by top Spanish triathlete and coach, Jaime Menendez de Luarca
I’ve been training triathletes for the last 12 years (as well as trying to improve my own performance for 20 years). I consider myself lucky as a triathlon coach because in all these years I’ve known the best triathlon coaches in Spain (some of them being the world's best) and learned from their training methods. The more training methods I learn, the more things I find I don’t know, and I am always wondering if I’m working with my triathletes in the best possible way.
Lately, I don’t have doubts anymore; I’M NOT WORKING IN THE BEST POSSIBLE WAY, but I’m always trying to improve it. All these years, I made things difficult by designing and prescribing training in a very technical manner, unaware that the best way was just in front of me. Simple and direct; the best measure of performance is performance itself (clichéd, I know, but easy to forget). For many years I’ve been training using heart rate and lactate as indicators of the intensity of the exercise ignoring speed, although from the beginning I used pacing in swimming as the best measure of intensity. Additionally, a few years ago I started to use pacing in running, but only for interval training sessions, as a way to add to measuring my performance.
A friend of mine (Alvaro Velazquez, www.planetatri.com, 8h30 in Ironman Distance) started to use power on the bike in 2004. He isn’t a coach, but his open mind allowed him to break his own barriers (mentally and physically) and taught me how to think out of the box. In 2006, I bought a PowerTap SL from HED (directly from USA, as back then PowerTap wasn’t available in Spain) and started to train with it. At the beginning, I wore the HR strap and then observed the power behaviour. After a few months of use, I found I was using power as my performance indicator and was secondarily observing the HR behaviour.
When I give a lecture about power training in Spain I always start it with a page with very complicated equations, etc. The audience looks at the page—scared—thinking about how boring and difficult the training is going to be. The second page is always the same; “POWER IS SIMPLE, YOU JUST NEED TO CHANGE THE CODE.” If your coach says you have to do 2 x 20´/5´ rest at 165 bpm, and you know that means threshold work, you only need to “translate” the beats per minute to watts (check out the next paragraph). In a few months, everyone will forget his/her old language about HR and will speak fluently in his/her new watt language.
Look at it this way, when you go to a gym for the first time and start a weight lifting program you don’t know how much weight you can lift, but your gym instructor tells you to lift a certain weight 10 times. If you put 75 kgs in the bar and try to lift it, you will immediately realize if you can lift 10 times that weight, or much less. It works exactly the same way with watts, but not with HR. You don’t know for how long you can be at 165 bpm, but PowerTap will show you that if you start a hill at 400 watts you will probably need to be at 250 or 300 watts in the next 15” if your last name isn’t Contador.
A beginner in methodical training system is going to take more advantages of power training than an experienced cyclist. The beginner doesn’t know his/her own limits, starting point, or potential target and using a PowerTap is going to help measure true performance based on the body’s limits. If you know your actual performance, you know how far you are from your goals and if the goals are realistic.
To use a PowerTap is as simple as putting the rear wheel in your bike, the computer on your handlebars and starting to ride. In a few sessions you will know where your limits are and what is required of you to break those limits. To help you learn those limits, start by doing a Threshold Test which can be done by following
If you are interested in improving your performance, there isn’t another gadget that will put your money to such good use. The ratio of performance gain to money invested is a thousand times better than the best aero frame or the lightest disc wheel because you are working on the engine and not the car.
Jaime Menendez de Luarca is a top Spanish triathlete (9-time Ironman) and coach. He leads several camps and clinics every year in addition to many speaking engagements across Europe. Learn more about Jaime at www.triluarca.es.