11.116)
and mastered that. And obviously when I say moved up to the next side, VO2 max, you're not doing VO2 max all the time, are you? No, every session. So how would you, for somebody listening at home that might think, okay, this makes a lot of sense spending, you know, two to three week or maybe four week blocks going through the zones. Once you start bringing in a bit of tempo work and then you may be moved to a bit of subthreshold work and VO2, how do you blend it in so you're not like fatiguing yourself?
Ryan Thomas (09:37.772)
Yeah, so I guess this whole, this protocol is good for when I start coaching someone. This is the first process we go through because when you start with someone as a coach, don't, I can see what you've done before, but I don't know you've done the proper training to get there. So this is the first thing and then you can do other areas after, but if you're beginning in training and you don't know where to start, this is the exact way you should start.
Cam Nicholls (09:59.566)
Yeah, and keeping in mind 95 % of people that come to you in that basket of training too hard too often, so they're fatigued. even if they're not fatigued, they're one of the, know, one out of a hundred, it's just a robot and they just keep going. But even if they are in that category, it's still always good just to back it off a little bit.
Ryan Thomas (10:17.294)
That is, yeah. So it's a great strategy and what we, what I try to use and what we try to use within our off the shelf programs and try to develop within the RCA coaches is we look at, think of our three to four week block. So generally we use a step ladder approach of every three to four weeks we have an easier week. So in that three to four weeks over 12, 16 week period, what are you actually working on? So that first, let's say for the example, you've just had a week off the bike. You've just had rest, you've reset, getting into the new season.
I've got four weeks of training. The first four weeks is going to be predominantly zone two work. You if you're riding five days a week, you're probably doing zone two three times a week. Okay. Or endurance three times a week. And then the other two days you're doing some short tempo work, slowly progressing and maybe doing some strength efforts or something neuromuscular to try and work that energy system. Just keep it you're at it, low fatiguing. Yeah.
Cam Nicholls (11:05.358)
I know a lot of our members have what we call the not negotiable rides, so you can still have a ride during the week where you can just go out and rip it and do whatever. Have some fun.
Ryan Thomas (11:13.39)
Yeah, so bunch rides are always included. We always want to keep it fun and sensible. So that's the first week, four weeks. And then the next four weeks, you're probably looking at doing three intensity sessions in that week. And one of those can be a bunch ride. The other two sessions, you're looking at tempo or sweet spot or low threshold area, trying to work on that energy system for three or four weeks. And you've been working on it a little bit in that first four weeks as well. there's like, there's six to eight weeks there where you're working that energy system.
And then after that block, you're probably looking at scattering in a bit of sweet spot, VO2 and threshold. So we're not going to do VO2 three times a week for four weeks because that's going to hurt for someone who hasn't done much VO2 yet. So you've sprinkled in a bit of VO2 once a week and do threshold the other session and you're bunch ride. So you're trying to look at if you're riding five times a week.
Once you've got that bass under control for six weeks, whatever that bass period looks like or foundation period looks like, you're doing three rides where you're focusing on quality intensity and then two endurance zone two specific work. Yeah.
Cam Nicholls (12:12.172)
Okay, and if you, as a general blanket, if you put a timeframe on, if someone wanted to periodize through the zones and start with zone two and work their way through, how long would you be spending? 12 weeks, 14 weeks, 16 weeks, 20 weeks? no, it depends on the individual, but everyone wants a tangible takeaway.
Ryan Thomas (12:30.198)
If you're starting from scratch, I'd say 16 weeks is a good mark and then you probably should have a rest. Like have a week where you reset. Yeah, around 16 weeks is usually a good mark. You can peak pretty good in 12 weeks and then you maintain for that four weeks and sharpen or you're coming into an event for example that's 16 weeks away. then you have rest. Yeah, and rest for a week and then do the same thing. Another 16 weeks is usually what I like to do. And if we're getting past that 16 week mark, we kind of flag it with the member and say,
All right, we're weeks into a training block. How are you feeling? Do you feel like you need a rest? Do feel like you can keep going? So it's talking and communicating there as well.
Cam Nicholls (13:06.37)
Yeah, okay. And of course, this is a general framework. There are nuances. So people are training for a specific event. Obviously there's specificity that comes into play and a whole bunch of other nuances. So as a general framework, I think it's just easy for people to go, okay, there are my seven or six or five, whatever you're looking at. We use seven at the RCA training zones. I'm going to spend three weeks on here and then I'm going to move up here.
and then I'm gonna move up here. And what the workouts look like specifically, that's a rabbit hole for another day. Yeah, exactly. So thanks for your time, Ryan. Much appreciated. We'll catch everyone in the next podcast.

Summary
This podcast features the RCA's Founder (Cam Nicholls) & Head Coach (Ryan Thomas); discussing the journey of starting an elite domestic cycling team, the challenges faced, sponsorship strategies, team dynamics, and season highlights. Gain insights into the operational, financial, and community aspects of building a successful domestic cycling team.
Team & Podcast sponsor: https://onekloudx.com.au/
RCA Supporter kit: https://shorturl.at/5axJb 
Takeaways
A clear budget of $60-65K is essential for a competitive team.
Community and personal growth are core values for RCA.
Managing multiple roles in a team is challenging but rewarding.
Winning Melbourne to Warrnambool in the first season exceeded expectations.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Team Background
01:50 Funding and Sponsorship Strategies
04:03 Team Values: Personal Growth and Community
05:57 Challenges of Managing a Cycling Team
07:59 Rider Selection and Team Culture
10:51 Budget Surprises and Kit Expenses
13:02 Season Goals and Race Expectations
14:53 Season Highlights and Wins
16:47 Impact on Rider Confidence and Future Goals
18:55 Closing Remarks and Gratitude for Sponsors
Cam Nicholls (00:00.078)
So welcome back to the RCA podcast, where today I'm joined by the RCA's head coach, Ryan Thomas, who's also the team manager of RCA Bikes Online. We're in the middle of season. There's lots going on in the boat. But I've roped him in for a podcast because I wanted to talk about, don't know people are curious, how does the team come about? How much does it cost? What are the surprises? What are the benefits?
Ryan Thomas (00:11.359)
So busy.
Cam Nicholls (00:27.15)
winning Melbourne to Warner Wars just happened on the weekend. So that was a good one. yeah, just wanted to, because you're at the cold face, you know, I'm just the guy that's, you know, helping bring in some of the funding of our sponsors, which we're very grateful for. But, you know, what does it look like? So first question I had for you, Ryan, is how did it all come about? Starting a Pro Velo team.
Ryan Thomas (00:51.278)
Yeah, we were in, we were at TDU in 20, start of 2025 and we think a couple of, a couple of you were talking to a couple of brands and they were talking about the Pro Velo and then just kind of sparked, sparked your interest. And we sat down for a beer at TDU and said, what can we do this? Will you do it? And I was like, yeah, well, I'm kind of already like, I was helping out a team at the time, Tandem Co in Brisbane, and we did a couple of, a couple of.
Cam Nicholls (01:17.61)
like a state team.
Ryan Thomas (01:18.926)
Yeah, stay team. did Tour of Tassie the year before with big success. And then we did Q2 in the first year of the Pro Velo. We won teams class and finished fourth and sixth on GC. So it was a big success. So I had a bit of experience there and kind of what it would take. Yeah, I was pretty keen, actually. was like, oh, is like scratches the itch for me in terms of the high performance.
Bike team, I love being a part of the team and it's just good fun going away with the boys for a weekend and getting involved in big races.
Cam Nicholls (01:50.638)
Yeah, although the way the Pro Velo is these days, it's not just every other weekend, it's every single weekend back to back to back. Which we're finding out, or you're finding out is quite intense. yeah, off the back of that discussion, you know, I went away and looked for some money. You told me how much budget you thought we needed for a team, which was...
Ryan Thomas (02:10.862)
Yeah, I did a few. The Pro Velo put out a, before the Pro Velo started, they sent out like a document saying what roughly what the budget would be. Which was around a hundred thousand. But that was with bike expenses and a lot of product and a lot of stuff that we didn't really need in there. So I went back and paid it back and looked at, we're probably looking at around 35 to $40,000 for direct expenses for flights, ACOM.
staff, all of the stuff that happens around the actual event. And then you're probably looking at another 24 expenses depending on what sponsors we could get and paying for the entry for the series and some care and whatever, all the other stuff. So I was thinking around 60, 65,000 is what I think that was the goal I said to you was if we can get 60 to 65, we can make it work. we get any more than that, then it's a bonus and we can help out other areas.
Cam Nicholls (03:08.62)
Yep, so then I put together a little proposal took it to some brands that I've been able to establish relationships with through, you know, having my fat head on YouTube for a number of years and Yeah, cut a long story short. We're very grateful for you know, having some major sponsors and some minor sponsors. I won't go through them all Right now but you know particular, you know bikes online coming on board with the with the polygons. Yeah, huge pretty big deal creative carbon wheels
Not only provided the wheels, but also the bars. We've got Insta360, so we're capturing some pretty cool footage with their cameras. Asseoma Power Pedals and Prungo, Red Light Therapy Device. They're probably the biggest sponsors and some minor ones. I'm super grateful for all of them. But I managed to secure the funding and then I'm like, are we really gonna do this? Because it's funny when you know
Ryan Thomas (04:03.96)
Thanks.
Cam Nicholls (04:08.674)
Like I'm 44 now and I've made lots of mistakes over my time thinking things aren't gonna be as much effort as they are. So now I'm always like, okay, if you think it's gonna be a big effort, times it by 10. And that's probably what it's gonna be like, which is what I did with this. And I'm like, why are we creating this team? That was like the big question when we sat down, when we were going through the RCA's core values. And we worked out our core values.
as a business and there was two in particular where I was like, actually, now this team actually aligns quite nicely with what our values are at the RCA, the Road Cycling Academy. So one of them is personal growth. So we want all our members and our staff to be able to achieve personal growth through the RCA. And while this isn't so much a membership-based thing, it's more of a staff-based thing. You're getting some personal growth, learning opportunities as the head coach of the RCA through the team.
We've got Dylan Proctor Parker, who's our community manager, who's got the opportunity to race in a Pro Velo cycling team this year, and that's giving him opportunities and personal growth. And Craig Wiggins, our social media manager, he's coming back for one final show to see if he can take out a sprint in maybe Sydney this weekend is a chance. Q Tour, he's a smokey. So personal growth opportunities for RCA staff, but also
Ryan Thomas (05:22.69)
Yeah, Sydney or Q2,
Cam Nicholls (05:30.36)
from a community perspective, I felt like the team could help connect the RCA community a little bit more by having somebody to follow and cheer on, turn on the Melbourne to Warrnambool on the weekend and there's the RCA. I loved how Sal, one of our members, the next day went and wore RCA at his crit and won his crit and then he tagged RCA race team. So, know.
the brand being out on the road and connecting our community, I think it's done a really good job at that. And that's what we thought it might do, and it's proving to be the case. So yeah, when we stepped into this, why are we doing the team? Well, personal growth and community. So the season started, we're midway through. What's surprised you the most so far?
Ryan Thomas (06:20.312)
Just the amount of admin it takes to coordinate with riders and booking fights and accommodation and organizing logistics at tours. We've only done one or two tours so far, but I've also realized that trying to be a rider, a team owner and a manager is challenging. Trying to juggle three hats or put three hats on at a race is probably too hard and I probably won't do it again next season. I would probably just try and focus, put one hat on and focus on that.
That's been the biggest challenge so far, would say, is trying to, yeah, can't be a rider.
Cam Nicholls (06:55.528)
Just be clear, you are, you are ricing as well.
Ryan Thomas (06:58.402)
Yes, I am racing. Yeah. So not training too much to do those races, but I wanted to be involved in the team and it's good fun. I still love racing my bike. Not at the level I once was, but still good fun to be there and be a part of the team and to fill out a roster. Our first year, I kind of wanted to need five riders to start each round without penalty within the pro velo as part of part of their regulation. trying to field five to six at each round. So that was kind of the main.
go with myself racing.
Cam Nicholls (07:29.102)
And maybe just taking a step back. Before we continue with the podcast, I wanted to thank one of our team sponsors, One Cloud X, a company that's headquartered in the Gold Coast, Queensland, but they have a national presence and they provide software solutions to small to medium businesses that need support with financial management, planning and budgeting, advanced manufacturing, warehouse management, supply chain optimization and analytics. They also specialize in multi-entity and operationally complex
environments across manufacturing, distribution, construction, education, and services. And they go beyond core enterprise resource planning solutions like NetSuite and Epicore, which they do provide. But on top of that, they're layering automation, warehouse management solutions, and AI enabled workflows to drive measurable operational outcomes. They're also a supporter of local Australian cycling, and we're very grateful for that. So if you're a...
Small to medium sized business in need of what I've just described. Please check out One Cloud X and we'll drop a link to their business in the podcast description. Now, back to the podcast. How did you get the writers? Because obviously, we had that discussion. Yep, we're gonna go ahead. And then you had, you kind of already been chatting with writers. You had your own network. So how did the writers come about?
Ryan Thomas (08:51.642)
Yeah, so I get the a bit of it's not wasn't our main goal, but we are a coaching company at the end of the day. So we wanted to either coach the riders or be within the staff. So that was that was kind of my first priority was right. I coach a few riders and know quite a few riders that wanted to coach as well within the Brisbane cycling scene. to two main goals that I wanted was they need need to be able to coach them or help them and they need to be good people. Yeah.
Cam Nicholls (09:19.99)
No dickhead poll... Same as the Sydney Swans and the All Blacks?
Ryan Thomas (09:20.622)
No dickhead policy. So a good group of guys in the first year was obviously going to be good bike riders because they're racing a lot and we're going to help them be good bike riders. But good people get a good group that are going to have fun on tour and that's going to see success.
Cam Nicholls (09:41.208)
Did you, and also you mentioned earlier in the podcast, you had experience with Tandem and Co, which is a state-based team. So some of these writers are from Tandem.
Ryan Thomas (09:49.582)
Yeah, so last year, myself, Josh Bajkoff, Matt Lambert, Brent Reese, were all part of tandem. So four of us. So they were involved in tandem. And I knew we raced really well together. I was the director at Q2I in 2025. But Matt finished fourth on GC. Brent finished top 10. And we won teams class with those riders. So I knew that they were good quality. it good experience.
Cam Nicholls (10:17.346)
Dickheads. Although Brent's had a few strikes hasn't he?
Ryan Thomas (10:21.65)
A good group of guys, a bit of banter and fun. That's what you want in the team, right? Yeah. Yeah, so I had a good foundation there within Queensland and then we had a new out, had four or five secured pretty quickly and then it was just about filling out the other two riders.
Cam Nicholls (10:37.026)
Yeah, okay. Yeah, and look, you know, the team camp that we went on recently, you know, it's having a barbecue and a few beers, everyone gets along. It's a really good vibe. And it's a supportive vibe. No one's in it for themselves.
Ryan Thomas (10:51.662)
Yeah, and it was interesting when we asked what the goals were of the riders and what they wanted to achieve out of the series. Pretty much everyone said, like, help the team succeed. So it wasn't like a lot of it's a team mentality. It's not like I want to, I need to win this race. So it's all for me. Everyone was like, I'll put my hand up and help you help the other riders succeed at the end of the day. So it wasn't, it's not a, there's no I in team.
copper mentality, it's everyone's there to race for themselves and for the team.
Cam Nicholls (11:24.396)
Yep. And going back to, you know, the budgets and what's required, is there anything that surprised you there? Because there was one thing that surprised that sort of made me go, I never really thought about that until now.
Ryan Thomas (11:39.17)
Yeah, a lot of the...
Cam Nicholls (11:40.686)
to do with that thing hanging up behind us here.
Ryan Thomas (11:42.882)
Yeah, lot of the... we didn't... I guess the assumption at the start was that we would get really good support with the kit brand, but that was one of the biggest things that we didn't quite...
Cam Nicholls (11:55.458)
They must get hit up so much though I reckon. They must just be so fatigued of so many little teams going, you know, we'll represent you Brian, give us free kids.
Ryan Thomas (11:57.39)
I think it's you.
Ryan Thomas (12:04.366)
And it's such a high volume thing too, right? Like if you've got seven to ten riders who all need four to five, six pieces of kit, like there's hundreds of pieces of kit coming out of factory, then it actually costs a fair bit. yeah, we ended up paying, and I think this is the case with most teams in the Pro Velo, is that they pay a reduced, it's like, I don't know, 30 to 50 % off or its cost or whatever.
Cam Nicholls (12:27.118)
We got a great deal through Jack Roo, which we're very proud of. We still wanted it all for free. Of course, you all do when you're trying to scrape together funds, but they dig it.
Ryan Thomas (12:29.166)
Yeah, Jack, we're really helpful.
Ryan Thomas (12:36.91)
Reach for the sky. Exactly, that's it. But yeah, we ended up spending, I think it's been $12,000 Australian dollars on kit so far. So that's a big chunk out of the budget that I'd kind of had it in the back of my mind that we may need to pay for it, but it wasn't planned upfront. luckily in the end we got a few extra minor sponsors that helped cover that as well through the actual RCA community, which was awesome.
Cam Nicholls (13:02.946)
So we're halfway through the season. We've got Sydney this weekend. Then it's Grafton, then it's Q Tour. And then you can lie down in a coffin.
Ryan Thomas (13:12.067)
Come awake? Can't have a holiday.
Cam Nicholls (13:14.158)
What's the expectations for the rest of the season? I'll just give you my... I just thought it would be great to have a team to be in some breakaways, maybe make a podium. But it's nice to be in the mix for the first season. And it's funny on Saturday, Cam Kim, used to run Inform Team Insight Make, which was probably one of the biggest teams for good three years.
and they were in the NRS before it was called the Pro Velo for maybe five years. He rang me, because he was watching my Instagram stories, and he goes, did you just win Melbourne to Warrnambool? And I was like, yeah, like, can't believe it. He goes, do you know, we ran a team for five years and we could never win it. And you've just won it in your first season. Are you joking me? And that really put it into perspective for me because when you're in your first season, you're just kind of finding your way. You're not really thinking about it.
And it's probably, you know, having a team year on year where you probably start to sharpen your goals and what you want to achieve and races you want to win. Definitely. So that really put it into perspective. Like we could just, we could wrap up the team now and it'd be a successful season.
Ryan Thomas (14:26.99)
100%, yeah, 100%. Yeah, like to win the warning or the grafting, like the two big one day races, like they're arguably the hardest thing to do. I'd say if you spoke to anyone in the Pro Velo Peloton and they said, what races would you win? And they would choose either grafting or the warning. That's one of the ones because they're the most, it's like a one day race.
history, Everyone knows how hard those races are and they're both equally hard. And to win one, like, yeah, I guess my goal going into the season, I knew the capability of the riders, right? I knew that we were capable of getting a podium either in a stage or at the morning of the grafting if the right situation arose. But to win, to win something like the morning, like when I found out that Josh won, like I...
I was the reason I couldn't be at the warning because I was looking after my son.
Cam Nicholls (15:23.926)
I you a photo of him being interviewed.
Ryan Thomas (15:25.996)
Yeah, because the original story from the warning they put up all these standing winds and then they took it down and then they put up Josh wins because there's a fire photo finish Yeah, okay. I saw I saw the original Instagram story. No one else did so I was like nervous my second or first and then someone called me and told me that he wanted I saw a photo or refreshed and at the time I couldn't go because I was looking after my son that day my wife had to work and I couldn't I couldn't get around it so
My son was in his high chair, he was having a feed and someone told me he wanted, I'm like jumping and screaming and I'm sure the neighbours probably got noise complaining. I was absolutely gone ballistic. Yeah, absolutely over the moon. That Josh's ride was unbelievable but yeah, far exceeded our expectations in the first season.
Cam Nicholls (16:05.742)
as you should.
Cam Nicholls (16:15.234)
So, but what does that do for the confidence of him and the other writers? Because I feel like, you know, just teams that I've been in in the past, when somebody elevates themselves like that, it sort of elevates everybody else.
Ryan Thomas (16:27.18)
Massive, yeah. I think it, honestly, I think it came off the back of Tassie and the end of Tassie. So Josh, specifically in Tassie in the first road race and even in the prologue under, he didn't meet his expectations. He was dropped 15 kilometres into the first road race in Tasmania.
Cam Nicholls (16:46.253)
Yes.
Ryan Thomas (16:47.18)
to come out the next week and win arguably the biggest race in Australia is huge. we, towards the end of that, the next day, so Josh was down, he was feeling bad, like he wasn't performing where he wanted to be. Then the next day, he rode across to the break with up the hilltop, rode across, helped Brent. Brent performed awesome, finished really good up the top of that mountain top. And it was like riding on a high. Everyone was really happy after that stage. Had a good crit, Dylan finished sixth in the crit.
And so we finished that tour on a high and it was like really positive. We're in the Moors, we were aggressive, we were racing. And when I dropped Josh at the airport on Friday going down to the morning, just like, the objective was getting the Moors, be aggressive. And I said to the boys at the end of Tassie, said that the more opportunities you get in those breakaways, it's just an odds game. the more times you do it, one will succeed eventually. You just do it and do it and do it and then it'll pay off one day and the odds will be in our favor. And morning was the day.
Cam Nicholls (17:44.386)
Yeah, incredible. So yeah, the rest of the season, what are you thinking?
Ryan Thomas (17:50.124)
Yeah, I think Josh is going to be on a high. He probably still hasn't come down yet. He's probably going to be fatigued as hell going into Sydney because he's just been riding on the adrenaline. But I think it's a big confidence booster. think we'll get, we added some pretty good rides. Brent's pretty well respected in the peloton. He rides pretty assertive in the peloton. Same with Dylan, third at Nationals. So pretty respected with those couple of guys. I think...
we'll be more respected in the peloton now. Even though was a breakaway win, was like a chance, like it wasn't from the peloton, I'm just sprinting right away from everyone. was a chance win, but I still think it earned a lot of respect for the team within the peloton. So Sydney's going to be awesome. I'm actually racing Sydney, so I'm keen to see what that vibe is like in the peloton, whether he get a bit more room for the sprints. And like, I think it'll give Josh a lot of confidence and the other boys a lot of confidence that we can win.
Even if it is a group, we still have the opportunity. We can win. We're not an underdog team. We have some of strongest riders in the peloton, so we can win.
Cam Nicholls (18:55.488)
Yeah, great. Well, we'll find out. mean, by the time this podcast goes live, Sydney probably would have already been. But thank you, Tom Ryan. Yeah, interesting to share the experience with you. And you know, I'm learning a lot as I go here. And yeah, super grateful for our sponsors that have enabled this to happen. So yeah, we'll catch everyone the next podcast.
Ryan Thomas (19:22.168)
Yes.