Team Ineos (Formerly the Sky thread)

[badboygolf16v]

If it were fat you were losing that would be different, but we're talking about a professional road rider and WC pursuit rider having 8kg of flab to shed.

As has been noted, the CW 2006 piece confirms that BW was very lean back then.

 

[taiwan]

You are reading my point backwards - I am not saying that those with the best power to weight will necessarily be the best TTers. I am saying that for an individual physiology you can lose some weight without necessarily punishing your TT'ing ability too much.

Surely long TT is about aerobic endurance not highest absolute power output.

Well yes it's about highest absolute power output as opposed to highest power relative to weight. I don't mean peak power output as that would be sprinting.

Sure, you lose some more fat and you drop some muscle. Say he dropped 5% body fat then some of the weight loss of 7-8kg would have been that fat and the rest would have been muscle.

Power as a ratio is not necessarily a problem - peak output may be lower (less muscle) but that is compensated for by lower mass to move. That is before even talking about the effects of training on the muscles.

...was what I originally responded to. You say a drop in powerwith weight loss will be compensated for by the effect of lower bodyweight on your speed in a TT. I'm saying that lower mass is not an advantage in a TT. If lower mass were beneficial to speed, then power/weight or something similar would be the desirable quality in TTs and someone like A. Schleck who will have some of the best power to weight would be advantaged in a TT, and someone like Cancellara or Grabsch would be disadvantaged. Although I'm cherrypicking riders.

 

[Cervelo77]

Well yes it's about highest absolute power output as opposed to highest power relative to weight. I don't mean peak power output as that would be sprinting.
...was what I originally responded to. You say a drop in powerwith weight loss will be compensated for by the effect of lower bodyweight on your speed in a TT. I'm saying that lower mass is not an advantage in a TT.

Hmm. It's really aerodynamic position + sustained power output in that position that matters. Absolute power is kind of useless if you can't sustain it over a long time (hour for a long TT) in an aero pose.

 

[taiwan]

Hmm. It's really aerodynamic position + sustained power output in that position that matters. Absolute power is kind of useless if you can't sustain it over a long time (hour for a long TT) in an aero pose.

OK, OK, sustained power output. Maybe I misused "absolute". By absoulte power output I meant "power independent of weight". I honestly don't think that someone with the best peak power f.i. Greipel is an undiscovered TT champion!

edit - Oh right, you're saying that it's what you can produce in an aerodynamic position that's critical. Fair enough, but you'll agree that bodyweight is of little importance once you're rolling.

 

[Darryl Webster]

In fact his progression looks pretty normal when taking his age into account

I posted the example of Endurain pretty much for that reason. He was a "super domestique" and his progress up the GC was not dramatic but steady, firstly as he matured/ learnt his craft and secondly as he gained protected rider status and became team leader. His example shows that its possible to go from lowly GC to champ and over several years.
His arrival at the top can be charted as plausible
and not outlandish. Another aspect I,d suggest is his temperament, a quite man, not pushy and happy to serve his time..the apprentice if you will.
I don't think he was natural born leader. His humility endeared him to many.

 

[D-Queued]

I posted the example of Endurain pretty much for that reason. He was a "super domestique" and his progress up the GC was not dramatic but steady, firstly as he matured/ learnt his craft and secondly as he gained protected rider status and became team leader. His example shows that its possible to go from lowly GC to champ and over several years.
His arrival at the top can be charted as plausible
and not outlandish. Another aspect I,d suggest is his temperament, a quite man, not pushy and happy to serve his time..the apprentice if you will.
I don't think he was natural born leader. His humility endeared him to many.

Doesn't that make him more of a natural born leader than someone who is highly abrasive with low social skills?

Nah, I don't want to follow the guy that speaks through actions, includes me in their decision-making and recognizes my contributions and achievements. I want to follow the loudmouth, everything is 'me' guy.

There is no 'I' in we.

Dave.

 

[Darryl Webster]

Doesn't that make him more of a natural born leader than someone who is highly abrasive with low social skills?

If only that was the case Dave.. unfortunately its often not in many areas of life.

 

[The Cobra]

Do you have an example of how an Olympic level pursuiter with <10% bodyfat loses >10% of his body weight?

Whilst increasing flat TT power / speed?

How do you know he hasn't lost power? The only way to really know would be if he did a flat out 4km pursuit on the track, which he isn't going to do.

The level of doping in the peloton has reduced since then too and the speeds have got lower, which imo in the most likely reason for improved TT results opposed to decreasing muscle mass and at the same time significatly increasing power.

Not that a huge amount of muscle mass is needed anyway. Pushing 400W is easy and doesnt require a lot of strength. Pushing 400W for an hour does require a big aerobic engine though. Has very little to do with the size of muscles.

 

[Zam_Olyas]

Tim Kerrison: the man behind Bradley Wiggins’ Tour

Tim Kerrison: the man behind Bradley Wiggins’ Tour

http://www.cyclesportmag.com/features/tim-kerrison-the-man-behind-bradley-wiggins’-tour/

excerpts

For the first year Kerrison mainly observed. He agrees now with Brailsford’s conclusion at the end of that 2010 season that many of the riders simply were not fit enough. “At the end of the year Dave said we focused too much on the peas and not enough on the steak, and I think he was right. We were looking at all the fancy little things — the hundreds and thousands on the cake, but we forgot about the cake.

“One of the things we looked at was the race programme. There’s a requirement to ride all WorldTour races, but let’s take away this approach of going from race to race to race, and in between races you have a couple of days to recover and a couple of days to get ready for the next race. Riders would go through a whole season and never actually train.

“So with quite a few of our riders we stripped the race programme down, so they were getting enough race days, but also enough blocks between race days to get some good training in. We tried to dispel this myth that you have to race to be ready to race.”

An example of this came last year, when Wiggins crashed out of the Tour de France and was preparing for the Vuelta. “We were debating whether he should go and race in Denmark to get some racing in his legs before the Vuelta, but ultimately we decided it would be better to train, and control the training load, than a race where you can’t control the training load.”

‘Control’ is the word that crops up again and again. Some of Kerrison’s innovations are visible — the warm-downs after stages, for example. “It took a while to convince everybody that was something we should do,” he says. But others are less so.

The data that Kerrison collects, which allows him to build his training models and to establish “what it takes to be the best in the world,” is tightly guarded. And the question of whether they would be willing to release it is a difficult one. “We do make some of it public,” says Kerrison, “but our reservation about making our performers’ data public is that we’re trying to develop guys and a team where the guys are all the best in world at the jobs they do.

“And part of our work is developing models to establish what it takes to be the best in the world at every job. By releasing all that data we’re giving it to everyone else. We’ve got nothing to hide, but we don’t want to be doing everyone else’s jobs for them. If we released the training data, they could use it.”

The suspicion that surrounds exceptional performances at the Tour de France, and which has led to Wiggins being quizzed almost daily, is not something Kerrison has encountered in his previous jobs, or not to the same extent, and he struggles to comprehend it.

“To all the people who are suspicious of performance, sport is all about performance, so you have to have more than performance as a basis for your suspicion,” he says. “We can’t be suspicous of everybody who performs without some other reason to be suspicious. I think it’s quite sad.

“We have been open about the process, and we invite everyone to look at the method behind what we do. We’d be losing our competitive advantage if we gave away all the details of that method, but the actual process behind it, we’ve been very open about.”

Kerrison says there are no secrets, and that it is quite simple. Even something as apparently simple as the warm-downs offer a clue. “I think everyone can see,” says Kerrison, “that we’re prepared to do things that other teams aren’t prepared to do.”

 

[The Cobra]

Tim Kerrison: the man behind Bradley Wiggins’ Tour

http://www.cyclesportmag.com/features/tim-kerrison-the-man-behind-bradley-wiggins’-tour/

Seems plausible...

 

[thehog]

Kerrison says there are no secrets, and that it is quite simple. Even something as apparently simple as the warm-downs offer a clue. “I think everyone can see,” says Kerrison, “that we’re prepared to do things that other teams aren’t prepared to do.”

- Yes never seen any other teams doing warm-downs! Seriously? They all do it.

 

[Cerberus]

Apart from being irrelevant for someone who didn't focus on stage racing early in their career.

So can you name a pre-epo example of someone who experienced a similar performance gain. Surely not everyone pre-epo focused on the Tour all the time?

I would say another theory is that endurance athletes mature later and that their peak tends to be late 20s to mid 30s.

This theory is only supported by post-EPO data. Pre-EPO talent always showed early, and while perhaps the peak is in the late 20s it certainly isn't in the mid 30s. Not for cyclists, not pre-EPO.

That isn't to say that some young riders won't show early promise - there are always exceptions.

Except that's not the exception, that's the rule. Still if, as you say, there's always exceptions, why can't anyone name even one example of a rider who experienced an at least remotely similar performance jump as Wiggins pre-epo? Someone who was consistently bad at GCs and then went on to be really good.

 

[Mongol_Waaijer]

Kerrison says there are no secrets, and that it is quite simple. Even something as apparently simple as the warm-downs offer a clue. “I think everyone can see,” says Kerrison, “that we’re prepared to do things that other teams aren’t prepared to do.”

- Yes never seen any other teams doing warm-downs! Seriously? They all do it.

I used to warm down as an elite amateur - everyone did.

I also copied rugby teams and put my legs in an ice bath to remove lactic - are SKY doing that??

We also trained on Xmas day, contrary to popular myth that only lance did.

 

[The Cobra]

Kerrison says there are no secrets, and that it is quite simple. Even something as apparently simple as the warm-downs offer a clue. “I think everyone can see,” says Kerrison, “that we’re prepared to do things that other teams aren’t prepared to do.”

- Yes never seen any other teams doing warm-downs! Seriously? They all do it.

After TT's yes, but after road stages as well? I went to the Tour in '10 and didnt see anyone warm down after a road stage the entire time. Everyone was off the bike and straight on the bus to the hotel. Sky started doing it this year and now it seems a lot of teams are copying.

 

[_frost]

It is the 10% weight loss in an individual with an already very low body fat % that is the giveaway - this means the weight loss must have included a serious amount of muscle.

Look at Cancellara's physique - the large muscle mass goes a long way to explain his power on the flat. (and also his lack of climbing ability)

Let me rephrase my question: please point to a study that shows or explain the mechanism that leads to reduction in sustainable aerobic power (dependend primarily on VO2Max and mithocondrial mass/density/enzyme activity) due to lost muscle mass?

Large muscle mass doesn't explain Cancellaras power but big heart, high ratio of slow twitch muscle cells and high lactate threshold.

 

[thehog]

After TT's yes, but after road stages as well? I went to the Tour in '10 and didnt see anyone warm down after a road stage the entire time. Everyone was off the bike and straight on the bus to the hotel. Sky started doing it this year and now it seems a lot of teams are copying.

You're awesome! Well done you.

Garmin, Rabobank, Radioshack. They all do it. Stop with the nonsense.

 

[Dalakhani]

Kerrison's points (post #3068) are quite reasonable, though I'm not sure what he means by this:

“To all the people who are suspicious of performance, sport is all about performance, so you have to have more than performance as a basis for your suspicion,” he says. “We can’t be suspicous of everybody who performs without some other reason to be suspicious. I think it’s quite sad.

Does "he never had performances in this ballpark before" count as "some other reason"?

This is why, to me, Wiggins is one of the less interesting Sky riders (from a Clinic point of view), and why so many of my comments have been about Froome.

I've yet to hear Sky's explanation re his contract situation 11 months ago.

Surely training = data, and data = knowledge of someone's ability.

So, to have that data, and not sign him up... just don't get it.

 

[Benotti69]

Kerrison obviously does know about other sport science like the Mapei centre.

It is again another false claim from Sky that they invented the wheel, that there was no wheel before them!

I didn't see Sky warming down after the Tirreno-Adriactico stage in Chieti, this year. All hiding in the bus.

 

[_frost]

On the flat, weight means nothing, apart from how quickly you get up to speed. Power-to-frontal surface area is the key. Frontal surface area isn't going to change much with weight, so this means that his power has remained more or less constant throughout his transformation from an ugly trackie caterpillar to a beautiful yellow butterfly.

So, did Wiggins win multiple gold medals 10kg overweight?

No.

20% of power in 4k is from anaerobic energy pathway that is dependend on muscle mass + standing start requires actual muscle force.

Then again some extra weight is not that a big deal on a flat track. Keeping your weight very low and training hard is really tough and might compromise health/training so unless that gives a real benefit then you don't do it. But if the "calculation" shows that you gain more than lose by dropping weight, then you do it.

 

[red_death]

How do you know he hasn't lost power? The only way to really know would be if he did a flat out 4km pursuit on the track, which he isn't going to do.

Actually thinking about it I suspect you are right. As I said earlier BW's team pursuit effort in Feb 2011 didn't look to have been compromised too much by losing 7-8kg. He might have lost some top end speed compared to say Ed Clancy, but aerobically he looked in amazing shape.

Well yes it's about highest absolute power output as opposed to highest power relative to weight. I don't mean peak power output as that would be sprinting.

What is the difference between peak and absolute power output? They are the same thing.

I was talking about maximum power, whereas you seem to be talking about aerobic power endurance. Not the same thing and you could lose muscle and still have a lot of aerobic power.

 

[The Cobra]

You're awesome! Well done you.

Garmin, Rabobank, Radioshack. They all do it. Stop with the nonsense.

Lol. Who's the one talking nonesense?? It was not standard practice to see entire teams sitting on the turbo after road stages in the Tour until this year. Wiggins started doing in Paris Nice and people laughed and said it was more mariginal gains crap from Sky. Then he went and won a bunch of races and now everyone is doing it! Call it nonsense if you want, but its also truth!

 

[The Real GFY]

After TT's yes, but after road stages as well? I went to the Tour in '10 and didnt see anyone warm down after a road stage the entire time. Everyone was off the bike and straight on the bus to the hotel. Sky started doing it this year and now it seems a lot of teams are copying.

Yes, yes, yes. SKY are more committed and doing things other teams are not doing. Warm downs. Spinning higher cadence. Weight loss. Aging their tires. Training to race. Training in the winter. Not getting fat.

Oh! Wait a moment! We've heard this before

 

[The Cobra]

Yes, yes, yes. SKY are more committed and doing things other teams are not doing. Warm downs. Spinning higher cadence. Weight loss. Aging their tires. Training to race. Training in the winter. Not getting fat.

Oh! Wait a moment! We've heard this before

Nice try to belittle the point. Doesnt make it any less true though does it? Marginal gains and all that.

 

[red_death]

So can you name a pre-epo example of someone who experienced a similar performance gain. Surely not everyone pre-epo focused on the Tour all the time?

I have no idea, though I am not sure what relevance pre- or post-EPO has to do with the argument.

The argument is about whether a change in focus of training can improve an athlete's performance in a different event. If you are saying it is impossible without drugs then how do you explain mountain bikers who make the switch?

How many riders have ridden the roads whilst focussing on pursuits? I suspect not that many. A more useful parallel would be if Cadel had ridden the Tour in the years after he first switched - he rode 2 GTs in his first 3 years on the road.

This theory is only supported by post-EPO data. Pre-EPO talent always showed early, and while perhaps the peak is in the late 20s it certainly isn't in the mid 30s. Not for cyclists, not pre-EPO.

Well I did say late 20s on...so mea culpa

My point was not specific to cycling, but about endurance athletes in general. As I said in runners it is not at all unusual for athletes well into their 30s to be still competing at high levels.

 

[thehog]

Lol. Who's the one talking nonesense?? It was not standard practice to see entire teams sitting on the turbo after road stages in the Tour until this year. Wiggins started doing in Paris Nice and people laughed and said it was more mariginal gains crap from Sky. Then he went and won a bunch of races and now everyone is doing it! Call it nonsense if you want, but its also truth!

Sorry mate. Garmin were doing it well before Sky.

I love how a fan attends one race and thinks it gives them special insight into the inner workings of a professional team.

Dream on Sonny Jim. You've seen nothing!