I agree, the original Jonathan, Nate and Chad podcasts were great. There was a real camaraderie that came through and it made the podcasts more enjoyable. I think Pete, Amber and Ivy were all good, too, if not quite the same as the original three. The Jonathan led podcasts these days are perfectly fine, but they’re not nearly as fun and engaging. I think Jonathan needs a steady partner on the podcast; he can’t carry it all himself. Nate is always great, but he obviously can not participate all the time. I don’t know if Amber actually had another job at the company like Pete and Ivy, but maybe TR should look into hiring a co-host just for the podcast?
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Oh, I’m well aware of YT’s algorithm. Skilled marketing can also absolutely find your audience without going for the lowest common denominator—and it doesn’t require a huge team. Looking at y’all, Cade Media, and GCN, your titles and thumbnails are the most clickbait, your format the least consistent, and your relationship between the title and the content the furthest apart. One could argue that chasing the YT algorithm is what brands have to do, but then one could also look at the subscriber count of those three channels.
I never accused you of having biased guests. I said that having just a single expert on presents a single point of view (most of the time). An example of this is Kyle Pfaffenbach who presents great data from an academic/research environment or professional athletes, but doesn’t always translate it well to amateur athletes. I’m not saying this is your fault, it’s just how the podcast industry treats and trains experts—“just come on and give your talking points”. What is your fault is seeing that amateur athletes commonly have fat loss goals at some point in their journey and deciding to have an academic and pro cycling coach (coaching olympians) on to present his academic point of view as the answer.
I think you missed the point with what they were saying.
Yeah, someone else pointed out that the channel is demonetized. But the claim that y’all are prioritizing the YT algorithm has already been confirmed by you, so the motivation for it is less the focus than the outcome.
It wasn’t an assumption, I work in marketing and you’re doing very textbook stuff. But that’s the thing, it used to be a great thing for building trust with the TR brand and taking people through the middle of the funnel while also building a sense of support and community with the people behind the platform. As a listener and customer, I’m saying I miss that aspect (I’m not going to put words into the others’ mouths, but there’s a definite common theme). It’s now skewed too much toward just the top of the funnel with 1) clickbait titles, 2) almost every voice of authority being external to TR, and 3) the majority of the time being fluff not answering the questions. It used to be a feature/product of the TR brand and community, but now it’s just a basic marketing hook with little longterm benefit as a listener. I think that’s the change that I, as a long-term listener, am reacting to. There can be a strategy to better engage at the top of the funnel and nurture potential customers through the middle of the funnel while also deepening relationships with existing costumers, but y’all aren’t entitled to that much of my time.
Good to know. I took a look at the timestamps on today’s and didn’t bother listening. If y’all think this is a winning approach for engaging your community and are sticking to it, I’ll gladly unsubscribe from the pod. There’s world tour racing on, so I’m not starved for content playing during the day.
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Longtime lurker, first time poster. Looking at some of the responses made me think that I should share my thoughts.
I started cycling in 2022 and I was looking for some science-focused cycling podcasts and stumbled upon this one, and haven’t stopped listening since. Learned a lot about cycling and working out even though my background is in running, but I do think that the current format needs some constructive criticism about a couple of things:
I think the loss of Chad has been an overall negative to the show, in that the way he brought forward research and distilled lessons-learned hasn’t been replicated. I think that by being an informed coach/sports science enthusiast allowed him to communicate information from studies in ways that most researchers can’t do because they fail to understand the lack of domain-specific knowledge of outsiders. That doesn’t mean the experts that are now brought in are bad and don’t explain things well, but I went back to listen to an older podcast and that was the feel that I got.
In terms of bringing on Drs. Alex and Kyle, I think they’re great and do a great job when they’re on, but it’s something to remember that if you’re only bringing them on about nutrition and science, we’re only getting their point of view and I think it would be worthwhile to add experts to the stable if for no other reason than to offer slightly different perspectives even if they’re making the same points. Now, I know the logistics of finding guests can be tricky, but I think it’s worth exploring.
Also, while it is sometimes interesting to listen into deep dives into users’ workout histories I’m not too sure that having to listen to yet another “Oh, I’m just your average amateur with a 4.7 W/kg FTP please help” is all that interesting, especially since most of the deep dives boil down to “Stop smashing it every day and properly rest. Oh and be honest in your feedback in the post-workout survey so the AI prescribes you the appropriate workout.”
I understand that the audience skews toward higher performance cyclists, but it feels like the vast majority of these deep dives are for users with >90th percentile FTP’s and I question how much of it really resonates with the wider audience that doesn’t give feedback. I’m a scrub with just a 3.3 W/kg FTP, and there’s times where I listen to an episode and am left with “Welp, that was nice, but how’s that going to help me finish 4 spots higher in mid-pack in next year’s big gravel race?” I think occasionally trying to highlight key strategies/workouts/thought processes that provide outsized benefits for less-than-elite riders may be worth considering–especially those like me who aren’t totally new to cycling, haven been doing structured training and trying to get everything right, but haven’t gotten over the hump that the faster riders have overcome.
That’s my two cents. I’m not sure I’m a model listener for the podcast to get feedback from, but I thought it might be worth sharing.
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2.8W/kg crew, checking in.
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People do complain a lot about free stuff.
The podcast is great, I’ve been listening forever (15 years now on TR). Chin up Jonathan and team.
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I still enjoy the podcast, and listen to it semi regularly. I definitely really enjoyed the original days, the in person dynamic was great. I personally thought it was best when Nate was full tilt cycling training. The contrast between him, as a bit of a hard gainer without a huge athletic background, and Jon, who seems like a very gifted and talented cyclist, was really good. I always found Nate’s exploits very relatable, and loved how he would own his mistakes, and how much of a kick jon and Chad got out of them (also relatable).
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I recall a diagram of the distribution of FTP/kg and it showed most TR users being between 2-4 approx and I think it would be worth bearing that in mind.
I think it was Nate that posted it?
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I hardly listen these days and yet listened to every one up to about when Ivy left.
Chad was missed but Amber added a lot and I would love to see her back.
My issue is the star worship of Keegan and a couple of other top athletes. It gets so boring and is not really relevant to the majority of the audience.
As said above, remember the 2-3.5 w/kg abilities of your audience and cater to them a bit more.
The reviewing a 4.5 w/kg rider and his training load was OK the first time but should be very much a very infrequent event. It also does not translate well to those listening to the podcast.
The meaningless titles is my main reason for not listening now. If it doesn’t interest me I don’t bother and I my well be missing some other topics that do interest me.
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Couldn’t agree more. I understand why they utilise the connection with Swenson so much as he’s high profile and friendly with the hosts but I found Alex Wild a much more relatable and personable presence when he was on the podcast.
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This weeks podcast with Tobin was one of my favorites in a very long time. Not necessarily the content but Tobin seems to have a good personality for podcasts and meshed well with Jonathan
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I hate to keep being so critical, but I found Tobin to be a very ‘yes man’ guest. He was supposed to come in as an expert and answer questions, but he either didn’t answer most of them, changed his mind, or didn’t really have good advice. At one point Jonathan tried to get him to mention that pro cyclists are actually really busy and Tobin totally missed that point and was like “it’s nice having a bunch of free time in the morning to add air to my tires”. haha. He is cool though, I just thought Tobin could have been more assertive.
I think it’s easy to underestimate how hard being a guest on any kind of talk show is. Or hosting for that matter.
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I still listen all the time, no hesitation and regardless of topic. The main reason is Jonathan is intelligent, humble, passionate and a really good communicator.
Not to come across as blowing sunshine, I think there are some really good constructive suggestions in many posts, but I did want to give some credit to Jonathan as an excellent host that I really enjoy listening to.
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You’re right. I’m being way too hard. The TR podcast is great overall, and I learn a ton from Jonathan every time. He really is an expert in his own right and has a way of combining information from may different fields (health, performance, strength, racing, etc).
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+1. I am so grateful and excited to have whatever quality content is out there - the hard work that is clearly being done by Jonathan to continue to consistently put out the pods through all the changes garners a huge THANKS from me. Jon - I wish I had your respectful demeanor amidst challenging opinions and it is clear that you use info from others to consistently improve.
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I hadn’t listened in a while and I straight-up unsubbed once I started getting the all caps clickbait titles and AI slop title cards in my feed. But I’m probably not the target demo, Im old and already a paying customer. I’m actually a little sympathetic, currently if you’re at all serious about getting eyeballs on your media YouTube is the monster that you must feed, and it hungers for all-caps titles and featured images with colorful text and goofy surprised looking people.
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I’ve been listening for many years and still find the podcast compelling. I do miss the early dynamics with chad, amber, nate, pete, etc. when there was a core group participating, but that’s a hard thing to replicate. I suspect those early dynamics came together somewhat naturally and maybe a byproduct of being a smaller/growing company. I don’t think I learn much more or less from the current podcast format, it’s just less engaging without as much storytelling and banter among friends (or at least seemed like friends). And I definitely miss the guys/gals signing up for events and tracking their training and execution. Again, it was just good engaging storytelling. I like to hear the pros talk about racing/training, but it’s good to get the amateur perspective also. I think it’s a tough ask to try to recreate that early talk-show group dynamic with all the storytelling. And pulling employees from their day jobs to try to recreate that dynamic may not be the best use of their time (and then you get a bunch of people complaining when someone leaves…).
All that said, I thought the interview with Tobin was good this week. I’m not sure I learned too much, but it was entertaining for me during a long drive. I almost spit out my drink when Jon asked him to name his least favorite event - “There are so many…”. All I really want is engaging people talking about cycling-related stuff.
Yep - stopped listening after that. I only tuned in for the updates and banter, not the tech discussion.
+1 for this
Restoring a dynamic from the past isn’t possible without restoring the past itself - even a highly successful ‘reunion tour’ of a hit band is never the same as the one that put them on the map. The individuals aren’t the same as they were, but also the world/context they existed in is different too.
I don’t love the dynamic of AaCC as much as I once did but I feel like it’s probably a more useful tool for the listener pool beyond us die-hard regulars in its current form, and I still get a good amount of value from it. I think it probably fits TRs needs about as well as it can at this point and I think chasing a nostalgia-driven ethos would be a mistake.
I respect that it exists in a different time/context than it used to and I commend Jonathan for finding ways for it to continue evolving and improving. Thanks Jonathan/TR!
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It would be kind of cool if they had a series where they pick a novice or someone relatively untrained and then kind of follow them along on their journey and what they learned. Not sure if they’ve done that in the past.
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