Iñigo San Millán training model

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.

3 Likes

At the tender age of 25, I’d say you have to consider the compounding gains of his training trajectory.

4 Likes

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”.

3 Likes

Not trying to argue semantics, but the following was previously published by numerous reliable sources:

Iñigo San Millán is the Head of Performance at UAE Team Emirates and the coach of two-time Tour de France winner Tadej Pogačar.

I usually interpret the word “coach” to mean…coach. Or is this like the Carmichael thing? He is a coach, but not the coach. I don’t think so. I think coach means coach.

Of course, this is no longer the case, but during the time which fitness and sports media referred to him as Pogačar’s coach, it appears as though he was, in fact, Pogačar’s coach. It wouldn’t surprise me if he delegated the day-to-day monitoring and training plans to other coaching staff, but that is fairly typical.

Also, tempo this, tempo that. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

ISM was Pog’s direct coach ever since their collaboration had started at UAE. He wrote the plans and spoke with Pog almost daily. He mentioned this several times in interviews.

1 Like

Do you have any (legit) links to Sola interviews or webinars?

This is probably the most realistic scenario.

Currently San Millan is listed as “trainer”:

A year ago, he was listed as “Head of Performance”:

In 2019, he was listed as “Head Trainers Staff”. That’s also the first year he’s listed on the Team UAE website.

As they said most of the Spanish language wko material is done by Javier Sola. Those webinars are on YouTube.

Search youtube. They are all in Spanish.

It’s also possible (although this purely internet speculation on my part) that he is distancing himself from UAE because they are starting to train in ways that challenge his ethics.

Come on, he got a job in soccer, er football, where there is 100X more money to go around. Good on him!

4 Likes

Dan Lorang (coach of Bora, Jan Frodeno, and Lucy Charlex-Barclay) once said in an interview that for an exercise physiologist (in Europe) there is nothing bigger than working in football (sorry, can’t say soccer). Because there you see what is feasibile when budget/money is not a limiter.

And on top of this, ISM is a Basque. Athletico Bilbao is “the” Basque football club. And he is now Director of Performance!

Opportunities, money and national pride. Cycling and UAE dwarfs against this.

13 Likes

Ok ok. Lol

Yes, the football. I agree

Imagine how easy it will be for him to train footballers! They already come with the ball skils. He gives them some zone 2 and a little more aerobic capacity and his job is done. Collect the big paycheck and enjoy the cushy new office!

4 Likes

That’s a great post!

One selfish question: What if I don’t feel tired, sleep well but my ability to perform hard workouts goes down to zero? Moreover, I cannot even ride moderate intensity most of the time?

I’ll speculate but still would like to hear your opinion. Because of bike-fit related issues I’m constrained to max 2.5 hour rides. Maximizing my weekly riding volume the rides are very similar in duration and after a couple of weeks also in intensity (no hard sessions). I suspect that stimulus fatigue led to regression in condition. (Just for context, spring FTP was around 300 W, easy riding is 200- W, medium intensity 230- W, hard - longer intervals of 280+ W. FTP dropped to around 280 W even with 14-16h/week).

Unfortunately The Cog was removed from the forum, I believe , some time ago.

You should start a new topic.

I probably knew that but have forgotten .

@AJS914 I am not really interested in someone solving my training error but more in a general view of what is wrong with that approach. No one can know my whole life and things that might be wrong. But if there is more people with the same experience it is either the same training error or this approach doesn’t work very well (this = minimal day to day variance of training time).

I’m no expert so I asked ChatGpt.
I hope this opens ok.https://chatgpt.com/c/66daab9e-742c-8013-a8e9-b5aa47fdda7e