Tim Kerrison

[the big ring]

I know for a fact that Kerrison has drastically changed how the riders on Sky train. For example, they've almost completely stopped doing the classic "coffee-stop ride" or the recovery ride. Every single minute of their training is planned now, and it's usually insanely hard. However, they also have more days completely off the bike (instead of recovery rides). Every single training ride is analyzed afterwards. The length of the intervals is dependent on which race they are aiming for at that particular time.

I'm not saying this means Sky are clean, but at least it shows that he has indeed changed something.

Yep, but everyone I know who has a power meter (including me) does this. So to say no other pro trains like this (what Sky imply, not what you are saying) is ludicrous.

Rogers was coached by Aldo Sassi. I've seen their training programs and they are structured like this also. Mapped to the km and m elevation, at set power levels.

And I will reiterate: Brad came 4th, at Garmin, in the 2009 Tour de France, behind Alberto Contador, Andy Shleck and Lance Armstrong (stripped?). With Lance's 3rd place stripped, Wiggins comes virtual third.

So why did anything need changing from 2009?

 

[sittingbison]

Not only that, there is still the elephant in the room that has not been addressed in about 10000 Sky posts over almost 10 threads:

TeamSky have not improved with this wonderful new scientific focused team training, only the Fab Four. The other 5 TdF team mates, and the rest of the team are unchanged from their pre Kerrison/Sky careers. As witnessed in Veulta, where they were peleton fodder and not totally dominant every day.

 

[jamiephillips]

^^ Sorry but Andy Schleck was awarded the 2010 Tour de France....

 

[the big ring]

^^ Sorry but Andy Schleck was awarded the 2010 Tour de France....

Thanks. I did 2011 - 2 and started at 2009. Post fixed.

 

[the big ring]

In French. Have Tx'd via Google but may ask my French friend to do a proper Tx.

http://www.rmcsport.fr/editorial/278210/kerrison-le-cerveau-de-la-sky/

Something about Cartesian something or others.

 

[bianchigirl]

It's the usual snowy bs - Spent a lot of time looking at how you win the tour, analysing riders performances, developed a plan to Help the team do what was necessary to win the tour, worked the same with all riders looking at How they need to work & what they're capable of doing blah blah blah

There's only one reason for using people like kerrison & leinders and it has eff all to do with 'revolutionary training methods'

 

[bianchigirl]

Edited double post

My gut feeling is there's nothing out there on kerrison because he's a relative nobody - a beard like carmichael was for extraordinary changes in a riders performance - another elephant in the room & one that is fundamental to hamilton's book - doping helps you train insanely hard...

 

[sniper]

Note that Gonzalez Haro, Garmin's physiologist, is also a swimming coach.

 

[thehog]

Not only that, there is still the elephant in the room that has not been addressed in about 10000 Sky posts over almost 10 threads:

TeamSky have not improved with this wonderful new scientific focused team training, only the Fab Four. The other 5 TdF team mates, and the rest of the team are unchanged from their pre Kerrison/Sky careers. As witnessed in Veulta, where they were peleton fodder and not totally dominant every day.

This is very true. And at the classics they were not much.

I'd say they have a core group of 5 on the program. No one else must know.

Basically the Tenerife gang.

 

[Wallace and Gromit]

Another elephant in the room & one that is fundamental to hamilton's book - doping helps you train insanely hard...

So if Lance had the best doping regime, does that mean he actually did train harder than anyone else?

 

[the big ring]

So if Lance had the best doping regime, does that mean he actually did train harder than anyone else?

OT, but the contention is he must have had to. By November 1999, 4 months after he won the Tour de France, he had packed on 4kg, and his VO2max had dropped to 71 ml/m/kg. Giving him a lean, race weight VO2 max of 76 ml/m/kg.

Sound like a Tour de France winner to you?

 

[Wallace and Gromit]

OT, but the contention is he must have had to. By November 1999, 4 months after he won the Tour de France, he had packed on 4kg, and his VO2max had dropped to 71 ml/m/kg. Giving him a lean, race weight VO2 max of 76 ml/m/kg.

Sound like a Tour de France winner to you?

I genuinely don't know. The fact is that he won whilst doping and whether he'd have beaten other dopers if they'd all been clean or AN Other cyclist who was considered to be clean at the time is of no interest real interest to me.

I'm mildly interested to know whether the doping simply made him go faster by improving the oxygen supply to the muscles in the condition they were trained to, or by enabling him to train more and improve via training. I guess a combination of these things.

On a philosophical level, if you dope and still undertrain/underperform (albeit at a higher level than if you hadn't doped) is this morally better or worse than doping and then using the benefit of the dope to train yourself to be the best you can then be? I guess as Lance did the latter, the answer will be the former, but it's an interesting thought, I think.

 

[slowspoke]

Kerrison was at OZ swimming when they were a powerhouse in international swimming. There were plenty of scandals however. Re Thorpe, a good friend, who was 6"7 and we called "Dolph" for his likeness to Dolph Lundgren raced Thorpe. He was in the lane next to him. The gun goes off, they dive in and he comes up and he's already 2 meters behind. You can't dope that. Not saying he didn't dope, but he was a phenom. Hackett, is another mater. Interesting how BAD Ozzy swimming is now. I don't have any gossip on Kerrison specifically but Thropes coach Gennadi Touretsk is as dirty as they come.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/swimming/3002998/Swimming-Coach-charged-with-possession-of-steroids.html

 

[the big ring]

Thanks for the link, Slowspoke. I had read something similar elsewhere but for the life of me could not track down a link.

Found another tidbit about the expertise of Tim Kerrison.

The background:

When Brailsford—who masterminded the 2008 British Olympic track team’s seven golds from 10 events—said at the launch of Team Sky three years ago that his goal was to have a British winner of the Tour de France within five years, most observers s******ed. And when all the team could do at its debut Tour in 2010 was 24th overall for Wiggins and no stage wins, after Brailsford had spent an estimated $30 million putting the team together, the skeptics said there was no way that Sky would produce a British winner within 10 years, let alone five.

Keeping in mind that same Brad was 4th (or 3rd if you strip Lance of his results) 12 months earlier. Sky "fixed" something that was not broken.

And yet Brailsford is persistent. He hired Kerrison, an Australian who previously worked with his country’s swimming and rowing teams. He’s an expert in altitude training, so after studying Wiggins’s previous performances in the climbing stages of the Tour—notably his fifth place at Verbier and 10th on Mont Ventoux at the 2009 Tour—Kerrison decided that Wiggins was weakest on climbs higher than 5,000 feet (about 1,700 meters); he had to improve his ability to accelerate on grades steeper than 10 percent; and he needed to improve his performance in hot weather.

An expert in altitude training. Hmmmm. I've seen this somewhere else...

An interesting study by Aussies on altitude training and its effect on elite swimmers: http://sweatscience.com/altitude-training-fails-to-help-australian-swim-team/

 

[BroDeal]

I basically figure swimming is just as dirty as track and field. Just like I doubt there has been a clean Olympic 100 meter sprint winner in forty or fifty years, I doubt that swimming is any better.

The altitude training stuff is interesting because it seems like current research shows it is mostly bunk or of limited value.

 

[sittingbison]

swimming has always been a bit strange to me. There are "stables" of swimmers who belong to a specific coach, often since childhood. They use certain pools. These coaches are often father figures.

It seems like Kerrison was never part of this set up. So that to me seems to increase the likelihood of the "Carmichael" phenomenon.

What specifically could Kerrison point to (his palmares lol) when going for the job at Sky? Or as appears more likely, what could Brailesford have seen that led him to headhunt Kerrison?

 

[the big ring]

What specifically could Kerrison point to (his palmares lol) when going for the job at Sky? Or as appears more likely, what could Brailesford have seen that led him to headhunt Kerrison?

And what gets me is - noone asks him!

Journalists interview him, and never seem to ask him, "So, show us the runs on the board. What's your palmares?".

It's always, "The Aussie swim and rowing trainer who moved to England in 2006 and worked with UK swimmers and then rowers and then.... Brailsford grabbed him for Sky".

They don't even mention any Aussie swimmers or rowers he worked with, or how far he took them in competition.

I mean. Look at the post a few up from here. They blew $30M in 2010 for 24th place at the Tour with the rider that came 4th the year before. To turn that around requires a sure thing, not a gamble on a swim trainer who's never looked at a bike race in any detail. Ever.

These dots don't add up.

 

[JRanton]

Kerrison adds a worlds silver to his 2012 palmares .

Imagine how good EBH could be next year after a proper winter's training under Tim's guidance.

 

[JimmyFingers]

EBH is a class act, always has been

 

[Parker]

And what gets me is - noone asks him!

Journalists interview him, and never seem to ask him, "So, show us the runs on the board. What's your palmares?".

It's always, "The Aussie swim and rowing trainer who moved to England in 2006 and worked with UK swimmers and then rowers and then.... Brailsford grabbed him for Sky".

They don't even mention any Aussie swimmers or rowers he worked with, or how far he took them in competition.

I mean. Look at the post a few up from here. They blew $30M in 2010 for 24th place at the Tour with the rider that came 4th the year before. To turn that around requires a sure thing, not a gamble on a swim trainer who's never looked at a bike race in any detail. Ever.

These dots don't add up.

The Aussie swimmers he worked with were the ones tha came from Queensland. He worked for the Queensland Academy of Sport, not AIS. Most notably he worked with Jodie Henry and Leisel Jones and a little bit with Grant Hackett. He had next to nothing to do with Thorpe, who is from Sydney.

He was also at Sky from day one. They hired him in 2009 - he was about to go to England Cricket - not in late 2010 as you suggest.

If Sky have a doping program - and I don't think they do - it won't be run by Kerrison or Leinders, it will be run by someone you have never heard of.

 

[JimmyFingers]

The Aussie swimmers he worked with were the ones tha came from Queensland. He worked for the Queensland Academy of Sport, not AIS. Most notably he worked with Jodie Henry and Leisel Jones and a little bit with Grant Hackett. He had next to nothing to do with Thorpe, who is from Sydney.

He was also at Sky from day one. They hired him in 2009 - he was about to go to England Cricket - not in late 2010 as you suggest.

If Sky have a doping program - and I don't think they do - it won't be run by Kerrison or Leinders, it will be run by someone you have never heard of.

+1 Trufax all

 

[hiero2]

Kerrison crunches the numbers and Brad's normal cadence is found lacking. . . .

Quote:
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.''
end quote
. . .

Just speaking from a pragmatic, experiental approach, I can vouch for something like this. When I raced I was living in western Tennessee- pretty flat. I did make sure I periodically had the occasion to climb. But figuring out where the leg/lung balance lay, was not easy. I thought I found that I did better on a lower cadence, rather than the 90+ that I normally attempted to work with. At 90+ my cardiovascular system gave out before my legs. Getting to the top quickly was a matter of balancing the two. So, I could easily see someone racing, and working out a set of methods, but still being able to optimize those methods with proper analysis.

 

[Cloxxki]

Just speaking from a pragmatic, experiental approach, I can vouch for something like this. When I raced I was living in western Tennessee- pretty flat. I did make sure I periodically had the occasion to climb. But figuring out where the leg/lung balance lay, was not easy. I thought I found that I did better on a lower cadence, rather than the 90+ that I normally attempted to work with. At 90+ my cardiovascular system gave out before my legs. Getting to the top quickly was a matter of balancing the two. So, I could easily see someone racing, and working out a set of methods, but still being able to optimize those methods with proper analysis.

Cadance means nothing if you use the same bike for flats and climbs. Position not only on the bike, but realtive to the gravity vector means the world.
Slam the seat forward and feel how well you can spin uphill. Most overlooked elementary art of cycling. People can talk about seat positioning all day, and then take their classics bike to the big mountains. Cycling is so biblically stupid in some ways...

 

[hiero2]

You have said what I have been thinking all along. Someone above has stated Kerrison is a bona fide physiologist, and I am prepared to accept that. The vapid, "crunched the numbers of Tony Martin vs Wiggins cadence at WC 2011 TT" is what sealed the deal for me on that theory.

The reason I started investigating Kerrison in the first place is beyond the "Wiggins <3 Kerrison" TdF drivel there was nothing. Absolutely nothing about this guy and what he has done.


But you'd think someone who could revolutionize cycling training having shown himself at swimming or rowing training would have some runs on the board there... somewhere?

And that raises another scenario:

a) he was ok to crap at swimming training, so why the hell would you ask him to come and be head of sports science with your multi-million GB pound cycling team experiment? OR

b) he was brilliant at swimming training, so why the hell would you remove him from the swimming team?

Bottom line - this guy is a practical ghost until joining Sky in 2011 and then he's an indominitable force in cycling training techniques.

From what I've been reading here, I don't think you could say Kerrison, or Sky, "revolutionized" cycle training. They fine-tuned it, not revolutionized. And I think "indomitable" is an overstatement, as well. They WERE successful in their aims, and the circumstances helped to make them look pretty good. So good, I too, am suspicious of whether some other medical or diet aid was added to give a couple of extra percent. But, so far all I have is my suspicion - and that of the other cynics who inhabit the Clinic. So far I have seen nothing that lends itself to convict Sky of not competing, as another cynic here characterized it, coining the word, "paniagua".

 

[hiero2]

Cadance means nothing if you use the same bike for flats and climbs. Position not only on the bike, but realtive to the gravity vector means the world.
Slam the seat forward and feel how well you can spin uphill. Most overlooked elementary art of cycling. People can talk about seat positioning all day, and then take their classics bike to the big mountains. Cycling is so biblically stupid in some ways...

Cadence is still part of the equation, not to take anything away from your point. But, if we grant your point - position is important for climbing, and I am more than willing to do that - how does that affect what I am saying and what Wiggins said? I don't see how it does - we were talking about balancing the demands and power from the leg muscles against that provided by the cardio system while climbing.