Thinking about hiring a cycling coach but not sure what's actually involved?
In this episode of the RCA Podcast, Cam Nicholls sits down with RCA coach and sports scientist Ben Treble to pull back the curtain on the coaching process and explain exactly what recreational and amateur cyclists can expect when they start working with a coach.
Whether you're training 6–12 hours per week, struggling to improve your FTP, getting dropped on group rides, preparing for a Gran Fondo, or simply looking to become a stronger and healthier cyclist, this conversation covers the complete journey from onboarding through to long-term performance improvements.
RCA coaching: https://roadcyclingacademy.com/one-to-one-coaching/
In this episode you'll learn:
✅ What happens during a cycling coaching onboarding call ✅ Why goal setting is more important than FTP targets alone ✅ How coaches analyse your training history and cycling data ✅ The difference between FTP and Critical Power testing ✅ How TrainingPeaks is used to deliver and monitor training ✅ Why accountability is often the missing ingredient for improvement ✅ The role of recovery weeks and periodisation ✅ How coaches adjust training around work, family and illness ✅ Common mistakes recreational cyclists make when training themselves ✅ How structured coaching helps break through performance plateaus
Ben also explains how coaching extends far beyond simply prescribing intervals. From nutrition and recovery to training load management and identifying performance blind spots, coaching provides the structure and accountability many cyclists need to unlock their potential.
If you've ever wondered whether cycling coaching is worth it, or what the process looks like behind the scenes, this episode will answer your questions.
🚴 Perfect for recreational cyclists, Gran Fondo riders, masters athletes, endurance cyclists and anyone looking to train smarter and achieve better results.
Subscribe for more evidence-based cycling training, nutrition, bike fitting and performance content from the Road Cycling Academy.
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 am joined by the RCA's European correspondent Ben Treble, who's also a science data geek that digs into all the research. But today we're actually, Ben, we're not going be talking so much about the research, although I know your approach is very research based. So no doubt we'll be sprinkling that a little bit into the topic of today's discussion. But what I wanted to do today is talk about what does the process look like if
I'm a recreational slash amateur road cyclist. You know, I've been training anywhere between six to twelve hours per week, depending on the week. And I'm kind of stuck on a performance plateau. I've been thinking about getting a coach, but I'm a little bit un uncertain. Maybe it feels a little bit beyond me, or maybe it feels like it's going to be another thing in my life. But I I kinda I don't really know. I know people improve a lot when they get a coach, but I don't know if I can commit to it or or what's involved. So
I thought maybe you could share how you work with RCA members, which are essentially men, women between the ages of, you know, thirty-five to sixty-five, that busy lifestyles, jobs, families, you know, life stresses, but they want to improve on the bike. So let's peel it back. Let's just say somebody doesn't really know you know they know s coaching's gonna help them improve, but they don't know what's involved. So my name's Joe Blow.
I'm thinking about getting coached. Ben, what's it gonna look like?
Ben Treble (02:00.162)
Yeah. You're gonna you're gonna sign up to the RCA and the first step is we're gonna get you scheduled in for an onboarding call, which kind of sets the stage for what's gonna happen afterwards. In that onboarding call, we're just gonna have a big discussion. We're gonna talk about primarily it's a it's an opportunity to get to know each other, but second it's an opportunity for me as a coach to get your context, get your history.
And we're gonna start to have the first conversations on what is one of the most important parts of working with a coach and that's goal setting. I think it's something most athletes are typically not very good at doing.
Cam Nicholls (02:41.304)
Yeah, and I think some people come into cycle coaching with a an expectation that they have to have like a event goal or, you know, a specific of you know, something that's happening on a certain time and I need to be, you know, peeking for for that. Whereas I know a lot of our members actually yeah, once once I have a call with them, because I like I'm typically speaking, you know, as in the inquiry guide to them before they join.
No, you don't need a specific event goal. You don't need to be racing your bike. You can literally just want self improvement. But then within that self improvement, you're breaking down what does that look like?
Ben Treble (03:24.76)
Exactly right. I can think of a perfect example. It's probably one of my longest standing athletes I've worked with at the RCA. He did just do his first event recently, but we've been working together for well over a year now, and he never had any necessary intention to do any events. He wasn't racing in the history. His goals were quite simple in some respects and beautiful. One was he wanted to get fit and healthy
So he was a good role model for his daughter. And he wanted to get fit and healthy for himself so he could enjoy life a bit better. And he also just found cycling really enjoyable. and he only did indoor training at this point in time when we started. Interesting. So a very different set to maybe what is more traditional where someone says, I'm a master's writer and I'm gonna do a grand fondo in twelve weeks' time.
Cam Nicholls (04:09.912)
Interesting.
Ben Treble (04:21.633)
And I would like to qualify for the UCI Grand Fondo Worlds.
Cam Nicholls (04:25.698)
Yep. Okay. So in this call, if someone says, yeah, look, I just want to increase my FTP, do you just go, Great, let's just increase it? Or do you set things a little bit differently? And how do you determine where to go? Because obviously you're having a conversation, but do you in that initial call, are you like looking at the previous riding history? are people, you know
Are you getting them familiar with training peaks, which is the software application we use for the calendar and looking at the data, or are most people already familiar with it?
Ben Treble (05:00.642)
Most people are familiar with training peaks or a similar athlete management system. if they're not familiar with it in this initial meeting, I'm not going to spend massive amounts of time on that because you could spend days doing this. That initial meeting is the time has to be focused on getting the context of the athlete. So what's their training history, which might be I'm very new to the sport to I've been training for fifteen years, you know, varied periods of time from seven to twelve hours a week.
So you could have big different levels of experience and there's often a injury context. So, you know, I've recently had diabetic people who are trying to improve diabetes. I've had people who are coming back from back injuries, very common back or knee injuries. maybe they've not been riding for twelve months because of that and they're trying to come back into the sport. So the context is that's a big part of the conversation.
Then there's the availability piece. We're trying to tick this off relatively quick, which is, you know, what days can you ride? How many hours are you willing to commit to? That sort of thing. Part of that is looking at their training history. So objectively, I tend to look at if they have training peaks, I'll go in before this conversation and look at how many hours they do a week. And I'll ask them, how many hours do you think you do a week? And they always overestimate it. Interesting. And then I show them, I show them the data in training peaks. I'll screen share and be like,
I know you said you think you're doing eight to ten hours a week, but unless you're not syncing your data into training peaks completely, says you're only doing five to six. So there's sometimes we just try and set the scene a little bit here and put in some reality checks. When someone says, I'm doing eight hours a week and I want to move up to twelve, if they're only doing five hours a week in reality, you're not going to jump to twelve. Yep. Straight away. So I like to do that. And then the goal setting is the next biggest piece. And if
That's a very common thing. Someone says, I want to lift my threshold. I want to improve FTP or what's worse is I just want to improve, you know, my cycling. And I'll ask them why. So Cam, Joe Blow, why? Tell me why you want to improve your FTP.
Cam Nicholls (07:10.196)
because I I'm struggling on the local group ride. I'm you know, I'm in in the D in the B group and I feel like I could be better in the B group and I want to get to the A group.
Ben Treble (07:21.816)
Yeah, so tell me what do you struggle with the most in the B group?
Cam Nicholls (07:26.002)
look, towards the end of the ride I just tend to fatigue out a bit and I go from being able to roll some turns and then I'm at towards the back and there's this climb at the end where sometimes I get popped and you know, I I don't finish and then other times I make it, but I'm always just struggling in the last part of the ride.
Ben Treble (07:43.778)
Yeah. So already asking more questions, we're digging into some really nice goals, right? It's not I need to lift my FTP. Maybe that is part of the answer, but often we're already digging into two goals. One, you know, it might not be as measurable in terms of power, but it's still measurable. I want to try and move from my B to A group in a bunch ride. Sometimes it's I want to get from, you know, the the C grade crit race, the local crit, up to the B.
And I want to be able to get to the end of my bunch ride and do the kick, which is a durability question. So, okay, we already have two really good goals. Like how do we get you moving along in your program to improve your durability? And then how do we lift you up into the next grade?
Cam Nicholls (08:32.418)
Yep, okay. And what if I say to you, Ben, but I I also like this is a not negotiable ride for me. It's the Saturday group ride. I go there with my mates, we have a good time. I really don't want to like I'm happy to do stuff during the week with you, but the Saturday ride I'd really love to keep it. Is that okay?
Ben Treble (08:50.37)
Definitely. There might be a time and place where I say you might be better off here missing it for something specific. But at the end of the day, there's a really important component to training. That is you need consistency and volume. Kind of that's the bottom of the the pyramid, if you want. And often to achieve that you have to stay motivated. So if if doing yes, often the bunch ride's not as effective.
If you're doing three bunch rides a week, I'm probably going to try and convince you to drop some. But if your non-negotiable is I want to do one social bunch ride a week, we're going to make room for it. What that might mean though, that might look like, okay, Friday has to be easy or an off day. Or maybe the Sunday has to then be an easy day. I don't want you doing back to backs like doing a crit race on Friday AVO, going into another really hard bunch ride and then buggering yourself for three days.
Cam Nicholls (09:27.704)
Okay.
Cam Nicholls (09:44.812)
Makes sense. So we've kind of dug into some of the actual underlying drivers behind the FTP goal. you've done a deep dive on, you know, my logistics, my injury history, you've looked at some previous training. What happens next? You you send me off into the abyss or what am I looking at?
Ben Treble (10:06.934)
Yeah, we would talk about a few other topics. Always try to touch on sort of in a self self assessment on strengths and weaknesses, which would include reflecting on your recovery and nutrition practices. I don't normally deep dive on them too much, but I just try to get a picture, okay, is that an area that I need to dig into more with you or not? Have you got a good handle? Are you good and up to speed on, you know, modern nutrition practices or not? And if you're not, I usually make a note, a self note to myself.
Okay, next coach call, we're gonna we're gonna have a bigger chat about nutrition as something for us to work on. Once we've got those out of the way, we've got an idea of the schedule where typically we'll have a chat about equipment. I need to get familiar with what power media you're on, do you have heart rate? What bikes do you have? Are you okay doing indoor training? Do you have a preference for indoor outdoor? They're a little bit different. Typically I might prescribe slightly different work if you ride. Some people are very good outdoors with doing their intervals.
And some people really struggle. So there's no point giving somebody thirty fifteens if they have rolling terrain and they just cannot execute them.
Cam Nicholls (11:14.294)
Of course.
Ben Treble (11:15.382)
So yeah, making sure that the work you prescribe is relevant and feasible for the athlete to pull off, I think is an important part. Maybe I'll try build you up to a point where we can get you to pulling off high quality thirty fifteen's outdoors. Okay.
Cam Nicholls (11:30.936)
So then what happens after that? After the call?
Ben Treble (11:34.04)
Or I throw you in the deep end. No, I'm just kidding. No, no. So we would wrap up the call typically with a point where normally there's a couple of days where I go away, I take all the information and I build out your initial couple of weeks of training and we put in place a sort of a higher level macro plan. So often there's if there's not an event goal, I do like to put in place a time bound goal. So that might be we want to try
move from, you know, C to B grade at the crit races by the end of the season. So that might that could be three months away, could be six months away. Who knows? Depends on the individual. But we put a time bound goal in place and that helps drive the the macro plan for the training. So the general blocks. We might say month to month, you know, generally we try and put in place, I want to work on these things. I would hand this over to you in training peaks for you to have a look at in a note.
And you can go in and say, That's not gonna work because I'm going actually going away on holidays for four weeks here, or these are some blackout dates, can't do it here. So then we start to do this a little bit back and forward, getting to know each other and the schedule and making sure that everything fits in place and will work for the athlete. Okay.
Cam Nicholls (12:52.974)
Okay. And in that first four weeks where you've sent me off into the abyss, a lot of people get a bit nervous about doing tests because, you know, they need to work out their their numbers. and obviously at the RCA, we don't use FTP, we use critical power. So is everyone doing the tests in that first week? What do the tests look like? Or can you look at existing, you know, data? And are some people already
You know, ticking some of the they haven't done the test, but maybe they've done a three minute all out effort in a local bunch ride. So, you know, you don't need to test that. Well, what does that typically look like?
Ben Treble (13:29.762)
Yeah. I would at least in the first four weeks we're gonna do critical power testing.
Cam Nicholls (13:34.838)
Okay, so what does that look like?
Ben Treble (13:36.728)
Yeah, so we'll talk that through. It's normally for me, I'd like to do three efforts, different durations, short, medium, long. First one's around three minutes, next one's five to six, and a long effort could be from ten to fifteen minutes. Ideally, if someone is more of an outdoor rider, I tell them just go find a segment or a climb that's roughly those durations and try do your best time up it. I like to split them across days, do it on three days.
You can do two in one day if you really want. but I typically try to avoid that. I often find the first time you try this, if the athlete's never done it before, the testing doesn't go perfect. There's a familiarization piece, which I kind of expect and it's normal. but I find often if you let them find a local climb or segment where they just try to do their best time up it, it's a lot easier for them to go repeat it. It's also easier for them to go redo.
testing without it feeling like you gotta try do, you know, testing, which people hate testing, which is fine, but we just try and make it as easy as possible. As you said, some people might have a recent power PB. So we can just easily look in training peaks. If you've recently done in the last, you know, sort of 30 days, even up to 60, I would say, if you've done any of those three efforts, like a good P B, we might use that. So then you might only need to do one more effort.
We just have to fill in the gaps. Yep. Equally, if you've done three power BBs across those numbers in the last thirty days already, training peaks is a great feature in its modeled, it's called modeled FTP, FTP. It's in the the beta, I think it's still called beta function charts. And so we can often rely on that relatively well, at least to get a good idea. So if they're very anti testing or depending on their goals and phase of training, if the first couple of weeks are not great to do testing.
Cam Nicholls (15:06.179)
Okay.
Ben Treble (15:34.092)
And they have some good training history data, we can often get a pretty good idea of critical power without officially testing, but I would still target in that first block to try and do full C P testing. Yeah.
Cam Nicholls (15:47.118)
Okay. And with the training as a general rule, I know this will depend on the person's goals and how much time you have with them, but let's just say they've got a fair bit of time. Their goals are just general improvement. In that first, you know, four weeks, what is there a typical focus you find? Like do they are you sort of peeling them back a little bit and let's have more of an aerobic focus and and get some of that foundational stuff right? Or do you just go straight into it?
Ben Treble (16:17.314)
I actually like to go straight into it a little bit. I do to some respects I get gauge how well they might be able to do some stuff. And I like to put in a a mixture of work because I really want to see how good are they at performing intervals. I want to see how good they are at giving me feedback, like their comments. Do they always put in their RPE? This first month is really important for me to get a gauge on the athlete's ability to do work.
How they respond, what their level of feedback is, and just build upon that. So I might give them quite a mixture of work to do, if there's not a singular focus. But I do find in that initial conversation, it's rare that I can't get them to some good goals. Okay. Everybody who says, I just want to improve my cycling generally, when you start asking them why and really pressing, you get down to those, as we did before with Joe Blow, you get down to those really nice goals of okay, I want to improve durability.
I want to move up from this grade to this grade. I want to get to the end of my bunch ride and still do that big kick. I want to improve my sprint or I'm going on a European holiday and I wanna do climbs, but my nutrition's really poor. Pretty quickly we can put in place some really specific stuff.
Cam Nicholls (17:34.2)
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So head over to the roadcyclingacademy.com and lock in your spot with Ben today. Let's get back to the episode. Yeah, okay. Cool. And you you mentioned comments there, then them providing feedback. So, you know, you put the the workouts in the training peaks calendar software. One of the the benefits of this software is that it's been around for years and all the major head units and indoor training apps integrate seamlessly. So when you sign up,
People just add their their Wahoo account or their Garmin account, they add their Zwift account, or maybe a lot of people are using Training Peaks Virtual these days because it's covered in the Training Peaks license, which is basically the same as Zwift, which means that when you log into Zwift or Training Peaks Virtual or you turn your head unit on in the morning, it's like, there's the workout that Ben's prescribed me. I just need to follow along. So they follow along, do the workout, and you mentioned feedback before. So
Cam Nicholls (19:53.932)
How does that work? Are people just shooting you an email after they do their their thirty fifteens that Ben's prescribed on a Thursday? Or what does that look like?
Ben Treble (20:03.606)
I mean they can, but typically what we try to do is the sort of day to day communication is through the comments function in training peaks. So as you said, you get set up. If people are not familiar or tech savvy, there's sometimes some emails after that initial onboarding to make sure that they get set up in the tech, whatever that is that they want to use with Training Peaks. So connecting their Strava, their Garmin, Wahoo, Swift, whatever that is, making sure it's connected.
To training peaks so that the workouts will sync across from the calendar into their device where they can perform the training and follow along. They complete the workouts each day. And at the end of the workout, I try to get them to put in a comment. It doesn't have to be every time. if a workout just goes well and there's nothing to note, you don't need to put anything in. I do ask my athletes to put in their RPE, that's rate of perceived exertion. In training peaks, that's a score from zero to ten.
Zero being no work at all, feet up on the couch, ten being the hardest thing you've ever done before. Throwing up, puking at the end of a ride. So I try to get everybody to put in an RPE score. It's still a very, very valid measure of tracking how hard was the training. It typically factors in all the other stress you have in your life. So workouts work out. You know, if you're stressed or not stressed outside of the bike training, it can impact how hard it felt.
So that's where it gets measured. And the comments athletes can put in comments like that, that felt really easy. If I give someone, if we haven't managed to do C B testing, we're doing say VO2 work and they put in an I don't know, RPE of two, the intensity's probably pretty wrong. that's an extreme example, but I mean it the the good example here with RPE in those early days is trying to get the zone two endurance work right. So making sure you can use RPE with heart rate.
To look at the power and see what's happening. So yeah, collecting that athlete feedback and the athletes often put in the comments, you know, a little bit about their nutrition. I quite like that. I've got some athletes put in comments about nutrition, managed to eat XYZ. This workout felt super hard, or first two sets felt great, but third set failed like, you know, really hurt, or maybe there was a tech glitch, was riding outdoors, third set interrupted because a car cut me off. So little bits of feedback help give me context. So when I
Ben Treble (22:32.428)
At least once a week, ideally twice a week, I go through every athlete to review and respond against the comments. And when I'm looking at those workouts and looking at the data, if I don't get that context from the comments, often you can miss stuff. So you go, did the power drop off in the third set 'cause a car interrupted them? Or is it because it was the intensity was too hard?
Cam Nicholls (22:52.27)
Interesting. Okay. And what happens if you know, back Joe Blow, he works for a company which is head officed in interstate. I've had to fly to head office for a few days, didn't mean for it to happen. Then I came back and I was a bit sick because one of my one of my kids was you know, gave me something from daycare. So I've had five days off the bike. What happens in in that in that case when you've laid out the four weeks of training after that initial call and there's been a disruption?
Ben Treble (23:22.828)
Yeah, I mean assuming this is a monthly if we say this is a monthly coached athlete, I would try and set up in the initial onboarding that the for anything like this, I would say this is sort of more urgent communication. So if you get sick or injured or there's something more urgent you need a response to within a day or two, is to email me. And pretty quickly I would want to make adjustments. So if I know that you're getting sick, we're just gonna put in, most likely depending on the illness, a couple rest days.
And just monitor. As soon as you're ready to go, we might start putting in some shorter, easier recovery rides and just build you back into the hard work again. If you have to travel for work last minute, that's often something that happens. Someone says, I need to go fly to the East Coast this week suddenly because work needs me over there. I've got to leave tomorrow. We might have to just drop a few days out of that week, but then I might adjust the week after in response.
Cam Nicholls (24:19.342)
All right. And let's just say that I've I haven't been sick, then I I've nailed the month, you know, I've done all the workouts. Training peaks, you know, for those with a bit of OCT gives you a green badge if you do it in a compliant way. And a lot of people like getting the green badge or all the green color code. So, you know, get to the end of the first month. We're doing monthly coaching here and you know, what what happens next?
Ben Treble (24:45.858)
Yeah, I put in a little there's different ways, but typically, you know, we try to have at least one call a month, ranges from a short phone call, twenty minutes, where sometimes people do it in the car, to forty five minutes on a video conference, which is preferred the video conference, because we can share the screen and the athlete can often we will share the screen and I'll bring up a certain workout or we want to talk about certain data or make some adjustments to the program. So
The monthly call can be used for different things. We can review the goals. Often you end up talking about one or two topics though more deeply than anything else. It might be, we need to make some adjustments. I've got travel coming up. Let's adjust the plan. It might be discussing the last couple weeks of training, what worked, what didn't work. And then based on that feedback, I'll be able to make some adjustments going into the next block. We might review the goals, see how we're tracking against goals.
Cam Nicholls (25:41.942)
Yeah. So it becomes more less about understanding who the person is, their writing preferences, what their goals are, and more about digging into specific topics that are relevant based off of the phase of training.
Ben Treble (25:56.066)
Massively, yeah. And some athletes bring certain topics. I think the advantage of working with me as a coach is I'm an accredited sports scientist, so I am a bit of a data nerd and I'm very happy to talk about some of those other topics like nutrition or talk about physiology on why something's working or not working. And a lot of my athletes love that. It's not for all of them, but yeah, the ones who are interested in going deeper on the data can take full advantage of that.
Cam Nicholls (26:23.384)
Yeah. Yeah, cool. And I also you know, know that on that topic in particular, so a lot of our members also go to the gym. So even like strategic placement of the gym, especially when you're doing, you know, high intensity interval training, is a is a super important one. Because you know, once again, it's not a one size fits all gym needs to go here because people will respond differently. Like I know myself, for example, it took me years to figure it out, but
I actually can do a high intensity interval training quite well the day after a gym session. but two days after a gym session and even sometimes three days, I really struggle. So, you know, it was I had to play around with that a a lot initially to figure that out. And no doubt this is something you would do with your clients, whether it's gym or some other cross training activity or maybe maybe a family stressor, just adjusting things to suit that particular individual and how their physiology responds to, you know, the training.
Ben Treble (27:20.94)
Yeah, and it's a different circumstance where the adjustments are really important along with the feedback. If I think of the North Americans and the Europeans, they have very distinct, you know, seasons. And going into winter often means a significant drop in volume for recreational cyclists. It's a lot trickier. They don't ride outdoors as much. It's often too cold or snowy. It's not possible. Riding indoors, you're not gonna do most people anyway, are not doing six hours on the indoor trainer twice a week. So
Managing that and managing them through that with motivation and is there even talk about cross-training or just keeping fitness up in different levels varies athlete to athlete. But it comes back to the importance of those monthly conversations where you can collect the feedback about the context. And that helps me as a coach work out what's appropriate, what adjustments do we need to make to keep this athlete going, moving forward towards their goals.
Cam Nicholls (28:17.006)
How long do you feel it takes for people to embrace, you know, the the periodization schedule? So obviously one of the big benefits of working with the coach is I think people conceptually understand like building and progressively overloading and having an easier week, but a lot of people don't just don't do it. They listen to podcasts, they watch videos, they just don't do it. But obviously when people work with the coach, they're kind of like committing to, all right, I I know this is something that I need to do. And the coach is gonna, you know, put it in the plan and is gonna make me accountable.
But then there's also the buy-in aspect. So some people might start off doing it apprehensively, where it's like this D-load week, I'm doing not doing enough training. you know, this feels a bit weird. And then I've I've found anyway, and this is from my experiences when I used to coach, maybe after the first four to twelve weeks of training, all of a sudden they're looking forward to the D-load week because they are starting to experience real freshness and real fatigue and
They're buying into it. Like how how do you find, you know, people that you've trained at the RCA respond to that sort of the process?
Ben Treble (29:24.928)
Masters male athletes are not good at taking time off the bike. So it's often something that takes time. Some of them are better at it than others. I often kind of let them I try to show them how they come to this conclusion, which sometimes means I have to let them mess up a D-load week on their own. And then, you know, in our monthly call, we're gonna go back and look at the data. And and you can often see in the data, they if they mess up the D load week.
You go into the next block and midway, they're really struggling. And you see it in the comments. And when you review it together objectively like this, they're like, I probably should have taken that rest. Then I then I could have got through the block. Okay, this D load week in a week's time, I'm I'm gonna try to stick to it. I'm gonna take the extra rest day. Like putting data to it often helps. I think a lot of these athletes really see why it's valuable. But sometimes they have to go through the process of sort of
messing it up that first time and and then struggling through a block to realize that. And that also gives you the data to kind of convince them that it's really valuable that they need to do it.
Cam Nicholls (30:31.51)
And as we're talking here, I'm just pulling up the RCA Google reviews. maybe I I I'm not gonna have time to pull up some of your really good ones because I know there are some great reviews in there about working with you as a coach. I was trying to I'm thinking of Josh as he's dropped a recent review. I was trying to find his his results. But people can go and read them, of course. When do you think I've just pulled it up here? I don't
helped my FTP grow by over forty percent. So you help Josh increase his FTP, we might be talking about critical power by over forty percent. So there are some really massive numbers people achieve, whether it's FTP, whether it's critical power, whether it's their local climb or their bunch rides or or events, you know, shaving half an hour or an hour off peaks. I know you recently took a guy who'd failed peaks challenge three times previously.
Yep. And then on the fourth attempt under your guidance, made it through with half an hour to spare. So obviously you're static. So there are some really big, juicy goals people are you know, that they might have had for years and they've been on a plateau and the goal seemed out of reach and they get coached and all of a sudden they they're achieving what they wanted to achieve. Like people are inherently impatient as well. So like I I gotta ask you the question if people get coached.
When should they expect the big gains? Is it is it in the first eight, twelve weeks or is it more so they've kind of done a build, then they've d dialed it back and then they're into their second build. So maybe it's twenty four weeks down the track or thirty six weeks. What are you saying?
Ben Treble (32:11.656)
I think there's often some big gains in the early blocks. In the first eight to twelve weeks you often see really good improvement. This is often just because you're changing their training and giving them more stimulus or different stimulus and trying to get them to take on more recovery and give structure to it. This alone, most athletes see massive jumps in that first sort of eight to twelve weeks.
But I think you bring up two really good points here. You brought Josh up as an example, and he's a great example because he really struggled with taking time off the bike, recovering, right? He's a sort of person that if he doesn't ride on a day, he feels like he's missing something. So how do we get him to take recovery? Because that's why he was stagnating in performance. He was going nowhere in his bunch rides, but he really wanted to improve. And I think when we started
He had a lot of capacity to improve, which obviously he's had really significant improvement with a lot of commitment and hard work. But what Josh needed was accountability and permission. So most athletes, I think what they get from a coach is you get this accountability piece. Like as soon as you're paying someone for their service, you feel a bit more committed to it, and there's this other person involved.
Right. And they're going to come back to you and say, Hey, on a monthly call, I'm going to talk about it and say, You missed these sessions or I think you could improve here. This could be done better. I'm going to be constructive. I'm going to give you positive feedback as well, but I think a lot of people thrive off constructive feedback, especially in those early days. There's a steep learning curve and that comes from getting constructive feedback. The permission piece is equally as important. A lot of these masters, male athletes, in my experience, they need to be told.
They need to be given permission to take a day off the bike. And they need the confidence to go, Josh knows I'm a sport scientist. So if I tell him he trusts me, and he knows if I tell him you need a full day off and this is why, because if you don't do it, this is what's going to happen. He goes, okay, I can have a day off. It's okay and it's actually going to be good for me. But he needed that human interface and he needed the verbal permission to do it for it to work.
Cam Nicholls (34:31.074)
Yeah. No, it's great. Great examples. And look, you know, one of the I appreciate you breaking that all down, Ben. You know, one of the the the challenges that you know, I face as running the RCA is really trying to to normalise cycle coaching because it's funny if you if you if I was speaking to a triathlet this morning and they were talking about a coach all these coaching they supply triathlet gear, custom triathlet gear to co and a lot of it to coaching businesses in in triathlon.
And what I was just talking about how in the triathlon culture, it's very normal to have a coach. But in the road cycling culture, which they're reasonably intertwined, it's probably less normal to have a coach. And I feel like a lot of that comes down to just education. A lot of people don't really know what's involved with cycle coaching and also don't think that they've got the right goals for cycle coaching because they're not racing or they don't have a
big UCI event that they're targeting. But in actual fact, look, it's just for anyone that wants, you know, self-improvement. So yeah. Appreciate your time, Ben. anything to add to that before we wrap up?
Ben Treble (35:44.224)
No, just that coaches help you identify those blind spots. You can be an excellent cyclist, potentially even have a some very good working knowledge on how to train. Maybe you've been even coached in the past, but human nature, you know, we're quite biased to ourselves and we're not good at identifying our blind spots. So sometimes having that human interface, the coach, there to call you out.
To help you identify those blind spots and break those problems down and how do you solve them? Sometimes that becomes more valuable than saying, I can do a Zwift program and get 30, 30, 15, you know, VO2 hit sessions. Right. So sometimes the I think the value of the coaching in those first few blocks is probably from the training itself more than anything. But after this, it's the monthly or weekly conversations where you identify these little gaps.
And you can find a solution from them, that's where I think athletes get these really big value out of having a coach.
Cam Nicholls (36:51.704)
Good. Well, if you're listening and you'd like to try cycle coaching yourself, make sure you head to the RCA's website. It's www.roadcyclingacademy.com. Check out you can either there's two spots you can check out. We've got a 12-week custom plan. and it's that's what it's called in the menu system, which is more of a one-off call with the coach, like Ben described, but then he'll build or they'll build you out twelve weeks in advance and it kind of stops at twelve weeks or
What we've really focused on today is more of that monthly operating rhythm. we also have a weekly, which is perhaps a rabbit hole for another day, but monthly coaching is kind of what Ben's described today. So that's in our menu system as well, where you subscribe and you work monthly with the coach. Catch you in the next podcast.
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