Tim Kerrison

[the big ring]

Who is he?

In 2010, Sky did sweet FA on the road. They then hired an Aussie swimming coach (Kerrison) towards the end of 2010 - and from 2011 onwards, Wiggins at least, started to show dramatic improvement.

This guy appears to be a nobody until Sky hire him, then all of a sudden he's a demigod in terms of cycling coaching.

I'm looking for links / quotes describing the Sky relationship and where Kerrison came from and what he did prior, but I am very keen to get a handle on him and his ability.

Tim Kerrison is part of the key, imo, if we are to believe Sky are not doping their riders.

 

[the big ring]

http://www.ridemedia.com.au/?p=6440

Michael Rogers: “I’ve seen a five to seven per cent increase in my general threshold power. And that’s great. It’s also come from working with Tim Kerrison of Team Sky, as Bradley has – and as have most of the guys in the Tour team… we’ve all been training under his guidance and he’s bringing some fresh thoughts into it for all of us.

“There’s a bit of variation and a lot of the techniques have come from his background in swimming. And so far it’s been working well.”

NB: also evidence of a distinct "Tour team" with in the Sky team getting Kerrison's attention - not the team as a whole.

Michael Rogers: “Obviously our idea was to put the pressure on going up the Joux Plane. I think Boasson Hagen put everyone on the ropes with his effort – he set a really, really high tempo for the first half of the climb and then Richie took over. We could see that [Jurgen] van den Broeck really had plans to attack but with the tempo that Richie was setting, I don’t think he was able to – everyone was on the limit. There was only four or five guys left at the top…”

Did you have your SRM on the bike that day?

Michael Rogers: “Yeah.”

Going up the climb, what sort of power were you generating?

Michael Rogers: “We did [the Joux Plane climb] in 34:50, I think, and I averaged 440 Watts. That was one of my highest every power reports.”

 

[the big ring]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/jul/22/tour-de-france-reasons-bradley-wiggins

Wiggins's Tour win was masterminded by his coaches Tim Kerrison and Shane Sutton. Kerrison broke down the various elements required to win the Tour and was responsible for Wiggins's day to day training, with Sutton acting as troubleshooter and bringing his racing knowledge to the party. Kerrison radically changed Wiggins's training and brought in high-altitude warm-weather training camps in Tenerife. Other elements in the plan included a team built to win the Tour, with a group of strong, talented riders who could ride hard in the mountains or the flat: Christian Knees, Edvald Boasson Hagen, Richie Porte, and Mick Rogers. Another element was Chris Froome, who was there as backup in case Wiggins faltered

The things attribute to Kerrison highlighted, although team selection sounds more like a Sutton / Brailsford gig.

The other break with cycling tradition was to race less often but always to race to win. That took the pressure off for the Tour, as Wiggins went into the race with a perfect season behind him already, rather than the Tour being the be-all and end-all. It also avoided unnecessary travelling and enabled him to get used to the press conferences and other hassle that go with winning. It enabled his team to get used to the job of leading a major stage race – they had won five such events this year, and Kerrison argued that they were more at ease leading a race rather than chasing the lead. Equally importantly, his stripped down race programme left time for lengthy training camps.

I'll add this next one as well as I have read elsewhere it's Kerrison's "95% all year" approach, even though he is not directly credited with it here:

By the end of 2010, when he had endured a disappointing first season with Sky, Wiggins's back was against the wall. He had moved to stage racing after fulfilling his Olympic ambitions on the track in 2008, and knew that at the age of 30, he did not have many years left. That knowledge made him decide to adopt a no-compromise approach. He would devote himself to his profession for 365 days a year, rather than backing off in the late autumn as he had in the past. Sutton has praised his compliance to the programme but it comes down to timing: "I said I don't know how long I can keep training hard for, so I was willing to give it 100%," he said.

What I find telling here, is that in 2012, "backing off in the (late) Autum" is exactly what extra holiday taking, beer swilling, smoke inhaling, no WC TT riding Wiggins is doing.

 

[the big ring]

http://www.cyclesportmag.com/features/all-aboard-the-magic-bus/

Kerrison has the appearance of a youthful university professor. Neat hair and a serious manner. He is sitting in reception, working on his laptop. To the uninitiated, the screen shows a jumble of charts and numbers but the Training Peaks software plots every effort Wiggins has made on a bicycle this year. “We really didn’t have much of a picture of Brad as an athlete,” he says. “The first job was to build up an accurate picture and then tailor his training to the demands of the event.” Every time Wiggins has ridden his bike this year, whether on the road or the turbo, in a race or training, he has recorded his power output. Kerrison, who previously led the revolution in Australian swimming, has analysed it all and knows to the watt how much work Wiggins has done.

This is a classic case of "product placement". I can guarantee Lionel (article author) has no idea what trainingpeaks looks like.

TrainingPeaks is an Official Supplier of Team Sky and in cooperation with the team we are excited to provide race files from select races and team members throughout the season. Visit the race pages below to read the race analysis and to view and interact with the actual SRM power data.

Curiously, JV knew Brad very well, and Brad knew himself very well too - he had the numbers down pat in 2006 as to the power he needed to do for the Olympic IP 2 years later.

I am amazed that JV of the "marginal gains" clique had no idea what Brad's numbers were. And that Brad had none of his power files from 2009 or 2010 to share with Kerrison in 2011.

Good to see Kerrison had revolutionised Australian swimming - that should give us a lead into his palmares with that sport.

STAFF
Shane Sutton – Head coach
Sean Yates – Sports director
Nicolas Portal – Sports director
Tim Kerrison – Head of performance science

Not a lot of confidence in the warm-down theory...

“It’s something we’re trying out,” explains Kerrison. “When you think about it, you warm down after a prologue time trial that might be a six-minute effort or after a short track race. You’ve just ridden four hours, with an intensive burst at the finish. You’ve maybe ridden hard for half an hour, with accelerations and then you just come to a halt and get on the bus. It doesn’t make sense.”

I thought this was interesting, given all the guff about marginal gains and warm-downs, etc.

After the finish, the riders’ recovery drinks were not ready and waiting in their seats on the bus as they should have been. A small but vital detail had been overlooked.

Sutton gathers the staff around him. “Listen guys, we’re a team, but Klaus is still up there working. Today we had a problem with the recovery drinks. They have to be there for the riders. I don’t care who was supposed to do it but work it out between you, okay? Take responsibility. If you’ve finished your work don’t just fold your arms, see if there’s something else you can do. If you see a bloke who’s struggling and you’re all done, ask him if you can help. The riders are really pulling together and I want to see everyone do the same. Don’t let your mate fail.”

Kerison talks some power numbers.

Even before Wiggins had won the Dauphiné, some journalists and armchair experts were predicting that he had come too good, too soon. The assumption is that a good Dauphiné usually leads to a bad Tour.

But Kerrison is adamant they’ve got their planning right. “I am 100 per cent convinced there’s more to come at the Tour.”

He talks through some of Wiggins’s numbers. “The first 30 minutes of the Collet d’Allevard, his power was 430 watts, average. That tailed off to 408 for the last seven minutes. His cadence also tailed off a bit. The first 15 minutes of the Grenoble time trial, going uphill, he was doing 480 watts.

I wonder which people in particular underestimate the impact of being at altitude... other riders? other teams? or just journalists?

In May, Wiggins and a few other riders spent time in Tenerife, training at altitude. “It’s the best, most productive thing I’ve ever done,” he says. “Last year I suffered when the Tour went high and it goes higher again this year. I basically lost 100 watts every time it went over 1,500 metres. After ten days in Tenerife I had that 100 watts back. It’s not just about being at altitude, it’s about training to perform at altitude.”

As Kerrison says: “People underestimate the impact of being at altitude.”

 

[the big ring]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18922103

Some more detail on the Tenerife training camp(s):

2. Science. Team Sky's sport scientist, Tim Kerrison, spotted that British Tour cyclists were struggling particularly with three challenges - the heat, the altitude and the climbs. So the team trained intensively at altitude, in the heat, and on mountain ascents. A volcano in Tenerife provided all three conditions at once. "Tim's the brains. He's changed my career, totally," Wiggins has said. Wiggins sometimes climbed 4,000m (13,000ft) in the course of a day's training, his power output constantly monitored by Kerrison, and plotted on graphs. He made it his target to complete 100,000m of ascent - the equivalent of cycling 100km vertically - in the months leading up to the race

I find it curious that Wiggins had very few problems with climbs in 2009. But Kerrison changed the training completely coz the Brits struggle with heat, altitude and climbing...

 

[TubularBills]

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.”

http://www.cyclesportmag.com/features/tim-kerrison-the-man-behind-bradley-wiggins%E2%80%99-tour/

 

[the big ring]

Kerrison as a swim coach: http://www.bestswimcentre.com/sports/10-of-the-best/jodi-cossor/

5. In terms of sports science, how much has British Swimming changed in the past decade?

Initially Gary Phillips was providing all areas of Sports Science, Sports Medicine (SSSM) to British Swimming then Henryk Lakomy became the SSSM manager at the same time that I joined in 2002. Tim Kerrison brought his expertise on reverse periodisation as well as his race analysis system in early 2005

 

[the big ring]

Kerrison expressess the same surprise some of the Sky non-believers in the clinic: http://www.teamsky.com/article/0,,25884_7926390,00+en-USS_01DBC.html

Asked what has made the team stand out from their rivals, he said: "We obviously have a very strong leader in Bradley, the best bike rider in the world right now. We also have an incredible support rider in Chris Froome but beyond those two the team is incredibly strong and they’ve really lifted each other over the course of the last year. The level to which those guys have risen this year is just fantastic.

"For example you’ve got a big guy like Christian Knees who has excelled in the high mountains. He comes in as a domestique, primarily to work on the flat, and he leads a reduced peloton of about 35 riders over the Tourmalet. That's what marks them out."

 

[the big ring]

Kerrison crunches the numbers and Brad's normal cadence is found lacking. We also see a rowing mention for Kerrison: http://www.smh.com.au/sport/cycling...ot-at-gold-20120723-22km8.html?skin=text-only

Wiggins elaborated on the role that former rowing and swimming coach Australian Tim Kerrison has played.

''We've worked a lot on cadence this winter,'' Wiggins said. ''I averaged 103 rpm [revs per minute] for the world time trial champs last year over 55 mins for a given power. I averaged 456 watts for 55 minutes and lost a minute and 20 seconds. I'd have had to average about nearly 500 watts for an hour [to win], which is mind blowing.

''Tim studied it over the winter and decided [that] maybe it was the cadence which was the problem. They worked out Tony's rpm compared to mine and something to do with rolling resistance to do with the gears. We started working a lot on torque because I've always had good cadence coming off the track and good power production. So if we could just keep the power production and bring the cadence right down, and how it works respiratory wise.

''So we started doing a lot of low cadence work on climbs … powering the gear a lot rather than spinning along, and that forward momentum for the same power has helped me go a bit further. It's made me stronger too.''

FWIW:
1. This figure agrees with the figure X quoted on wattage groups (453W).
2. Very simply, (51.81/50/62)^3 x 456 = 489W. ie 500W is an overestimate but sounds impressive.

It sounds to me like Brad is admitting he wasn't putting out enough power in 2011, but note:
1. no mention of Osymmetrics - which he was already using
2. no mention of hurting his hand at the Tour (Krebs Cycle's claimed it was pertinent)

His "we lowered my cadence" spiel sounds like they have made that improvement in power now, thanks to "uphill TT efforts" and pedaling slower.

Curious that Kerrison (sports scientist) can study Martin's TT cadence over winter and change Wiggin's cadence to suit. But Kerrison has no Martin power files, of that I am pretty damn certain.

Yet when 131313 watches Wiggins' Olympic video for minutes at a time to calculate cadence, both "sports scientists" here: Krebs Cycle ("I use 50Hz video cameras to analyse cadence raaaaaa!!!") and "***-u-me" acoggan ("Have you got Brad's power file, just ask Brailsford he's helpful") say you can't estimate Wiggins' cadence based on that video footage.

Strange...

 

[TubularBills]

from the Swimming thread:

http://twist.future.net.uk/showthread.php?p=941824

 

[the big ring]

We've seen this previously, but it really reinforces something in my mind: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/ot...m-Kerrison-with-revolutionising-training.html

Team Sky head coach Shane Sutton introduced Wiggins to Tim Kerrison, who has revolutionised the 32-year-old triple Olympic champion's attempt to be the first British Tour de France winner.

Wiggins said: "Shane's much more of a mentor, whereas Tim's the brains. He's changed my career, totally.

"Since that 2010 disappointment in the Tour, from that moment on, we started working together.

Wiggins did something, with JV, in 2009 that netted him 4th place at the Tour. He climbed like a Spaniard, and TT'd exactly as he had in the past, with similar results.

He or Sky changed something, or did it the Sky way in 2010 and it was crap. So much for "taking training methods and ideas to the new team when you move". Utter rubbish.

Then Kerrison comes in and "changes everything", and Brad goes 3rd at the Vuelta. For my money, that's no better than 4th at the Tour.

ie Brad already had the goods, with no super team support, to go 4th at 2009 Tour. He already had what amounted to a podium program / training regime.

Then clearly dumped it in the toilet for 2010.

What am I missing here? This Kerrison fellow is no better than JV.

It took a lot of trust at the start for me to trust Tim's training methods, because he'd never worked in cycling.

"I'd go as far to say he's revolutionised training in cycling."

 

[the big ring]

Queenslander, who sounds like he himself rowed: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/spo...ggins-to-victory/story-fn8sc2wz-1226432235548

Queenslander Tim Kerrison's next task is to ensure Wiggins, a three-time Olympic gold medallist on the track, is in shape for the road race in the London Games on Saturday.

He is the latest in a long line of Australian coaches taking athletes from other nations to the top.

Kerrison, from Toowong in Brisbane's inner west, is a relative coaching novice in road cycling, having turned to the sport just three years ago after a background in rowing and swimming

Our previous test results showed he often peaked much too early. There were other factors we had to consider in a race like the Tour - things like crashes - and we had plenty of those in the first week. Teams invest a lot in riders but don't do a lot of structured training to develop them to their full potentia

Except in 2009, when he came 4th, right Tim?

Some more background on coaching and his own sporting success:

He came to cycling having served a long apprenticeship, first in the rowing program at the Queensland Academy of Sport, then switching to swimming under the former national head coach Bill Sweetenham.

It was Sweetenham who first took him across to Britain to work with its swimmers between the Athens and Beijing Games.

Before that, Kerrison worked with Jodie Henry to win triple gold in the pool in Athens. A former rower, he won a world title at under-23 level in a men's lightweight four.

 

[the big ring]

http://www.rowingaustralia.com.au/athletes.asp?cmd=Details&ID=164

Athlete details and a result in the U23 4x as mentioned above.

Date of Birth 2/03/1972
...

2002 U23WR ML4x Genoa Gold

It would appear he was the coach of this winning team.
http://www.toowongrowing.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=59

2002 Tim Kerrison ML4x (Coach)

So I think they have misreported, because in 2002 he would have been 30, not U23.

Or is U23 mean Under 23 stone or something in men's lightweight rowing?

 

[the big ring]

Someone else's experience at sport crossover: http://thevolleyballanalyst.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/successfully-crossing-over-to-another.html

I've already blogged about the importance of performance analysis and the people doing it. What really interested me was before his Team Sky post, he had never worked in cycling. The previous job was in swimming and before that it was in rowing. He basically used his knowledge of those sports, applied it to cycling and was successful. This is pretty much what I am trying to do, offering a fresh perspective into football analysis from my volleyball and basketball background. So far I have not been too successful (see link and link) but this story has given me hope that it is possible.

 

[sittingbison]

isn't krebs cycle a PhD in lightweight rowing? Try PMing him, he might be able to help out

 

[the big ring]

Kerrison mentions Grant Hackett: http://www.smh.com.au/sport/cycling...gins-attack-20120708-21pc1.html#ixzz26yChpAx0

To help prepare Wiggins, Kerrison, who in his capacity as Sky's performance analyst works closely with the sports directors in the team that each rider is assigned to, has often spoken to him about the philosophy behind training methods that were used by the former swimming star Grant Hackett.

Kerrison is a big believer in squad training and incorporating race simulation in sessions. He has been a driving force behind organising the core of Sky's Tour team not only to race together but also train together as much as they could - and on several occasions at the high altitude of Tenerife.

The thrust of his training is aimed at getting his riders to adapt to riding at race pace in training, or beyond and then being able to back down to a recovery pace that every other rider, or team, will still have difficulty in following. ''I talk to Brad quite a bit about how Grant Hackett used to swim 1500 metres,'' Kerrison said. ''He would go out real fast for the first 200 metres because he was a great 200 metres swimmer and he was then able to back off to a pace no one else could swim at,'' Kerrison said.

''We want to ride on a mountain at a very high pace after responding to an attack.'' That, Wiggins and Sky showed on Saturday.

Now I am not 100% sure - but this sounds like the riders are all training together - ie doing the same training.

How is this any different to the other teams training together for the tour?

How does this line up with the following claim Kerrison made upon first seeing the "structure" (which is being debated elsewhere in the Clinic): http://www.cyclesportmag.com/features/tim-kerrison-the-man-behind-bradley-wiggins’-tour/

One of the surprising things not just to me, but to others who came in to the professional team from the British system, was the absence of coaching structures,” he says. “Teams invest a lot in riders but don’t do a lot to develop those riders to get the most out of their potential. That was surprising. From the outset we said that we’d have a coaching structure, and develop a coaching group to get the most out of our riders. We have a good coaching group now, and most riders have one-on-one tailored coaching

 

[the big ring]

isn't krebs cycle a PhD in lightweight rowing? Try PMing him, he might be able to help out

Whatevs dude. I've got over 10yrs experience working at the AIS and NSWIS with elite athletes and coaches as a sport scientist and for the last 2yrs I've been teaching exercise physiology at tertiary level.

I asked him and he said he has never met Kerrison.

 

[the big ring]

(PDF): http://israelirowingfederation.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/fisa-2011-scott-gardner2.pdf

Using performance based models to focus training;
Practical examples from Cycling and Swimming
Scott Gardner Ph.D.

Looks like Kerrison was at a conference with Krebs Cycles best mate:

• Dr David T. Martin
• Dr Matthew Parker
• Tim Kerrison

 

[the big ring]

Kerrison at swimming: http://www.sail-world.com/USA/AIS-has-$5m-to-stop-coach-poachers/24354

(Published 6:24 AM Thu 1 Jun 2006 GMT)

Sweetenham in turn recruited three of Australia's leading sports scientists - Bob Treffene, Tim Kerrison and Jodi Cossor - to work with him. He credits them for much of the improved performance that led the British men to dominate the pool during the Commonwealth Games in March.

 

[the big ring]

Kerrison as rowing coach: (PDF) http://omc.uq.edu.au/news/519UQNEWS.pdf

Ms Houston said much of the
honour for being Queensland’s first
rowing world champion since 1995
lies with her coach Tim Kerrison.
“I did rowing to keep fit when I
left school but Tim pulled me aside
and said I should start training
seriously,” Ms Houston said.

 

[BroDeal]

Is this bloke the Australian Dr. Ferrari, or what? His training plans turn everyone he works with into a champion, no matter what the sport?

 

[the big ring]

Interesting analysis here: http://bikerackheads.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/seven-elements-of-wiggins-trainig-part.html

and a pointer to the swimmers coached by Kerrison (no source provided):

distance swimmers like the Australians Kieren Perkins and Grant Hackett--swimmers under the tutelage of Wiggins' current coach, Tim Kerrison

 

[the big ring]

2003 Oceania Swimming conference: http://www.codsc.co.uk/print.php?sid=4

‘Training principles and periodisation’ a lecture by Tim Kerrison was a practical reminder in the use of different energy systems when constructing training sessions relating to the events that athletes are training for. How about two aerobic systems? If that is a novelty for some of us consider training Fat Oxidisation System and Carbohydrate Oxidisation System together with all the others of course. There is no considered single ‘best way’. Some of the highlights in this lecture were ‘Conventional or Reversed Periodisation’ and ‘Tips for developing a training plan’. Up to date information on these subjects is always very useful to any coach.

Maybe Sky are doing full-on reverse periodisation?

 

[Ferminal]

So how did Kerrison revolutionise swimming?

 

[the big ring]

Not sure sedatives = doping... http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/ne...pnol-and-mogadon/story-e6freuy9-1226415050410

Grant Hackett Hackett said he battled a "heavy reliance" on Stilnox.

...
"The chief concern is it's a drug of dependency, it causes hallucinations and it can lead to addiction."

http://fssalerts.wordpress.com/2012...ckett-gold-at-beijing-olympics-coach-reveals/

GRANT Hackett’s former coach, Denis Cotterell, has no doubt the controversial sleeping medication Stilnox cost the champion distance swimmer the 2008 Beijing Games 1500m freestyle gold medal and a unique place in Olympic history.

Also seems to indicate Kerrison was not the coach.

http://www.swimnews.com/news/view/9604

Australia: Retired Aussie 1500m free great Grant Hackett has refuted his former coach's claim that a sleeping pill now banned by Australia's Olympic Committee cost him a third consecutive 1,500 metres freestyle gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Games. Denis Cotterell had told media that he blamed the use of Stilnox, a brand of the medication zolpidem, for the swimmer's "lack of clarity" in the final at Beijing. Hackett took silver by a slither behind Oussama Mellouli (TUN). "In 12 years of racing international 1500m freestyles across Olympic, world championships and Commonwealth Games, I managed to lose twice, and that's one of those races," Hackett told local radio station Triple M. "I just thought, that's a load of rubbish. The person that should be blamed, the person who had the poor race strategy that day, was myself. Was I asleep? Was I affected by Stilnox? That's just a load of rubbish."