Cycling in Alignment with Colby Pearce

Cycling in Alignment Episode 50 is with Bike Fitter Chris Balser. Chris is known as the Bicycle Fit Guru, and he has earned this title over a long period of overturning all the stones in bike fitting technology. Chris has worked with Retul, saddle pressure mapping, and done extensive work with EMG in the context of bike fitting. We discuss the lessons he has learned and his current philosophies in...

Hello, space-monkeys! This is a PSA! Going forward you will now be able to find new episodes of Cycling in Alignment with me and all of my illustrious guests on a new channel. I would be eternally grateful for you to take an extra moment in your day to re-subscribe to the new Cycling in Alignment RSS feed by clicking on one of the links below or searching "Cycling in Alignment with Colby Pearce" o...

We are framing the discussion on endurance training recovery around Paul Chek’s, Six Foundational principles: sleeping, breathing, eating, thinking, drinking, and moving. There are many things we can do to facilitate the recovery of our muscles. Some popular techniques include massage. cryotube therapy, Norma Tech compression, ice baths, inversion table hanging, electromagnetic pulses, etc., but n...

Failure is uncomfortable and unwanted but it comes across our lives in often unexpected ways. Learning how to deal with it and, most importantly, learn from it, is an invaluable ability. Colby tells the stories of a few of his biggest failures and the lessons he learned from each.

Back for a solo episode to demystify some common false beliefs about cycling. I will clarify some falsehoods related to cadence and some common misconceptions about suffering in the saddle. I expand on the idea that poor breathing is a systemic problem in our culture and outline the correct technique. Finally, I’ll share some ideas around expanding your movement practice to other activities or fun...

Jason Williams, Retül fitter at the Specialized Experience Center in Boulder, is here to discuss the methodology of Retül fitting and how the technology is used to help fitters make decisions during their fit process. We delve into the strengths and potential pitfalls of using comparative data. We also discuss the current trend of road riders slamming the saddle forward. If you have comments or qu...

Happy Freedman is a 40-year bike fitting veteran and expert. Prepare yourselves for another round of bike-fitting nerd-dom. Happy and I don’t agree on every aspect of bike fitting, so I hope you find the explanations of our respective thought processes helpful. We share our separate opinions on the merits and pitfalls of selling bike saddles, seat-posts, cleats, etc. as a bike fitter. Happy’s Site...

Jerry Gerlich, a Steve Hogg Certified bike fitter based in Austin, Texas and I go way back and share a lot of common knowledge about bike fitting due to our mutual teacher and mentor, Steve Hogg. We dork out big time and get honest about fitting mistakes and learning how to reframe those experiences as learning tools. We relate Jerry’s musical talents as a drummer to some of the same rhythms and a...

After starting with a disclaimer, that he is not a doctor, Colby outlines a few guidelines for supplements. First, understand the concept of bio-individuality. Next, know that eating good, healthy food should always the first choice when you want to increase your body’s performance. Absolutely use discernment when reading labels and marketing materials related to supplements. Answer a few question...

Gluten is bad news for your body and today we’ve got an expert in the subject who will explain exactly what the long-term effects of consuming gluten are. Trevor Connor, who you know as the host of Fast Talk, is also the CEO of The Paleo Diet. We talk about keto and carnivore and veganism; we talk a lot about gluten and specifically the challenges that it brings. We get geeky and scientific in thi...

The paradigm of climbing an endless mountain paints the picture of an athletic journey that at points will be fraught with endless comparisons to other athletes, and devastating setbacks with illness or injury. What if training and racing is more of an orbital journey? Your goal is one point of the orbit. At halfway, you can see your goal on the horizon.

Greg Choat  is a cycling coach and bike fitter with decades of experience, whose bike fitting knowledge traces back to the expertise of Steve Hogg. Understanding the quintessential difficulty of a bike fitter’s challenge is most aptly painted in this proverb quoted by Greg in the show: “Man is to bicycle as fish is to elephant.” Helping a human body fit seamlessly onto a carbon or metal frame requ...

Former guest on the podcast, triathlete and Feet Freex shoe creator, Jessi Stensland is here to unpack more of her evolution as an athlete. Starting as a D1 swimmer, making the Olympic trials, transitioning to triathlon, and finally competing in ultra Mountain Bike races are all a part Jessi’s athletic journey. Her continued athletic evolution has a different focus than simply “winning” a race. Cr...

The essence of what training in alignment looks like began to crystallize in Colby Pearce’s mind after an email exchange with a listener of the podcast. “As you’ve identified in your show, amateurs look at pros for things like training, not realizing that all pros do is ride, sleep, and eat. For those of us who race, how much training is too much? Where is the drop off in terms of results? Persona...

To perfect the time trial position for your given anatomy and physiology, it can take years of trial and error. Sometimes, becoming a contortionist is the most appropriate way to describe the skill you must master to find the fastest, most aero position. That raises issues: Riding in such a time trial position increases the functional load when compared to road riding. For instance, the wider the...

James Wilson is the owner and founder of MTB Strength Systems. He is a mountain bike, strength, and Jujitsu coach based in Grand Junction, CO. He is also the inventor of the Catalyst Pedal. He has pioneered many advanced perspectives on strength training for cyclists, producing content on this topic starting in 2005. Our conversation includes James’ thoughts on how power is most effectively made o...

Some say Scott Moninger is the greatest American cyclist to have never ridden the Tour de France. Moninger is a crafty all-arounder who has victories in road races, criteriums, time trials, and state races. He’s a versatile rider and a passionate athlete with a deep love for the sport. His characteristically stoic expression on the bike and ruthless competitive nature have earned him the nickname...

So many of my clients have questions and run into issues related to saddle sores, and man, when you get a bad one, it can be really bad. I have actually had a couple clients that suffered so severely, they had to have surgery.  When you sit on a saddle, that’s a lot of weight on a very small surface area. There’s the weight of the torso, the weight of the helmet, the weight of the upper body, the...

Group rides are dead. Unpopular opinion number one. Even in ostensibly safe scenarios, group rides are dangerous. Rides are too big; riders are too brash; vehicles are too numerous, and drivers are too distracted.  Other potentially unpopular opinions of Colby’s are related to indoor riding. He outlines some of the pros and cons of Zwifting, including the benefits of riding with extremely controll...

My friend and colleague, Julie Young, sent me an email asking some deep, thoughtful questions about fitting riders properly on their mountain bikes. The central theme was around steeper seat tube angles on many modern mountain bikes and how that it is challenging and sometimes impossible to get a rider’s saddle offset far enough back behind the bottom bracket on a mountain bike to match their road...

In the first installment of this two-part series on  How to Pedal a Bike , you learned the basics of my philosophy of how to pedal a bike. Humans are meant to push down so we need to understand how to optimize that motion for cycling. We’re going to break down how to pedal in different conditions: We will look at the demands of the event that will help us decipher what disciplines have what requir...

Daniel Holloway is a professional cyclist who races for Texas Roadhouse and is a 20-time U.S. National Champion, a Pan Am Games gold medalist, and a member of the U.S. National long team for the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo. I met Daniel when he was a junior racing on the track, sometime around 2004. Years later, when I had the opportunity to race some of the European six days, I needed a partner, and D...

Many riders come into the fit studio struggling with their bicycle saddles. In this aspect of bike fitting, the end goal is to have a saddle disappear, where you don’t think about it for one hour, you don’t think about it for three hours, you don’t think about it for five hours, you don’t even think about it when you get home. There’s no chafing, there’s no scarring, there are no saddle sores, the...

In a continuation in our  two-part series  about wellness, Dr. Scott Storrie continues to dissect a myriad of elements that go into making a well-rounded athlete. Scott is a medical practitioner with over three decades of experience specializing in naturopathic endocrinology, utilizing diet, supplementation, balancing neurotransmitters, with the synergism of manual medicines, energetic & emotional...

Trevor Connor, Host of Fast Talk, and Rocco Orlando, U.S. Army veteran and athlete, are here to discuss their respective journeys into the dark world of overtraining. Each of these men has a poignant story to tell. The idea behind sharing these stories is that you, the listener, will get a feel for what happens if you decide to overtrain your body. As you’ll discover there are extraneous factors t...