“Man, that was hard.”  “Jeez, my body hurts.”  “I need to do more training.”  “I felt good in that workout.”
 
These are pretty popular statements, right?  And there are many more just like them.  When athletes describe their workouts or how the felt, or when coaches communicate expectations to their athletes for a given set or workout, I find there’s quite a bit of laziness in adjectives and word choice in general.  This is one area in which I challenge the athletes I work with to get as descriptive as possible when they report to me on a workout.  I know an interval workout is “hard” – I wrote it!  I don’t want to hear that it was hard or tough; I want to know exactly how it made you feel, precisely how your body responded to it and any sensations you experienced.
 
Athletes and coaches need to get better at using words that on the surface appear synonymous but really are not.  Pain v discomfort.  Fatigue v being tired.  Weak v sick.  Strong v powerful. And so on.  Even catch-all concepts like “do more” or “do less” are woefully inexact in what they portray.  Take any of these and what do they even mean?  If I ask ten different people, I’ll get ten different definitions of any given concept or adjective.
 
Athletes need to really tune in to how they feel before, during and after workouts.  And then it is incumbent on them to use the appropriate description when writing in their workout logs and back to their coaches.  To me, this feedback being accurate is way more insightful and important than any training file on power numbers.  Give me the depth, not just the surface check list details.
 
When an athlete tells me that a particular workout was hard, I immediately ask “How do you mean? Give me the details.”  Or if an athlete says, “My knee hurt during that run,” I challenge that athlete to tell me exactly what’s going on, where the pain is, when during the stride the pain intensifies and when it diminishes, does the pain come on from the first stride and then go away after warmed up or visa versa, how would the athlete rate the pain on the 1-10 and what does that number correspond to, and so on.  As a coach, I really cannot do anything with “My knee hurt during that workout.”  But, I can do something with multiple data points which better describe what “hurt” means. 
 
Same goes for “fatigue v tired” as a prime example.  Fatigue is what we experience during our workouts as well as day-to-day latent feedback after workouts.  Tired is what we are when we don’t sleep very well or not long enough.  If I sleep 5-6 hours, I typically wake up feeling really tired.  My body is heavy and it’s challenging to get out of bed and my eyelids feel like lead weights.  My body is slower to wake up and shake out the nighttime shutdown than when I get 7-8 hours of sleep.  Once I get some blood flowing and brew that first cup of coffee, I then tune in to any fatigue I may be feeling.  Are my muscles stiff or sore from the previous day(s) workout(s)?  Are my muscles quick to burn when I use them going up or down stairs?  When I stand up quickly do I get a head rush?  Is my heart beat strong but slow or does it easily quicken?  And more.  Being tired is a state of being whereas being fatigued is related to central nervous system recovery from our workouts that manifests itself in our muscles and things like heart rate and blood pressure. 
 
See the difference?
 
There are countless examples of lazy speech in this athlete/coach feedback loop.  It is incumbent on each of us, regardless of which role we’re in, to challenge each other to communicate more clearly, more precisely and more crisply.  As a coach, tell me exactly what’s going on rather than using generic soundbites.  Those don’t do me or my athletes any good at all. 
 
I tend to think that this grammatical laziness is an offshoot of a couple things.  First, people rely way too much on data.  Power and heart rate data are regarded as the be all, end all.  Understand these two things and all is good.  Not so.  RPE (Rate of Perceived Effort) is the third dimension and, in my opinion, the most important to get right.  RPE is the one that tells me how to create future workouts for my athletes, not the power and HR data.  Second, we live in a world of soundbites.  We get in, comment, get out and move on.  Next!  There is understanding and then there is comprehension.  The quick post-cycling workout log of a power file that a coach can then dissect while the athlete moves on to showering and getting on with the day is completely devoid of value.  It’s like abstract art – what in the world am I looking at?  I dunno.
 
So, if you’re an athlete, I challenge you to be a better communicator as to exactly how your workouts go – to yourself in your workout logs and to your coach.  If you’re a coach, then I challenge you to look beyond the workout files and require more human communication from your athletes.  I don’t charge any extra for unlimited communication with any of my athletes.  No coach should.  Those who do are doing their athletes a disservice.  Full stop.  Because they are perpetuating the problem of surface communication and lack of comprehension around how workouts are really going and influencing an athlete’s progression.
 
Becoming an RPE expert is pretty amazing.  Being that in touch with what’s going on with your body is empowering and opens up a whole new dimension of workout comprehension.  You move beyond simply understanding what you’re doing and why you’re doing it – important things, but not the be all, end all to performance.  It’s like this.  I know what a perfect swim stroke looks and feels like.  In all the millions of yards and meters I swam in my life, during every single stroke I thought about every aspect of those strokes – the entry, was my entry clean or were there bubbles around my hand, the catch, the pitch of my hand, the sweep of my stroke, the exit of my elbow and then hand at the bottom of the stroke, the recovery, high elbow, relaxed forearm, my breath to the side, was the water creating a cup around my mouth as I drew breath, am I exhaling completely when my face is back in the water, is my head at the right angle or am I dipping it as I fatigue, and on and on. 
 
Knowing what a proper stroke looks like is understanding; the depth of sensory feedback is comprehension.  If you are stuck on “understanding”, then it’s time to challenge yourself in ways of the mind and spoken word rather than of the body.  You will get more out of your workouts, deepen the relationship you have with your coach and, ultimately, attain more progress in your training program.
 
Happy Training,
Coach Nate

Upfront Disclaimer:  Before diving into this, I want to state that I don’t have any direct proof that any athletes against whom I competed blood doped or used PEDs.  I did not see any athlete, male or female, pop pills or inject nor did I find any paraphernalia associated with PED use.  What I can say is that the more I study the history of cheating in global sports, the patterns of PED use and see what’s happening today in global sports, I have more perspective with hindsight on what occurred during my own sporting career, more specifically when racing triathlon professionally during the 1990s.
 
My Story of Why I Compete Clean
I’ve been asked why I decided to compete clean during my athletic career – first as a swimmer, then as a top Olympic distance triathlete (amateur and then professional), and now as a Masters cyclist.  The answer is both simple and complex, straightforward and convoluted.  To really answer this accurately, I had look beyond the easy answer and dig in to what’s driven me to compete, excel and stay on the straight-and-narrow.
 
In the Beginning
I’m the youngest of three kids.  My sister and brother are 7 and 5.5 years older than I am, respectively.  While we all love each other and get along very well, I also have early recollections of the two of them fighting like cats and dogs which caused my parents a number of headaches and parental challenges.  At some point in my childhood, I recall thinking that the last thing I wanted to do was create yet more headaches and challenges for my parents.  I was not a perfect child by any means, but I did my best to not disappoint my parents or put myself in a position where I would be letting them down.
 
This decision has followed me through life.  I followed my siblings into competitive swimming at the age of 5.  We each won national titles at different ages and we all competed into the collegiate ranks, though I was the only one to compete all four years at that level.  The mentality I outline above caused me to lead by example in a few ways.  I always worked my hardest in workouts; I never complained outwardly about particularly difficult practices; I encouraged others to get the most out of themselves; I talked to my coaches to better understand why we were doing what we were; outside the pool I kept my grades up and largely avoided making dumb adolescent and teenage mistakes.
 
I swam year round.  Our club team was always one of the best 2-3 in the state.  My high school swim team was a perennial top 10 at the state champs.  I was the first two-year captain on that team, being voted into that role by both teammates and coaches.  My senior season, I was voted my high school’s male athlete of the year.  My practice of leading by example was paying off. 
 
While I usually got it right, sometimes I made mistakes.  My junior year, I attended a New Year’s party with some of my teammates and girlfriend.  I knew there would be drinking there – it was high school – but I didn’t drink or do drugs (that would be a bad example by a leader).  Everyone knew it and so I never got pressured to just be “one of the guys.”  My parents’ rule for curfew was that I had to be home by midnight unless I called and told them where I was and with whom.  Then, I could stay out as long as I wanted.  This particular night, some terrible weather blew in, so as it approached midnight I called home and my parents agreed I could spend the night at the party.  A teammate was about to leave and I almost left with him, but decided to stay. 
 
When Winter Break was over and we were back in school, I remember showing up to swim practice one day that first week back and my coaches called me into their office.  They did not look at all pleased, which was both puzzling and concerning.  I wondered which of my teammates had fucked up.  Turns out, it was I.  Some pictures of the New Year’s party surfaced (this is when photos got developed and were tangibly held to enjoy) showing students having fun and drinking.  A teacher walked by some girls viewing the photos, confiscated them and, recognizing me in a few of them, gave them to my coaches.  Long story short, I ended up in front of a review board made up of our principal, athletic director, my head coach, and a couple notable teachers.  I was grilled, offered the best answers I could, and then awaited my punishment – a 4-meet suspension.  I would be able to compete in the local, regional and state championship meets which was a big relief for me.
 
I felt terrible.  I had let my coaches and teammates down.  I had let those who looked up to me down.  I had let my parents down.  I had let myself down.  All the things I never wanted to do I managed to accomplish in one fell swoop.  I vowed to never let that happen again – not ever.
 
A Quick Overview of My College Years
I ended up attended Kenyon College.  I fondly remember driving from Illinois to central Ohio for a campus visit, parking in front of Admissions, getting out and looking around, and knowing immediately that I had found my home for the next four years.  The feeling in my gut was so strong.  I told my mom that if I got accepted, I would be attending Kenyon.  Set amid gorgeous rolling rural hills in the Ohio River Valley, Kenyon Swimming had curious turned into the most successful athletic program in NCAA history when measured by NCAA Championship titles.  My senior year, I was again voted captain.  While in high school it felt like a no-brainer to be voted captain, at Kenyon I felt it was a hard-earned honor.  That year, “Sports Illustrated” wrote a long article on “major minors” – smaller schools that punched well above their weight.  Kenyon Swimming was the feature program and the article included a full 2-page photo of the team. 
 
I was largely as straight-laced in college as I was in high school, and the four years passed without any major incident for me or my teammates.  Save one.  Every year, most of the team traveled down to Florida during Winter Break for 2.5 weeks to effectively swim all day every day since school was out for a solid month.  My senior year, two of my roommates who were majoring in Economics, a supremely difficult major at Kenyon, needed to study while in Florida.  We’d swim for three hours in the morning, and then while the rest of us were recovering before a two-hour afternoon workout, they would go to the library to work on their Senior Thesis.  While my Senior Thesis was due in April, theirs were due immediately after returning from Winter Break.  I felt badly for them.
 
Nationals occurred in mid-March.  We would be gunning for our 11th consecutive NCAA Championship, a record for any sport.  Tom and Scott would be instrumental to us staving off a sharp challenge from UCSD.  As the Econ Department graded the theses, a red flag was raised.  Tom and Scott’s theses cited identical references and so they were accused of working on their senior projects together, something which was strictly forbidden.  While they had gone to the library in Florida together and shared the library’s resources, they did not write their papers together.  The head of the Econ Department was unwavering – Tom and Scott would be kicked off the team and in return they would be allowed to graduate. 
 
I couldn’t believe it.  They had done nothing wrong.  In fact, I felt they should have been commended for attending the training camp while having this critical project on their plates.  It was no secret that the head of the department felt sport had little place in the world of academia.  To me, this was a personally-driven vendetta against two athletes on the most successful program in the country who he felt were putting more focus on athletics than on their studies.  I wasn’t going to stand idly by.  I vented to my coach, whose hands were tied.  I was denied an audience with the Econ department head.  The school president pushed me down to the Dean of Student Affairs, who finally agreed to see me.  I told Dean Ponder that a mistake was being made.  Tom and Scott were consummate student-athletes who would never cheat, that his was a personal axe the department head felt he had to grind, and so on.  It fell on deaf ears.  Tom and Scott would be taken off the team and denied competing at Nationals.  Two athletes similar to me had paid an even stiffer penalty than I did five years prior.  Terrible.  Despite this setback, we rallied.  We dedicated the meet to Tom and Scott, and ended up crushing UCSD.
 
But probably the most interesting story of my collegiate swimming career is that my freshman year the NCAA announced it would start drug testing athletes.  The national swimming championships were officially the first Spring event at which testing would occur, not coincidentally due to Kenyon’s success in the pool.  During my four years of collegiate swimming, I was tested more than a dozen times and Kenyon swimmers made up the majority of the “random” tests completed beyond the Top 3 in each event.  While I did not expect any swimmer to test positive, it was comforting to hear that all tests were negative.  During these four years, it became ingrained in me that the athletes against whom I competed were clean, and that hard work and dedication paid off.  To be the best, there were no short cuts.
 
Rose-Tinted Glasses
After swimming my last stroke in collegiate swimming, I decided to give triathlon a go.  I had 3 months to start biking and running to prepare for that year’s amateur national championship.  I was leading the entire race wire-to-wire, and only got passed by two athletes in the last 3-4 kilometers on the run, finally ending up second in my age group and third overall.  Not a bad way to enter the sport.  Again, dedicated hard work paid off big time.
 
I turned pro after two years in the amateur ranks, motivated and ready to take on the very best the sport had to offer up.  I had become enamored with triathlon in the early-80s after watching Scott Tinley storm to a come-from-behind victory at the Hawaii Ironman that year.  He personified what I stood for in sport and his tenacity really drew me in.  I was destined to give the sport a go.
 
My blind faith in the AD (anti-doping) system carried forward into my triathlon career.  Those four years in college led me to believe that if someone were taking PEDs, I trusted the system would find the cheats out.  At first, there was no drug testing in triathlon.  But, when the movement to get triathlon into the Summer Olympics began in earnest, the drug testing followed.  First, on the ITU (International Triathlon Union) World Cup Circuit, which is where I mainly raced.  As I recall, the podium in each World Cup race got tested along with three more athletes at random.  As in collegiate swimming, I figured the cheats would get caught and so didn’t really have much skepticism for athlete results in races.
 
But then a strange thing happened.  In just three years, I went from winning a half-dozen races and being able to beat any pro on a given day to struggling to stand on the podium and remain in the top 10, all while I continued to get faster.  I trained more and harder, sometimes to my own detriment.  Self-confidence that once had been brimming was now shaken.  I was racing fast in both draft-legal and non-drafting races, yet I was lagging farther behind the tip of the spear.  While I was bleeding out my eyes, some athletes around me were calm, cool and collected.  Because I believed in the drug testing – because I had always believed that hard work led to excellence and success – I looked in the mirror and blamed my flagging results on myself.  It had to be my fault.  I wasn’t dedicated enough or training hard enough.  I. Must. Do. More.
 
How blinding naivete can be.
 
During the flagging results, there were multiple occasions I had the opportunity to gain exposure to PEDs – to cross the line.  It was never a question.  Cheating to win would not be something I would ever do.  As with swimming in high school, how could I live with the certain disappointment my parents and those who believed in me would surely feel were they to find out I had cheated to win?  How could I look at my wife every day?  My friends?  “But what if they never found out?”  Well, I would know and I would not have been able to look at myself in the mirror let alone look them in the eye.
 
I knew the stories.  Blood doping had been used since the 70s and 80s.  EPO was available over-the-counter across Europe.  Parts of South America lacked any sort of controls.  Stories about certain athletes and coaches circulated, further raising eyebrows about their cleanliness.  But, still, I believed in the AD system.  From a results perspective, to my own detriment.  However, my reputation remained intact and my conscience completely clear.  At the time, it stung.  A lot.  In hindsight, I would not change a thing.  My ability to race clean and win became compromised and ultimately led to the premature end to my professional athletic career.   
 
Conclusion
To me, there is a purity in sport – the pursuit of excellence.  Athletes determine how far they can push themselves physically, mentally and emotionally.  Barriers are hit and overcome, then hit again.  Sometimes we want to quit it all because the necessary dedication to perform at our highest level no longer brings rewards commensurate with the effort. Those who push themselves longer and harder, who can overcome more barriers more often, will rise to the top.  Hard work can overcome “God given talent”.
 
My lack of proper perspective on the extent of doping occurring at the time certainly didn’t help.  In retrospect, the number of top-grade pro triathletes from both hemispheres that flooded the sport was shocking.  They were popping up like weeds.  At the time, I didn’t connect the dots.  Maybe I was unwilling to see what was right in front of my eyes.  Or, more likely, I believed that the other athletes were of a similar mind.  That the purity of sport overruled all else. 
 
In no way do I believe that everyone else doped.  Nor do I believe that I was only beaten by doped triathletes.  That said, I do think there was a much larger percentage of competitors cheating than I believed at the time and certainly more than the anti-doping tests caught – or that were reported.  Afterall, triathlon was lobbying hard to get into the Olympic Games, so while some positive drug test results would be great for show – “Look, we are catching the cheats” – too many would kill the Olympic movement right when it needed to gain a full head of steam.
 
In the end, things have turned out just fine.  I’ve got my health and my conscience is fully intact.  Even now, as a Masters cyclist, I know I’m competing against cheaters.  Some of my fellow competitors have been caught, and a few more than once.  I’m to the point in my athletic career where finding new challenges and trying to make tweaks to my training approach are the real challenges.  Sure, I try to win the races that suite my strengths and still do win some of them.  But, I find I gain more fulfillment from helping teammates win than going after personal glory. 
 
My eyes are open wide now.  I’ll keep cycling as long as it fills me up.  Once it doesn’t, I’ll find the next challenge whatever that may be.  Regardless, trying to challenge and better myself will forever overrule the “win at all costs” mentality.  On this, I will never waiver.
 
Happy Training,
Coach Nate   

​I’m tired. 
 
I don’t mean physically tired, but rather mentally.  Not in a futility sort of way, but rather an “I can’t believe some people can be in such denial” sort of way.  Specifically, around our sporting heroes, favorite teams and favorite sports.
 
There’s a broad spectrum when it comes to belief.  On one end, you have a group that is supremely cynical and which might say something like, “Every elite athlete cheats.  They’re all on PEDs.”  On the other end of the spectrum, you have a group that is so starry-eyed and naïve that it might say something like, “(My favorite team/athlete) is achieving success through so much hard work and wanting it more than the competition.  Their system is better.”
 
Both ends of the spectrum are incorrect.  On the spectrum of cheating, from 0% to 100% of athletes being cheaters, the only statistical percentage we know for a fact is not possible is 0%.  That said, it is very, very highly improbable that all elite athletes are cheating; we just can’t prove that all are not cheating. 
 
So, why am I mentally tired?  Because people are more apt to believe in fairy tales than they are to apply scrutiny.  We are inclined to apply a filter of nationalism or tribalism to any scrutiny we do apply to athletes or teams or sports.  Rather than taking a step back and looking at a situation objectively, most people apply whichever filters they choose that will result in the narrative which provides them comfort, which allows them to put the performances in question into a neat, tidy box to be filed away and forgotten.
 
Well, this isn’t how sports work.  If we strip away the filters and the biases, and really strive to look at elite sports with an objective eye, the problem is that we won’t like what we see. 
 
The biggest misconception is that athletes are innocent until proven guilty.  The problem is that sport is not subject to the same justice system as typical societal crimes.  A failed drug test results in a ban for a period of time and sometimes a fine.  There are more cases of athletes not failing drug tests yet being doped to the gills than can be counted.  There is a growing number of retroactive positives in frozen samples when athletes’ A samples originally showed up negative, indicating at the time the popped athletes were doping in an at-the-time undetectable manner.  There are well-known periods of “glowing” – the window of time during which athletes would test positive because the drugs are still in their system – that athletes and their doctors have mapped out so the athletes’ systems are clean come the time for competition.  The actual anti-doping tests are woefully inept at being current and all-encompassing to catch cheats in the first place.  Athletes and teams are gaming the anti-doping and TUE systems, exploiting loopholes through which you could drive a semi truck.  Even in the case of professional cycling, when athletes release their power data or physiological test results, we see a snapshot in time or a sloppily-performed test protocol that renders the data itself completely and utterly useless.  And on and on. 
 
We should put zero credence in passed doping tests.  Multiple studies are showing that a far greater percentage of elite level athletes are doping than what people are willing to admit.  On the low end, around 45-50% is accepted; on the high end, 65-70%.  So, half to two-thirds of elite level athletes in a given sport are very likely cheating.  So, tell me how or why we should care about negative drug test results.  We should not.
 
“But where’s your proof?  If you don’t have proof, Nate, then shut the hell up and crawl back in your hole!”  Yep, I’ve been told variations of this many a time.  I’ve even been personally disparaged when I suggested Masters athletics is no less dirty than elite level sports.  I’ve been told I suck as an athlete and am a whiner because anyone who beats me must be a doper.  Nothing could be farther from the truth and this sort of personal attacking also speaks directly to the ignorance of those taking issue with my skepticism.  These folks know nothing of my own sporting history or palmares, and they tend to sit on the far end of the “belief spectrum” where unicorns prance and leprechauns shower the rainbow-splashed hills with gold.  And that’s OK.  Believe what you will.  But to personally attack me – aside from me not caring – only weakens a person’s argument.  To think that Masters athletes are as clean as the driven snow or that “less than 1% of us cheat” (as one critic fired back at me), demonstrates the tribal lens through which my critics are viewing all this.  To be clear, I’m all for healthy debate and open dialogue.  The more this type of stuff is discussed – with open minds – the better.  But this requires that we take off our tinted lenses, stop getting defensive and open up our eyes.
 
The burden of proof for innocence lies with the athletes and teams.  Full stop.  We should not believe athletes who says we should trust them.  We should not believe athletes who say they have not failed a drug test or will never fail a drug test.  We should not believe athletes who say they have done nothing wrong.  If anything, these types of statements require us to apply even more scrutiny and skepticism.  We should absolutely look at “alien-like” performances and “once in a lifetime” athletes with a raised eyebrow and shake of the head.  Because if it is too good to believe, then we should not believe what we’re seeing.
 
Why?  Because we’ve heard and seen it all before.  What many people don’t seem to comprehend is that patterns are proof.  History repeats itself and, in the case of cheating in sports, over and over and over again.  Cover ups for positive doping tests happen quite literally all the time.  Athletes have forever not failed drug tests while absolutely doping.  TUE submissions have skyrocketed; it is as if elite-level sports is now the stomping ground of medical invalids.  In cycling, the team trains annihilating all comers on mountain stages of the Tour de France during the EPO era have eerily returned.  Mountain climbers being able to time trial as good as time trialists, and time trialists being able to hold their own on the climbs is another EPO era redux.  In any sport, we have been told to believe that “clean can beat doped” and that the best in the world are even faster than known dopers who served bans and returned to competition – as if doped athletes rely solely on the PEDs to propel them to victory.  One has to look no further than a “Top 10 Times of All-Time” to see how many red lines can be drawn through known cheats.  And, when those athletes are stripped out, there are still more who need to be, but we leave them in the “clean results” because they’ve never failed a drug test.  We see power numbers in cycling creeping ever closer and even up to the EPO era values.  We see NBA players looking like NFL linebackers.  We see elite level mid-packers transform into world best performers at an age when their lot in life had already been cast.  We see athletes who served multi-year doping bans return to competition, supposedly clean now, and they are bigger, faster and stronger than ever before – yet without the drugs this time.
 
And this is just barely scratching the surface of it all!
 
There are no new super secret ways to train; there really aren’t.  Sports science has not progressed by leaps and bounds.  Technological disparities between athletes and teams is non-existent.  One athlete’s coach or one team’s R&D and access to doctors is no better than another’s.  At the tip of the spear, we look to a fraction of a percentage of difference in physical ability across the top athletes in a given event or position or sport.  A coach may direct one athlete to being world best.  Maybe even two.  When that coach is directing a cadre of athletes or an entire team to the pinnacle of an event or sport, that is a such a huge red flag.  Yet, few apply the skepticism.  Instead, we label these coaches as “transformative” or “masterminds”.  Look at the coaches who are linked to a list of world best athletes and you will be looking at a dodgy system.  This is not to say a team cannot be greater than the sum of its parts.  Far from it.  However, if the majority of team members are punching above their weight, that’s a surefire red flag.
 
All of this and much more has occurred over the past multiple decades, so what is the basis for believing all of this is not occurring today?  Because omerta is strong and the pundits tell us so?  Because athletes tell us their particular sports are cleaner now than ever before?  Why?  Seriously – WHY?
 
And we haven’t even gotten to the inherent spiderweb of corruption infiltrating top-level sport – from the IOC to the world governing bodies to the national governing bodies to the who-is-connected-to-whom-and-what-protection-does-that-connection-offer, and more.
 
So, do we just roll over and accept that this is the way of the world?  We should not.  Blatant cynicism cannot overcome our desire to aspire to clean sport.  And, blatant naivete cannot overrule our ability to ask hard questions, pull back the rug and see what’s been swept beneath it.  With the media largely acting as coddled, spoiled infants, indeed, it is society’s greater responsibility to apply the proper scrutiny to sport if the desire is for the status quo to change.  Because until this occurs, until we no longer accept the bullshit we keep getting spoonfed, rampant cheating will be the status quo.
 
Happy Training,
Coach Nate

​This will be a fun, if a bit lengthy, post.  Some friends and I were discussing the need to write an article about Marginal Gains.  It won’t be the first article, nor will it be the last.  That said, I took the bait, so here it is.
 
In the last few years, it’s been posited that unless you live in a cave, that David Brailsford has built an ironclad success model which vaulted Team Sky from overhyped disappointment to cycling juggernaut laying waste to any who might challenge its throne.  Brailsford had been vociferous in his proclamation that the team’s dominance comes down to one thing and that that thing is a unique approach to top-level sports – the concept of Marginal Gains.  In short, Marginal Gains is the idea that if you identify and attack a bunch of areas for improvement and manage to improve them by just an increment, all those incremental improvements will aggregate into a much larger, more impactful gain in performance.
 
It sounds like it makes sense, a lot of sense.  Only, Marginal Gains is a complete and utter myth, as explained very well by Ross Tucker, PhD in Sports Science here.  This article is about exposing Marginal Gains for the bunk that it is.  Because unless you really have been living in a cave or are incapable of rational thought, Marginal Gains is nothing but snake oil. 
 
I’ll take some of the more popular and well-publicized Marginal Gains and debunk each in its turn, much like I did with the Andrew Hood article on why we should now believe Alejandro Valverde is riding clean.  I’ll also list a few areas of not-so-Marginal Gains that Brailsford and Team Sky have completely overlooked and which defy logic within an organization known for its rabid attention to the nano-detail.
 
Top Touted Marginal Gains
1. Developing bikes with Pinarello. 
MYTH: The premise is that instead of simply sourcing their bikes through Pinarello, Team Sky insists the bike manufacturer weaves its feedback into the design process.  For example, the Dogma K8-S is “designed especially for dealing with the Paris-Roubaix cobbles.”
REALITY: The manufacturer-athlete feedback loop is nothing new, nor is it limited to bike technology.  Name a piece of equipment critical equipment in most sports and you bet that athlete feedback has most definitely impacted R&D.  With regards to this specific example around the Dogma K8-S, look no further than the Specialized Roubaix or Trek Domane as just two rider feedback-enhanced designs that well pre-dated Pinarello’s version of a Cobbled Classic bike. 
 
Here’s another quoted example:  “For it’s Plasma TT, SCOTT worked with some of the same players from the Giant project, such as Simon Smart, an aerodynamicist who also consulted for Lance Armstrong’s F1 tech team in 2004.”
 
2. Using the same pillows/mattresses before/during races.
MYTH:  Apparently it is “well known” that Team Sky takes its own mattresses and pillows to major races to ensure the riders’ a good night’s sleep.  Better rest equals better recovery and, thus, better performance.

“The differences between the hotel rooms that we use are extreme,” says Carsten Jeppesen, Team Sky’s Head of Technical Operations and Commercial. “If we come to a hotel room that’s not in a good state in the Tour, for example, our staff give the place a proper clean. You’d be surprised at how dirty a hotel room can be. Quite often they move the bed and clean everywhere.  In a Grand Tour a rider’s breathing system is really challenged and just small amount of dust in a dirty room can make them sleep quite badly.”
REALITY:  Athletes traveling with their favorite pillows dates back decades if not more.  When I was globetrotting in triathlon through the 90s, I took my own pillow with me as did some other athletes. Certainly, we weren’t the first athletes to do this.  And the concept spread virally.  You see someone doing something that makes sense so you do it, too.  I’ll concede the mattress thing to the extent Team Sky was/is able to implement it (I’d be curious just how much it is actually leveraged).  I don’t know of another individual or team schlepping their own mattresses around the world. 
 
And Carsten’s assertions of how dirty hotels rooms are is a bit alarming.  He makes it sound like the races are being held in Third World countries or in hotels run by hoarders.  One would think that if you were going to demand sanitary conditions and demand a swapping out of mattresses, then advanced discussions would be had and certain protocols followed which would then ensure the smoothest of transitions for Team Sky staff and athletes.  If this pre-work were not done, checked and re-checked (and re-checked again), imagine the failure points that could – and would – get tripped before the cyclists arrived to rest up for the night.  It would be potentially catastrophic.
 
3. Sorting out equipment well in advance.
MYTH: The premise is that there is only a finite amount of equipment made so Team Sky sources the necessary equipment as much as a year in advance to ensure they are never short on supplies.
REALITY: In other words, plan ahead.  It’s already well-documented that USPS sourced and stored its tires for a couple years before use to get those tires to the ultimate suppleness and performance.  I've also been in Team BMC’s service course in Belgium.  The only way they run out of equipment is if every rider crashes in every race resulting in total, complete catastrophic equipment failure.
 
4. Traveling on the Death Star (team bus).
MYTH: Sparing no expense for rider comfort is paramount to ensuring optimal performance given the amount of time spent in the team bus during transfers in Grand Tours, as well as before/after individual stages.  “Individual, deeply padded seats for riders” is called out in particular, as well as the onboard showers and toilets.
REALITY: Team buses have been around for decades, and they have been consistently iterated over the years to effectively become private planes on wheels.  Listing this as a Marginal Gain implies other teams are using school buses retrofitted with outhouses.
 
5. State-of-the-art mechanics’ truck.
MYTH: Since the mechanics work in a climate-controlled environment, they are happy and work better.
REALITY: In walking through the team bus area during the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, just about every team’s mechanics have the same set-up.  Work on bikes can be and is done both inside and outside the vehicles as appropriate.  While a luxury that the lower budget teams probably forego, this is not something unique to Team Sky nor new within the peloton.
 
6. Standarizing saddle height measurements.
MYTH: Team Sky draw blue lines on every rider’s saddle so as to reduce the variance of a rider’s fore/aft position as bikes get built, broken down, and rebuilt, as well as across the 250 bikes ridden by Team Sky riders over the course of a season.
 
“There are so many different ways of measuring a bike,” says Jeppesen. “We have nine full-time mechanics and if they measured nine different ways it would be too risky for us, so we have made a way of doing things based on those two specific points. It is a way of making sure that all of a rider’s bikes are set up the same.”
REALITY: Mechanics have a lot of work to do and a lot of bikes to service, but if they suck then they are not employed for long.  Rider safety and performance hinges on how well equipment works.  And, riders can be maniacal about their equipment and will do their own check and re-check of everything before straddling the bike for a race.  Eddy Merckx was famous for fiddling with his saddle position on nearly every ride and would use different positions based on the race, how his body felt and how the position felt.  It was not uncommon for him to stop mid-warm up and tweak his position a few millimeters, then do it again a few more kilometers down the road.  Lance Armstrong is another prominent example of maniacal focus on position.  To believe that a couple of blue lines on a saddle ensures any gain around rider position is ludicrous.
 
7. Organizing wet weather bags.
MYTH: Each bag is properly labeled so finding the right piece of gear for the right rider is much easier.
REALITY: In other words, be organized.  To state that this is unique to Team Sky implies other teams throw all the riders cold weather gear in the back of the team car and chaotically fish through it whenever a rider needs a vest or pair of gloves.  Silly.
 
8. Using color coded water bottles.
MYTH: Different bottles for different functions – pre-race, in race, post-race.  That way, there’s no mix up with the riders’ nutritional and hydration strategies.
REALITY: Regardless of how bottles are marked to be separated out – by bottle color, by separate coolers per function, by marks on the bottle tops, and so on – this is such a critical piece of the puzzle that even mentioning this as a Marginal Gain is ridiculous.  Even in their musette bags, riders sift around to determine what they need and what they decide to discard. 
 
9. Cooling down on a trainer.
MYTH: “We were the first team that started to warm down after the stage,” says Carsten. “Now they all do it!”
REALITY: This can be looked at from a couple different angles.  First, some studies will show that the effectiveness of “spinning down” is questionable – whether it is completed immediately after crossing the finish line, 5 minutes later or never.  Of critical importance is rehydrating with water, then getting in some quick energy (carbs) followed by a recovery meal.  Second, post-race spin downs have been used since humans straddled bicycles with the intent to race.
 
10. Working with Muc-Off.
MYTH: Team Sky co-designed some super duper special bike chain lubes.
REALITY: Lube is a very personal choice, believe it or not.  What one rider swears by, another disparages.  I ride a wet lube regardless of the conditions because I really enjoy how the chain slides through the cogs compared to a dry lube.  I have teammates who love dry lubes for the same reasons.  Chalk this one up under “proper bike maintenance” rather than a 007-type approach to frictionless spinning.
 
Marginal Gains Team Sky Missed
Now, what’s the flipside to Marginal Gains?  How about the ones Team Sky completely and utterly missed?  Here are just a few.
 
1. No wind tunnel testing for Chris Froome.  As critical as rider position is to optimizing time trial performance, Chris Froome has curiously been absent from the wind tunnel.  If Team Sky is so maniacal about saddle position, wouldn’t the same approach be applied to rider position to optimize performance?  To be clear, optimizing rider position is more than a Marginal Gain and can result in sizeable swings in performance – for better or worse.  Yet, no wind tunnel for Froome, even after David Brailsford calls out the wind tunnel as being critical to turning around British Cycling’s Olympic track cycling performances.
 
2. Improper blood screening when Froome was hit with debilitating Bilharzia.  Aside from this being a fairly common parasite (300M people/yearly) from where Froome grew up, determining its presence and treating it can be fairly straightforward.  Bilharzia can be eradicated in only a few days.  For acute cases, those afflicted can barely get out of bed, let’s not even think about riding a bike let alone doing so at the pinnacle of the sport (pro ranks).  Given Team Sky contends Froome was afflicted for an extended period of time – years, in fact – wouldn’t they have turned over every rock possible to determine the cause and cure as quickly as possible?  One would think they would.
 
3. Poor medical record keeping. This whole TUE dust-up with Bradley Wiggins, Froome and even other riders has been explained away – in part or in whole, depending on the particular thread of the story one pulls – as incomplete or even non-existent medical record keeping.  In other words, a practice that is completely irresponsible if not downright unlawful.  Couple this with the lost laptop fiasco and Team Sky, an organization known for its attention to every detail, makes itself sound like the most unorganized and unprofessional of teams.  Yet, we are to believe they have based their multi-Grand Tour winning approach on this shoddiness?  Right.
 
4. Getting stories straight.  Basic communication skills are the foundation for any program to be successful.  Yet, Team Sky seems to be confused about some pretty straightforward logistical matters.  Case in point, the Jiffy Bag.  If it was simply Fluimucil, an over-the-counter medicine, why the inability to explain what actually was in the Jiffy Bag?  And, if it were simply Fluimucil, why not just go down the road to get it rather than ship it across country borders and over 1,000kms to source it?  And, why state it was for Emma Pooley, which has also been proven to be a complete lie?
 
Conclusion
Love him or hate him, here’s what Team Sky’s first Tour de France winner, Bradley Wiggins had to say about his former team’s attention to detail:
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“A lot of people made a lot of money out of it and David Brailsford used it constantly as his calling card.  But I always thought it was a load of rubbish.  It never struck a chord with me.  The people it struck a chord with are those who made fortunes selling it and telling you it’s the best thing since microwaves.  At the end of the day, Marginal Gains and all the buzz words … you have got to get the fundamentals right.  That’s what makes you a better athlete:  your physical ability and whether you’ve trained enough – not whether you’ve slept on a certain pillow or mattress.”
 
As stated above, this is not the first debunking article on Marginal Gains.  You can find even more articles or even forum threads like this one.  Tucker put it very succinctly when he stated, “The idea of breaking down the sport into all of its components is so common it is what you’d find a mediocre coach doing.  The notion of optimizing a number of processes and systems is so old that it doesn’t bear mentioning.”  He then added that another problem he has with Marginal Gains is “its implicit arrogance.  By attributing Sky’s success to Marginal Gains, some in the media propagated the idea that Sky were the only ones invested in aerodynamic bikes, fuel and hydration strategies, health and recovery, when in fact some of the best minds in sports science had been there for decades.”
 
A Marginal Gain by definition only exists if that particular tactic is not being used by the competition.  If the majority or all are doing it, then it’s not a gain, right? 
 
If we are not to believe in Marginal Gains, then we must ask this question:  Why the PR spin by Team Sky?  Why the redirect?  Behind what green curtain is Team Sky trying to hide by putting the time and energy into a bedtime story to sell it to the public hook, line and sinker?  And, why has the public at large been so eager and naïve as to swallow the hook?
 
Happy Training,
Coach Nate