I have absolutely hated hearing Jonathan talk about weight loss over the years. He’s a young skinny guy trying to optimize those last few pounds. He has no idea what it’s like to count calories for months and only lose 7 pounds and then gain 3 back within a few days of stopping counting.
I’m 59 now and yes when I was in my 20s I could start a build cycle in Jan/Feb and lose 5 pounds a month for a few months and hit race weight by June. No problem, easy peasy and I didn’t even have to think about it.
I think there’s a couple things at play but the two biggest in this case (I’m assuming you’re talking about his recent Leadville build) are:
Jonathan is genetically gifted. He might not be world tour level gifted but he carries a pretty high W/kg and seems to handle high intensity work well. Yes, he’s ‘normal’ in that he has kids, a 9-5 job, house, etc. but he’s certainly on the right side of the bell curve athletically.
For Leadville, he was building/dropping to a weight and FTP that he had been to fairly recently. So while the changes were relatively large for most people, it’s much easier to gain back fitness that you’ve lost than to build to new levels. He’s sorta taken a step back from where he was maybe 3-5 years ago in terms of volume and such so bumping that up and doing an intense 3+ month build will be able to bring him improvements much faster that for most people who have never been there before.
So all that combined with his pretty intense focus when it comes to stuff like this and a job that is likely decently flexible and accommodating for things like this all help him to achieve these improvements.
I peaked at my best ever FTP around this time last year, I didn’t do much the rest of the year and first half of this year did virtually nothing. Every few months AI FTP would drop me down a bit by april it knocked me down about 60 watts. Carried that with a hair of a bump somewhere from a sporadic workout or two until I started back in July (while also starting IF and cutting calories hard). I’m now back up within about 5% of my peak last year based on a real outside ride last week not aiftp, aiftp was giving me 5% bumps every few weeks though. I’m pretty sure I’ll be back at my last year peak in a week or two and if I don’t back off by end of year I should be blowing it out of the water.
This is all while I’m down now 20lbs in the last 8 weeks ( I think 8 need to check my spreadsheet). The gains are coming back despite the calorie deficit because I have been here before.
I’m 45, I do expect my bounce back gains to start to not bounce back so well in the coming years. But the point is that bounce back that Jonathan saw and that I’m seeing is pretty easily replicated vs raw increases to places you have never been.
I don’t know, I’m 50 and his fitness increase and weight drop didn’t sound out of line from what I could do in a similar time-frame. I think the key is you would need to have been at the higher power and lower weight somewhat recently, opposed to breaking power records and getting lighter than you have previously been.
I agree not everyone can pull this off, but I don’t see him as an outlier or anything.
My only issue is the way he has talked about weight loss over the years. He is speaking to a wide ranging population but his only experience is as a relatively skinny guy on the right side of bell curve of performance.
I bet Jonathan doesn’t say he “can’t” do something very often. He went on a crash diet and turned up his workouts, and he admitted a good chunk of the weight was likely water in the early stages.