Andy was a guest on the podcast as well so check that episode out. It’s not as informative as an ISM tweet or two but hey.
It seems that Pog was winning despite training under the ISM model.
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It really looks like it, indeed.
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Change in training stimulus with new coach?
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I have to believe there is some truth here. Just goes to show you how easily we can all be influenced. Not saying that all ISM training ideas are bunk, but I think many people wanted to believe he had some sort of magic formula. The magic is in Pog.
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Riding long hours of Z2 with a sprinkle of intervals being the ticket to success and high performance always sounded like those late-night “supplement” commercials.
Goodbye Z2, we hardly knew ye.
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Yes, but ISM never advocated this for high level athletes. Far from it. This is what social media made out of it.
And now everyone will buy a Core sensor.
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I think he did, at least if we believe what “Mou”, “leaked” in the forums.
For those that think ISM is/was snake oil - Pog did win two Tours and a crap ton of Monuments.
ISM for his part went on Peter Attia and told regular folks to ride a lot of zone 2 for health and fitness. Nothing wrong with that.
Did ISM ever tell people like us specifically how to train? No, nope, never. Lots of generalities and no specifics for those doing structured training.
A long time ago he might have given you a training prescription based on your lactate test if you showed up at his lab in Colorado. I recall seeing such a prescription one time as part of an article that some journalist wrote. And that is the closest thing to a training prescription that I’ve ever seen from ISM. He’s a gosh darn lactate enigma.
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There were some interesting comments on r/Velo. Sola is a WKO guy. He did the spanish language webinars. He’s also a TTE guy. TTE is vastly under-rated.
Still, these guys are leaving the dopers in the dust on steep climbs. 
“The magic is in the man, not the miles.” - Bill Boweman
That said, his performances not only were successful previously but one year builds on the other. Would he be as good without the previous training as a foundation?
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Or maybe he would have won last year if he changed coaches sooner? But that is not the point. The point was that it isn’t hard to train a rider like Pog. As long as you are providing progressive overload without burning him out he is probably going to progress. That doesn’t make his coach’s training philosophy good, special, or the best. He just happened to work with a once in a generation talent.
To paraphrase Coach Tim Cusick, the job of a elite coach is to not screw things up.
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Totally agree… There’s no secret training or workouts.
My line of thinking goes back to the long debate of doubles vs. singles. In college we did doubles. Lots of them. Post collegiate I transitioned to the marathon and rather than doubles (30/60) transitioned to more runs around 75-80 min. I saw a big improvement on singles for many reasons. But the years doing doubles definitely prepared me for longer individual sessions. One isn’t better than the other but rather was a springboard. Training, even training that may not have Ben the best, contributes to the next step.
This is true for other training philosophies as well. If you do low volume/high intensity and then bump up the mileage and see big improvement… is it that you are training better or that the previous work provided the stimulus for the breakthrough?
Maybe. I have been blessed with coaching two high school athletes who would be considered “generational talent” (Went on to compete in Olympics/World Championships). More than anything I felt my job was not to squeeze every second but rather not screw it up. With athletes like that you are more pulling the reins than cracking the whip. They responded to anything you threw at them and being high school level I felt it was my responsibility to prepare them for the next level rather than run them in the ground
For the record, I am not a fan nor ever believed the hype of the ISM Zone 2 training philosophy. But I also the performance from a new coach within a year is not solely without the training that came before it. I also believe that talent is the biggest factor in performance.
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The stuff this Mou has written is all based on public knowledge. In fact, what he has written about Pog’s new training regime is an exact copy of what had been written in a French newspaper article a few weeks ago. He hasn’t proven any inside access so far.
We don’t know how Pog trained under ISM. We know how McNulty trained under ISM because everything was uploaded to Strava. It was clearly not just Z2 with two times FTP work per week. And we’ve posted several times statement of ISM on high level athletes’ training in this thread here. It’s not just Z2 all the time with a sprinkle of FTP work.
A few months ago a Spanish newspaper published an interview with Pog’s new coach. He stated that they haven’t really changed a lot in his training overall. Training at UAE still follows strongly an ISM philosophy (whatever that means).
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Honestly, it was never clear to me that ISM “coached” (as in wrote every single workout) for Pog.
UAE/Lampre/Saunier is one of the longest running teams in the pro peloton. They have a lot of tricks up their old sleeves. It’s hard to imagine that they rely 100% on the phd from Colorado.
I’m not some huge ISM fan but all I’m saying is that they won with him as part of the team.
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I agree there’s a lot of speculation, however, the timing of ISM departure and coincidence with the massive improvements of Pogi and Yates is somewhat vindicative.
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At the tender age of 25, I’d say you have to consider the compounding gains of his training trajectory.
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Uhhh Pogi hasn’t been “coached” by ISM for years… Tested, maybe. I think ISM is/was a resource for the team, but he isn’t writing the training plans and “coaching”.
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