REBROADCAST:Ep.263: Maximizing Your Training on an Indoor Bike Trainer - with Robbie Ventura
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This week, we're revisiting one of the most insightful interviews we've done here on the Purple Patch Podcast. With a fresh year just beginning and more athletes than ever logging miles on their trainer, we felt this conversation with Robbie Ventura was worth sharing again!
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Robbie shares experience and knowledge from his 12-year career as a pro cyclist, and more than 20 years providing expert training programs to endurance athletes of all levels, to dial in what he believes are the critical skills every cyclist should develop.
Using Robbie’s approach and development as a model for training as a time-starved athlete, Matt focuses on how to leverage indoor bike trainers to elevate your race craft and become a better and faster cyclist.
Matt and Robbie put remote coaching under the microscope and examine the common mistakes athletes make in using indoor bike trainers and share strategies for getting the most out of indoor training. They also explore Velocity’s unique training software and how it aims to elevate the quality of engagement between coaches and athletes through live instruction and immediate feedback on real-time athlete performance data.
The goal of today’s episode is to highlight the training tools available to time-starved athletes, to help create an individualized training experience that delivers both the physiological adaptations for improving speed as well as the skill set for executing efficiently on the bike.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 8:43 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
08:51 - 1:02:40 - The Meat and Potatoes - Episode 263/ Maximizing Your Training on an Indoor Bike Trainer - with Special Guest Robbie Ventura
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Full Transcript
Matt Dixon 00:03
I'm Matt Dixon and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. The mission of Purple Patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential. Through the lens of athletic potential, you reach your human potential. The purpose of this podcast is to help time-starved People everywhere integrate sport into life.
Matt Dixon 00:24
Hey folks, Matt Dixon here. And over the last few months, we've been tracking the progress of many Purple Patch athletes who have leaned into the surfaces of InsideTracker. I've been particularly interested in key measures that we know have an impact on their performance, their daily energy, and their global health. And there are several factors that I decided to really take a close eye in monitoring. Factors such as iron ferritin levels, vitamin D, and blood values, including cholesterol. And over several months, we monitored via InsideTracker, and the average improvements, it turns out, according to peer-reviewed research, was significant across all of the participants. We saw an improvement in their vitamin D profile, their iron and ferritin levels, and a decrease in LDL cholesterol a better profile overall. And that is telling. The route to get there? Well, these participants, our athletes, doubled down on their training with Purple Patch, of course, but also made some important shifts in their behavior and habits, including how they were eating, what they're eating, some of their hydration, and even some supplements, when appropriate. And all of these recommendations were provided by the team of experts at InsideTracker. I think that's quite a good partnership. Now this is just a really nice case study in leveraging personalized insights to deliver focus so that you can get the best return on investment over your journey in performance. And of course, you can track for yourself the meaningful results just like we did. These measurable improvements linked to better sports performance, but I think more importantly, perhaps better life performance and overall health. And that's the thing that's really important in this big picture and puzzle that we're going for. Guess what you can benefit too, all you need to do is head to insidetracker.com/purplepatch. That's insidetracker.com/purplepatch, and you put in this sneaky code Purple Patch Pro 20, that's Purple Patch Pro two zero and you get 20% off everything at the store. All right, today we're talking about cycling training and it is a very special guest, in fact somewhat of an icon. U.S. Pro Cyclist, Robbie Ventura is joining us. Enjoy the show.
Matt Dixon 02:45
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast, as ever, your host Matt Dixon, and today we are talking cycling. In fact, we're going to talk about maximizing your training with a particular focus around utilizing the indoor trainer. And we welcome to the show a very special guest. In fact, we might call him a legend in the sport Robbie Ventura. He is an ex-pro cyclist. And I would say one of the more storied and successful U.S. Pro Riders that we have had. Part of the golden generation, he was a three-year member of U.S. Postal Team. He had 12 years in the professional circuit. And over the course of those 12 years, he accumulated more than 70, seven zero, 70 victories. But what I find really compelling is who he was as a cyclist and athlete, because I think that in many ways marks the backbone of our subject today. Because Robbie wasn't a guy that just had these huge genetic gifts that enabled him to breeze through victories. He had to be cunning, smart, he had to work his way to get every piece of potential out of the genetic gifts that he was given. And he maximized it through being tactically astute. Developing his skills, his management, his planning, he became a great artist on the bicycle. In other words, of the genetic gifts that he did have, he squeezed every piece of speed out of those traits. And in many ways, that's the game that we're playing. Because most of us are time-starved Most of us only have such a level of genetic ceiling. And so we want to work on our fitness, our power potential, but we also if we really want to improve, want to become a better bike rider to try and yield the best speed that we can through how we sit on the bike, pedal the bike, manage through terrain, use the environment and you've heard me talk on this show many many times before. But Robbie is a cycling coach now. He heads up Vision Quest Cycling based out of Chicago, Illinois, and he is also the founder of Velocity, a cycling platform. And it turns out that our philosophy and approach around guiding athletes is completely aligned. And so we thought, we need to have a discussion on this because this is an important educational moment that we get to share. And it always helps when you have someone with an aligned perspective, that maybe has a different way of talking about it, discussing it, educating it. And so I asked Robbie, on to the show. Now, before we get going, I must mention a little disclaimer. As I said before, Robbie is the founder and head coach of Vision Quest coaching a super coaching outfit based out of Illinois, but he's also the founder of Velocity. And this groundbreaking training software is the very platform that Purple Patch now uses to deliver our video-based coaching. And so we're going to talk about that platform a little bit as we go through today. But I want to put it out there as a disclaimer, Robbie and I are ultimately business partners. But I want to ensure that we've reinforced the fact that today's show isn't designed as some advertorial for our cycling platform or coaching. And this is really important. And I mean it. It's critical. This is critical education, I believe that we're going to go through today on how you can get faster at cycling. That's what Robbie and I came together to try and deliver today. To try and paint the picture of how you can get faster at cycling. And we discuss it today. Because we're so aligned as coaches in this areas, we thought we need to just have a coach's powwow, we need to record it hence, me, you, and Robbie, us together on today's show. We believe ultimately, the athletes have been delivered a little bit of a disservice via the most common approaches to bike training, particularly indoor training, that has become so prevalent today. And so we want to break the mold a little bit, we want to help you get faster. And let me just put it this way, I'm gonna give you a little snippet because there was a quote that Robbie said that you're going to hear in today's show that I want to just bring to the forefront right now. He said, "Why is everyone just focusing only on building horsepower when they really need to work on building speed." I'm gonna let that marinate a little bit because that is the genesis of everything we talk about today. I'll just select that stew. It's a golden piece of education. And if you ride your bike trainer indoors, I recommend that you give today a listen. There's no Word of the Week this week, there's no Matt's News-ings. Just before we dive into the meat of potatoes, a quick reminder, we are only a few days left of our special April promotion. If you do decide to join Purple Patch, the Purple Patch squad program between now an April 30th, that's all the way through the month of April, you can get $600 worth of complimentary coaching consultations with a member of the coaching team. That is big. If you commit upfront to the rest of this season, $600. If you want to join us month to month it's a $200 value of coaching consultations, individual to help you get really refined. Now is the time it only runs through the end of April. Check the show notes if you want more information or if you want to set up a complimentary call with us. Just ping us at info@PurplePatchfitness.com and we will see if we're a good fit for you. Anyway, I give you, ladies and gentlemen, it is Robbie Ventura and Barry, let's do this. It is the Meat and Potatoes.
Matt Dixon 08:51
All right guys, it is the meat and potatoes. And we do have a very special guest, we're going to focus our discussion today around indoor training but who better to have this discussion with than Robbie Ventura from Vision Quest coaching as well as of course Velocity. So welcome, Robbie, thanks so much for joining us.
Robbie Ventura 09:10
Happy to be here, Matt excited, excited to talk about meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 09:13
Meat and potatoes, I hope you've got your, we've got two guys here that are going to have a discussion and both of us can talk. So we're going to have a healthy competition to see who can hold the microphone here. But, but it should be very fun. I think over the next 40 minutes or so we're going to give I think, some really important perspective around maximizing indoor training and some of the components and we're going to dig into your platform that you've built which, which of course at Purple Patch we are utilizing here. But to kick off I, I always like to do this with guests is to ground ourselves a little bit and for folks that don't know, as I mentioned that bio before, an extremely well-known, highly successful professional cyclist. We're going to come to that in a couple of minutes. But before we dig into that part, I'd love you to tell the audience about your life growing up where you grew up your family siblings, education. What's your background?
Robbie Ventura 10:13
Yeah, I am from a from a full-blooded Italian family, very traditional Italian family. I was spoiled, that's for sure. I had two sisters and if you know anything about the Italian culture, they take care of the boys first and foremost. And so I had everything I needed. I had really supportive parents. I did have a little bit of a lung issue when I was born and I had my bronchial tubes, for some reason were like kind of stuck and they weren't they weren't opening up. So the doctors told my parents to get this kid into some endurance sports so they got me into soccer, which I loved fell in love with it in my soccer teammate and his dad took me to the velodrome we got very lucky because we have a velodrome which is a concrete 330-degree concrete track where you race fixed gear bikes on it. And my buddy took me to the Velodrome and we started racing with our with our BMX bikes because they had a stock bike program night and started racing, did a couple of races had a great time. And then my dad, my buddy's like, Hey, Bob, that's my dad's name, come over to the Velodrome and check it out. Your son and Shane are doing really good. And he came out there and like everybody knew my dad, it was the craziest thing. They're like, Hey, Bob, how's it going? Nice to see you here. I -- This is a true story. I was eight years old. I had no idea my dad has ever ridden a bike in his life. The guy was a construction worker, he went to work with his lunch pail and did that thing and little do I know he opens up this box and there's like state championship jerseys and medals and all this stuff in there. And he was just, he was just, it was crazy that I found it without him. And then he ended up becoming you know, what I think is the greatest coach I've ever had by far. So he supported me there. But ultimately, I wanted to be a hockey player. I like cycling, I love cycling, but I really loved hockey and I went and played junior-A hockey and got injured, broke all the bones in my face and had an ACL reconstruction and just wasn't durable enough, I wasn't big enough and frankly, I wasn't good enough. I ended up playing some college hockey and and yeah, I mean I had a great childhood I had great parents that raised me with great values. I had two great sisters lived in Kenosha, Wisconsin, hence the K-town motor. And when I was little heavy motor home, they call me the K-town motor home and I gained some pounds. But um, yeah, and then I played I played college hockey for Lake Forest, got injured again there and started riding my bike again, and got really lucky and won the world uh -- the world's trials for the points race and ended up going the World Championships on the track in 93. I got fifth place in the miss and out in the elimination race at the Worlds in Norway, which was great. And then I got lucky and won a couple of big races as a kind of an independent when I graduated from college and got an opportunity to race professionally on Saturn. And then it kind of kind of went from there.
Matt Dixon 12:59
Well in your professional cycling career I think is really interesting. We were chatting before the show know you spent several years on US Postal, obviously, an incredibly famous cycling team, and all across I think 10 or 12 years as a professional cyclist if I'm right with that and you were really known I mentioned your name to someone the other day and he said the king of crits. This guy was a great racer, you won more than 70 wins. You're just famed for that prowess. And I think that everybody when you think about a professional athlete, particularly in a sport like cycling, a huge endurance cycling, we think about huge engines big VO2 MAX that great ability to hold a very high percentage of VO2 MAX et cetera. So is that an accurate representation of you as a professional cyclist? Were you one of the big engine boys?
Robbie Ventura 14:01
You know, it's interesting, you know, like I told you before I was, I was a hockey player. I was a little bit bigger than most. I was stronger than most, physically. But I wasn't even close on the what would you would call the endurance markers for a professional athlete, a VO2 MAX of 70 or more, probably a lactic threshold of close to 90% of that 85 to 90% of that. And it's just I just simply wasn't built that way. You know, I was -- I was-- I just -- I struggled anytime things got really long, or there was long climbs. And I mean, I think I told you this story. I went to the Olympic Training Center when I was when the first year as a professional, and they tested all of us and they put us in a room and they said, you have to have a VO2 MAX of at least 70. Everybody on my team was over 70 except for me. I was in close to 70, I was closer to 60. And it just it that kind of got in my head. And me being a person that loves data, was always thinking that unless I have this big motor, I just can't compete at this level. And I really struggled. Yeah, I barely finished the race that year, I got fired my first year as a professional. Not many people know that. I was very, very lucky to have a supportive wife that told me, "Hey, man, time to buckle down play to your strengths. You know, I mean, you can do things better than anybody else can you've won races. When you were 18 years old. You're winning senior races, why can't you keep up now and a little higher level." And I really dove into maximizing what I had. And I was never going to be a Tour de France racer, but I could do things if the race was short enough. I did improve my VO2 MAX, I did improve my lactic threshold. But what I really leveraged was my skill set was my race craft. I raced on the Velodrome. I was very lucky and most triathletes don't have this ability to get this many practices in but I raced three times on the track in Kenosha three times in the track in Northbrook three times in the track on Indy, and then I would do two-week races on the weekend. So I was racing 11 to 12 times a week when I was 18, and 19, 20 years old. Think about the amount of reps that I got. So I really mastered all these other skills that when people were going out and riding hundreds of miles, I was learning how to handle my bike better than everybody. I was understanding how to draft better than everybody else. My pacing strategy, my tactic, my toughness, I mean, I just, I when I wanted to position I took the position. I use some of my hockey, my hockey smarts and toughness to just put myself in positions to start winning bike races. And even though I didn't have those mass..., that massive motor, I really really mastered everything else. And that, to me, has been, it's been something I'm proud of, I'm proud of the athletes that I coach that perform better than their power output. I mean, that's something that that vision quest has prided itself on is, you're only gonna get so good, you're only gonna get so much power. But I love when my athletes were able to outperform people that were physically and power-wise significantly better because they learn the nuance of the sport of cycling. And it's something that I mastered. And it's only way I could survive because I couldn't win any races if I didn't, if I wasn't good at that stuff. And passing that on to athletes is something that probably gets me more excited than anything else.
Matt Dixon 17:14
Well, it's interesting you say it because one of the reasons I wanted you to sort of lead off with that is when we think about coaching globally before we dive into indoor, the landscape of coaching now, we see and I think both of us agree on this, the overriding emphasis of coaches, and therefore by definition of athletes is to just focus on getting proverbially stronger. So in other words, building the engine boosting FTP Functional Threshold, etc -- it's like strength, strength, strength, but the actual art of becoming a better bike rider is de emphasize ignored or, or coaches just don't have the skill set understanding or appreciation of the value of that which ultimately, I think both of us agree that area is the thing that is the hockey stick of improvement no matter how strong you can get. I just love your perspective on that before we dive in, because I think it's so important in the discussion we're going to have around cycling, coaching on an indoor environment. So I'd love your perspective on that.
Robbie Ventura 18:22
I mean, I think you summed it up great. I think there's been a real focus over the last 15 or 20 years on improving horsepower. And where the focus needs to be is is improving speed. And horsepower is a component of speed, but there are there are limits to that right. There's limits to people's time right? There's limits to people's engine size, VO2 MAX I mean, I was limited, but I didn't let that limitation stop me from getting faster, stop me from from winning bike races. Because there is so many elements around the nuance of cycling, aerodynamics, pacing strategy, managing RPM, managing tactic, understanding the wind, I can go on and on and on, right? Even the form a cyclist takes when he produces power, conservation of energy, there's just as there's so many more things that far outweigh the horsepower gains, because -- at the end of the day, horsepower is going to be limited by time for many of us. But skill development and, and race craft, you can get better at that for years and years and years. in and the, the amount of space that you can improve there, I think far outweighs a 10-watt gain in FTP. That is just that's not going to get you home, what's gonna get you home is all the other stuff.
Matt Dixon 19:38
Yep. It's interesting, and I'll just tell a brief story to you, and therefore by definition in the audience, as well, but I had a real-world experience of this with two of my professional female athletes. I won't name them but the Rider A was on vastly superior equipment than the other -- aero helmet, more aerodynamic wheels, a better bike aerodynamically and, and -- then Rider B. They rode the Hawaii Ironman at exactly the same power-to-weight ratio. And, and so therefore, you would assume that Rider A would go faster, but Rider B was something like 12 minutes faster over and they both rode the course completely solo, there wasn't any interference from media or other athletes, it was down to race craft. Rider B was just cunning on terrain management, environmental management, in other words, wind, really switching up her pedal stroke and developing a toolkit of that. So this is your -- think about how much fitness you have to gain to gain 12 minutes that the horsepower chasing of it. And we never quite managed to get Rider A to really lean into it and Rider B less "talented" from a physiological standpoint, way outperformed. So I think it's just an interesting sort of side story of everything that your experience also has really highlighted there.
Robbie Ventura 21:01
And I think as coaches, I mean, it's our duty to teach that nuance, it's our duty, if we have that, in our heads, if we have the ability to make people better without just trying to increase their power only. I think it's our duty as a coach to make sure that we're imparting that knowledge. It's not easy, like some of these things, you have to actually be around and see them like there's, there's elements to the sport of cycling, where getting your hands on the athlete might be the only way you're going to help them with some certain things, right? We're teaching them at the moment. I think, for me to write a bunch of things down for them to think about, and have them go do it, that's, that's better than not right? So it kind of goes like this, you give them a basic workout 2 x 20, right? And that's Coach A, right? And then Coach B says go 2 x 20. But try to do me a favor in the last 10 minutes of everyone trying to get as aerodynamic as you can and see if you can raise your speed by at least a mile an hour by keeping your power the same, just by getting smaller and cheating the wind, that's a nice thing you might put in for Coach B. Then the really good coach is actually at the Velodrome with them yelling out splits, telling them to change their position telling them to do different things with their rpm and seeing them, "Oh, hey, you're elbow, bring your right elbow in, it's sticking out." Like, that, to me, is kind of like the ultimate from a coaching perspective. But that's a very, very difficult thing to do.
Matt Dixon 22:22
Yeah, I think it's a great example, well, let's dive into indoor because I know that you're trying to crack the code on much of what we just talked about there from an indoor environment. And we're going to come to this. So let's talk about inside training. And when we talk about inside training, I'm assuming the rider is on a bike on a trainer or maybe on one of the smart bikes like the Wahoo attack smart bike, something along those lines. I see as a coach, as we're having a coach's discussion here, a huge disconnect of riders approaching their indoor riding, and real-world riding outdoors. And so how do you view indoor riding within context of overall training and the sport?
Robbie Ventura 23:07
I have two thoughts on it really, I was from Chicago. So I had to do a lot of training indoors to prepare myself for races in February. I didn't have a lot of money. I couldn't go fly to the Canary Islands and train for two months at a time. So instead, I had to go in my basement and I had to cut out of Rocky Balboa and Yoda and I literally have those two and I put movies on and I'd ride my indoor bike for long hours. I don't really recommend that as a training modality. I think right now. Most of the people that we work with, don't have -- aren't trying to train 30 hours a week, for one. So so they have options, right? They don't need to train that much. Because they have other things in their life. All I had was cycling, wasn't even married. Um But, you know, I think cycling indoors should be done with very, very specific goals in mind. And I think with all these new things that are out there, and Rouvy and Zwift, and, and RGT, I think, unfortunately, we go into these, these rides with the best intentions. I'm gonna ride nice and easy, and I'm going to, I'm going to work on my pedal stroke, whatever the intention is. But it's, there's just so many people out there, and there's so many things taking your concentration away. And naturally, we're in this sport, because we have a slight competitive side to us, right, we're driven to get better. So watching people pass us all the time and the opportunity just to hop on the wheel for a little bit, just, I'll just go a little bit harder and see if I can stay with this guy. Like, I just think the indoor environment right now is challenging, because it's entertaining and because there's, it's competitive, I think it ultimately is not a great place for the athletes that I coach that I want to spend a lot of time -- unless, of course, they have something very specific to work on. Because there is huge opportunities indoors, you can train very, very specific you can, you can work the energy system just right, you can create opportunities to do the same thing over and over again, a skill. For example, if you want to practice something that you can kind of manipulate a lot of things. So you can do it exactly like you want it or your coach wants you to do it. So I definitely think there's a place for indoor training. And I think it should be done, you know, mostly on the skill development and intensity side. And if you have the opportunity to ride long and easy, doing that outside I think is a good opportunity or maybe some race pace intervals outside because when you're outside, you're really experiencing what it's like when you're in your event, right? A crosswind and how you lean your bicycle or even how you sit on the bicycle might change ever so slightly when you're outside. There's just so many elements at play, that the long and the heavy riding and the race-specific riding you should be doing, in my opinion, should be done outside.
Matt Dixon 25:52
Yeah, I think it's great. I mean, I wanted to ask you about mistakes of riders that athletes make when they're riding inside. It sounds like you answered the first one there. So I will ask the question because I see a lot of athletes making a lot of mistakes with their approach. The first one is sort of getting drawn into the bells and whistles, the racing, and in almost every session just being too hard or nonspecific. Chasing physiological gains without thinking about posture or anything what other mistakes do you see when you, if you walk into a room, you see an athlete on a bike trainer, what do you see where people often go wrong?
Robbie Ventura 26:31
I think they may get a little sloppy with just how they are on the bicycle, it doesn't. When you're indoors, you're not required to balance even right? The bike is locked in there. So, I think our posture changes a little bit, we don't focus on necessarily things that we would normally focus on outside -- even hand position, elbow position, aerodynamics. And, we tend to push a little bit of a bigger gear indoors as well, at least I do. I'm telling you some of the mistakes I make. And we do a lot of indoor training. So we're, at our facilities, we're always constantly correcting people and trying to get them to look and be like they would normally be outside. And that doesn't make me -- make everybody look the same. Right? We all have different morphologies and sizes and shapes and length of arms and stuff. Everybody in the indoor riding doesn't look the same. But we're all trying to get them as efficient as they can. With the body shape that they have. Right. And I think, you know, I'm not a big fan of Erg Mode. You may disagree. I think you may even have Erg Mode-type workouts and different things like that. I don't love the trainer creating the power output the person is supposed to ride at. I just I think that is something that it doesn't happen outside. Why would we want to do that inside? And oftentimes, it gets us into some bad habits. We just rely on the Erg to create the intensity. And when we're outside trying to write a certain intensity, we don't know how to do it. Right? We rely on that trainer to do so. So I think yeah, I think riding too hard is probably the number one mistake, riding out of position is probably mistake number two, and then relying on Erg would probably be another third mistake that I think I see people on Zwift do.
Matt Dixon 28:12
Yeah, and we won't dig too far into Erg. And I agree I have built sessions in Erg mode and one of the things that I've always been strongly against but begrudgingly in, historically have provided mostly because the athlete really wants it, are these structured workouts. And I think it, I just like to not have to think -- the trainer tells me what to do, which is the antithesis of what should be happening. And it's a really sort of coaching frustration to say actually you're removing all aspects of self-management. You're almost you know, becoming the proverbial Monkey on the bike just trying to keep up with it. And, and it leads you down a path where you lose what we call the inner animal a sense of understanding of what's right for the day, almost similar to having a GPS and just following it straight into a lake, because it points you there, you know? So that's one of the challenges of structured workouts where people sort of fall under the guise of specificity. This is really specific because it's exactly the number versus when you're outside and you're having to generate the power etc. On the flip side, it's, you know, being completely random with no insight into where the intensity you're riding, it is also challenging. So just riding on a dumb trainer without can also be challenging. But luckily, we've got a solution for that, which is your platform, which we're gonna get into, in a couple of minutes. But, but I think it's there, I do want to focus as well, on the postural side of stuff. I think it's really important what you said there -- not everyone looks has to look the same. But if you just glance across social media, and people posting their pictures, it's horrifying, mostly because people are sitting there with locked elbows and ingraining, all sorts of habits, where when they take those habits outside, it is actually going to prevent them from riding a bike. You know, rigid elbows, there's no course correction, it's impossible to stand in that position corner in that position. And in an environment where you don't have to worry about things like traffic, it's a great venue to actually think about riding with good posture and good form, and great pedal stroke. But that's not really the emphasis. It's just on, as you said earlier, in so eloquently chasing horsepower. And so unfortunately, I think one of the biggest mistakes for me, my standpoint, as a coach is this controlled environment facilitates the adoption of really bad habits that impacts negatively outdoor riding if you're not really cautious. Does that make sense conceptually, as I sort of talk about that?
Robbie Ventura 30:54
Totally, you know, and an example of that would be -- we do this, we do this thing called the Madison ride, we do two of them a year, and we get like two or three hundred people that go out and ride the Madison, Ironman Madison course. And Matt, if I told -- if you were on the bicycle, and watching all these people ride this course, it would, it would, it's difficult for me to watch. It's difficult for me to watch in a couple of ways. And I know, it would be so easy to help them but I would have to get a hold of them. Right, I'd have to help them. And one of the two areas -- you nailed the first one is their position on the bike. From an aerodynamics perspective, from a shock absorbing perspective, from a control perspective, we could eliminate and cure so much, just from the standpoint of if your arms are rigid, and you're hitting bumps, the impact alone versus shock absorbing over the course of a six-hour bike ride. Those are the nuance that I'm talking about the race craft piece that if you can just get like 10 of those correct, you're going hour faster. I mean, like it's crazy, right? But we get we focus and focus and focus on power and time. It's, it's it's, it's, it's important. But if we just spent even half the time, you don't I mean, focusing on the other components, we make such a bigger gain with our athletes. But the second thing that I see is these athletes going -- because Ironman Madison is a very tumultuous course I mean, there's lots of terrain changes. And it's just difficult for me to see A athletes throwing their chain off on the inside throwing the chain off on the outside, waiting too long to shift, not shifting at enough, I mean, shifting too early, going up the gear, going up the hills at 45 RPM going down the hills at you know 160 RPM and just constantly chasing efficiency and getting there so late and maybe sometimes not even getting there at all, that I just there, there needs to be some coaching of that there needs to be that skill development piece. And if you're on the trainer in one gear on a flat road on a Zwift course, where you don't have the hills on, that's where they learn that. They don't learn to shift their gears, they don't learn to manage terrain, they don't learn all of these things that oh my gosh, if they just practice a little bit, indoors, or even outdoors, for that matter, it would be a game changer.
Matt Dixon 33:13
Well, let's talk about that. Let's go on a fun journey and reimagine indoor training as a way. And hopefully, we can do this in a really educational way where we can present some light bulbs to go off as it were. Your image you have a platform velocity Purple Patch, leverages that platform. So that's the disclaimer, we're talking about this but the reason we're here together is today is education. So I want to go back in time a little bit and want to get inside your head and I want you to frame indoor training. Because as we talked about most athletes just think about the trainer as a place to chase physiological gains -- time on the saddle, specific intervals, etc. That's a part of it. As a coach, what we -- the context that you just provided that, How do you view the opportunity, when you started to think about developing velocity, what is the opportunity for indoor training that we can, you know, five years ago reimagining this thing, what does it look like? What are we looking to do here? What's the goal of the platform?
Robbie Ventura 34:28
Yeah, the goal, the platform is just to try and get what's in the coach's head, all of what's in the coach's head, into the athlete's head. It's really about taking all the knowledge Matt that you've had, and learned and spent and toiled and read and experimented and everything that you've learned about the sport of cycling, and other -- strength training as well, for that matter, and be able to create a situation where you can take that knowledge and put it in your athletes head or give that to your athlete in a way where you can do it real-time. You can make corrections like we just talked about on people's form - real-time, you can give people the opportunity to practice those skills that we talked about that were so important - real-time. And you can not only correct athletes, you know, athletes that you're looking at, but have athletes hear those corrections, as they're doing the exact same workout and potentially making that exact same mistake if they're watching that workout on-demand. The ability to coach and teach the skill of cycling, is ultimately what I wanted to do, I wanted - I felt like I was very, very lucky that I had an incredible coach, my father, teaching me the skill of cycling at a very young age. And because I had those skills, I was able to far out outperform my potential, really, really outperform it. And to me, a lot of these coaches, these good coaches have so much more to give their athlete, but they're limited by writing into a workout. Having the athlete do the workout, give you lots of good comments, have you come back and kind of trying to decipher what they did well, and what they didn't. Or you can actually get on the bicycle, or not, see your athletes, not just one but many of them, and teach them some very, very important specific skills that are going to mean as much to them if not more than power output and improvements and fitness improvements. And not only that, we all know for a fact that it is a heck of a lot more fun to learn, to train, to suffer. And to get motivated when we have other people with us, whether that's in a live class, or whether at least we know other people have taken that exact same class and have gone through those exact same skill development elements. And you're trying to do it as good, maybe a little bit better than some of the people in the class. So I think at the end of the day, my idea of indoor training is all the things that we talked about early on in this in this podcast, teaching those athletes that skill, and to give the software the opportunity for coaches to have coachable moments, to get them excited about when the athlete does do something great, whether it's controlling their power on a hard climb, kicking it over the top of a climb, or maybe having their best two-minute power that they've had all year. Either way, being able to coach those athletes, meet them right where they're at, practice skills on a regular basis, and give them that X factor that we all know is so important.
Matt Dixon 37:43
I want to draw a tangent here because there's a truth when you talk about this. And we're both you know, we're both very aligned in this philosophically, but I want to underline this a little bit. Unfortunately, right now athletes have been underserved. And they are there's a blunt truth to this. Athletes have been underserved, they have been guided and driven to have their focus be only on the horsepower. So if you're an athlete, it's very difficult just to go out and say I'm going to upskill I'm going to get better I'm going to have that and there's one of two reasons for that. The first is that their coach or program doesn't have the knowledge or expertise or appreciation of this side of it, let's call it the art of the skills of becoming a better bike rider globally, or they don't have the ability to do effective transfer knowledge. That's another part of it. So let's assume the best. It's just really difficult to me coaching, you know, Pierre in Paris to actually say how do I get that transfer of knowledge across on a 30-minute phone call every week and through riding it into a training platform? It's really difficult. So --
Robbie Ventura 39:00
I don't think you can.
Matt Dixon 39:02
I don't think you can. And, and so that that, So, therefore, coaches fall, you know, go more and more and more to this side, and athletes focus more and more on it, but there comes a chasm of ultimate performance output of speed is nowhere near because, as you say, most of us are time-starved only have so many hours. And so can only reach a certain physiological ceiling point within those hours. And so how do you actually make more use of it? And if we can get a focus on this, it is a huge yield of performance. So this is really important, like going outside and playing on your bike and feeling it. And then leveraging a tool like this, to use it, I think is really, really important.
Robbie Ventura 39:54
I mean, that was perfectly said, and I think, at the end of the day, you're going to have to teach at this level, I mean, you're setting the bar on the triathlon side and teaching this level of ability and skill. And I think people that realize what they're getting, they -- I will guarantee will perform better with these skills. I mean, let's just take pacing, for example. To be able to create different pacing strategies, let's just say you want to give eight-minute intervals, right? Most of the time coaches would say go do 4 x 8 minutes, right? And I want you to do them between 85 and 95% of your FTP. That's a that's a workout, right? Like a sweet spot, Seiler, workout whatever. Now with our platform, we can say, okay, we're gonna do the first one, high, low, high, and we're going to practice a pacing strategy of starting hard, going a little easier in the middle, and finishing hard, on his next eight minuter, we're going to start low, and finish high. On the third eight minuter, we're going to start high and finish low. On the fourth eight minuter, we're gonna go low, high low. We're gonna give you four opportunities to practice four different pacing strategies and we're going to make those very specific, based on how much what zone we want you in for each of those efforts. Now, you may choose the first I may choose the second, but we're going to figure out how our body responds to all four different strategies. That is so difficult to write into a workout and actually be coached through because there's elements to it, that in the moment, you can explain exactly what's going on physiologically during these pacing strategies, why some might be better than others. In the moment, you're coaching four different pacing strategies, and explaining the benefits, and potentially the pitfalls of all these pacing strategies and when and where you might want to use them. Now pacing strategy to me gets so overlooked in the sport of triathlon, it's not even funny. You can really dial in someone's pacing strategy because they're not always the same -- pace and strategy for every race and every person might be a little bit different you just got to educate them, and you got to show them. And our platform allows you to do that.
Matt Dixon 42:04
You know, when I think about building a platform, and you know it from the ground up almost every element that if I shut my eyes -- thought, I'm gonna go and build this platform, it was there when you brought it to us. So I want to, I want to try and paint the picture a little bit of what the experience is like, and a little bit of the how. Because I think the first perception, we -- we're about a month in with Purple Patch, we're learning how to optimize, I would say. I think the first month has been really good and a huge learning curve for us. But the common question that we get, before we dive into the how is "Okay, great it's another platform choice, why shouldn't I just carry on doing, you know, a Zwift or a Rouvy or an (inaudible)?" A bunch of good platforms out there. So, what do you think -- the physiological gains is one part, where is this different to the regular platforms out there? How do you see is the differentiator of them?
Robbie Ventura 43:04
For one, there's a there's a couple, but if I wanted to learn, I mean, I would want to learn from you, Matt. I would want you to teach me how to ride my bike if I was a triathlete. You have incredible experience, right? And I think, you know, watching you on a YouTube channel, do a good workout. That's okay because you're gonna give me some great pointers, right? But I kind of -- I'm selfish. I want you to see me. I want you to see me and correct me if I'm doing something wrong, right? I also want to see how I'm doing relative to everybody else. Maybe I'm really good at one thing, but not so good at the other stuff, right? And our platform is really designed to give the coach the opportunity to create coachable moments, we'll call them.
Matt Dixon 43:51
Yeah.
Robbie Ventura 43:53
In every aspect of the word. So, for example, I think the best coaching is when a coach can see the athlete perform an interval, and not only see the athlete in their physical space but also see their power output in their RPMs. And their heart rate for that matter. If I as a coach can see the athlete and their power output and their RPMs, and then I can give them some very specific intervals to do, and I can see by the color of their gauge and a bunch of other things, if they're in compliance or not, I can start to coach that athlete, maybe their cadence is a little bit too low -- "shift to an easier gear, Julie. Get that cadence up a little bit. You're starting to bog down a little bit. You got -- you're doing great on the power, but not so good on the RPM." So being able to coach the athlete real time and see them is by far and away the biggest differentiator. Now what the coach does with that is totally up to up to the coach, right? At the end of the day, the coach can make it as game applied as they want, they can add points if the athletes can actually control their output to the what they want. And one thing that I think is important about training in general, and you touched on this earlier, is people have good days and bad days. And to me when an athlete has a good day. That's a really good learnable --learning moment, right?
Matt Dixon 45:10
Yeah.
Robbie Ventura 45:11
Or if an athlete has a bad day, you can learn a lot. And our software allows athletes to have these good and bad days. Because I really, I'm not a big believer in telling someone to do a number, right? I like to get people to do a range, plus or minus a given watt, wattage. So 90% plus or minus 20 Watts, let's say. And if an athlete's having a good day, they can work to the right of that range, right? If they're not having a good day, they can work to the left of that range. Now, ultimately, athletes want to be successful, and they want to be told good job. So the platform really supports and helps people and lets them know good job by making the interval green every time they get the average correct and the cadence correct. We take it a step further, getting the average correct is good. And I think ultimately, when you first go to a platform, you want to make sure you're getting the power and the cadence correct, like we talked about, because that's we want to still work on power output, we want to still work on their overall fitness and make sure we're hitting the energy systems. But to me, that's where most coaches stop, and where you're going to carry on because you're not just going to have to hit the power output. Now what you're going to do is you're going to manipulate gradient, you're going to manipulate some cadence, because you're teaching them how to roll over the top of a climb. And then what you're going to do potentially, is shrink that power window. And by shrinking that power window, you're forcing them to pedal their bicycles more efficiently, you're forcing them to have less slop in that pedal stroke. You're not forcing the pedal in a perfect circle, no one wants anybody to do that. What we want them to do is be able to control power output, and stay smooth and steady. And certain people will be -- won't be able to do right in the beginning. And that's okay. And that -- you don't want everybody to be able to do it in the beginning because we know for a fact they can't, because they don't have those skills yet. But as they get better and better and better, they get rewarded by having higher percentages, by scoring more points by getting excited. And then they can start to have a little fun and compete with other people in the class and get excited about not because they're the strongest person in the class. But because they've really focused on working on those skills that you've been teaching them getting better at those skills that will guarantee transfer and more speed out on the road. So it's really just a platform where people can have some fun, they can learn those skills, they can connect with a coach, and the last thing they can do is connect with each other. Because I don't know about you, but for me, being in a class with you would be great. But being in a class with you and a bunch of people that are focused on the same thing that I am, that really makes it special for me, it makes it easier for me to keep showing up for one. And for two, it gives me a reference point of how I'm stacking up against others and how I'm getting motivated by others.
Matt Dixon 47:45
Well, it's an interesting point, that concept of team because there are two things firstly, with a few things. Number one, it's more fun and more enjoyable, you know? There's a reason that people go to master swimming, that they want to go to group rides, that they want to go to a track session. That's harder to create remotely. There's -- there's -- that infuses accountability infuses enjoyment. And accountability goes -- I want to show up I want to do it. So adherence is better on top of it. But actually, that there becomes a team component where everybody contributes to the overall net effect of the team performance and individual performance. Therefore, it's a more effective way to get training. And I'll give you an example of this outside of indoor training. When I really coached a pro squad. I didn't coach 10 to 12 PROs. I coached 12 Pros as a squad, as a team, that were unified under a global way of doing -- while each of them had an individual program. But we all had a way of being, a methodology. We supported each other. And the output of that was better team performance, but also better individual performance. There was a reason if someone's left the unit that they would often struggle in the year following because they were they were missing the team. It wasn't because I had pixie dust. And that becomes really compelling. Because then also culturally, when someone joined the pro-squad a younger -- they fell into a way of doing a set of habits or (inaudible) a mindset and several else. And that becomes really compelling. So I think it's opportunistic, coming back to, to this, Velocity, of how does that happen, because that's easy for people to appreciate if they can -- let's make it up -- they can come to my session Tuesday, Thursday, 7 am Great. But that doesn't happen -- you know, not everyone has that opportunity. Our athletes are spread across the world, you got three ways of participating in a coach session. So you got the live workout, that's great. And that's easy to understand. I'm -- like me and you here right now, you know? I can see you you can see me you're getting feedback. You've also got an on-demand kind of Netflix style, where there's the coach me or whomever the Purple Patch coach is -- you coaching VisionQuest -- where you're guiding through a workout, and the platform is providing the feedback you're following along and and everything else we'll get into in a second. You also have replays, where I think this element of team can really apply as well, where people can cluster up in their timezone at a set time similar to like going to a movie theater almost and saying the movie starts at 7 am Eastern, explain that concept a little bit, because I think that's really fun as well.
Robbie Ventura 50:39
Yeah, it is fun. And it gives people the opportunity, like you said, to work to show, uh, -- to me, what gets me to show up to things on a consistent basis is other people.
Matt Dixon 50:50
Yeah.
Robbie Ventura 50:51
Coach is obviously very important. But, you know, having knowing even if I don't know that person, John from Seattle is going to be at that nine o'clock class, John and I are really kind of similar or similar types of people, I see his video on the on the screen as well. And, you know, we just have a similar vibe, I don't really don't know him that well. But that guy is going to be there. And he's going to be training and he's going to be getting better at his control. And he's going to be better at the cadence intervals. And you know, I always feel like when I go against John, I'm a little bit better on the climbing stuff but anytime the cadence gets up there, he always gets me. So I'm going to really focus on working on my cadence and see if I can at least get closer to John and this and the intervals that have high RPM. I'm terrible at high rpm. So I'm just giving you an example of what a replay class would be. We're going to play the same -- Heather Haviland is going to do the class. We're going to play -- replay her 6 pm class at 8 pm. Because that's when I can work out. And I know John works out at 8 pm as well. And we're going to get our group together there every 8 pm. And Heather's not going to talk to me potentially personally. But you know what, there's a lot of things that she's saying to Susie, in the class at the 6 pm class that I can really learn from, She's experience --, you know, that this the same things, that same coachable moment that you're telling other athletes, there's going to be people in that replay class that need that exact same feedback. And I think ultimately, it's just like a live class because you have a bunch of people doing it with you, you have a big leaderboard that you can see that you're moving up or down on the leaderboard. But at the end of the day, it's as close to a live class as you can possibly get. Because you have all the other people showing up at the exact same time. And on demand, I will tell you, the on-demand classes are really slick because as you know, when I know, sometimes a VO2 MAX workout on Tuesday is not that good for me this week, right? Maybe weeks, it's good for me, because I'm doing them every two weeks. But I need a threshold-based effort or I need a tempo-based class. And I can go through the library, pick out that tempo class, and do that one instead on that Tuesday morning. So you can -- I mean, everybody doesn't have to be doing the exact same thing all the time to really benefit from that one on one personal coaching that happens in even in those on-demand classes. So I think ultimately, the on-demand gives the flexibility to for the coaches and the athletes to get the precise class that that person needs at a given time.
Matt Dixon 53:19
I want to come back to the leaderboard a little bit and the point side of stuff, gamification, which typically, by the way, if I heard anything and gamification, I would instantly go, "Oh, my goodness, me that's not for me." And maybe that's because I'm an old poor, begrudgingly, old-school English guy. But this has been really, really interesting because it's -- I want you to dive in and explain a little bit more about the reward side of it. And actually, the construction of the workout because the leaderboard is not who's producing the most power, who does the best? You know, like, Wow, I did 300 Watts and therefore I'm better than Jenny that can only do 200 Watts. It's actually completely unrelated to that. It's really about execution of skills, for lack of a better phrase. So just dig in and give people a little bit of a context around that and how you and I build that into our respective programs.
Robbie Ventura 54:23
Yeah, selfishly, you know, there's, I wasn't the strongest and most powerful guy, I was never at the top of the leaderboard when it comes to horsepower. So why do I want to develop something that only rewards the super, super strong guys? They get enough pats on the back. Society in general loves the super strong, super fast guy. And this is not what this program is about. It's really about, like I said, rewarding the people that put the work in to develop the skills that are going to make them faster. And that really involves being consistent and working at it.
Matt Dixon 54:56
Yeah.
Robbie Ventura 54:57
And focusing on your shifting, learning to shift quickly when the terrain changes. And basically, what we reward is the amount of time you can spend in the right power zone and in the right cadence zone at times. And Matt, you do a great job of slowly bringing people into the points. I mean, it's really important that when people first try this platform, to know that it's not like any platform you've ever used before, we're going to focus on teaching you to control your pedal stroke, forcing you to have good pedal stroke, and then really forcing you to be -- be attentive to your RPM. Not every interval. Not to the point where you're, you're gonna your nerves are shot after a workout, because every single thing, you're focusing on your control. But at times, we really want to pay attention to how much time you can spend in a given area. And to be able to spend time in a given area, you have to be smooth because it's real easy to keep -- get the average, right, right? You understand, you know, intensity, variability index, in today's plan or training piece, or whatever CP -- WKL4. Basically, it's that, but really in real-time. So, we're trying to get you to control your output and keep it in a certain zone. Then if Matt wants to get creative, he can also add cadence to that equation and he can add terrain to that equation, and force you to be in a certain cadence range and a certain power range. And the more time you spend in those ranges during that interval, the more points you accrue. So it really, it forces people to pay attention to the cadence and the power goals. And it, it causes you to figure out how to manage your gears and how to manage your output. So you can do that. And that transfers directly to automatically understanding your shifting and your cadence, and your power control when you get out on the road. I mean, we've seen it first time we've been using this platform for eight or nine months, from a standpoint of the athlete's ability to ride smooth out on the road, for them to manage terrain better, for them to get out of their seat the right way, to know when to get out of your seat, that timing, that cost of getting out of your seat. When's it applicable? And when's it not? When should you be sitting and when should you be standing? The intervals that Matt can create can help you figure out exactly how to climb out of your seat the most efficient way. By using the platform correctly. And by Matt teaching you proper technique when you're out of the seat. So I think all of those things get rewarded. And to me, I love rewarding things that you can learn not rewarding power outputs that we might never be able to reach.
Matt Dixon 57:36
That's a great quote to finish there. Thank thank you so much. I Robbie, I'm going to finish with one email from my side, I'm gonna give you one more opportunity to give you anything else that we might have missed today that you that you want to portray. And, but I want to read you an email that I got just this morning. So I thought oh, this would be interesting to read to Robbie. It's from one of the Purple Patch athletes that's been probably about a month onto the program right now and unsolicited she sent me an email. Longtime Purple Patch athlete and she said, "Hey, Matt, I just happened to listen to a podcast titled 'The ways to make triathlon training more fun.' And one of the last proposals when was when doing a bike workout on XYZ platform to wave to your coaching team friends," We won't name the coaching team but "wave to your friends on that platform. And the point of the proposal was that community is really important and how good it felt when using this platform to give someone a wave." And she carries on with the email, "What a contrast to what Purple Patch live cycling by video training provides, live education, live leaderboard, live view of the class and the coach, two-way interaction, ongoing coaching and the platform actually itself providing feedback to me of when I'm getting things right. What Purple Patch has developed is lightyears beyond XYZ platform and what the podcast was talking about combining your expertise with this platform changes everything. It's amazing." I think that sums it up, doesn't it? Robbie, I think it's a pretty cool partnership.
Robbie Ventura 59:19
That warms my heart man. That, Matt, thank you so much for sharing that. Thank you so much for taking the risk of trying this out. I just, I, I'm passionate about skill development, I'm passionate about teaching speed and the nuance of cycling. And there's not everybody can use this platform. If you don't have the knowledge, the understanding of how to do that, you're kind of stuck with the rote workouts that coaches have been stuck with for years. So I really think this will help the great coaches coach at a higher level. And these athletes get the most important part of cycling, which is, which is skill development in that nuance that we talked about. So thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate it. Really appreciate you giving the platform a shot. And I am so excited for your athletes in what they're going to learn using Velocity.
Matt Dixon 1:00:07
Well, we have we have Velocity embedded as a platform into every Purple Patch program. So one-to-one coaching and individual coaching, obviously, as well as our tri-squad program. So this is an important part of Purple Patch going forward. And we're really excited. And my -- I'll finish it with this, an invitation. I'd love you to come back over the coming weeks or months and, and talk more about skill development because my guess is that there are a whole bunch of athletes and cyclists, triathletes out there that are probably listened today and thought, sh**, there's a lot to learn and I don't know much about it. So maybe we can do another session on skill development and break it down with Terrain Management and other pieces.
Robbie Ventura 1:00:51
I did I had 10 or 12 skill development things I was going to talk about today. I think we got to two of them. So I'd love to do that.
Matt Dixon 1:00:57
That let's do it because I think it can be really really insightful, but I tell ya, cracking. Really enjoyable loved, love having you on thank you so much for spending the time.
Robbie Ventura 1:01:06
Thank you very much, Matt.
Matt Dixon 1:01:08
Guys, thanks so much for joining. And thank you for listening, I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing. Head to the Purple Patch channel of YouTube, and you will find it there and you could subscribe. Of course, I'd like to ask you -- if you will subscribe also, share it with your friends. And it's really helpful if you leave a nice positive review in the comments. Now any questions that you have, let me know, feel free to add a comment and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. And in fact, as we commence this video podcast experience, if you have any feedback at all, as mentioned earlier in the show, we would love your help in helping us to improve. Simply email us at info@PurplePatchfitness.com or leave it in the comments of the show at the Purple Patch page and we will get you dialed in. We'd love constructive feedback. We are in a growth mindset as we like to call it. And so feel free to share with your friends. But as I said, let's build this together. Let's make it something special. It's really fun. We're really trying hard to make it a special experience. And we want to welcome you into the Purple Patch community. With that, I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun, keep smiling, doing whatever you do. Take care.
SPEAKERS
Robbie Ventura, Matt Dixon
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
performance, coaching, patch, purple, journey, athlete, year, life, high performance, transformation, expertise, plan, simply, improve, transform, goals, adopt, concept, lean, success