Is coaching the best performance upgrade you can buy?

Cycling is a technical sport and we all love shopping for the latest kit. But let's be honest, as cyclists we probably care more about style than real performance a lot of the time.

When we’re hitting the final ascent of an alpine epic, the cafe instagram photo is long since forgotten and suddenly it’s all down to performance. By this point, it’s just about keeping the pedals turning to the top and not having to walk the last 2km in our fancy Italian carbon soled shoes!

So what effect does spending cash have on performance on a long gradual climb, and how does this compare to consistent training, improving our fitness and maybe even dropping a few kilos! We’re confident that following a structured training plan from Kudo Coach over a 6 month period will improve your fitness. So for a bit of fun let’s see what will give you the biggest bang for your buck. Fancy new kit or coaching?

To help us work this out we used the amazing Bike Calculator app. This engineering model allows cyclists to easily compute all their important parameters, such as weight, power, body position etc, and see how changes to these affect your time over a given distance/gradient. The Bike Calculator was developed by Curt Austin, who as well as loving bikes holds a PhD in Metallurgy; so a smart cookie!

The Experiment

We need an example cyclist, so let’s take my Kudo co-founder Steve as our guinea pig. His goal is to complete the Etape du Tour sportive as quickly as possible. We’re going to test him over a hypothetical 10km climb with a 5% average gradient.

Baseline Steve weighs 70kg and his standard £1500 road bike weighs 9kg. He likes to climb on the hoods and his current FTP (Functional Threshold Power) is 250 watts.

Let’s predict that if Steve trains consistently for 6 months using Kudo Coach he would increase his fitness by 10%, and now have an FTP of 275 Watts (this is actually a pretty conservative improvement estimate for the average cyclist). On the other hand, he could empty his wallet and buy some cool new kit!

So let’s see how these scenarios translate to actual performance over our fictional 10km, 5% climb.

The Results

Scenario	FTP	Bike Weight	Time	+/-
Baseline Steve	250W	9kg	33m 46s
10% fitness increase	275W	9kg	31m 17s	8%
5% body weight loss	250W	9kg	32m 42s	3%
£3500 road bike	250W	8.1kg	33m 29s	<1%
£6000 road bike	250W	7.2kg	33m 13s	1%
Climbing on the drops	250W	9kg	33m 1s	2%

There are some big differences and some surprises. Increasing fitness by following a training plan like Kudo Coach tops the list, and clearly beats any piece of bike kit for value.

In this example, each second gained from 6 months of using Kudo Coach Premium cost £0.17, whereas each second gained through upgrading to the £6000 bike cost a whopping £136!!

In reality, the 5% body weight loss would go hand-in-hand with the increased fitness, so these gains can be combined making the coaching option even more of a no-brainer.

The surprising result was the benefits of climbing in a more aerodynamic position, on the drops and tucked down as opposed to the hoods. So some time spent increasing flexibility and a good bike fit would also pay off.

Buying a lighter bike might make you a little faster but it should come low down on your priority list when compared to the fitness increases gained from coaching, and also the aerodynamic gains from a better body position.

Now imagine if Steve went for the whole lot, he trained using Kudo Coach, he stretched, he spent the cash and followed the diet. How fast could he ride the 10k climb?

Scenario	FTP	Bike Weight	Time	+/-
Baseline Steve	250W	9kg	33m 46s
Performance Steve	275W	7.2kg	29m 2s	16%

Conclusion

So in short, increasing fitness through consistent training is the key to faster climbing, and represents far better value for money than buying the latest new kit. However, a lighter bike will certainly help a little, and will look a lot cooler in the finish line photos!

Happy training!