A collection of podcasts that I’ve found interesting over time on fitness, training or nutrition. Some are extremely technical, and some fairly straight forward. I’ve included some of my commentary that I’ve shared with other coaches and some of my athletes. They are in no particular order:

  1. Anyone can qualify for Kona. Although geared toward triathlon, some good general concepts on limiters and VO2 max trainability. https://podcasts.apple.com/si/podcast/anybody-can-be-kona-qualifier-genetics-is-not-your/id1209821045?i=1000441749964

  2. Improve your running speed and performance. Not necessarily what I’d consider one of my favorites, but pretty practical overall. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/that-triathlon-show/id1209821045?i=1000453394957

  3. Sports psychology https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/faster-podcast-by-flo-episode-9-sports-psychology-master/id1368799871?i=1000417213893

  4. These three go together… and somewhat mirror what Alan Couzens said. This is a sports scientist who really focuses on (or made popular) the idea of “polarized” training… keeping easy work easy and doing hard work hard… and the “ideal” ratio is 90% easy and only 10% hard. He feels that it’s not productive to spend time between LT1 (lactate threshold point 1… where lactate starts increasing more significantly above baseline) and LT2 (where lactate is no longer steady state… it builds fast meaning you can’t spend a lot of time there. FTP tests estimate this point). So, depending on where LT1 is, he advocates not doing tempo or sweet spot work. I don’t necessarily think this is optimum per se… but there are a lot of valid points here. The reason I say this is Seiler’s hedges at is that when he starts talking about transition points… sometimes it seems to work up to around 80% intensity (on the bike), which would be low tempo. Likewise, his threshold workout cutoffs seem to extend a little lower than threshold too, when limited by HR high limits (from a practical standpoint). Still… I think it’s good to understand, as well as understanding some of the limitations. From my experience, I think that tempo and sweet spot work can improve stamina (ability to hold intermediate power longer) as well as bumping FTP. They may not necessarily improve VO2 max, but they can help increase your FTP relative to VO2 max. And these are somewhat practical operating points for long-course triathletes and ultra-cyclists. A 70.3 bike is executed typically in a low tempo range, from 78-83% of FTP. Practicing this… getting your body and mind around holding this for several hours… provides race specific benefits. Again, I do think there is value in understanding this methodology as a whole, and the importance of not getting too overboard with too much high intensity training. Three podcasts, in order:

  5. Now on the other end of the spectrum… these podcasts sort of go together. These tend to focus more training on that middle area, and some of the benefits… particularly around improving fat oxidation rates. Being a better fat burner significantly improves the margin for error on nutrition when doing long events. If you are a high carb burner, you need to take in a lot of carbs while you ride or run, increasing the risk of GI distress. These discussions lead me to adopting the INSCYD testing methodology for some athletes, with the goal of helping people becoming better fat burners.

  6. A good one on nutrition myths with Asker Jenkendrup. He is the person behind mysportscience.com… a ton of great info there. https://www.trainingpeaks.com/coach-blog/coachcast-nutrition-myth-busting-with-asker-jeukendrup/

  7. Nutrition / Diet / Metabolism:

  8. Male / Female differences in performance and nutrition:

    1. Dr. Stacey Sims: She’s a well known scientist / researcher who has focused on the differences between men and women. She does a nice job of explaining how menstrual cycles impact training, as well as some strategies for mitigating some of the differences. High progesterone (closer to the end of the cycle before progesterone / estrogen drops) can impair intensity capacity, reducing power output, as well as impacting core temp and possibly heat tolerance. Understanding some of the potential impacts of normal hormone changes can better help you set expectations or make adjustments in training as necessary (e.g. if you are impacted and the schedule is for sweet spot work, dropping to tempo may make more sense). She also covers the potential impact from oral contraceptives… with the short version that they can negatively impact overall athletic performance (not making a recommendation with this, just summarizing her comments). Here are some of the podcasts I’ve listened to from Dr Sims that may be of interest.

    2. Dr. Kirsty Elliote-Sale.

      • Energy availability, and menstrual disorders. I thought this was an extremely informative podcast… I’d put this up with the first Sim’s podcast above and highly recommend listening to it. Having menstrual cycles makes it easier to identify low energy availability (meaning you are consuming less energy than you are expending, at a point where it’s detrimental to performance and possibly health), through observation of variation in cycles: https://sigmanutrition.com/episode280/

      • She has recently done some great articles on the impact of menstrual cycles and oral contraceptives, that may be less extreme (e.g. the impacts are very individual specific, and the impacts are generally small):

    3. Other non-podcast sources:

  9. Super deep dive into “a” theory on improving CV performance, if it is a limiter. This is a 4 part series. This can be slow at times, but an interesting opinion… but you really have to be willing to get through a lot of technical talk:

  10. Strength.

  11. Cardiovascular / Heart.

  12. Muscle Fiber / Training.

  13. Gear, efficiency, aero misc”