Dr. Phil Skiba is all science. The sports physician has found ways to predict your performance with the training you’ve completed. A power meter users dream (or GPS), RaceDay will not only show you how much work you’ve done, but it will predict how good you’ll be once your body absorbs the workout. Want to ride the Ford Ironman World Championship bike like race runner-up, Eneko Llanos? Llanos rode the bike with an average of 270 watts. Try riding 270 watts over 112 miles, enter the power data into RaceDay and SHAZAM! Learn how shelled you truly would be after the bike (if you were able to hold the power output at all). And, see how long it takes you to recover from such a session. This is only scratching the surface of RaceDay.
The New Jersey resident has given these tools to the likes of Bjorn Andersson and Joanna Zeiger. He was instrumental in developing a plan that led to Zeiger’s victory at the 2008 70.3 World Chamionship in Clearwater, Florida. The performance led to a world record time for well decorated Zeiger (4:02:49).
And, if you’ve thought about purchasing a power meter and/or GPS for training in the past, you’ll definitely pick these tools up after reading our interview with the doctor.
TriHive (TH): Tell us about some of the notable athletes you coach and how the relationship(s) work. How have you specifically helped these athletes get to another level from their previous stellar performances (pre Dr. Phil)?
Dr. Phil Skiba (PS): The most well-known triathletes I work with include current 70.3 World Champion and World-Record Holder Joanna Zeiger, 3x Duathlon World Champion Catriona Morrison, 2004 & 2007 Ultraman World Champion Jonas Colting, and Bjorn Andersson. I’ve only been working with Jonas and Bjorn for a short time, however. I also have a few slightly less well-known, but equally motivated professionals in my stable, in addition to a number of amateurs.
I have a reputation as a problem solver, and this is why most athletes come to me. I start out by reviewing what the athlete has done in the past. Being a physician, I apply an old adage I learned in medical school, “If you listen long enough, the patient will tell you what is wrong with them.” This includes conducting in-depth interviews, review of race records, power meter files, swim workouts, and the like. I then compare what they are doing in training with what they are trying to do in races, and see if the two jibe. Sometimes they do, and all that is required is some tweaking.
Sometimes, however, there is a large disconnect. The most common reason I find for this is that many coaches have a personal theory of training that they are trying to impose on the athlete’s body. In contrast, my approach is to apply what is scientifically known of how the body responds to exercise. If you do this, the athlete will express their talent and inborn potential for greatness. Moreover, it is just plain easier to do than trying to take a square peg and squeeze it into a round hole, so to speak.
It is worth noting that coaching is much more than the application of science, of course. You need to be able to communicate, to motivate, and to mentor, among other things. However, those things often come naturally to people in the profession. The knowledge base, on the other hand, requires work. I like to say that I have trained my brain as hard as they have trained their bodies.
TH:How is power training involved with these elite clients, and do your philosophies/protocols change with the level of athlete experience?
PS: Training using a power measuring device (and in this lot I include tools like GPS, and a stopwatch in the pool) is incredibly helpful. My athletes keep track of their training in excruciating detail, and send me these records on a daily or weekly basis. This way, no matter where they are in the world, I always know exactly what they are doing, how they are doing it, and if we are seeing the expected results. If the athlete is improving, great! If not, we can immediately address the situation. You don’t want to find out that your training was sub-par in the middle of a race!
My protocols for both amateurs and elites are guided by the principle of specificity; that is, the body responds exactly to the stimulus applied. Training is directed towards what is needed for race success. For instance, if you need to race 56 miles at 250W, you’d better well have done a lot of rides with some long intervals at 250W or better, and then done some running off the bike. If you are unable to do it in training, it is very likely that you need to readdress your expectations and reevaluate your ability. To paraphrase an old movie, don’t let your ego write checks that your body can’t cash.
Where the pros and amateurs differ is in the volume and intensity of training. Professionals will often be able to tolerate much more / much harder training than less experienced athletes. However, that does not necessarily mean that you simply do more because the athlete can tolerate more. You do what is needed for race success, period. The power meter helps monitor this.
In my experience, one of the most common reasons for suboptimal performance in both amateurs and professionals is the theory that more must be better. Once you are performing well, it is easy to get greedy and to try to push. This is a dangerous way to think. For instance, I knew long before 70.3 Worlds that Joanna was going to have the race of her life. RaceDay predicted it, but more importantly, she was setting PR’s in training without killing herself and was feeling good. In this case, we chose to simply maintain what we were doing, rather than go on a snipe hunt for that elusive next level. It doesn’t matter if you win by one minute or 10, and you haven’t done yourself any favors if you end up injured in pursuit of more. As Jack Daniels has said, don’t leave your race on the training track.
TH: Power training is becoming more common. However, many athletes have excelled without power meters or heart rate monitors. What does power bring to the table that “old school” training does not?
PS: It’s important to remember that power training is a way of thinking, and not something you do with a particular tool. In other words, you are working in terms of how much work you do (i.e. distance), and how fast you do that work (i.e. speed). Great track and swimming coaches have applied these principles for as long as there has been an “old school.” Power training is beneficial to cycling in particular because cycling is more variable. You can’t just say “ride a 5 mile interval at 20 miles per hour”, because that means something different if you are riding into the wind, or with the wind, or uphill or downhill, or whatever. When you dial into a particular power, terrain / environment becomes less of a factor and you can always do the assigned workout. Using the meter, you always know exactly how hard you are working.
One of the most important uses of the power meter is as a “stupid-meter”. In other words, it is easy to get caught up in the moment on a group ride, or during a race. You see everyone hammering and you want to do likewise. The power meter is that reality check. Those little flashing numbers should trigger something in your brain that says, “I’m going to be out here for six hours, and then I have to run a marathon. Should I really be 30% above my best 1 hour power output going up this mountain?”
TH: Tell us about your theories regarding power training and how they may differ from other power experts. How do you apply this to a three-disciplined sport like triathlon?
PS: There are a lot of coaches that simply use the power meter to deliver the training they always have, or as my mom likes to say, “Same dirt, different shovel.” I use the power meter to inform me about what is going on with the athlete, and then tailor the training to them specifically. For instance, many coaches (some very well known) misunderstand periodization of training to mean that you train hard for 3 weeks, easy for one week, and ratchet it up from one 4 week period to the next. The power meter can help blow this misconception out of the water. Is the athlete improving the way you want? Great! Carry on! Has the athlete plateaued? Ok, it is time to tweak the training. I have athletes who need training changes quickly, and others who can do the same thing week in, week out, for months at a time, and continue to improve. Again, you don’t want to impose your harebrained theories on the athlete’s body. You let their body tell you when it is time for a change, and you make that call using the power meter (or the stopwatch or GPS or whatever).
With specific reference to triathlon, it is important to understand three things at the outset. First, the same basic principles of physiology apply across each sport. Second, the athlete’s improvements in each sport can (and usually do) happen over very different time courses, which implies that the plan for each must be quite different. Third, although you must monitor improvements in each sport individually, triathlon is a unique sport that requires a unique approach. There are superb cycling coaches who have tried to make the move into triathlon, and are mystified by the lackluster performance of their athletes. They fail to realize that the optimal strategy for a killer bike leg and the optimal strategy for a killer triathlon are very, very different. Athletes also make this mistake with alarming frequency.
TH: You developed a training management software program called Race Day. What does Race Day do specifically? Does understanding RaceDay require much knowledge of the science behind the program or can a new power meter user “plug and play” without much study?
PS: Essentially, RaceDay looks at your training and separates out the positive effects (i.e. improved fitness) from the negative effects (i.e. increased fatigue), and predicts future performance from this data. It shows you how fitness and fatigue come and go with time, so that you can optimize your training. It shows you exactly how you should taper to have an optimal race. It differs from other products in that it calculates all of this automatically, rather than asking you to make estimates of how quickly the effects of training come and go.
RaceDay also allows you to easily apply the principles of power training to swimming and running by calculating wattage for those sports. This can be very useful. For instance, it will look at your running data from a hill, calculate the power output you held, and then tell you what pace you could have held on a flat road at the same effort.
You don’t need to understand much about the science at all, unless you really want to. However, you do need to be willing to carefully record your training, because it only knows what you tell it. Like any piece of software, you have to learn what button to click when, but we have a series of videos on the website (http://www.physfarm.com) that makes it really easy.
TH: How well does RaceDay work for the self coached athlete? How does an athlete develop an Annual Training Plan (ATP) based on RaceDay as a training tool?
PS: RaceDay is great for the self-coached athlete, because it removes a lot of guesswork. For instance, earlier we discussed the idea of monitoring the athlete’s training and performance and watching for changes and an eventual plateau, so that you know it is time to change training. RaceDay allows you to make some calls about when that will happen, and plan for it in advance. This way, you can rationally plan your season based on your personal physiology, and not something you read in a book or magazine. My new books, The Triathlete’s Guide to Training with Power, was written with this tool in mind, although one does not necessarily require the other.
TH: Power meter or race wheels?
PS: You can have both! For instance, you could get a Saris PowerTap, and have a wheel cover made to turn it into a disc for races for about $100.
However, if you needed to choose between the two, the answer is “it depends”. If you are racing for fun, are happy with your training, and don’t much feel like messing with things, the race wheels are a great choice because they get you free speed. In contrast, the power meter will probably get you a lot more speed over the long term. However, you must be willing to use the power meter, think about what it is telling you, and then make changes to your training based upon those things. Otherwise, it’s just another toy.
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