If you are looking to take your cycling training routine up a notch, join us for an exclusive YouTube live broadcast with Optimum Derby MD Tom Heeley.
Tom will offer top-drawer training tips designed to enhance your performance and prevent injuries.
Whether you’re a beginner or someone that has been cycling for years, Tom’s expertise will guide you some ideas that can elevate your performance.
We’ll be discussing how best to nail an effective warm-up routines with stretches and techniques to prepare your muscles, while reducing the risk of strain and injuries.
We will look at strength and conditioning exercises and an aspect of cycling training that is often overlooked, your post-ride recovery.
With Tom’s vast experience of dealing with cyclists at a high level, he will also pass on valuable tips for your nutrition and hydration both before and after a ride.
Have your questions ready for our live Q&A and we’ll see you there.
CHAPTERS:
0:00 Cycling tips coming up
0:51 Tom’s background in cycling expertise
2:34 Training and nutrition tips for beginners
4:06 What to eat before my ride
5:18 Use your watch on your ride
7:12 The importance of hydration
8:01 Intermediary training tips
9:31 Warm-up for cycling experts
10:46 Tips for experts – Zone 2
14:13 What food and drink do the pros take in?
15:28 What to do after a long ride?
17:15 What cycling injuries are common?
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hello and welcome to Optimum Derby live uh wherever you’re joining us today whether that be LinkedIn or YouTube you are very welcome my name is Martin croen I’m today’s host and I’m joined today by Tom Healey the MD of optimum Derby Tom how are you doing yeah good thank you it’s good to catch you been a few weeks but it’s h yeah it’s great to catch up again mine yeah um if you’re watching on YouTube today and you’re not subscribed please do so if you’re watching us on LinkedIn it’s great to have you with us uh today we’re going to be talking about some uh a thing that many people are doing at this time of year and that’s some cycling anytime you go out on the country lanes at this time of year there’s plenty of uh people pedaling their ways around the countryside and and Tom you’ve had a big background in cycling today so just tell us a bit about um your cycling background before we crack on with some tips and uh helpful hints that people can improve their training and their performance during practices and races yeah absolutely so um first probably first bit of uh sort of cycling history for myself was this is going back years ago when I first started came out of University I worked on a cycling trip from London to Monte Carlo amateur cyclists and I learned an awful lot having not worked a lot in cycling before learn an awful lot about saddle height saddle position um I sat in the van with a mechanic for like eight or nine days he he taught me loads about Cy just bikes in general um and then from then worked with a couple of um different cycling teams and um again like um the odd individual cyclist um from Semi-Pro to Pro level and then all the way down to sort of like um amateur cyclist completing big longdistance challenges or sort of triathlons or um some Val drone bits as well sure okay you like a ride yourself don’t you have you ever thought about pushing that any further or work got in the way um not on a serious serious level I’ve got a few challenges I want to do this year I’d like to do well I’m gonna I’m going to do coast to coast in July um and then there’s a couple of big hitters next year um and it’s all just kind of prepare preparing for that so next year’s challenge one’s going to be the Fred Wht which um is up in the late District which is pretty tough sort of very hilly sort of event and then the other one is in France about June July August time next year so just need to keep an eye on those couple but yeah just preparing for that and planning for that really so not really anything structured structured but just kind of a couple of little challenges I want to do okay great we thought we’d have a look at today’s tips and hints from time in two ways of beginners for starters and then developing those ideas a little bit more for intermediaries and um and expert cyclist so Tom let’s start with uh training tips for for for beginners um what advice can you give those people and and I include sort of nutrition and diet in that as well I think a bit like this is probably simple one but a lot for a lot of sports is don’t expect to kind of Hit the top early and don’t expect to kind of like be able to go out and straight away do 20K rides so 20K doesn’t sound an awful lot but if you think about sort of your running um you would do it to sort of couch to couch to 5K and that might take you a few weeks same sort of thing with your cycling just just a matter of building things up and taking slow and steady and um again just getting used to the equipment getting used to your saddle getting used to sort of your pedals um and after a few weeks then you can maybe start to tweak a few little things if you’re not quite happy with XYZ but certainly just get practicing even like on a local park with your cleats um and setup and and what what what equipment you feel you need you know there’s some Essentials you want some padded shorts you want some um cleed shoes to clip into the pedals and that might be about it and a water bottle and that might be about it you know to begin with um and then after that you can start kind of playing around with a few little extras and accessories and other things to to add in but yeah certainly just take your time and enjoy it really try and get off the main roads try and pick some nice country roads and probably pick a HB or a cafe or something to stop out on the W you know just nice suddenly sounding good yeah like a bit of C that’s always makes every ride great and talking of the food side of things if it’s just me and I’ve just gone out and B my first bike and I’m starting this Sunday just to do go out and do LLY 10K or something too early to worry about what I eat or even from that stage is it good to get into some good habits yeah yes and no I think um good habits are probably things like not eating too close so especially for sort of like beginners not eating too close before you go out on your ride so giving yourself at least an hour maybe even an hour and a half before before you go out on your ride um and thinking that that that whatever you’ve eat in that short period of time you’re going to your blood is going to start digesting or your your body’s going to start digesting that and therefore that requires blood and energy so you don’t want to take that away from your riding time and leave yourself with a stitch or something similar so give yourself a decent Chunk in in front and then if you’re doing anything under an hour and under an hour and 10 15 you probably don’t need to worry too much about what you’re fueling your body with whilst you’re out and about maybe just take a quick banana just in case you kind of have a a mishap and you get a flat tire and you need something just to kind of keep you going for a little bit longer but yeah you shouldn’t really be needing too much in sort of those short hour hour and 15 RS yeah um just before you start what sort of warm-ups good for cycling hour or so hour and a half two hours on the bike yeah I think some nice easy stuff is um and again a lot a lot of you will have um a garming watch or an Apple Watch or or something similar so even if you just use the first 10 to 15 minutes just to warm up so from leaving the house or or meeting your mates or whatever it may be try and look at the watch a little bit if you can and just kind of look at zone two um try and stick in that zone two stage um and then put a few little efforts in that will bump you up to zone three zone four and then just drop back in again and and over the next 10 15 minutes that will just kind of build your uh body temperature um climatize yourself to the bike a little bit more and also just get blood pumping around the body so ju just use that first even just even if you’re just going to meet your mates 10 15 minutes away use that use that as your warm up um and just to kind of get yourself going okay and during the time you’re on your bike even though you are a beginner and you just started going um where’s your focus watch on that bike you know we’re talking talking long long spells of time for people that are used to short games football rugby or whatever if you start gam to cycling is that time scale important to have the right frame of mind while you’re doing it I think um I I think just being comfortable is probably the first thing Martin you know just just it takes you a little bit of time to adjust to maybe the sadle height and maybe the bars and what sort of like way you want to be so and also the seats aren’t particularly comfortable so even with a set of paded shorts on you’re going to take a little bit of time to adjust and adapt and certainly know that even if I take a couple of weeks off the bike or off the off the indoor W bike and then jump back on even with a pair of padded shorts on it’s still not comfortable so you have to adapt you do you certainly do have to adapt so even again just from a physical point of view just from a comfort point of view just take your time to build it up and just go nice and steady yeah after the race just stay hydrated or ride I mean I’m not talking races we’re talking about beginners yeah and again especially like on a hot sunny day um things the weather started to get a little bit better and like you said you probably every time you turn a corner onto a country road as a middle-aged man in ler just kind of like cruising around um so yeah especially when the weather is getting a little bit better like this and the evenings are getting lighter sort of yeah just keeping yourself hydrated um that might be just a bottle of sort of a 5007 750 mil bottle whilst you’re on your ride and then just again something similar when you finish um and to be honest for those shorter distances um water or squash will be fine anything a bit longer than that you can start kind of supplementing with maybe um some tablets so like electrolyte tablet or um like an energy tablet a glucose sort tablet okay good point to move up move up a notch as well and now start talking about intermediaries and and people that you know genuinely involved in races and and trying to challenge themselves at the weekend so if we move on to those guys now we’ll go back to the start again any training ideas training tips for those sort of people yeah I think I think certainly for those guys it’s you start talking about s having a proper coach I think for th for those sorts of um if you start to take things seriously and it’s something an event you’re seriously training for you’re looking forward to an event and you’re not just kind of like casually leisurely sort of like building bit of Fitness on a bike if there a if there’s an event that you’re training towards and trying to hit and a goal then I think certainly either doing some research online and finding a program or training program that helps or um having a chat with a coach and building a little plan that will fit your time frames and again unless you’re an elite athlete you need to work that around day-to-day life just general things you know working um socializing so you don’t want it to take take over everything but you need your sessions to be specific and that’s not going to be just smashing out a 30k every time it might be some long endurance rides in the saddle or it might be just some short little in full sessions so certainly having a variety of those sessions is really useful okay good time the minute folks to tell you that if you’re watching us live today and you do have any questions while we are on live please pop them on and uh and we’ll do our best to answer any that that crop up joing the show Tom let’s move up to the warm-up for experts uh you know last time half an hour before the race gets going or a lengthy ride gets going what’s the best thing for them to do again I think very similar to very similar to amateur to be honest Maring this I think if you’ve got a an a race or you’ve got an event coming up again if you’ve got the opportunity to take a set of rollers or even take um words have gone from my mouth but yeah a set of rollers basically just have a little warm-up or even once the event starts if you’ve got chance to kind of go down the road and come back again or any opportunity just to sit on your bike for sort 15 20 minutes and again put some little efforts in and some intervals in just to kind of raise your heart rate and get yourself going the big thing there is trying to do that as close to the event as possible you don’t want to do that an hour out from the event because okay you warm up and then cool down again so yeah try and do that as close to event as POS and then again same sort of thing if you’re going out on a long ride from home or you’re going out for for a ride and a training ride use that sort of first 10 15 20 minutes just as a warmup so just build yourself up build your intensity up kind of just gradually go through the steps um and also just put some little efforts in there and intervals in there just even on the flat flat surfaces just to kind of raise your heart rate drop it back down raise the heartway drop back down and then sort of 15 20 minutes in off you go and get get really into your ride okay and when you are into those rides they’re pretty lengthy and there’s some serious rides ahead for people that do take this seriously how have you approached the things you’ve done in the past and what tips of those can you pass on to other people I think a lot of tips sort of that have been given to me or I’ve sort of learned through working with different sort of triathletes or different sports is um and if you if you go away from this and read up zone two will come back a million times over so um zone two is based on your heart rate so um if you take a general rule of thorm if you look at sort of 220 minus your age and then it’s percentage based off that so zone five is is close to your Max and pretty much up to your Max and then zone two is a is a bit more than just kind of U you still can have a conversation can hold a hold a conversation well you’re not massively out of breath but you just steadily sort of exercising and moving along zone two is he’s kind of talked about as bit of the Holy grow and and reason being is you’re able to sustain a long duration of effort but not maxing out too high um if you go out and try and exert yourself in zone five close to your maximum heart rate you’re just not going to be able to do it for very long periods of time so zone two is key but that doesn’t mean you can’t Peak up and PE and drop back down again um and that’s where the coaching sort of helps um to plan some sessions in to kind of factor different heart rates and heart rate variability as well okay and during the race it’s always fascinating me as a non cyclist the the food and drink that people take on board whilst they’re doing these things I always seeing trying to look at wondering what they’re taking on what uh what what are those things and and what do you advise yeah mad um a lot of food so again sort of anything over that sort of hour hour and 15 sort of window that we talked about previously anything sort of beyond that you need to start fueling your body body for to to you’re running out of reserves really so you need to start fueling your body whilst you’re on the bike so some simple things are like glucose and put those in your um put those in your water bottle um okay that could be with a with an electrolyte tablet as well so sometimes you’ll get like a carbohydrate um capsule and that’ll come with electrolytes as well and just drop that in so you aiming for about 90 grams of carbs an hour okay which is actually quite a lot if you start adding quite a lot a mediumsized banana is 30 most of those tablets are about 30 and then you still need 30 from somewhere else and that might be an energy gel it might be the equivalent of like a a squares bar that you could you could make yourself at home um but you’re looking at three of those an hour which again takes time to adapt to so don’t expect to probably go straight in and be able to guzzle and eat all that and still be able to f feel comfortable on a bike you might just go for two and then the next time you go out and ride just try and increase that a little bit each time yeah but presumably crucial to keep taking these things on because the easiest thing to do is to not do it because you’re concentrating on what you’re doing and it requires some effort to take on and the worst thing is if you’re hungry so if you’ve got to the point of hunger it’s too late you know okay you need to almost eat regardless of whether you feel hungry or not because otherwise it’ll catch you up and but yeah you’ll just get caught you get caught and then that’s the worst feeling in the world and when you’ve kind of Hit the end and you’ve got no energy and you pedaling and you’re going nowhere you feel like you’re just going backwards it’s horrible horrible feeling and when you’re talking about the the amount of carbs intake there what what do these guys do in the in the major races you toy Frances you jro ditalia what are they taking on because the races are hours and hours long and you just explained how challenging it is to maintain an hours worth of required intakes yeah so these guys all they’ll follow a similar routine they might they may even be up to like 120 grams of carbs an hour so that’s again sort of you’re touching on four four bananas there an hour that’s a heck of a lot of food just in a shortish space of time um but they’ll have uh Riders within their group and they’ll have people stationed on the road who will drop off bags of food so for their group of riders or for their five or six riders in their team somebody will grab that bag and in that bag there’ll be things like homemade sort of black y the equivalent of Rice Krispies or squares bars there’ll be again bananas energy gels um tubes of sort of like glucose tablets to pass around fresh fresh water bottles made up um yeah it kind of varies and again they’ll have a really good diet from the nutritionist in their team who will maybe work with the local Chef or work they’ll have a chef that travels with the team who’ll provide quality food sort of beginning of the day um to F them for the rest of the day and also recover in the evenings as well okay I just finished I finished a long race what am I going to do now is it a gradual warm down is it some food is it rest what’s the most important to get back to where you want to be quickly absolutely all of those three so um if you if you’re repeating efforts and sort of races day after day so a little bit like the Tour of France or the jro that just been on then something like an ice bath would be really useful just to kind of like reduce some of that information and some of that stress um but if you just training oneoff event I wouldn’t bother with the ice bath I’d just probably allow your body to recover because those ad ations that your body will make then will then progress you onto some further rides later down the line however if you repeating sessions day after day you need that sort of hit from the I fuel so yeah so you need to replace the fuel so you need to go carbohydrates and protein again um and complement that with some vegetables and some nutrients so again something really simple like chicken pasta with some tomato sauce or like a um vegetable based um sort of Ratatouille um type meal um and then yeah hydration again and a good quality sleep so um anything towards your eight hours of sleep is perfect um anything less than that and again less than six hours and you start kind of getting some stress responses we always Overlook that side of things don’t really tend to you can put whatever fuel you likeing but unless you’re resting your body at night it’s it’s an uphill battle literally oh yeah literally yeah it’s it’s um yeah it’s mad and again a lot of the smart watches these days will sort of give you ideas on how well you slept or how much SLE sleep you’ve had and some body battery scores and and sort of levels of fatigue and things like that which which are good just take them with a bit of a pinch of salt but they’re really useful to have and keep an eye on and just kind of see how you’re training overtraining not enough sleep what what quality sleep you’re having as well yeah let’s wrap up today Tom with some of the injuries you see from cyclists at the clinic there at Optimum Derby what do people come in with and um um how easy are they to treat yeah probably two or three big hitters I think one of them um tends to be like an it B problem so like on the outside of your knee so just from that repeated stress and being in that sort of hunch position your hips don’t get a massive stretch and don’t get um uh go into extension an awful lot so don’t go behind you an awful lot so tends to be that your glutes end up tightening up and particularly around the outside of your hip so some good stretches around there would be really useful to try and relieve some of the ITB stress or the the lateral or the outside your knee pain that you might be getting yeah lower back so a lot of people will suffer with lower back pain again just from that CR outch position and that sort of hunched over position so again stretching hit flexors is really key um again especially if you’re clicked in and you’re going to be picking up and pulling through on the pedals um really useful to work on again some exercises and some stretches around that area key to help the cyclist and then Ken of the last thing is just making sure your bike set up for the right height probably going get a bike fit if you’re starting to to train towards an event just because being in the bike for such a long period of time kind of looking through neck starts to get stti or hands and wrists start to a little bit sore from being on the on the handlebar so um yeah upper body neck and neck and sort of hands are the main ones but again sometimes that just comes down to the bike fit um and going and getting that sorted that will correct a few little things in there fantastic a good place to end there Tom thank you very much that’s fascinating really interesting to you talk about that um if you’re a king Sportsman or or woman and you haven’t subscribed to our YouTube channel yet please do so there’s a whole host of information covering various Sports and injuries uh topics that we’ve discussed in the past on there ones such as uh marathon training if you’re into your longdistance events and um uh you do that have a look on there and see what’s missing from your marathon training um injuries with shoulders uh recent one we’ve done recently with Tom there uh which is really interesting and then we just touched on it there the back pain that you can get associated with cycling um if you’re suffering from that or any sort of sciatica um there’s a really good 15 20 minutes of Tom giving some hints and tips there on uh how to notice when you get sciatica and how to recover from it thank you very much for joining us today here on opum Derby live that just lead me Martin cross and say thank you very much for joining us today just finally if you want to find out more about Optimum check out our website the address is at bottom of the screen at the moment uh we just said to subscribe to the YouTube channel and hit the notification Bell if you want to know when we’re on live next and if you want to get in touch with Tom directly for any uh hints tips or training methods to do with cycling or any other sport that you may be involved with there’s Tom’s email address um Tom thank you very much for joining us again today we’ll catch up with you soon mate all the best thank you very much cheers M thanks you time cheers mate and thank you all for joining us today here on Optimum Derby live all the best and we’ll see you soon bye bye