Explosivity, short bursts in power, winning moves…
Just watch how explosive riders change when they come to UAE… for some it works great like Adam Yeats, but for most of them not that good…
Lot of guys who came to UAE lost their punch (Hirschi, Wellens…)
Well, their training is not so bad apparently :
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They have a lot UCI points because they have a lot of money and lot of guys who can score points… and most of the points come from harvesting them on second and third tire races…
I mentioned above the Marc Hirshi who was competitive cyclist in TDF and classics while he was in DSM now he is harvesting points in third tier late autumn Italian races while most of the strong guys are on holidays…
And having Pogacara monuments and TDF second place…
And UCI points are great for marketing and presenting to sponsors but let’s be honest… jumbo visma won all three grand tours and lot of big races but they are below UAE…
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Maybe UAE not to content with the philosophy anymore. It may work for the genetic freak Pogacar, but not so much the other riders?
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Not the way I would read it. From the article you posted.
“As of next May, he will be leaving his teaching and research duties in the United States. Furthermore, given the importance of San Millán’s work, Athletic Club and UAE have reached an agreement so that the man from Laguardia can, from his position, continue to monitor the performance of Tadej Pogačar, as well as that of another series of cyclists who work with him.” (bold mine)
ISM already had “two jobs”. He is leaving is academic position at Colorado for this one.
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It’s football - they probably pay at least 2x or 3x better than even UAE and definitely better than university job. this way he has 2 very financialy capable clients. I wonder if the football players will be doing z2 work and be able to run for 240min without a break 
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a big loss for the university, a smaller loss for the UAE and a win for the whatever club that is.
Money, you are scary…
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Good for him. I hope he quadrupled his salary.
Maybe he wants to return home and grow old and retire in Spain? I’d be curious if he has any family in Colorado.
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Dan Lorang (Bora-H, Frodeno, Anne Haug, Ch-L Barkely) once said in a podcast, football is a fascinating field for an exercise physiologists because there you see what can be done when money is not a limiter.
And then, ISM as a Basque native, a job with Athletic Bilbao is probably hard to top. And I’m sure he makes more money than with the university job.
Being back home may be a factor as well.
W/r to his university job, we don’t know if there were any conflicts behind the scenes. His publication list is not overly impressive. His commitments with UAE must have consumed a lot of energy and time. However, I do not want to speculate.
I always admire people who dare to leave a treaded path and try something new.
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Probably not from their perspective. Academic medical centers in the US are primarily driven by NIH funding; a coach/exercise physiologist doing service testing would never be able to generate the dollars that the indirect costs from even a single such grant provides.
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His title is Asst Professor. My guess is that his primary role is teaching and since he gets summers off he’s free to coach and consult on the World Tour.
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He was at the medical school in Denver, not the main campus in Boulder. PhDs in medical schools generally do very little, if any, teaching (unless they are in a basic science department, which ISM was not). They are there for one reason, and one reason only: to bring in grant money (as they can’t generate income by seeing patients, and other than basic science courses the teaching of future clinicians is left to current clinicians). People who work in medical schools also don’t get summers off (even faculty at non-medical schools usually have to work in the summer, even if they don’t get paid for it).
Source: me (survivor of 24 y on “soft money” in medical schools).
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- He’s returning “home”
- Probably decided he’s had enough banging his head against the medical establishment’s brick wall about the relationship between lactate and cancer and having to constantly fight for funding research.
- Wants to apply his knowledge and expertise to make some real money.
- Flying constantly between the USA and Europe for the races can get to be a bit too much after a while
I wish him all the best.
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Perhaps, I always assume if someone is not fired they must be useful.
There must be 150 phds lined up for that position. First interview question:
-Cycling? Where do you stand?
Right answer is: of course, recycling is very important for saving the planet.
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I would be shocked if ISM was replaced. Again, medical schools are not like other universities, with defined, tenutable faculty positions that must be filled to cover classes being offered. Instead, if the money is there they can and do create non-tenurable (“soft money”) positions as they see fit.
U of C’s efforts in this direction arose during the “cycling is the new golf” era, presumably because somebody with a bit of pull there thought (or was convinced) that there was money to be made by offering service testing to the deep-pocketed doctors, etc. That may or may not have been true to start, but obviously not after the “Lance effect” went away/blew up. I could ask people I know there, but my guess is that over time ISM was under increasing pressure to perform more like a typical PhD faculty member at a US medical school, i.e., get grants, do studies, publish research, leading to his flirtation with cancer biology. Also speculating, he may have been given benchmarks/a deadline for success, he may have decided that his new gig was more appealing, and/or a change in thinking of some superior led to the plug being pulled.
This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for ISM. Very close to being the best job one can have. Ever.
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So how would his lactate focused approach translate to football? I know some S&C coaches in pro field sports who have moved away from this type of conditioning for quite some years already and mainly work on very short stuff (400m repeats is the max). Their reasoning is that this type of anaerobic and vo2max type of training has a trickle down effect on their stamina. And also trying to keep as much fast twitch as possible.
Probably no crossover and he will apply a complete different approach, maybe that is the appeal as well for him right? Diversification. And him being Basque obvisouly
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Most soccer/fútbol kids I coach fall in the “800 meter” type of runner. They have speed and can run sprints (but usually not elite) and can go all the way up to XC. But the 800 is their sweet spot in that they can run really hard, and have a tolerance of repeatability. The training you describe (anaerobic / VO2) is the bread and butter training here. The repeated efforts is what gives stamina.
That said, soccer/fútbol is a 90 min game. Lots of walking and jogging between all out sprints but you need that speed reservoir to still go all out at the end of a hard and long game. Still, I don’t see a “lots of Zone 2” and “polarized” type of training working here. Speed is king.
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I listen to a few different strength and conditioning podcasts and anecdotally, I’ve heard them say several times that they get the athletes to do as little as a couple hours per week of aerobic conditioning (like zone 2) and it improves their endurance dramatically.
Maybe it’s a classic case of switch the stimulus and see an improvement?
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The bigger the base, the bigger the V02Max. Like the pyramid: large base, larger top.
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