 The day where I had to watch a chance to do another round. You can see in there as well, you can see the screen, just so you know. You can see you're not getting a block in the view of my fat. No, no. Grab the lob handle, that's what I'm waiting for. Soon, soon. Oh, so you don't grab one there? No. Okay. Did you want that one? Not really. That's the one I've been sweating about. Was I flexing then? No. I'm about to start an all-out five-minute effort up Gindia Drive, then I'm going to have a 10-minute recovery, and I'm going to do a 20-minute effort up Gindia Drive and continue on. And in the past, when I've done these tests, I've said things like, so I'm about to start an hour of flogging, and I've got to tell you, I'd rather stick my dick in a blender. But in 2023, my friends, I'm going to be doing more gratitude practice. For example, this morning I am very grateful for the fact that I get to use both my legs fully functional and also push my heart as far as I can take it. So, let's get into it. Five down. 20 to go. Time to get some calves in. Not sponsored. I bought this from the local supermarket for half price, and it's actually really terrible. I don't recommend them. Always make sure you get down a lot of fluid when you have a gel. Can't remember the exact amount, but according to Steph Cronin, I'll put it somewhere on the screen. That's 20 done. It's a different type of hurt. That one. What's my biggest issue with my diet currently? At the moment, you're not fueling enough or eating enough at the beginning of the day. So, what that is resulting in is when you get to that mid-afternoon time, you're fatigued, add in some work stress or life stress or just general day-to-day sort of activity. Your body's craving, you know, quick fuel, and then you're looking for carbohydrates and you're eating more carbohydrates at the back end of the day, and then that's also leading into a bigger dinner. So, let's have a sneak peek at some of my dirty habits and we'll start off by when I pick my kids up from school, which is every other day. And what we'll do is typically go grab a treat. And nine times out of ten, I'll grab a bag of veggie chips or even better yet my favourite $10 special avocado oil chips and I'll smash the whole bag. If I'm not picking the kids up from school, normally around the 3pm mark, I'll head into the kitchen and unleash on crackers, hummus, avocado, dark chocolate, and so forth. At dinner or whenever there is a platter in front of me, such as at mum and dad's every Sunday lunch, I will fill my plate up twice, sometimes three times. In the evenings, I love a cold beer. Normally a strong one too, IPA 6%. Plus, that's what you're out. And since moving here to the Sunshine Coast about four years ago now, because of the heat, I've got into a bad habit of having one most evening, sometimes sitting there watching the laundry dry, which works out to be about five to seven beers per week. And a few nights per week, I'll grab a tub of coconut ice cream and I'll sit there with Ruby, watching the grassy next generation and I'll smash half of that thing. So back to Steph. So what I'm going to try and do is fuel you more in the morning. That's fine. That's going to support your performance on the bike, but it's also going to support your energy levels over the day and then your hunger and appetite over the day so that by mid-afternoon and by dinner time, you're going to have enough fuel there but enough food there, I should say, but not so much that it's then going to lead into a surplus or energy surplus. You've got a really good starting base. So there's definitely room for movement and you'll find you'll likely lose most of your body fat from your abdominal area. But you've got a really good starting base. So kilogram-wise, it's hard to say based on how much lean muscle you either maintain or build. I would say from a body fat perspective, you've got anywhere from three to five kilos worth of body fat. I'm thinking that you're probably going to lose around seven millimetres worth of skin folds to equate to roughly about that sort of three, five kilos and because you're quite low in your skin folds, again, as an estimation, about two and a half mils is going to give you a kilo worth of subcutaneous body fat and then you're going to lose some visceral body fat at the same time. That might be equivalent to three kilos on the scales. However, that might actually be less if you're going to build some muscle at the same time and that's going to be based on your training program and obviously the amount of lean muscle that your body's capable of building. So I reckon it's been almost two years since I've done a vlog series on this channel where I'm kind of bringing you along on a journey and I apologize. It's been that long though because I've been myself in front of that thing over there which is unfortunately a computer screen trying to get a business off the ground being the Road Cycling Academy but the good news is over the past couple of years I've been able to hire some really good people, people that I trust and it's taken a lot of weight off my shoulders meaning I can run more series like this on the channel. I can give myself some time back and I kind of feel these are the best videos, best series to follow where somebody is being open, vulnerable and I can bring you along on the journey and we can all learn as we go through the process. So in my opinion, my biggest weakness as a cyclist is efficiency and I'm conscious you can break efficiency into multiple compartments. You've got sitting on the bike aerodynamics. You've got bike handling skills, efficiency in a bunch and we will delve into those as we go through this series which I'm forecasting to be about 12 to 16 weeks in length but for me the low-hanging fruit particularly from a data perspective something that we can sort of measure at the start and at the end of the series is power to weight. Now quickly for those of you who might be unaware power to weight is simply the amount of power you can generate while pedaling in wattage and I get my wattage reading from my power meter pedals divided by your body weight in kilograms so we can actually get a power to weight ratio for different segments which we'll discuss now. Now at the start of this video you saw me doing an all-out five-minute effort and then a 20-minute all-out effort and the day prior to that I also did three all-out five-second sprints and one minute as hard as I could go. In other words I now have a good idea on my current neuromuscular all-out sprint power my anaerobic power my VO2 max power and my threshold power and I also weighed myself at steps during the day and at home the next morning less the foam weight of 200 grams I'm about 78.4 kilograms which did surprise me because typically with this amount of weight in the past I've been closer to 80 kilograms and I haven't really been weighing myself a lot in the last couple of years so I feel probably over the last couple of years I've lost further muscle mass notably my upper body where I have legacy weight from going to the gym for a number of years. Now in my training software today's plan I also have all my history all my history from when I started training with power in 2013 which includes a couple of years when I was racing with an amateur team in form racing so there's a lot of data there for us to be able to reflect on and ultimately what I want to do in this series at the age of 41 now turning 42 in July is to beat my all-time power-to-weight numbers for you guessed it 5 second, 1 minute 5 minute and 20 minute in other words I want to get fitter than I've ever been before on the bike this year and look I really don't want this to come across like a show-off thing or anything like that I am fully aware as a recreational and amateur road cycles which is what I am I am middle of the pack and in terms of efficiency on the bike I have a lot of work to do this is really for me about self-improvement and I'm hopeful for some of you out there a good learning opportunity as I bring subject matter experts into the fold such as Steph Cronin the sports dietician Neil Stambry for another bike fit with me Aaron Turner a cycling specific strength and conditioning coach and my cycling coach Ryan Thomas that's right while I technically am a cycling coach myself I want to have that accountability and I also truly believe Ryan is a much better coach than myself and I'm going to learn a lot through the process so the data what we have in front of us here which I'll provide a link to below it's the official power to weight spreadsheet from Hunter Allen the co-author of the famous book Training and Racing with a Power Meter Hunter and his team have analysed thousands of athletes data over the years and myself and you too can see where you sit relative to novice right through to world championship level from a power to weight perspective across as you might have guessed 5 seconds 1 minute, 5 minute and 20 minute meaning in addition to see where I rank against my previous personal best power to weight numbers in this series I can also see where I'm sitting relative to the general population. Now my numbers from the past not surprisingly too are from when I was racing with Inform in 2014 and one from 2016 just quickly relating to that data as well regarding the FT number. I did ask Hunter overnight he came back to me thank you very much Hunter just trying to understand whether they had extracted that data as people's best 20 minute and taken 95% of that to get functional threshold power a rough average for your hour power which a lot of people do or was it the fatiguing 5 minute protocol first like what I did then the all out 20 minute and then taking 95% of that or was it people's full hour and surprisingly it was people's full hour or their about whether it was 55 minutes 58 minutes as long as it's around about an hour but he did stress if you want to replicate that as best as you can without doing the full hour because it is impractical that you must do the 5 minute all out fatiguing protocol first then doing 20 minutes and taking 95% of that my personal opinion I agree if your condition but if you've never done sustained effort before if you've never done an FTP test before like a lot of RCA members haven't done we advise initially to get some rough functional threshold numbers is to do the half Monty ramping protocol on Wahoo system so where am I now the testing that I've just completed what were the numbers I hear some of you asking well we're going to save that for the next episode because I want to dig it to some of the data and show you what I've been doing training wise in the last six months versus where we're going to be taking things into the future now during the series I'm going to be having a lot of discussions as mentioned with subject matter experts and I'm going to be cutting those conversations down for YouTube content but for those of you who want the full discussions and additionally my weekly coaching hookups analysis with coach Ryan then I'll be sending out this additional content every Friday starting next Friday over email you can join that list below now just know Craig Wiggins who's a continental writer for Pro Racing Sunshine Coast or ARA Skip Capital who's managing the RCA YouTube channel he will be running a similar series to me but on the RCA channel so make sure you check that out which will be at more of an elite level than me and ultimately appreciate your support if you're excited about this series I certainly am please don't forget to drop a like below helps the channel out and the video and I will see you in the next one