The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS

Down to Earth New Year's Fitness Advice (#287)

• CTS • Season 5 • Episode 287

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OVERVIEW
The Holidays are just about over and the New Year is about to begin. If you had a ton of fun over the Holidays and you're feeling a bit soft around the middle and bit slower than you'd like, Coach Adam Pulford has some good news! You're fitness didn't disappear and those couple of extra pounds will likely melt away pretty quickly once you get back to normal training. If you've been piling on the miles over the past few weeks, he has some advice for how to start your year, too! All that, and a preview of what to expect in 2026 from CTS!

TOPICS COVERED

  • Highlights of the 2025 Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcasts
  • The truth about detraining and weight gain over the holidays
  • What to do in the New Year if you just completed a big year-end training block
  • What's changing with The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast for 2026!

RESOURCES

ASK A QUESTION FOR A FUTURE PODCAST

HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.

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SPEAKER_00:

From the team at CTS, this is the Time Crunch Cyclist Podcast, our show dedicated to answering your training questions and providing actionable advice to help you improve your performance, even if you're strapped for time. I'm your host, Coach Adam Pulford, and I'm one of the over 50 professional coaches who make up the team at CTS. In each episode, I draw on our team's collective knowledge, other coaches, and experts in the field to provide you with the practical ways to get the most out of your training and ultimately become the best cyclist that you can be. Now, on to our show. But before we get into all of that, I want to thank you, our listeners, for another successful season of podcasting here at the Time Crunch Cyclist Podcast, because we wouldn't and couldn't do it without you. And what a year it has been. This year we hit over 2.5 million downloads since we first started, which was about five years ago now, which is kind of crazy as I think about it and talk about it. The most popular episodes by the numbers is How to Train VO2 Max. That was our number one. And it's a short to the point episode on all aspects that influence VO2 Max and how best to train it. So check it out. Google it if you're if you if you missed it. Uh search for it in wherever you get your podcasts. But that was the number one from the year. Number two from the year, and I believe all time, is how to build a durable endurance athlete with Dr. Steven Seiler. And that's a longer multi-episode conversation with the goat of researchers that is an evergreen uh episode for time-crunched as well as time-rich athletes alike. Our most popular places worldwide that everyone's listening from is Sydney, New South Wales, and Australia. That's our number one listener city in the world. Once again, because they were several uh years ago as well. Melbourne, Victoria, Australia is number two. And I gotta say, y'all are rocking it. Y'all are crushing it. Uh, and I feel like I need to come visit down under and pay some homage, uh, doing a few group rides down with y'all soon. So additionally, the USA is now the most listener country of all, pushing out the UK from a couple years ago. And the top listener cities in the U.S. are Charlotte, North Carolina. That's number one. Number two is Denver, Colorado, and number three is Seattle, Washington. Our biggest month of the past year was July, and that had our most downloads per month. And that's all because of you, our listeners, tuning in across all different platforms and sharing it with your friends and telling us what you want to hear more about. It's been super fun to see this little project grow and impact athletes all around the globe. And I'm fortunate to be a part of it. So again, thank you all. And now let's get into some seasonal training advice. The holidays at the end of the year can throw off some good habits, and this always isn't a bad thing, especially for the time crunched in amateur athletes. Taking a break from the grindy life of being an endurance athlete is healthy for both our minds and bodies alike. A little extra comfort food, cookies, or imbibing won't ruin all the training gains over the past year, especially if it only happens a handful of days per year. You have to let your hair down once in a while, slowing down, relaxing, and having an intentional time to do this is good for mental health as well as a physical reset. To understand why that is, you need to understand how your system works, how your brain and how your body work. Eating more in one day or even a few days per year doesn't increase body weight in the long run. It takes many days and weeks along with less training hours to add weight, that is long-term weight, essentially accumulating more calories than you're burning over weeks and months. The normal, even time-crunched athlete won't gain a ton of weight that will last. That's the key point here, that will last with just a few holiday parties, especially if they resume normal training habits after a few weeks. So, this is because our body actually has a bunch of checks and balances in place where we want homeostasis. Okay, it doesn't want to add or gain uh weight easily. So, those of you trying to lose weight, that's why. Those who have had a few uh bigger holiday parties and things like this, and you're up a few pounds, don't worry, that will come off soon. Everyone, including myself, gets these feelings of I've lost all the gains or I've gained all the weight after a few days and nights of indulging. But you need to let logic in and realize that in normal, hormonally healthy individuals with good habits of training most of the days year-round, it just takes a few days or maybe a week or so to get back into good habits before the body regulates, as does the mood, right? And not all is lost or gained in these few days or weeks around the holidays. Most of these short-term losses that we see are due to decreased plasma volume and mitochondrial enzyme activity. What this means to you is when you take a few weeks off and you come back to training, it'll make your heart rate higher for efforts that are actually like zone two and above. And it'll also increase your rate of perceived effort, also known as RPE, especially at zone four and above. But as I said, these are acute changes in physiology and come back relatively quickly when you resume regular training. You don't need to get overly emotional about it. Now, if we drag this out longer, say decreased training and increased consumption for four weeks or more, then bigger changes start to happen in your physiology. Check out my D training show for complete details on both short and long-term changes in training, and that's episode number 167. Or you can just search Time Crunch Cyclist D-Training wherever you listen to your podcast or watch on YouTube, and you'll find it. Additionally, with a long time away from training, mental health can start to decrease. This is because for most of us, the process of training brings us so much joy, fun, and flow, and some other complex things that happen in the brain that without the training, the brain starts to change as well. So for both mind and body, it's good to take short breaks to reset and prevent burnout, then come back to good habits after a week or two for most time crunch athletes. In fact, the longer I coach, the more I find that shorter, more frequent breaks throughout the season is far better for performance and mental health versus grinding away most of the season with a month or two off at the end. Our bodies actually thrive on consistency, and as athletes, we thrive in structure. Not all the time, but most of the time. And if there is one piece of training advice I can give you in 2026, is to lean into that and plan out your season with shorter, more frequent breaks to find this balance. I'll get more in detail about this in the coming weeks on my episode about annual training plans. So stay tuned for that. Now, being in full holiday mode 12 months out of the year likely won't set you up for endurance athlete success. So as we round out that year of 2025 and go into 2026, if you had time to reset, relax, this is good. You'll be ready to start training again in January. Just stay away from self-shaming because of extra eating and drinking. This does nothing positive for you. Now, if you're like some of my athletes who are time crunched most of the year, but use the extra time around the holidays to increase training, this is awesome. This is like a training camp for some. You can actually increase some of my athletes are increasing their training by as much as 50 or even 70% in this short term. And that's normal and that can happen, which obviously increases fatigue beyond normal. My advice to you is as you head into the new year, take a recovery block to start this new year. Many love to jump on the new year, new me bandwagon and hit the ground running with all the train, eat, sleep, repeat, doing properly and banking miles of all the things that you can do out there. But if you just had 10 to 14 days of hitting it hard and increasing volume and doing things harder than normal, relax. Recover. Take a three to four day recovery block. Probably that's all you need. If you need more, take the full week, so that you can continue on with training progression and keep things in balance for the new year. So in that short recovery block, that means maybe a couple days off and a couple days of 45 to 60 minutes of easy zone one or zone two spinning, then resume training. Life will have enough stresses for you in the new year. So dial it down in training in that first week back to be most successful in the long run. Okay, so before we wrap up today, I have some fun news for y'all. The podcast grows because you listen, consume it, and share it with others. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Keep doing that, and you'll keep getting great training advice on a time crunch budget each week. In order to keep growing the podcast and give you exactly what you're asking for, starting in February or March of 2026, a slightly more YouTube-focused content will start to roll out. Think short, straight to the point messaging as we do here with how-to messaging visuals and other resources that will keep you on track for the best year yet. You'll still be getting the audio versions on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcast, but you'll get more curated content on YouTube and social media from me and the team at CTS. And if you're not watching there already, go there and start following us. And you'll start to get that new content in the new year. I'll link to that in our show notes too, if you want to go there, or simply just search for CTS on YouTube or wherever you're at, and you'll find us. Some near future episodes and topics starting in 2026, as requested by our listeners, include but are not limited to annual training plans, and that's advice for Ivy. Gels, high carb, and gut health questions for Keegan. Should you do VO2 Max training year-round for Stefano? And if you were time crunched, now retired, how best to increase training hours? And that's for Kay Joffy, if I pronounce that correctly. So stay tuned. Uh everyone who has written in and asked some detailed questions. It's been awesome. But those are just uh some teasers of what is to come. Now, finally, a quick word from all of us at CTS that helped to deliver this show to you. We do this for you, our listeners, so that you can have a channel that you can tune into without all the ads, long rabbit hole conversations, ramblings, and hyped BS out there in this saturated market of training and fitness. Something simple, actionable, and helpful in reaching your goals. We know that not everyone can afford a coach or want a coach. So providing this information that anyone can use on their self-coach journey is why we do this. In 2025, we rolled out some different coaching options that hit well with new clients. I'll link to those in our landing page, but we also will be providing some new coaching services and products in 2026. So if you're curious about coaching, stay tuned to future episodes and releases on that soon. For now, the TrainRight membership may be a great option for you, giving access to endurance training programs, strength training workouts, online training forums that link to our community of CTS athletes, and Training Peaks Premium and Training Peaks Virtual. All of those wanting more direction on a scaled-down budget, go there and I'll link to those in our uh landing page as well. We also hope that you think of us when your friend or training partner may want coaching. Just refer him over to CTS. Or if things change for you in the new year where your goal is so big you need extra attention to take it to the next level, CTS will be there for you. That's it. That's our show for today and this year. I truly want to thank you, each and everyone, for listening, writing in with great questions, commenting on the socials with more inquiries and suggestions. It's a great way to hear from everyone around the globe and help as many athletes as we can taking a step forward to reaching your goals and increasing your performance. I look forward to doing more of this in the new year, so keep tuning in, especially on our YouTube channel for more elevated, actionable content soon. Happy New Year, folks. Thanks for joining us on the Time Crunch Cyclist Podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want even more actionable training advice, head over to trainwright.com backslash newsletter and subscribe to our free weekly publication. Each week you'll get in depth training content that goes beyond what we cover here on the podcast that'll help you take your training to the next level. That's all for now. Until next time, train hard, train smart, train right.

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Adam Pulford

Host