The Lance Armstrong Performance Program: Seven Weeks to the Perfect Ride (Paperback)

~ (Author), (Author), Peter Joffre Nye (Author) "In October 1971, shortly after Chris Carmichael celebrated his 11th birthday, he entered his first bicycle race, a 1-mile criterium, near his home in the..." (more)
Key Phrases: Tour de France, Carmichael Training System, Cycling Federation (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It's hard to argue with success; it's even tougher to emulate it. But if you want to train like a Tour de France winner, you couldn't do much better than learning the tricks of the trade from two-time champion (1999 and 2000) Lance Armstrong.

In The Lance Armstrong Performance Program: Seven Weeks to the Perfect Ride, Armstrong teams up with his coach, Chris Carmichael (whom the U.S. Olympic Committee named 1999's Coach of the Year), to offer the ultimate insider's guide to becoming a better rider, based on the regimen Carmichael has been fine-tuning for Armstrong since the early 1990s. Noting that athletes of all levels focus best when aiming for specific goals at the end of short windows, the authors describe the performance program as consisting of "three specialized weekly training programs that build on your current fitness level" followed by a week of "recovery riding between each program." They provide an easy-to-administer fitness-level self-test in the form of a three-mile time trial (beginner, intermediate, or advanced), and they then define the key operative terms that make up the bulk of the actual training, including Tempo, HighSpin, PowerIntervals, Sprints, and Training Zone. A brief section of workbook-style pages provides readers with a user-friendly outline for the entire seven weeks.

Here is week 3 for an intermediate rider:

• Monday: day off.
• Tuesday: 1 hour in zone 2 with 20 minutes Tempo on flat terrain.
• Wednesday: 30 minutes in zone 1; recovery ride.
• Thursday: 1 hour in zone 2 with 15 minutes Tempo on flat terrain.
• Friday: 45 minutes in zone 2 with 10 minutes HighSpin on flat terrain.
• Saturday: 1 hour in zone 2 with 15 minutes Tempo on flat terrain.
• Sunday: 1.5 hours in zone 2 with 30 minutes on hilly terrain.

Though clearly the focus, the performance program itself makes up less than a third of the book. Other subjects covered include cycling equipment, essential maintenance and repair, riding in bad weather, road hazards, mental toughness, and the pros' eating habits both on and off the bike, to name just a few. What the book is not is the story of Lance Armstrong's remarkable recovery from testicular cancer (see his autobiography, It's Not About the Bike, for that). Rather, Armstrong and Carmichael have produced a detail-packed training manual, sprinkled with photographs and tales of the racing life, for those who spend a large percentage of their time on two wheels--or dream of it. --Patrick Jennings

From Booklist

America's romance with Lance will undoubtedly soar with his second Tour de France victory and the success of his autobiography, It's Not about the Bike [BKL My 15 00]. Compared to other training guides, this covers the same basics with a straight-to-the-point style, bullet lists, and good organization. Just as people wanted to be like Mike, cyclists want to be like Lance. "What Would Lance Do?" sidebars provide anecdotal tips, but does it really matter if Lance likes to wear sport sunglasses to protect his eyes? It may be motivating to know his heart rates for time trials versus climbing, but does that really help someone training for a Century? Carmichael, Armstrong's coach for the past decade, offers helpful and useful tips in "Listen to the Coach" sidebars, and two chapters, "The Heart of Training" and "The 7-Week Success Plan," offer the best training advice for beginners to advanced cyclists. Readers who can't get enough of Lance will be drawn to the title, but the real draw is Carmichael's Training System, sure to inspire cyclists to peak performance--when tailored to individual abilities and goals. Brenda Barrera
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Rodale Books; 1ST edition (September 9, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1579542700
• ISBN-13: 978-1579542702
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #34,198 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

115 of 119 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book will NOT be liked., August 1, 2001

By	Daniel Wisehart (Southern California, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This just might be the best book ever written on cycling. The problem is, Armstrong and Carmichael have exposed one of cycling's darkest, dirtiest little secrets: we all overtrain.

In simple, clear terms, thankfully absent the mind-numbing details of other cycling books, Armstrong and Carmichael destroy the myth that training harder means going faster. Anyone who thinks that huffing and puffing until your thighs throb and burn is the way to grow stronger, is going to be outraged by this book. "How can you become stronger when it does not feel like you are working out? How can anyone reach ultimate fitness unless they pedal until it hurts?", they will wonder.

In a book that covers every aspect of cycling important to a rider, Armstrong and Carmichael lay out is a program for riding slower and riding less, but gaining strength and fitness you cannot reach the old fashion way of continually pushing beyond your aerobic limit. What Lance has proven beyond all doubt by his fitness level is that the key to expanding your aerobic limit is to stay within it. Forget the burn: if you burn you are lactating and if you do so every time you ride then you are loosing fitness, not gaining it.

It is a wonder that they decided to publish this book before Armstrong retires. We could have watched him perform for years and never guessed his secret. But his now open secret is safe, because it contradicts decades of training practice, so it is doubtful his opponents will use and capitalize on it. You may not be a world-class rider, but this is certainly a world-class book that will benefit any rider who applies its lessons.

53 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very good book (Ignore nay-sayers), June 24, 2003

By	Kenneth Wilson (Canada) - See all my reviews

The self-appointed elitists who gave this book a bad review only have themselves to blame if they bought this book only to find out that it wasn't for them. It only took me a few minutes scanning through the book to realize that it was geared more for beginner and recreational cyclists. (although there is good advice even for racers here) Even if you only had this website to go by, (instead of a personal visit to the bookstore) the Edtorial reviews here gave plenty of information to allow one to determine the content of the book.
Many athletes I've dealt-with over the years were guilty of over-training, and neglecting the basics that help prevent injury. This book will be a help to anyone who wants to work and improve at cycling without "killing" themselves every time they head out to train.....or literally killing or injuring themselves because they didn't learn a few riding techniques to stay vertical during turns, pack-riding or emergency maneuvers.
It's an excellent place to start.

44 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars good content /doesn't go far enough/needs to be more usable, August 1, 2001

By	J. D. Moffatt "jdweb" (Victoria, BC Canada) - See all my reviews

I'm not sure who the target audience is for this book: the fitness rider, or someone out to win races. For either group, this book isn't detailed enough, but what is there is excellent. I think that more experienced athletes won't buy it after a quick browse in the bookstore because there is too much really basic information between the nuggets.

The advice about cornering (weighting the outside pedal and shifting your weight, etc.) is something I haven't seen in print before, and I found it to be an awesome technique, having learned about it only at a criterium racing clinic a long time ago (the instructor adapted it from motorcycle racing). Also, the emergency turn advice is a great technique I learned at the same clinic, and it saved me from a few crashes in races. These explanantions, however, could have been aided by a bit more detail, and maybe some useful diagrams and photos. The dramatic and counter-intuitive emergency turn technique is poorly explained, and needs an explanation in terms of the angular momentum of the wheel (you have to take your front wheel off, spin it, and hold it in your hands to understand the technique).

The nutrition section encouraged me to be more rigorous in counting calories, which I've never done. That section didn't really tell me anything I didn't know already, but it was a good kick in the seat of the cycling shorts to shape up. On the negative side, the book makes a common mistake in recommending the amount of protein and carbohydrate by percentage. It may be ok for Lance to take in 10-15% protein, but given the total number of calories he needs to take in, he's probably still getting well over 120 grams a day (I need about 130 a day to be healthy at my comparitively modest activity level). But if your caloric requirements are much lower, then be careful - your protein levels must be kept up or you'll get ill. Joe Friel and Loren Cordain both have important things to say about this in their books, who recommend more like 0.8 or 0.9 grams per lbs of lean body mass for athletes (corresponding to about 25%-30% in most diets), as well as the "Protein Power" book by Eades and Eades. The bottom line is: beware of protein/carb/fat ratios.

I think James McCullagh's 1984 book "The Complete Bicycle Fitness Book" was a better book for newby riders, though it would be out of date in some areas now and is also out of print, unfortunately. It very nearly lived up to its title and was jammed with information. It's got some cool sections that Armstrong's book should have, like calorie output (and horsepower) vs. bicycle speed, and much more detailed suggestions on a variety of areas. Carmichael measures this stuff (see the Armstrong website for data about Armstrong's scary figures) so why isn't it in his Armstrong book? The Carmichael/Armstrong book therefore comes off as somewhat watered down: what's there is good, but they are only answering some of the common questions. I raced on and off road about ten years ago, and took up running after that (o.k. but far from elite results - a sub 17 minute 5k and a sub 3 hr marathon), so a lot of the training principles are old hat, and I know a lot that isn't in this book, too.

But what about the people who can't fill in the spaces? For example, in the climbing techniques section they mention that Armstrong "breathes out through his mouth and nose" and not in, and that he "concentrates on breathing deeply and regularly". This isn't sufficient information to really help someone: What they also need to know is you have to breathe from your diaphragm instead of your upper chest like most people, and that you only exchange 80% of your lung capacity in the first second when exhaling,so you need to increase your Peak Flow; there are abdominal exercises for helping with breathing, plus martial arts techniques, and respiratory devices (eg. The Breather) for strengthening your diaphragm to nearly double the peak flow in some cases, etc. This is what I mean by it not going far enough to be useful for the uninitiated, and it gets frustrating after awhile. In another section they refer to ab workouts and reference the excellent "Stronger Abs and Back" book, but all they show are lousy abdominal crunches, which are painful and difficult for some people, and a very incomplete recommendation as they only isolate one area (and they don't even mention specific ab exercises for helping with breathing). Why talk about it at all if they aren't going to do it right? That doesn't seem to be Armstrong's approach to his racing, so we expect the highest standard from his book.

The Armstrong training book is better than the old Lemond book, however, for new riders. I sort of get the impression that both the Lemond and Armstrong books coast a bit on the names, and that's unfortunate. Being a big Lemond fan, I was really disappointed with his book (should have been either stories or advice), as it seemed like something that was rushed out, and I get a similar impression with this one. I'm a bit more surprised at Carmichael than Armstrong, as Carmichael is in the business of training people. Is he trying to keep some of his really good advice proprietary so he can stimulate people to sign up for his coaching programs? Not a nice thought, but surely he knows more than this. I hope that future editions of the Armstrong/Carmichael book take a unblinking look at what's already published, and how usable some of their advice is, and try to do better. But hey, I gave it four stars because what's there is a good start.