Customer Reviews

Performance Cycling : Training for Power, Endurance, and Speed

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This is a review based on having the book and following the program in the book since November 2003.

Caveat: Everyone is individual, and one person's experience will differ from another. I've tried many different programs from Friel to every other magic bullet article in Bicycling Magzine and I'm pretty observant of my body and its reaction to training, so I think my experience with the program has some merit to it. Also, I fall underneath the category of -married, full time job, father of 2 small children, with little to no genetic predisposition to being a good athlete. So I'm looking for something with the best bang for the little amount of time I can devote to it. And this book and the training philosophies in it have worked very well for me.

The book is relatively small, and you have to wonder how much useful information is in there. But it is full of excellent nuggets of information. One thing I've found is that some concepts didn't sink in until seeing them for the 2nd or 3rd time. I don't think you get the full benefit from the book with just one quick reading.

In a nutshell, Morris provides a FRAMEWORK for a training program. His particular philosophies such as the Block training methods and focusing on intervals at set power outputs are what really set this book apart from anything else out there. This is not a book that is going to lay out your exact training plan for you.

The problem with this presentation is that there needs to be more help for a self coached athlete to develop a program. Friel takes this notion to the other extreme allowing readers to set up a program down to the hour. I tried Friel and found that it was just too much information and got bogged down in all the different rides, etc. Problem with the Morris book is that he is at the opposite extreme and doesn't present enough guidance.
Now in all fairness to Morris, what I'm asking for is really hard. This is the 'art of coaching'. Everyone is different. Each individual is going to have different goals, amount of time available, events they want to do, different reactions to stress and rest, etc... He could provide some specific examples, but what everyone will do is just copy the example which could prove more harm than good. But it would have been nice to see an entire year program shown in a calendar format. To use as a model for the self coached athlete to tailor their own program. He does provide some examples based on different cycling disciplines, but it leaves you wanting more.

The reality is that 99% of the people who buy books like this are NOT going to get a coach for one reason or another. I think the one reviewer who feels that the book is just an advertisement for coaching services didn't try very hard to understand the book, but without more guidance for the self coached athlete many won't take the time to get the most out of this book and this program. Mr. Morris is a PhD graduate student and I highly doubt he wants to create a coaching empire to compete with the Charmichael's of the world. With the huge increase in available coaching, especially online, his chapter on coaching provides some good guidelines for prospective clients to filter the multitude of coaching services out there.

There are some parts of the book where more explanation is needed.

For example, Morris talks about using power as a quantitative measure of your training. The problem is that and SRM, Power Tap, or Computrainer may be out of reach of many. He should discuss what products are currently available and provide some comparisons. There should be more detail presented on alternative ways to quantify training. Such as riding at a set speed on a constant grade, using the power curves that most standard trainers have combined with a cycle computer with a rear wheel sensor, or using perceived exertion. You DO NOT need an ergo trainer or a power meter to use this framework.

When discussing the different intervals, he provides ranges for duration, and intensity. These are pretty wide and more detail needs to be presented. For example, A SMSP interval is defined as 1-6 minutes at 105%+ of your sustainable power or heart rate. I wish there he'd break it down a little more such as 1min at x%, 2min at y%, 3min at z%, etc. Same goes for the other types of interval. Also there needs to be some guidance for TOTAL WORK during an interval session. Such as if your doing 3 hr mtn bike races, shoot for total work of 25mins of ON at the beginning of a block and progressing to 35mins ON.

The strength training section is pretty confusing. It took several times reading through it and putting the program into a spreadsheet to make sense. But once I did that it turned out to be really straightforward to follow. After following the strength training program for this season, and comparing it to others I've tried, I really like it. It is pretty intense, but is completed in a relatively short time period. In and out and then back on the bike. Like other cycling specific strength programs, this one focuses on taking weight room strength and turning it into cycling specific strength.

One area where the program seems unique is in the prescription for sprinting and leadout intervals during the endurance phase of riding. This is so the rider does not lose all the strength gains made in the weight room during a month or more of LSD riding.

One thing missing is the progression in the training over time, Meaning, how to increase the overall work throughout the season. As you work, then rest, work, rest... you should be able to increase the difficulty of training. In the weight training section is it easy to see how the difficulty increases between week 1 and week 2 of the strength period for example. But I wish he'd discuss more how to develop your own training program and increase the difficulty (varying the time and intensity) as time goes on. I guess you can do part of that yourself by retesting your sustainable power (which your training intensity is based on) every month. It should get higher as you train, so then the training would get harder too?

He does provide several example programs based on different disciplines. I just think there needs to be more details for helping a self coached athlete take the frame work and create his own program. For example, how to change the framework for a sport class mountain bike racer vs vet expert.

In conclusion, I think the book is very unique compared to what else is out there, and the concepts have worked very well for me. I constantly refer to it, have bookmarks everywhere and get more from it every time I glance at it. Just keep in mind that this is not a cookie cutter book, and you'll need to put your own work into it to come up with a training plan.

This book was a gift from my wife for Christmas 2003. I had signed up to go to the Tour de France in July with a Aussie tour group. I had heard from others from previous trips the daily rides of 70 to 120 miles always had an ultra-competitive group of Cat 1 and 2 riders. My goal was to time trial Alpe d'Huez and be able to hammer up some of the steeper climbs with the really good riders and ride 1100 miles in 10 days. When I received this book I had been doing triathlons for about four years...after cycling on and off since college. My old routine was go long on the weekends and during the work week to do a day of intervals with a day off followed by a 2 hour tempo ride followed by another day off.

This author advocates doing a big block of intensity followed by several days off which was different for me.

I did his program for the "stage race rider" and blocked high intensity days on Thu and Fri followed by a long 6 to 8 hour ride (much longer than he had in his program) on Saturday and then another 3 hours on Sunday at easy pace. Mon-Wed were off days or easy spinning.

At first this was very difficult! The very first weekend, I felt wiped out by Sunday (after 4 hard days in a row) but took three days off the bike and on the next thursday I felt really strong. I repeated the program the next week...same feeling by Sunday..kind of wiped out and wondering if I was going to burn out (which is a concern with this program)...three days of easy spinning followed. Well, on Thursday (two and half weeks into program) I was a animal on my interval ride. Holding 29 mph for about 4 minutes before poopin out. I didn't have a power meter running but it was on the flats with no wind. Some guys can do that for an hour - I'm not one of them. But before this program I couldn't come close to doing that. So I started to see results after a few weeks.

By the time the Tour de France came around I was as strong as I've ever been on a bike. Being a Cat 5 rider I was now doing training rides with Cat 3's and they were telling me "wow, you're really hammering today...way to keep up with us." I could never keep up with this group in years past.

Why the success? Two things. I think the back to back intensity that the author advocates is KEY and ONLY if you allow enough rest after. I would almost always bounce back from my three off days with increased power. The second thing is the modification to my weekend rides. I agree with some of the reviewers that the mileage can seem scant compared to previous training (I was doing about 800 miles per month before this book). What I did is shorten my weekday workouts per the author's program...but kept some really long LSD rides on the weekend. So I would be riding for only 1.5 hours on Thu and another 1.5 hours on Friday followed by a 120 mile hilly 8 hour ride on Sunday (thanks to my wife for the hall pass!) and another three hours on Sunday. That single Saturday LSD ride built up a lot of endurance for me that seemed to last. I rode 100 miles almost every day for 10 days in France without problem....and felt amazing time trialing up Alpe d'Huez. That summer was the best cycling shape I've ever been in and I had so much power compared to previous years.

I consider exercise physiology to be a science in constant flux and am always interested in people bucking the all-powerful conventional wisdom in favor of something new. Having said that, this book didn't quite convince me.

It starts with an incredibly academic discussion of general physiology that actually includes diagrams of chemical reactions. I'd recommend skimming over this-you won't need it. The rest of the book tends to favor vague generalities to scientific explanation.

In an nutshell, Morris's book puts forth the following: Maximum sustainable power output is the most important thing in cycling (no argument here), power measurement is much more objective than heart rate (couldn't agree more, as long as you have the $1,200-$3,000 it costs to measure it) and strength training protocols can be adapted to cycling (now we may be getting a little far out.)

First, be aware that this book is all about power. In order to use it properly, you'll need to buy a Powertap, SRM or CompuTrainer and go to a lab for a lactate threshold test. Morris does give an LT test you can do on a regular trainer, but it's almost an afterthought. I tried it (on a CompuTrainer no less) and came up with numbers that made no sense at all based on my known power output and average HR during a TT. All Morris's workouts are based on (essentially) a percentage of your LT power-so you have to get it right to follow his program.

Having said that, do I really believe that he (or anyone else) really knows what percentage of LT power produces the most significant training effect? Morris, for instance, suggests that LT intensity efforts produce a "much greater" response than LSD workouts. How much greater? Based on what study? If it's twice as great, then would I be better off doing a 3 hour LSD ride than burning myself out in a 1 hour TT? And do short, intense efforts provide training stimulus for slow-twitch fibers? All this is left to your imagination. The truth is that unless a mad scientist traps 1,000 racers on a desert island and forces them to ride trainers while jabbing them with biopsy needles and arterial catheters, we just don't really know for sure. Heck, there's still debate about heart rate zones, and HRMs have been around for years.

The main `revolution' here is Morris's suggestion that multiple days of high intensity intervals followed by multiple days of rest will create a greater training response than the less frequent interval sessions most endurance athletes are used to. This is not a new idea-I've been using this kind of program (to great effect) for rock climbing for almost a decade. The question (never broached in any meaningful way by the author) is whether endurance can be trained the same way as strength. Morris's entire theory seems to come from an accidental result in a small-sample study relating to overtraining. As is typical in this book, there are no specifics given-just that the subjects showed "remarkable improvement." How remarkable, remarkable in what way, or remarkable compared to what, is again left to your imagination.

This vagueness is amplified in the section on weight lifting, which he considers (laughably IMHO) the one exception to the rule of specificity. No discussion of why. No mention of the numerous studies contradicting this position. Nada on the fact that the adaptations for strength (hypertrophy/motor unit recruitment) are very different and sometimes mutually exclusive to those necessary for endurance. And zippo on the fact that even sprinters like Mario C. admit to having weight training programs less rigorous than my Mom's. All we get is his admonishment that lifting is "very important" and three months should be devoted to it. Oh, a piece of advice. Don't try to do a one rep max squat as he suggests. You'll kill yourself.

The scheduling section of this book includes sample training blocks for different types of riders, as well as an example rest week. The workouts are very high intensity (following a 3-week aerobic base period. That's not a typo-1/4 of the time you just spent lifting) and are designed more for training than winning-i.e. he has you doing two days of intervals back-to-back before a race. If you are looking more for trophies than long-term improvement, you'll have to do some tinkering. There is essentially nothing on periodization from the standpoint of advice on how to design peaks.

When I look at Morris's schedules, I remember my old-school mountain biking days. Essentially, lift like crazy all winter, do some riding on the road in the spring while the trails dry out, then race on weekends and squeeze in a couple of short high-intensity days during the work week. The problem is that I don't remember it working all that well. Eventually, we were all forced to drift to road bikes and huge mileage to stay competitive.

I don't mean to sound completely negative here. There are some interesting ideas in the book. The back to back intensity days with a corresponding number of days off might be worth trying. Also, I liked the idea of doing muscle endurance intervals after an LSD ride. And, obviously, the obsession with power output is right. Overall, though, this book had more the feeling of thinking out loud than a defensible program. It would be nice, though, wouldn't it? Based on the incredibly low volume proposed, you could have a full time job and still win the TdF. So buy the book, ask your boss for three weeks off in July, and get to work.

I found this book very directly and succinctly taught me what I need to know to become a better cyclist. The concepts that David Morris uses in this book should increase your understanding of what it takes to be a stronger, faster cyclist -and isn't that the reason why a bike racer or a wanna-be racer buys this kind of book?

The training program in this book is fairly straightforward and easy to understand. The program does not involve too many training cycles with a lot of different goals to reach within those cycles. The program Morris outlines is succinct and based on what I see as a logical goal. That means that knowing what you are going to do today and next week in the gym, on a trainer or on your bike is relatively easy to keep in mind. The actual schedule of work involved is hard to very hard but as the author states you adapt his program to meet your own requirements and because of its relative simplicity that is not too difficult to do.

I recommend this book for those cyclists who are seeking a practical training program to become a more powerful cyclist.

I am married, with kids and fulltime job and compete in Masters road cycling - so time efficient training is what I want. I had discovered this book by searching google and following ashwin's blog - finally the book was reprinted and I got a copy - I am a little disappointed in it, I feel the theory of hi intensity training is covered better in both Arnie Bakers 'Hi-intensity cycling' and in Michael Ross's 'Maximum performance for cyclists' - the Ross book has copped some negative comments, and for me his recommended workouts were simply too hard, but it gives the groundwork for time efficient training - both those books I found more useful than Morris's.

This book changes your thinking about training.

If you learned all your training methods in the 70's and 80's and thought road bike racing required many hours of base miles then this book will show you how to get strong and powerful for racing with fewer miles.

Training for power makes obvious sense only after someone has told you. This book is very well written and the methods work.

Dave Morris has written a great book for successful cyclist looking to put the final touches and take their fitness as far as it can go. I have found that his advice is SOLID for ELITE level riders. His experience will more than likely be very helpful to the upper category riders (3 and 2's) looking to upgrade and even coaches. I highly recommend it for these people but would probably tell riders that are considering racing, Cat 5's, Cat 4's and even some Cat 3's that Books from Joe Friel and Tom Chapple more appropriate to get them moving in the right direction.

Coach Peter Cummings
[...]

This book is easy to read, easy to follow, and best of all, easy to apply. Simple but effective workout plans will improve anyone's level of mental and physical performance on the bike.

The author just wants you to PAY HIM FOR COACHING! He won't give you enough information in the book to design your own training program and he won't answer a simple question about his book without GETTING MONEY FROM YOU IN ADVANCE. He's a con artist and put this book out to promote his "coaching". (...)