Thanks for your latest episode, it came at just the right time for me. Today I’m fried from (primarily) non-cycling related stuff and the pod really helped in my decision (not to ride today). I think in the past I might have been inclined to ride, which would be a mistake.
Using Steve Hogg’s principles was a nice way of structuring the pod, and a good reminder for some aspects that are easily overlooked e.g. breathing correctly. Your active recovery point chimes with my experience; I particularly find swimming in the sea helps with my recovery. I’m sure this is down to what you’ve said about loosening things up, but I also wonder if the environment is also part of it (at times I’m lucky enough to live relatively close to the sea in southern europe). I think you once mentioned some Soviet era practices about putting athletes into different natural environments to do just this? Do you have any more info/insights on that you could share on those?
In terms of eating, I think people here might benefit from reading some of Tim Spector’s work (e.g. a book called ‘The Diet Myth’). For those not familiar with him, he is Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King’s College London, and has over 700 published academic papers, so he knows his stuff! He runs a project with a few thousand twins and has been sequencing their gut biomes. Much of what he says chimes with your thoughts around the nonsensical demonising of macro-nutrients, and the practice of calorie counting. However, he provides a robust set of scientific data to suggest that a very large number of health issues (which are ultimately relevant to performance, we can’t perform optimally if we’re unhealthy) are down to how we respond differently to different foods because we all have different gut biomes, even though we might have identical dna (i.e. identical twins). Off the back of that he is nevertheless able to make some recommendations on diet choices - the chief one being eat the largest variety of quality food as you can, and don’t demonise food groups (sorry @trevorconnor, that includes wheat). He also references the ‘Eat food, mostly plants, not too much’ quote, but attributes it to Michael Pollan.
I’d be really interested to hear your and @trevorconnor 's thoughts on this work, possibly in a follow up podcast (I think Trevor has mentioned he might do another one)? Maybe you could invite him on as a guest (though I believe he is heavily involved in the UK’s Covid effort atm)?
The other thing that struck me about the pod is you didn’t mention the distinction between adaption and recovery. I’ve heard/read (possible including from you and/or Trevor) that some recovery methodologies can actually blunt adaptation. Can we take it as read that all the things you mention in the podcast do both things?
Keep up the great work!