FasCat Cycling Training Tips Podcast

In this episode of the FasCat Coaching Podcast, I'm joined by one of our newest coaches, Ricky Arnopol. We have some good cyclist to cyclists training talk, chatting about everything from Ricky's favorite ways to train himself and his riders, what's contributed most to his riding progress, his riding nutrition, and a bunch of fun rapid fire questions.   After getting a late start to racing, Ricky...

We are excited to have our newest coach to the FasCat team onto the podcast to get a deep dive into his training, preferences, thoughts, and everything in between. Coach Frank has a list of 20 questions he asks every coach and Zach gives us some killer answers!  Zach has been a cycling coach since 2018. His educational background includes a Masters in Exercise Physiology from Midwestern State Univ...

Sweet spot vs. zone 2 seems to be the big debate between rides. In our opinion at FasCat, the adaptations we've seen with sweet spot compared to zone 2 are undeniably larger. Therefore, athletes accomplish more with one hour of sweet spot training than they do with one hour of zone 2 training. In this episode of FasCat, we're going to cover the 6 most prominent physiological adaptations gained thr...

The BigCat checks in with Coach Jake about his new MeetUp and talks all things Zwift. We give you a step-by-step guide on how to join our Zwift meet-up rides, how to draft during group rides (I personally think it's extremely difficult to do!), how we both use Zwift as a training tool for our athletes when coaching, and how to navigate the more technical side of Zwift. What we discuss: 2:00 - Dire...

The new year is upon us and thoughts are quickly shifting towards the race season. What are you doing to ensure an improvement over last year? What kind of training are you doing? Are you just winging it? There's a certain combo of art and science to the base building phase of a training calendar, and in Coach Frank's extensive experience of coaching cyclists he's come up with a healthy dose of ea...

This podcast is for all the athletes who are making new year's resolutions for their 2022 training and goals. Just because it's a new calendar year, doesn't mean you will automatically reach your goals. In order to do so, you need to develop new habits. What habits do we recommend you adopt in order to set yourself up for success in 2022? I share 8 training habits you can easily adopt for achievin...

In this episode of the FasCat Coaching podcast, we are joined by U.S. Cross country mountain bike 2020 Olympian, Erin Huck. Coach Allie takes over as host because guess what? Allie and Erin are both badasses on the bike and are also both pregnant. What Allie and Erin discuss: - Managing pregnancy as an athlete  - The similarities and differences of their pregnancies - Expectations vs. their realit...

The best tool you can utilize for optimizing your performance are your training zones. Why? Because training zones bring professional level sport science to your handlebar in a simple, easy to understand and follow training method. Even if you are new to training, you can use zone-based training and literally train the same way Tour de France Pros. In this episode of FasCat Coaching, I give you a...

Just because it's winter, doesn't mean you should stop training. No one wants to show up in the spring on their first group ride and get dropped, right? Training through the winter isn't as difficult as you think, and in this episode of FasCat Cycling Training Tips, I share 3 habits to adopt if you want to stay on top of your game.   Implementing these three habits will no doubt have a dramatic ef...

In this week's podcast, the FasCat team continues with our annual Thanksgiving tradition of sharing short messages of gratitude to our loyal podcast listeners and athletes! We hope you all enjoy the episode and we wish you all a wonderful holiday season!

In this podcast, Coach Frank reintroduces the topic of timing as it relates to the 3 main phases of a cyclists' annual training plan including lifting weights, building base, and high-intensity interval training. He explains in detail the ways athletes can line up these phases depending on what their race calendar looks like for the upcoming season. He also answers the question that athletes frequ...

On today's podcast Coach Frank speaks with Alex Dowsett, a Pro World Tour Rider who is attempting to break the Track World Hour Record on November 3rd. Alex is no stranger to what it takes to achieve this feat, as he set the same world record in 2015! In the episode, they chat about Alex's training, his special equipment, nutrition, DadWatts, as well as the foundation Little Bleeders that he start...

In this episode, the Big Cat talks to Dr. Louis Passfield, a Sports Scientist from the UK. Dr. Passfield  is a leader in the scientific community, especially in the realm of quantifying training load from power data to optimize performance. He also  has a 25-year track record of work in cycling and has worked as a lead sports scientist with the highly successful British Cycling team preparing for...

Welcome to the 20th edition of our "Ask a FasCat" podcast series, where we gather athletes' questions from our forum, email, and social media to help you ride faster!  In this round, Frank and Lacey dive into topics ranging from the signs of overtraining, HR drift, the most useful whoop metrics, how weight loss can enhance or harm your performance, end of season CTL, and lots more. Big thanks to e...

In this week's podcast, the Big Cat dives into a discussion about stress including training stress, life stress, when it is good, when it isn't good and how/if you can manage both together. He also touches on how HRV is a good stress metric and what kind of lifestyle habits you can adopt to minimize your stress.   

BigCat speaks with Pat Warner and Ben Sharp, the dynamic Coach-Athlete duo from Stages Cycling. Ben is an Olympic Gold Medalist Coach who also happens to coach Pat Warner. Pat is the head honcho at Stages Cycling who recently won the Masters National 50+ Road Race and Time Trial. In part 2 of the episode, they discuss Ben's work with Asthon Lambie, Stages strain gage technology, Sweet Spot trainin...

BigCat speaks with Pat Warner and Ben Sharp, the dynamic Coach-Athlete duo from Stages Cycling. Ben is an Olympic Gold Medalist Coach who also happens to coach Pat Warner. Pat is the head honcho at Stages Cycling who recently won the Masters National 50+ Road Race and Time Trial.   In part 1 of the episode they discuss topics including their background in cycling, what their coach-athlete relation...

In this podcast, Coach Frank discusses FasCat's 4 new off season training plans for the 2021-2022 season! Specifically, he breaks down the 30 week off season plan, explaining the phases of the plan, how the workouts, sets, reps, and mesocycles progress, as well as the rationale for the plan and which type of athlete each level is designed for!

In this episode, Coach Frank Overton and Coach Christian Parrett discuss what pyramidal training is, research studies from world tour athletes that support its use, real-world examples of how pyramidal training differs from polarized training, and why the 'Polarized versus Sweet Spot Training' is a false debate. 

In this episode, the Big Cat talks about 4 training tips for the month of august including fueling for long events, SBT race strategies, gear and tire choice, 4 cyclocross skills you should be working on, and how to taper properly. He also announces a few changes to our tried n' true off season plan and our 18 weeks of sweet spot training plan that you don't want to miss!

We received a record number of user submitted questions for the 19th edition of our "Ask a FasCat" podcast! In fact, it was so many that we couldn't answer in one go. So in this episode, we bring in Coaches Allie, Jake, Lacey, and Christian to help answer 30 more questions!  Topics covered include stage race nutrition, optimal cadence, mid-season setbacks, mental strategies for pushing through int...

Welcome to the 19th edition of our "Ask a FasCat" podcast series, where we gather questions from our forum, website, and social media to help you ride faster! This go-round we are giving the athlete with the most thoughtful question a pair of Normatec Pulse, 2.0 compression boots that we've talked about in several of our podcasts including the holiday gift guide, recovery for cycling, and the mast...

We've podcasted on the topic of master's training three times before including on Masters CTL, Master's Recovery, and the Seven Habits of Successful Masters Cyclists. In this episode, Coach Frank touches on those again, but dives down even deeper and discusses 3 actionable adjustments you can make to your training as a 50+ athlete.  This podcast commemorates the Big Cat's 50th birthday! To celebra...

Are you a new cyclist or a season veteran looking for ways to start riding faster? Well here is your how to guide! In this episode Coach Frank goes over his top 8 Riding Faster Fundamentals that will help you to improve your cycling. While some of you may already know about these, it is always helpful to be reminded and to learn about ways to put them into practice. Visit fascatcoaching.com to lea...

Coach Frank and the FasCat Coaches drops some wisdom on how to nail your warmup for different kinds of bike racing. It doesn't have to be complicated to be effective, so tune in to get ready for your summer race season. Keep up with all things Fascat over at fascatcoaching.com.