There are some riders who call Dave “old school” and is a very, very, hard task master … Some Coaches also promise that you can be a National Champion on 7 hours per week …
Dave would like to think he takes “some” of the Old School stuff he learnt from Eddie Soens (who took Dave to the Olympic Games and winner of the very prestigious Tour de Suisse , William Tell GP stage race from a 50 a day smoker in 1969 to this particular win in 1972, and the Munich Olympics two weeks after this win ) .. Not a bad advert for the Old School.. Plus Dave was probably the only “true” amateur who rode the William Tell, with a full time job as a Medical Laboritary Technician!
Now Dave uses any new science pertaining to Cycle Coaching he possibly can .. He works with Heart Rate and now, more often than not with POWER ..
Dave used Power for 18 months about 5 years ago and the Meters he used were unreliable and always going wrong and giving WRONG information when downloaded .. Since then , Dave has been trying different Meters as and when they came along and now that one of Dave’s favourite Manufacturers came up with the Rotor Power Meters along with their superb cranks and Q and QXL rings . Dave believes the Rotor Power system to be the best and most reliable Power Meter out there .
Dave has now used Power himself for the last 6 months and now prefers Power to Heart Rate .. (Although he can obviously still use Heart Rate as a training tool) .. Dave also likes Garmin Connect as feedback from his athletes, but also uses Strava and Training Peaks , so all bases are covered . Dave likes to have such details as Intensity Factor ( IF) and Training Stress Score (TSS) and Normalised Power (NP) to look at from his athletes downloads, as this can tell him at a glance how things are progressing with his athletes Training Programmes ..
So Dave is FAR from Old School and although he may be “quite” a hard task master , that’s is the only way to improve .. The person who said “you get out what you put in” never spoke truer words …
