 What are five of the biggest cycling training and nutrition myths? This is what we're going to be getting into today. As a cycling coach, these are myths that I hear come up all the time. And as always, we're going to be taking a look at what the science has to say or doesn't have to say about each topic. Welcome back to another video. Cycling has its fair share of old wives' tales. And I'm only going to cover a few of them in this video, otherwise I'd be here all day. But I picked five of the most common ones that I see. Many of these have talked about before on this channel, and some I haven't, or at least not in this level of detail. Dude, can we talk about the myth that overthinking absolutely everything about bikes like you do in every single video has any correlation to how fast you actually go? I mean, just shut up and hammer already. Alright, let's jump straight into it with the first myth. Myth number one, cramping is caused by not taking in enough electrolytes. This almost seems to be common knowledge amongst cyclists and other endurance athletes. So many times have you heard that if you want to avoid cramping, you just need to take in more electrolytes. When you actually take a look at the most current research on the topic, though, this doesn't appear to be the case. This prospective study on muscle cramping in marathon runners took 82 runners and performed measurements on them before and after a race. 18% of the runners experienced cramping. These subjects were not different from the others in terms of racing performance or training status and serum electrolyte concentrations including sodium and potassium were not different between those suffering from cramps and those not affected either before or after the race, which led to the conclusion that induced muscle cramps may not be associated with fluid and electrolyte imbalance. And further research confirms these findings. Similar studies done on ultra-distance runners and Ironman triathletes come to the same conclusion. Cramping is not associated with a greater percent body mass loss or differences in serum electrolyte concentrations. This review on muscle cramping in marathon runners stated that most of the reports of muscle cramping due to electrolyte imbalance are based solely off anecdotal observations but no proposed mechanisms are offered. There's currently very little evidence that muscle cramping is caused by salty sweating, serum electrolyte changes or dehydration. Instead, whether or not you experience cramping seems to have a large genetic component and more evidence is accumulating for the altered neuromuscular control hypothesis in which fatigued muscles become more excitatory and less able to relax. Now don't get me wrong, electrolytes particularly sodium are important for hydration but not getting enough of them does not appear to be the cause of cramping. Myth number two, time spent riding indoors on the trainer counts as more time than riding outside. Someone who spent a significant amount of time riding indoors has heard this one. The most common formula that I hear is that indoor riding time is equal to one and a half times that of outdoor riding time, although I have heard people suggest that it's even more than that. This would mean that riding an hour inside is equal to riding an hour and a half outside, riding two hours inside is equal to riding three hours outside, and so on. I've scoured the scientific literature looking for any justification for this and there simply isn't one to be found. And in fact, riding inside may actually give you less bang for your buck. For example, this study testing outdoor versus indoor laboratory cycling performance found that subjects put out over 40 watts more power and were able to ride at an almost 10 beat per minute higher heart rate at the same perceived exertion when riding outdoors versus indoors. They conclude that riding outdoors may allow cyclists to ride at a higher intensity and that cyclists may want to ride at a higher perceived exertion indoors to acquire the same benefits that they would from an outdoor ride. It really doesn't take a study to figure this out. Anybody who rides with a power meter knows that there's a substantial difference in their outdoor and indoor power. You're missing the point, bro. You see, riding inside on the trainer is about as boring as watching paint dry or the first 150K of a flat Tour de France stage, so you need to find every excuse that you can to justify spending as little time doing it as possible. So make the argument that because you don't coast when you're riding inside, that's why it counts as more time. Let me ask you this. If you rode for an hour outside on a dead flat road where you never stopped pedaling, would you say that you actually rode for an hour and a half? No, of course you wouldn't. I would. At the end of the day, there are two things that affect how stressful a ride was on your body, and that is the duration or how long you rode and the intensity or how hard you rode. Whether or not you go harder or easier outside or inside or you coast or pedal the whole time, those all affect intensity, which does have an effect on the training stress of that ride. However, the only thing that affects the duration of the ride is how long you actually rode for and you don't get to add more time that you didn't do because you were riding on the trainer and it was just too boring. Yes, riding the trainer is boring and outdoor exercise has been shown to lead to better mental health and better exercise adherence than indoor exercise. So for your own mental sanity, it probably is a good idea to put a cap on how much indoor trainer riding you're willing to do, but don't pretend like you rode longer than you actually did. Myth number three, you need to consume high amounts of protein after a workout. This myth is obviously not exclusive to cycling and in fact is probably a commonly held belief amongst people in general. Hence the massive post-workout protein supplement industry. Listen, guys, you can choose to believe this dude who looks like he went through puberty three days ago or you can look at my long list of Strava KOMs. Yeah, that's what I thought. Hypergain, beast mode, mask gain or raw addition in the cupcake flavor, promo code, a drop is a drop. One word. Given this, it's really not a surprise that people think protein is so important post-workout. Here's why that's not the case. This systematic review on the effects of protein supplements for recovery found that high quality and consistent data demonstrates that there is no apparent relationship between recovery of muscle function, muscle soreness and muscle damage when protein supplements are consumed prior to, during or after about of endurance or resistance exercise. This does not mean that protein is not important. It very much is, but consuming a high protein meal or a protein shake immediately after you come back from a ride is not the optimal recovery strategy, despite what it says on the side of the tub. This meta-analysis looking at many studies on the timing of protein intake after a workout found that it didn't matter when protein was ingested. They state that these results refute the commonly held belief that timing of protein intake in and around a training session is critical to muscular adaptation. What you should be more concerned about immediately post-ride is your carbohydrate intake to replenish your body's glycogen stores or stored carbohydrate. From this article on glycogen resynthesis after exercise, they stated that to maximize glycogen resynthesis, carbohydrates should be consumed immediately after exercise. And if you wait two hours, the rate of glycogen resynthesis is reduced by 50%. Now, I can already hear the comments saying, but Dylan, I heard that carbohydrates and protein together is actually best for recovery. Well, let's investigate that. This idea that carbs and protein together is optimal became popular after studies like this that had subjects consume just carbs, just protein, or carbs and protein together after a two-hour ride. What they found was that glycogen resynthesis was fastest when carbs and protein were combined than when subjects consumed carbs only and consuming protein only performed the worse. To this day, I still see recovery supplements that advertise a 3 to 1 carbohydrate to protein ratio based off of this research. There is a problem with this study, though. The carb group in the study ingested 112 grams of carbs, and the carb plus protein group ingested 112 grams of carbs plus an additional 40 grams of protein. So it's no wonder why the carb plus protein group recovered better. They were simply eating more calories. What would happen, though, if the calories were equal? Luckily, we don't have to speculate. This study tested just that. They had three groups, one that consumed carbs and protein, one that consumed the same amount of carbs as the first group but without protein, and one that consumed just carbs but matched the calories of the first group. Following recovery, subjects ran to exhaustion at 70% of maximal oxygen uptake, and here's what they found. Just like with the previous study, carbs plus protein performed better than the same amount of carbs without protein. However, when they equalized the calories, the carb only mixture actually performed the best. The study concluded that the inclusion of protein in the solution was no more beneficial than when ingesting a more concentrated carbohydrate solution of equivalent energy content, and further research confirms these findings. This doesn't mean that you should avoid protein after a workout. That's not what I'm saying at all. What it does mean is that you should stop obsessing about pounding protein after a ride, and instead focus on where you're getting your carbohydrates from. And from what we've seen from these studies, a protein drink or protein is basically the only macronutrient present is actually the least effective for recovery. Myth number four, riding at a higher cadence is better, or there is an optimal cadence for performance. This is something that I've heard since I started cycling. I remember reading cycling magazines that told me that I need a ride at a cadence of 85 to 90. It's common advice to hear on any group ride, and even here on YouTube. This advice is likely so prevalent because some of the most successful cyclists were known for riding with a high cadence. However, this argument falls apart because you can easily find examples of great cyclists who love to mash. Regardless of what the pros do though, what does the science say will work best for you? Studies looking into optimal cadence routinely come up with mixed results. For example, this study tested pedaling at 84 rpm in a sitting position and 41 rpm in both a standing and sitting position. They found a significantly lower heart rate VO2 and ventilation while sitting at a high cadence concluding that a high cadence is more economical. This is contradicted by this study that had subjects perform a five mile time trial at their preferred cadence, high cadence, or low cadence. They found that the low cadence condition performed the best and the difference was substantial over the high cadence condition. This study on the effect of cadence on efficiency in cycling concluded that pedaling cadence did not have a dramatic effect on efficiency at all. So what gives? Why can't we seem to find an optimal cadence that everybody performs best at? Shockingly or really not that shocking at all, the answer is that everyone's different. Some prefer a high cadence and others prefer low. This review article on cadence summed the research up nicely stating that a single optimal cadence for all cyclists does not exist or indeed a single optimal cadence for an individual cyclist. The cadence at which perceived exertion is minimized would seem to reflect the optimal trade-off between the most metabolically efficient cadence and the most mechanically efficient cadence. Essentially, whatever cadence feels the most comfortable to you is the one that'll give you the best performance because minimizing perceived exertion is a huge part of performing at your best. This varies wildly from person to person, but can also vary between different cycling situations. For example, cadence generally increases as intensity increases. How hard you go, how fatigued you are, whether or not you're on a climb or on the flat, these all can affect your cadence and the research suggests that that's fine. Just spin as fast as you're comfortable with and that will give you the best result. Myth number five, stretching improves performance, recovery, and helps prevent injury. I was incredibly surprised when I looked into the research for this one. Forget cycling, this is something that my youth league soccer coach told me when I was seven and then I've been told ever since then. The benefits of stretching is just kind of something that we all take for granted. Now, whether or not we actually do it is a different question, but could stretching just be a waste of time? I'm beginning to sound like a broken record here, but let's see what the science has to say. This study on stretching effects on cycling efficiency had subjects perform tests at 85% of VO2 max until exhaustion with and without pre-exercise stretching. The results showed that stretching before the test actually decreased the time to exhaustion. They concluded that a preceding stretching routine significantly decreased exercise efficiency and time to exhaustion during heavy intensity. That's right, stretching before your ride may not only be a waste of time, but may actually decrease your performance. The study explains that stretching decreases a muscle stiffness. This is a problem because a stiffer muscle tendon unit can actually produce more force. This of course is just one study, but the balance of evidence points in the same direction. This 2012 men analysis looked at 104 studies on stretching and found that static stretching before exercise has negative acute effects on maximal muscle strength and explosive muscular performance, and these findings are universal regardless of the subject's age, gender, or training status. Okay, so you shouldn't stretch before your ride, but most people aren't doing that anyway. They stretch after their ride to help with their recovery. Surely stretching after a workout is beneficial, right? Again, this doesn't appear to be the case. This study on whether post-exercise stretching relieves soreness had subjects perform a 20 minute step test to induce soreness. Subjects were then randomly assigned into one of three groups, one that didn't stretch at all, one that only stretched the left leg, and one that stretched both legs. They found no difference in soreness between the stretching and non-stretching groups one, two, or three days after exercise, leading to the conclusion that stretching did not alleviate exercise-induced muscle soreness either acutely or chronically. Again, let's not take one study's word for this. This systematic review on stretching found that stretching before or after exercise does not confer protection from muscle soreness. This review came to the same conclusion stating that the studies produced very consistent findings. They showed there was little or no effective stretching on the muscle soreness experienced in the week after physical activity. One study on the effect of stretching on repeated sprint performance actually found that static stretching of the lower limbs during recovery periods between efforts may compromise repeated sprint ability. Okay, stretching may not help with soreness, but you still gotta do it to avoid injury. Well, maybe not. This study on stretching on the prevention of lower limb injuries took 1500 army recruits and split them into a stretching group and a control group. The stretching group performed static stretching exercises in their warm-up during 12 weeks of training while the control group did not. The results showed no significant difference in the prevalence of injuries between the two groups. And multiple reviews all come to the same conclusion. Stretching does not affect the incidence of injury. Now there is some evidence that suggests that stretching may help with the prevention of musculotendinous injuries. However, this is far from conclusive and musculotendinous injuries are not usually the injuries that plague cyclists. Now look, if you enjoy stretching or you find it relaxing, then go for it. Just don't do it right before you ride. I can already hear people in the comments section saying that stretching is the only reason they're able to ride a bike and that if they didn't stretch, they'd be in constant pain and bedridden and also that it cures cancer. Great, continue stretching. There may even be certain types of injuries where stretching is the best medicine. However, just know that the research suggests that stretching isn't improving your performance, your recovery, and isn't even offering that much protection from injury. You'd probably find that if you took a step back from stretching, many of the benefits are just placebo. And this really demonstrates why we need to look at the evidence for our beliefs, not just for stretching or for what cadence to ride at or even for cycling in general. I'm talking about for life in general. You may be surprised to learn that certain things that you think are common knowledge actually have very little evidence to back them up. If there's anything that I've learned from researching these topics, it's that that happens way more often than you might think. Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, leave a like and a comment. Be sure to subscribe for weekly science-based training videos just like this one and share this video with your cycling friends. I'll see you in the next one.