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Allen Lim: Power Potpourri

By Coach Fred Matheny

Earlier in this series on Allen Lim, we presented some of his quirky (his word) training approaches. Lim is an expert in physiology, human performance and sports nutrition. He’s the founder of Skratch Labs.

Here are a few more of Lim’s eclectic training dictums:

  • All of coaching boils down to instructing riders to either push harder or pedal faster.
  • Humans are lousy engines. Most humans are about 22% efficient at best, while camels are 75% efficient.
  • Most cyclists don’t take the sport seriously enough so they don’t improve as much as they could. Riders should approach each challenge on the bike as if they were fighting against their own imminent death.
  • Choosing the right training load is like preparing a batch of popcorn. If you correctly plan the amount and timing of your training load, you’ll pop the kernels perfectly. But if you do too much, you’ll burn the popcorn. Too little, and the kernels won’t even pop.
  • It’s a great time to be a cyclist because, thanks to power meters, we are the only endurance athletes who can measure power output directly. Swimmers, runners and Nordic skiers have to guess.
  • It’s important to analyze your workout or race as soon as it’s over. Power data is important but so is a subjective analysis. I ask my riders the following questions immediately post-race or post-workout:

How did you feel?

How tired are you?

What happened?

  • It’s not just about the numbers. I train my athletes by feel, but then I monitor their training with scientific tools.

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