If you are a data-geek, you”™ve stumbled onto the right blog. If you love learning about the science behind your training, you should find these posts pretty interesting. If you”™re the type who likes to not only know what, but has to know WHY training is prescribed in one way rather than another, your “show me” approach to training should be appeased in our Evidence Based Cycling.
However, if you just like to ride, and not worry about heart rate, not care about your power to weight ratios, could care less about threshold & VO2, then you might not get much out of Evidence Based Cycling.
Being patterned after the practice of evidence-based medicine, we (Cycling Fusionâ„¢) are defining Evidence Based Cycling in the following way:
The practice of Evidence Based Cycling is a process of life-long, self-directed learning in which caring for our own riders creates the need for cycling relevant information about diagnosis, prognosis, training methodologies, and other cycling and health issues that we can measure and improve.
Training protocols and methods used by Indoor Cycling Instructors and Outdoor Cycling Coaches that ascribe to Evidence Based Cycling are based on the following:
Integrating individual expertise with the best available external evidence from systematic research, but neither expertise nor external evidence alone is enough.
By individual expertise we mean the proficiency and judgment that we individual instructors and/or coaches acquire through relevant experience and practice.
This expertise is also reflected in thoughtful identification and compassionate use of individual rider life situations, rights, and preferences in making decisions about their training.
By best available external evidence we mean cycling relevant research, often from the basic sciences of training, but especially from rider centered research into the accuracy and precision of diagnostic tests.
External evidence can confirm previous theories or studies, but sometimes it can invalidate previously accepted methods and understanding. In these instances, it replaces them with new ones that are more powerful, more accurate, more efficacious, and safer.
Without cycling expertise, students risk becoming tyrannized by external evidence, for even excellent external evidence may be inapplicable to or inappropriate for an individual rider.
Without current best external evidence, training methods may become rapidly out of date, sometimes to the detriment of riders.
Evidence Based Cycling converts information needs into answerable questions:
Track down, with maximum efficiency, the best evidence with which to answer them.
- From the first hand accounts of coaches, instructors and riders the diagnostic laboratory from research evidence, or other sources.
- Critically appraise that evidence for its validity (closeness to the truth) and usefulness (cycling specific applicability).
- Integrate this appraisal with our personal cycling expertise and apply it in practice.
- Evaluate our performance.
- Report back and record the results for others to benefit from.
No doubt, this definition and outline will be refined and/or expanded over time, as we continue to build a practice of Evidence Based Cycling. With the last 3 posts amounting to essentially a foundation or background for why we believe this is something worth writing about and implementing, the next post will be an example of how anyone can implement their own Evidence Based Cycling program.
Originally posted 2012-04-13 13:34:50.
- Me & My Big Mouth - April 18, 2024
- Indoor Cycling Power Research #7: Good News, Bad News - August 16, 2023
- Blog Post #10 Baseline& Performance Testing - June 29, 2023
Hello,
Looking forward to your next post.
Pat