 So how are we going now? Can you hear me? Can I watch myself? There I am. Can I hear myself? There we go. Woo! Michael, g'day, Matt, g'day. Just turned myself down. As I said earlier, this is the first time I've done a live so I could completely fuck this up. And I've got a head cold to make things worse. And I'm really bad at multitasking so I think there's little pop-ups here. I can see comments come through on the phone and they disappear pretty quickly. So if I miss a question I'm really sorry about that but I can get to that another time. I can see questions here as well. Brant, good morning. So to get this session rolling how I wanted to run this I'm celebrating one year on YouTube and this was actually a recommendation from Tom who's one of my patrons. He said, great way to engage the audience to do a live. So I thought I'd wait until we're celebrating one year so this is the first time we're doing a live so thank you Tom and thank you to all my channel patrons for supporting me over there. Good morning, Perry. I know Raven said he might be joining us from Canada so Raven let me know if you're on. I know you might be drinking a pint as well. So how I wanted to break this up is in two parts number one any Q&As so if anyone's got any questions for me happy to answer them. And also I thought I would share with you my three big learnings since I started this YouTube channel. But to get the ball rolling this live thanks Fred, much appreciated. This live is brought to you by and this is not sponsored I have never been paid to do a video on this YouTube channel. So it's brought to you by I think it's Marconi Marconi Cycling Club in New South Wales, Sydney so they were trying to get me down there for a ride on the 29th of June that's called the Remembrance Cup Cycling Classic so if you're in Sydney or if you're heading to Sydney on the 29th of June it's a race around Sydney Dragway and it's all about racing funds for a good cause so link to all the details below this video if you want to check that out and secondly, my good friends at SunGuard they found out that I was doing a live today so they've got a giveaway three actually three cycling or not cycling three sunglasses they're willing to give away the pace breakers, these are what I wear when I ride my bike so you can build these your own custom design that's David, thanks David for this offer Pierre sorry mate I'm no good at English sometimes especially when I'm blocked up in the sinuses and these are also another pair of sunglasses that you can get through SunGuard so there's like casual wear they're going to be giving away three so you just have to basically let me read this out here so it's a landing page lottery it's a competition, just select the product you want to win, enter your email and then there's a random 1 in 500 chance of winning that product on the spot and if you want another entry what you can do is you can simply refer a mate by using a referral link you've been provided and you'll automatically be entered in for a second time so thank you to SunGuard for that offer so that's what this live is brought to you by I'm kind of wondering if I'm looking at myself here I kind of feel like I'm looking over here even though I feel like I'm looking straight at the camera let me know in the comment section if my eyes are wandering so I thought I would start with my three big learnings or lessons on YouTube and then I've got a bit of news that I want to share with you in this live something that is pretty big for myself and I think it's going to be pretty big for the channel further insights that I'm going to be able to share so I'll run through those and then any questions that I see pop up I've already had a question from one of the subscribers how are you able to test all those beautiful road bikes so I'll get to that shortly so the three big lessons that I have learned from being on YouTube for a year first of all actually I should tell you I was bloody delusional when I first started this YouTube channel so I did a course online from the US $1,500 how to set up a YouTube channel and how to run it effectively etc and my goal when I set this YouTube channel up and I think it was a poor goal anyway because I don't think subscriber counts should be your primary goal it should be a little bit deeper and more meaningful than that I thought I'd share this with you thank you very much my show much appreciated but that's that's I know who that is you've been emailing me about a certain bike recently which is very exciting so I wanted to get to a hundred thousand subscribers how bloody stupid was I in my first year on YouTube that's what my goal was and I'm sitting here at $13,500 $13,000 which I'm really happy with and really I was delusional because and it brings me probably to my first point in one of my big learnings and it's running a YouTube channel it's actually a lot harder than I thought harder in a good way because there are a lot of challenges that come with it but there are a lot more challenges than I thought everything's like it can a worms so using editing software camera equipment learning how to color grade learning how to frame things Costa Rica George nice to have you on board mate one of the great things about YouTube this is like people coming up from all over the world when you're hill climbing what are your best gears to climb in as I always die out well I'm a little bit different because I like to climb in the heavy ring I like big gear riding strength training because for me and a lot of people argue with this but the cycling gospel in my opinion is what works for you and I tried out heavy gear riding so I've only got a big ring on my SRAM 1x1 which is the bike here and I like to push 50-60 cadence a lot up hills because it helps with my cycling strength and I found it made me a lot more powerful on the bike so I hope that answers your question so a lot of rabbit holes learning how to smile all the time when you're thinking about all the camera equipment the lighting is everything set up am I smiling or am I staring at the camera looking like a bit of a dickhead which if you look at a number of my first videos I certainly looked like a dickhead a lot so it was a lot harder than I thought and a lot more challenges but I've really dived into those challenges and I've really enjoyed the challenges that have come with running a YouTube channel I think the second lesson with a YouTube channel is I've lost sight a few times I think with YouTubers you can get too bogged down in your analytics how many subscribers have I got how many views am I getting what's the watch time what are the comments saying I've been brought down a few times by the comments and there's been a lesson in there I think I've gotten lost in not why I personally created the YouTube channel and where I wanted to take it and I went away recently ha ha ha yeah thank you and you know helped me put a few things into perspective as to why I've why I'm doing a cycling YouTube channel and just to promote the activity of bike riding which I've said in previous videos and by promoting the activity of bike riding more people are getting into riding more people are you know fit and healthier more people are riding to work less industry congestion all these positive things being a technology platform being a social media platform you lose sight of these things so recently when I went away I read a book really highly recommend this book it's called Big Magic and really taught me that the reason why I create videos is because I just love the process I love the fact that I can reach a wider audience so we're seeing people on this live from all over the world which is super cool and I just enjoy the process of it's like a jigsaw puzzle scripting sometimes obviously not scripting so much in this instance because this is alive and it's putting it all together in an editing package with music just that whole process you know whether the videos get a thousand views or a hundred thousand views I'm not overly fussed I say that now sometimes I get trapped I'm not overly fussed because I just enjoy the process of making videos and I enjoy the outcome of those videos because they inspire some people to ride they inspire some people to make the right purchasing decision and that's super cool in itself so thank you all for watching my videos and supporting my channel greatly appreciated and the third big lesson this is the last one before I'll get to some Q&As and that is surrounding mental health so when I started this channel probably about thank you very much AJK much appreciated when I first started this channel probably about two or three months in I partnered with The Knights of Suburbia Love Me Love You Foundation and that really opened my eyes to mental health luckily I've suffered from some down times in my life I think we all have anxiety and certain things stress with work but I've never been depressed myself and I've never really been my eyes have never been really opened to what an issue it has become particularly in Australia so opening my eyes to mental health and more awareness, more conversations surrounding mental health in Australia the statistics are roughly nine people commit suicide every single day we've got a small population here about 25 million people seven of them are men which is really scary and in addition to that they're people that try and take their own life so I think having more conversations I actually went for a ride with one of my subscribers recently up in the Sunshine Coast Peter Luttrell and what have we got here I'll get to that question there and he works in the mines in Northern Queensland and they have a lot of issues with people you know working in the mines you're in a bloke environment it's not okay necessarily or the traditional way it's not okay to talk about your feelings he's had a number of conversations he now represents Nazi suburbia and he's had a number of conversations in the mines and he knows it's had an impact on a number of occasions so I think just my awareness a learning through running this YouTube which has been fantastic around mental health you just never know where that conversation will lead and what impact it might have so they're my three big learnings we've been going now for 12 minutes so we should be wrapping it up pretty soon now the big bit of news before I get to the question I've decided to become a cycle and I'm going to start the process in July I'm going to become a level one cycling coach the reason for that and this sort of came out of nowhere I've anticipated, I've made some videos recently on how to improve your cycling performance I'm not a coach, I've been coach for two or three years but I really enjoy making those videos and they've had a lot of reach and I feel to add further credibility to the way I deliver them some further insights and tips that I can share through the learning process I think it's a great great for my own personal development and also great for the YouTube channel because not only can I have more credibility when I'm talking about training but also there will be further insights that I'll be able to share through my learning process so that's a big bit of news finally the questions so I'll start with the Necromonga or something like that I think I'm fucking up a lot of things here the riding is really small on the screen when I see it come through here and I can see it over here now so I'm going to try and get to them in a succinct manner before we wrap up this live and we've got 25 people it's pretty amazing I said to my wife maybe I get 100 people on the live tomorrow but she does a lot of Facebook live she said no chance of getting 100 so I was a bit delusional there as well so how are you able to test and get access to all those beautiful bikes that was the question brother so I was fortunate enough before I started this YouTube channel I run a company called Bikechaser it's an online marketplace for bikes and over there we write a lot of content and we do a lot of reviews and I had access or dealings with a number of bike brands before I started this YouTube channel I also had relationships with specialised as an example so when new bikes are made available like the Venge or like the Tarmac and particularly specialised are really good like this I'll reach out to them and I'll say test ride the new bike and I'll do a review on the channel and they say no worries so none of those reviews have ever been paid it just means that I get to test ride those bikes which is pretty cool in itself specialised here is the Venge for three weeks that's just awesome in itself now the review process that video hit 100,000 views the other day by the way the Tarmac versus the Venge review that review took me a long time to put together like days of research had to do multiple shoots of the edit but that is an asset in itself for the channel so that's why we've had so much I've had a lot of growth in that video a lot of subscribers have come on board through those videos so it's a real win-win situation for me, the audience and also the bike brand so that's how I get my hands on the beautiful bikes I also have to be a little bit professionally annoying with these bike brands because it's hard to get them so constantly following up I'll see these new bikes come out can I get access to it etc so I'll see if I've got some questions over here I can look at any tips to better drill for cornering on races so this is a good one actually so I put together an online course recently with my cycling coach so it wasn't really for YouTube because it's 10 video tutorials all lined up in a sequence, step by step approach to take your road cycling to the next level and that's a big component of that course is skills which a lot of people don't so much focus on you normally buy a bike and you walk straight out the door and then learning basic fundamental handling skills tends to be lost it was for me, I didn't learn these skills until roughly 5 years into my road cycling journey so one way you can better corner is learn to ride no hands take your hands off the handlebar and just learn to ride you might start with one and then slowly move to two and then as you improve your ability to learn to ride with no hands start to move the bike corner it, just ever so slightly just with your legs with your hips, turning your hips as opposed to a lot of people use too much of their upper body when they corner so that is a great skill learn to ride no hands first don't do it on a highway do it in a quiet environment just get a good feel for the bike and you will find practice that for a month your cornering in criteria or whatever it might be will improve significantly so let's have a look what else have we got here is the Strava what estimates accurate, I don't know I'm not a big user of Strava believe it or not only because I spend so much of my time working in apps and technology I fry my brain like editing a video, like I'm staring at a screen for like hours and I use Instagram a little bit, use YouTube a lot so Strava is just one of those things I don't use a lot however the power meter that I recommend and this is only because I have used quark power meters SRAM aren't sponsoring this I've used them before I had a relationship with SRAM sorry I was just about to lose this is true through pretty much all my battery on my phone this is unbelievable so quarks have worked really well for me over the years so see what else we got here I like to get behind the saddle when cornering that's a good one what's your final verdict on the attitude tent my final verdict on the attitude tent was like blood test don't lie and I had a significant increase in my hematocrit and hemoglobin and I felt really good now the problem is when I did it I was packing up and leaving it was a really silly time to do it stupid, packing up Melbourne and leaving to come up here and I didn't really have a great opportunity Sunshine Coast vs Melbourne great question we're going to create a video on that one actually but I'll get to that in a second all questions work really well for me here on the mobile phone as well just as an FII I've lost track of where I was what question was I answering ah yeah the attitude tent this is how I got a head cut I felt really good on the bike but I didn't have a lot of opportunities to race then we came up here and I didn't race at all I did one race, crashed my bike and I haven't raced ever since so I'm going to have a new goal coming up shortly to start training for it which I'm going to share with you and hopefully some more insights to share on that Melbourne vs Sunshine Coast cycling Melbourne's cycling scene is seriously I don't think you can beat it, it's unbelievable the bunch rides, the crit racing the road racing the scene is so cool but up here the riding is just I can go right, I can go I can go hills, I can go left I can go flat, I can go over the highway I can go beautiful rolling to rain with no cars the infrastructure, the bike lanes in the Sunshine Coast are really more cycling story style videos please ok, thank you for letting me know actually the next video, couple of next videos I've got coming from you so better to ride here, but better seen in Melbourne my wife tried carbon wheels for the first time yesterday so we shot a video of her trialing the MV 6.7's she's gone from an alloy clincher to MV 6.7's, so her first experience on carbon wheels we did another video but she's about to go away for two weeks I did a few videos with my wife I'm explaining training zones to her that's actually quite a funny video she actually drops a fart in that video while I'm explaining to her training zones then she started yawning it was quite an amusing one which power meter or electronic shifting I've gone back from electronic shifting to mechanical because like I don't really find there's a huge difference, yes it's a little bit smoother they stay in gear in line with your gears a little bit better with electronic, but it's not massive and it's cheaper and like I've charged so many things on my bike these days with cameras, I've got to charge multiple cameras these days to not have to worry about charging something else it's just good for my sanity how many commas a week should you be doing to be a competitive A grade crits well I was competitive before I left Melbourne and I was doing in between 8 to 10 hours a week and I built a pretty solid base I think I over-indexed on base training and not enough high intensity stuff to be competitive in A grade really hardcore high intensity stuff stuff that you wouldn't typically do you got to take your high intensity stuff to the next level for example I was doing once a week on the indoor trainer I was doing something called the two man break which is like three reps of nine sets of one minute efforts on off and that was seriously I'd never done anything that hard in my entire life on an indoor trainer and I started to do that so you just have to start doing more high intensity stuff and bust your arse off essentially that's if you want to be competitive in A grade what do we got here dis versus rim brakes I had so many issues with the rim brakes that I had on my all sorry on the disc brakes I had on all the bikes that I tested and I was a little bit against them and then on the chapter 2 if you haven't you might have seen me riding around on that a fair bit that's got disc brakes and I've had no issues with that in 6 months time so for braking performance particularly in the wet but even overall people say it's mainly in the wet I disagree when I'm hitting a roundabout and a car comes out of nowhere and I need to hit the brakes hard you notice massively on disc however so my wife for example we had the opportunity to go her disc versus rim she hates things when they don't work properly she doesn't want to go get them fixed really irritates her so I said let's just stick with rim brakes for your own sanity so it really just depends on the situation but definitely for and she's doing triathlons as well by the way that's like her goal if you're doing crit racing things like that I think disc brakes all the way how many kilometers a week should you be doing for no grade what issues with the disc the discs were mainly noise the clanging like the meat cleaver sound it's like bloody irritating the clang clang clang clang and a little bit of rub so you don't want to be in a race and you think your brakes are rubbing that would really really get to you so that's my one hesitation but as I said with the chapter 2 I've got SRAM Force disc on here I've had no issue whatsoever however on the Venge that I tested and all the other any other bike I've tested the O2 the O2 had massive issues clanging I actually had to give it back and then I couldn't complete the full review on that bike so that's what happened there so I think I've missed a few questions here but I might leave it at that because my my phone's about to die it was about 90% before I started this and I just got a 20% warning quite a while ago now and we've been going for 25 minutes so I'll conclude what's a good regiment to ride how many days I'll finish with that question my NZ brother you know I'm half Kiwi, my mum's a Kiwi so what is the fastest you've ever gone another good question not very fast actually, a bit of a wind down hill probably 90, around 90 maybe just a touch over a good regiment is a tiered structure this is high level right if you've got 10 hours a week to train what you want to do is you want to do 10 hours in week 3 and you want to do 8 hours in week 2 and 6 hours in week 1 and build and then you go back pretty much to week 1 and week 4 and then you build again it's like a step ladder you're going up and down and you want to start with building base first get a good base foundation make sure you've got limited cardio drift and then you want to start implementing efforts so I can't go into too much detail on that in this video but perhaps that's a good suggestion a good idea for future video content on this channel 46 people, 47 people in this live now that's awesome I just want to thank everyone for your support running, doing a YouTube channel and having people supporting your efforts is massive the positive comments Eric how are you mate having your support the positive comments it really it means a lot so more live Q&A this has been great okay so that's another thing so in the comments section below thumbs up those sort of things help me maybe we could do this I don't do this like every week but maybe once a quarter, once a month something like that I can just give you an update on what's going on the channel you can ask me some questions and that's pretty much it so thanks for joining much appreciated and I'll catch you all in the next video so how do I turn this thing off now I normally just turn it off but now I can't cheers, cheers guys