Iñigo San Millán training model

You can extend this.
Is he is as good without the pre ISM years of foundation, in to ISM and without him… make of that you will.
He is a generational talent, many will be involed along the way, they play a part but they arent the secret mustard. (Sauce)
Hopefully we dont find out its more than mustard and the sauce.

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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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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:

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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).