Back in 2021 the Science and Cycling Conference, an annual pilgrimage for the world’s foremost sport scientists, exercise physiologists and cycling coaches to discuss recent innovations and future areas for experiment and discussion, was held in Belgium. Among two days of fascinating presentations and seminars was a presentation by Kurt Bergin-Taylor. Bergin-Taylor’s a trainer for Team DSM but his research focused on his time working on Cycling Canada’s Olympic track programme and how the team progressed via the appliance of science.
When Bergin-Taylor joined Cycling Canada, the Federation had already been working on torque development for several years. He became part of a team made up of a large group of experts to continue developing this approach.
Here, ahead of the 2022 UCI Track World Championships in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France, where the likes of Canada’s Kelsey Mitchell will be gunning for gold, we reflect on that game-changing seminar where Bergin-Taylor presented and explained Cycling Canada’s scientific approach
Slow starters
“When our team raced the 2020 UCI Track World Championships in Berlin, Germany, we noticed that we were struggling over the first couple laps in terms of all-out speed. This was especially the case with the female riders,” explained Bergin-Taylor. “Our flying starts were comparable with the best and we could sustain a pretty high level of speed. But our standing efforts weren’t strong enough; we didn’t have the ability to generate force in that early stage. It was costing us.”
The Cycling Canada team sat down and discussed the problem, which they isolated as torque. Torque is a measure of how much a force acting on an object causes that object to rotate. Broadly, that’s force per pedal stroke. Power is the result of torque and cadence. Torque is important across all levels of cycling but even more so on the track where not only are athletes generating force from a standing start but they are also using a fixed-gear bike so can’t enjoy the safety net of shifting through lower gears.
“What can we do to improve torque?” they pondered. “We can do work in the gym, of course, and on the bike. The latter is arguably favourable because it’s 100% sport-specific but what specifically could we do to improve torque development on the bike?
“That’s where we utilised a protocol via the Tacx Utility app in the smart trainer,”explains Bergin Taylor. “On there, you have an isokinetic mode, where no matter how much force is exerted, the speed is fixed, so it’s useful to train at low rpm (revolutions per minute). You also have the isotonic mode, which helps you to apply constant force through the pedal stroke.”
Maximal efforts, maximal rewards
Twice weekly, the Canadian riders’ strength-and-conditioning training was replaced with three sets of four-second maximal effort work, comprising up to 12 repetitions each time, with two minutes’ rest between sets. “It was hard work but it paid off as 66% of the participants racked up 3km individual pursuit personal bests,” said Bergin-Taylor. The biggest success story was Kelsey Mitchell. The 28-year-old only took up track cycling in 2018 after a youth spent playing varsity soccer, doing gymnastics and playing basketball. After three years of training under the guidance of coach Franck Durivaux, Mitchell was celebrating victory in the women’s sprint event at the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics. She also won bronze in the same event at the 2021 UCI Track World Championships in Roubaix, France.
Cycling Canada then proceeded to see how his track research could benefit road riding. “If we take a road sprint of varying cadence and varying torque demands by manipulating the gear, we can begin to identify tactical areas that are strong points for the rider,” explained Bergin-Taylor. “If you have a sprint, for instance, and you know they’re torque dominant, it gives you massive insight into maybe uphill finishes where you know torque demands are higher. Because power’s impacted by torque and cadence, even though a rider’s power numbers might be similar, the one with higher torque might win over the rival with less torque but higher cadence because of those high torque demands when riding uphill.
“Further, when you know optimum cadence of where power’s produced, you can play around with gear selection,” he added. “We know certain sprinters reach maximal power at a cadence of 120rpm, but if we dial down into the data, we see that they’re actually sprinting at 100rpm because they’ve shoved the gear down into 54/11. They do it every time. We then start to educate them and say actually, you’ll sprint faster if you shift down to 54/13 gearing as you’ll hit 120rpm.”
Bergin-Taylor finished off by talking about aero gains of equipment and how minor adjustments of bar extensions had seen a reduction in co-efficient of drag and an increase in speed. “The 3D-printed titanium extension attachments really helped to clean up the whole set-up,” he concluded.
The difference between victory and defeat at world-class level can be down to millimetres. Will Canada’s intensive work pay off in France? It won’t be long before we find out.