Author: Coach Richard Wharton

Xert In a Crit: Prime Win and Victory!

Travis Pope is a big guy with a big engine. He loves to ride, loves to race, loves Xert, and he loves to train with it. He has been a client for years, but has suffered several crashes that left him on the sidelines. It also affected his training consistency.

But this year has been a different story. Travis has trained consistently. In early June, he bought a Garmin 1000 and began training with Xert Fields.

The Race According to Xert

Last night, it all paid off! Here’s how Travis used Xert training to turn his hard work into success on the podium.

Interval Shapes – Intensity Over Time

Take a look at this graph. Each interval has a different shape.  It shows four separate 45-second intervals of maximal effort, on a 4% slope. I used PerfPro Studio to design this workout. Recoveries were three minutes each.

We also need to take into account that these intervals are taken 53 minutes into a 60 minute workout. The rider was fatigued, but the lesson is still relevant.

In this post I’ll show you how to use not just intervals but interval shapes to craft your intensity over time for maximum gains in fitness and available power.

Reliability, Accuracy, Results: The Beautiful Consistency of PerfPro Intervals

I’ve been using PerfPro Studio since it first came out in 2008. I’ve watched its capabilities grow, especially as we developed workouts and schedules for controlled progression and periodization. The workouts allow you to ride with absolute wattage, wattage as a percentage of Threshold, wattage based on percent of slope and any mix in between. […]

“On The Fly” FTP: Using Xert’s What’s My FTP App On Your Garmin

Not even a month ago, Xert by Baron BioSystems, released What’s My FTP? on the Garmin Connect IQ ecosystem. The premise is simple: if you have a smart Garmin head unit (520, 820, 920, 735, 1000) and an on-bike power meter, you can determine your Functional Threshold Power (FTP) with just a few solid, hard efforts, over a period of time.

I’m always skeptical about new product claims, but given Xert’s incredibly short but solid track record of apps that are dead-nuts on, I decided to give What’s My FTP a try. I put it to work for two of my clients, and all I can say is Wow—the results are incredible!

Now let’s show you how to get the same results for yourself.

Xert and Texas Mountain Biking, Part One

If you follow these posts, you know that I recently installed a power meter on my mountain bike, and began using it to study the demands that mountain biking requires for fitness. I installed it just before a trip to Arkansas, where my wife and I rode the Womble Trail, and I have since ridden […]

ShockWiz Tuning – A Video Discussion

Here’s another video highlighting my experiences with the ShockWiz Tuning System for mountain bikes. This is a tougher trail, with more rock and twists and lips, and I’m convinced that I’ll be faster, and smoother, because of this investment.

OH yeah—6 watts difference on my average power between the first and second lap, led to a 2.5 minute improvement over 4.8 miles. THAT IS HUGE!

Studying Suspension With the Shockwiz

[caption id="attachment_969" align="aligncenter" width="525"] Air Pressure determines Sag and Compression, while the red ring sets rebound speed, and the black and blue dials help determine when the shock gets activated on bumps of different sizes.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_914" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Coach Wharton using a ShockWiz and a Power2Max to study mtb suspension on the Womble Trail in Arkansas.[/caption]

Mountain biking; nothing makes me happier on a moment-to-moment basis than riding a mountain bike. Mountain biking is where I began cycling, and its’ challenges continue to push me every time a throw a leg over and head down the trail. Mountain biking is fun, it’s something I can do with my wife and with friends, and the technology just continues to impress me, as suspension, geometry, wheel diameter, gear options, and brake technology improves in such a quantum way.

My first mountain bike was all steel, had eight  gears in the back, three up front, and no suspension. It also had 26″ wheels. That was in 1987. The next year, I was riding a bike that was half-carbon, half-aluminum, had a 2.5 inch house-brand front suspension, and weighed 4 lbs. less. By 1995 I had purchased an early dual-suspension Trek Y-bike, and by the time I pretty much quit racing in 2001, I had a titanium frame with a soft-rear suspension, 3 inches of travel up front, and one of the first PowerTap MTB hubs ever built.

[caption id="attachment_916" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Coach Wharton’s Trek SuperFly with Power2max, Shockwiz, and Garmin 1000.[/caption]

Now, I’m riding a 2012 Trek SuperFly 100, with 4 inches of travel up front and in the rear, hydraulic disc brakes, two rings up front and ten in the rear. The wheels are 29 inches in diameter. THE NEXT YEAR, SRAM and then Shimano, introduced Single-Ring front drivetrains, 11 gears in the back, with broader ranges than I’d ever seen before. I think front and rear suspension gains a technology flip EVERY TWO YEARS! My own rig (and that of my wife), now has an OBSOLETE front and rear suspension system, a rear linkage system that has not been used since 2013, and the tires are 3/4 of an inch TOO NARROW.

It’s incredible. Technology has literally transformed mountain biking. It’s safer, faster, more comfortable, and higher performing than I’ve ever seen before.

BUT IT STILL TAKES SOMEONE WITH AN ENGINEERING DOCTORATE TO EXPLAIN SUSPENSION TO ME! AAAUUUGGHHH!

[caption id="attachment_917" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Shockwiz Suspension Tuner on a Front XC Sid Fork. Richard Wharton,[/caption]

Enter the ShockWiz, by SRAM. It’s two little boxes that mount to your frame and fork, and then attach to the compression air ports, where they measure impact, rebound, and all sorts of things that I just can’t explain. I’ll let it do the work.

The ShockWiz started out as a GoFundMe project, and is the brainchild of an Australian mountain biker. It started out around 2014, if I recall correctly, and ended up going to market after SRAM and Quarq saw the opportunity, bought the concept, and got it to the finish line. I was a fascinated early investor, but sadly, my opportunity to do some REAL mountain biking, is usually limited to 3 or 4 days a year. I don’t compete, but when I’m out there, I love the challenge of every corner, every tree, every root, every rock garden, and every climb and descent. But I’m absolutely convinced that if I KNEW how to properly tune my suspension, I could improve my confidence, my competence, and the joy would compel me to do the simplest thing I can do – RIDE MORE OFTEN. I am convinced that the ShockWiz is doing that, right now.

[caption id="attachment_915" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Wombly Trail and Ouachita Lake, Highway 27, Arkansas[/caption]

I’m writing this from a remote fishing village in Arkansas that sits along the famous “Wombly Trail”. It’s almost 40 miles of singletrack along the Ouachita River, and for me, it’s Heaven! But it’s also a PERFECT place to put the ShockWiz to use, and I did that today.

My 2012 SID Air was the first component to get the treatment, and it started with a roughly 15-minute calibration procedure that allowed the ShockWiz app to figure out my baselines. I used a shock pump to set the manufacturer’s recommendations for the upper and lower chambers into the fork (as well as the rear shock), and then took off on my ride, with my wife not far behind. Over the course of the next twenty minutes, we rode, and when we pulled over for our first break, I consulted the app, which was reading the data behind-the-scenes, the entire time. It gave me recommendations for compression, rebound, ramp rate, preload…. all that stuff that is a mystery to me.

Read on (subscription required for this part) for a review of the initial recommendations…and step-by-step screencaps of how I worked through the process of getting the best suspension tune of my life.