It’s August and, if you’ve caught a case of CX fever, this is one of the most anticipated times of the entire season. Whether you’ve planned your season completely around CX, or whether you’re looking to extend your racing season after a full season of road/MTB, CX demands a specific [...]
When it comes to road cycling, pro cyclists like Peter Sagan, Greg Van Avermaet and Philippe Gilbert are often seen as the strongest riders in the peloton. They strike fear in everyone around them. They possess incredible power that they can unleash and make it difficult if not impossible for others [...]
Hardness as a New Athletic Measurement When we introduced Smart Workouts, we introduced a completely new way to train. Rather than training at a given intensity, smart workouts have you training at a given level of strain. What this means is that smart workouts never get too hard. They are [...]
A Completely New Way to Train Xert has ushered in revolutionary ideas and innovations in measuring fitness, how much power you have, which energy systems you use as well as highlighting how traditional methods miss key training variables like strain and focus. When we bring all these concepts to bear and use [...]
What Xert Tells Us About How to Train During the Off-Season As many of you will be training during the off-season to try and reach new highs, it would be interesting to examine what the data has told us on how to train over the winter, after analyzing hundreds of thousands of activities. [...]
Understanding Fitness Signatures Your fitness signature and how it changes over time, is the foundation of Xert. Xert uses your fitness signature data in a variety of ways: Tracks how it changes over time. This is referred to as your Progression. It is used to derive your Athlete Type fitness, such as [...]
With Maximal Power Available (MPA) Analysis in hand, Xert enables these four concepts to now be measured, tracked and used with precision as part of an endurance training regime. Each of these are built on the foundation of MPA and your fitness signature: Stress being the work you perform measured against your [...]
Fitness Testing Most athletes dread test days. These are the days in your training plan where you test your fitness to see where you stand: "Am I improving?", "Do I need to change to workout targets?". They are dreaded because they require a lot of motivation. Your FTP can fluctuate 30-40 [...]
Workout Design Assigning workouts, for many, is considered an art more than a science. Given the number of variables that need to be accounted for, coaches and sports scientists combine scientific research, home-grown tools, coaching systems, and software in deciding on what workout to prescribe for an athlete at a [...]
What is Maximal Power Available? Maximal Power Available (MPA™) is a measurement of the maximal power that can be produced by an athlete for a given exercise, factoring in fatigue. Simply, MPA establishes at every given instant, exactly how much power you have. It is a concept that is [...]