Former pro and current coach Michael Barry weighs in on the risks of putting too much weight into awards
The lure of an award, a badge, a personal best (PB), or even a pat on the back will drive most of us to be better, especially in the short term. To achieve long-term success, the desire to be better must be intrinsic. Accolades will get us out the door when the weather is lousy and encourage our bodies to go that little bit harder when feeling the burn of an intense effort.
Over time, those goals, awards, and targets can become addictive as they add to the endorphin surge sport already gives us, former WorldTour pro Michael Barry says. Knowing this, most social media, online applications, and training platforms feed the flow of endorphins to keep us engaged, pushing us to reach further, and racing ourselves, our friends, and ultimately, all those on the apps by notifying us each time we’ve reached a target or gone faster than ever.
The gamification of training platforms
Training platforms have been gamified using techniques developed in casinos, which have since been adopted by social media. The brain can quickly become hooked on those small awards; as a result, training and, more generally, sport becomes a constant race where every ride or run is monitored and ranked by a computer platform.
The persistent pull of a possible award will detract from long-term training goals, especially for the bike racer, whose purpose is not only to become fitter and stronger but also to perform in races. This requires process, patience, coordination with teammates, and skill development—elements that platforms don’t quantify. A properly trained athlete, reaching their potential by following a well-structured training program, will hit two to three peaks in fitness throughout the year. Those peaks will be harder, or even impossible, to attain if the athlete is pushing to their maximum capacity too frequently, as fatigue will set in, eventually leading to injury or burnout.
Understanding training
For an athlete to be their best, both mentally and physically, they must set personal benchmarks in which they try to control as many variables as possible. Constant classification and comparison are detrimental, as others’ performances are out of their control. The best athletes who can progress with consistency over time are often the ones who have a clear understanding of their training and what they are trying to achieve while also having the ability to honestly evaluate their fitness and efforts through their perceived exertion—not by chasing performance metrics on a regular basis. Understanding performance and what works best for the individual will occur with self-awareness, experience, and education.
Platforms like TrainingPeaks and Strava don’t fully quantify what it takes to be a better bike racer—just a fitter cyclist—which are two different objectives. The racer needs to understand this in their approach to training so as not to be caught up in comparison.
Skills to help across disciplines
Over the last several years, I have coached riders training on the velodrome, road, and mountain bikes. On the track, their training sessions were often short and intense or skill-based; as a result, the power and heart rate files uploaded to the training platforms didn’t quantify the work done in their training scores.
They were becoming better racers, learning skills that would help them across disciplines, but as those gains weren’t reflected in the data, it was easy for the riders to believe the sessions didn’t have as much value and that they weren’t progressing as much as they might if they were out hammering for hours on the road.
Many group rides are hampered by the leeching rider who sits at the back of the paceline, never contributing and then sprinting for a Strava KOM. To the others in the group, this is a pyrrhic victory. Together, both the collective and the individual will grow stronger, move faster, and achieve more.
On fitness targets
Not every training session should have fitness targets, but a training plan should also include skill targets, tactical race simulation targets, team-building, or even mental relaxation and mind-building objectives. Sport is so much more than just FTP, max power, etc.; yet, these are the metrics we chase because they are tangible, quantified, and comparable.
Chris Reid, a cycling coach who is also the director of the National Cycling Institute in Milton, Ontario, reflected on how platforms have changed perceptions of what’s important: “Bike racing is a game, and chasing badges and power files moves people away from that. Because we canmeasure power, we’ve come to put too much importance on it. Just as important are skills, tactical awareness, physical repeatability, etc.
Some cycling metrics that can’t be measured
In the book Moneyball, the author Michael Lewis discussed how the fastball pitch came to be overrepresented in draft decisions simply because the speed of the pitch could be measured. Yet, what is the metric for a curveball? Similarly, in cycling, what’s the 90-day PB for corners taken without touching the brakes? If a racer executes the soft skills properly, they will be more efficient, conserve energy, and may win; yet the peak power values may not reflect this.”
Constantly chasing PBs within a specified training session will be detrimental to long-term progress, both mentally and physically. If we don’t achieve our training PB on a maximal effort, it’s easy to lose confidence, as we can perceive that as not progressing, while ultimately, the goal should be to accomplish the workout properly to build towards performing in the actual race. I’ve known many riders who excel in power tests and consistently break climbing records in training yet rarely win races, as their focus has been on breaking those records rather than on becoming better, more skilled, and calculated racers.
Failure, or a loss, leads to higher cortisol levels and lower testosterone, which ultimately is detrimental to growth. Those unnecessary and worthless awards the training platforms introduce can still have needless negative effects on our brains and bodies.
No training plan will work if it is just a steady stream of maximal efforts, which is what many platforms encourage. The lure of the PB or crown on a Strava segment can easily push a rider out of their prescribed zone, negatively affecting the training plan and process or causing unnecessary performance stress.
This article was original publishes in Canadian Cycling Magazine. Michael Barry is a former WorldTour pro, author and co-owner of Marisposa Bicycles
