I’m training a promising junior* road racer in the UK. Their numbers are good and improving but I have no benchmark data to compare with. All I have is the Coggan Power Profile comparison chart which is measuring adults.
Can anyone point me at some benchmark power data for ‘junior’ male & female riders?
*Junuir in the UK means Under 18.
strangely, I’ve had 3 or 4 podcasts pop up in my feed that all address developing jr riders. Lots of really good info available. I thought this one was good: Fast Talk: Dr. Iñigo San Millán Special: Developing Young Talent in the Pro Peloton on Apple Podcasts
Hi. Yes I have listened to that podcast -it’s part of the reason for my question. Mr. Millan has his own database of junior data, but doesn’t reveal any numbers.
One point I take from his lack of numbers, and from other pods on jr development that also don’t reference numbers, is that maybe the numbers are a distraction??
Thanks for calling out that episode! It was great to get Dr San Millan to talk with Emma-Kate about his personal experience with youth.
I personally find that the Coggans Power Profile does under-estimate athletes, so I’m glad you’re not using that. Especially with Juniors.
This is just my bias, but I don’t personally find power numbers that useful with Juniors. I focus on how they’re performing in the Peloton and the overall development of their aerobic base fitness. A lot of Juniors haven’t gone through their second growth spurt where they put on a lot of muscle mass. So, often their power simply isn’t that good. But, when they go through that secondary growth, power goes up a lot.
For Friel’s Craft of Coaching, I was asked to go through the recent research on Juniors and write a summary (https://www.fasttalklabs.com/the-craft-of-coaching/what-the-research-says-about-junior-development/.) One of the things I saw in several studies was that power numbers in Juniors really didn’t predict future success.
If you’re interested, here’s the list of studies I went through and my bullet points about each: Recent Research on Junior Athletes - Fast Talk Laboratories
Hope that helps!
Trevor
Hi Russel,
If you’ve you Junior create an account on intervals.icu, and connect their current training program to automaticly upload their you van, on the Power tab, compare their values with their age peer group.
See Print screen below from One of my Riders getting16 this year and falling in the group “Male Under 17”
