The Happy Heart: Decoding My Garmin Sleep-Time Stress

A single night's Garmin Sleep-Time Stress chart showing the average stress score and HRV-based recovery bars.

Tracking my sleep isn’t just about how long I was “out”; it’s about what my Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) was doing while the lights were off. As a coach who preaches Physiology First, the Garmin Sleep-Time Stress metric is one of the most honest looks into my recovery. Let’s break down the data from my […]

Decoding the Flux: How the Reverse Fibonacci Protocol Re-Maps Your Threshold

Stacked line graphs showing physiological data from a Reverse Fibonacci cycling workout, including power output, heart rate, SmO2 desaturation, and VO2 plateaus across 8, 5, 3, 2, and 1-minute intervals.

    Beyond the Score The Garmin Guru Series | Decoding the Fast-Adapter | By OnlineBikeCoach.com Programming Reverse Fibonacci intervals is the ultimate way to shatter the lie of the “Static Zone” in high-performance cycling. We move past the idea that a single FTP test or a heart rate formula from a 1980s textbook is […]

Physiology First: Navigating a “Red Light” Morning with AlphaHRV

Screenshot of a Garmin HRV Stress test showing a high stress score of 75.

    Physiology First: My Red Light Recovery Ride This morning was a masterclass in why I apply a Physiology First framework to every session, looking at the internal engine before I look at the wattage. Between a late meal and the devastating news about my friend Murray being struck by a motorist—suffering a serious […]

Living in the Parabolas: My Deep Dive into the “VO2 State”

Cyclist on an indoor trainer wearing a VO2master metabolic mask during a Billat 90/90 interval session with a Garmin 1040 and camera setup for data documentation.

Living in the Parabolas: Decoding Metabolic Inertia and the Billat 90/90 In our last deep dive, we dissected the steady-state grind of 5×3 and 4×8 intervals. Those workouts are the bread and butter of threshold development. However, today we are stepping into the “red zone” to explore Veronique Billat’s 90/90 Metabolic Inertia. Using the combined […]