There are a few goals we have for everyone we work with. It doesn't matter if the individual's goal is performance, weight loss or rehab we look to achieve this with all of them?Do you know what 'it' is?What we're looking to achieve with all these clients is help them be as lean as possible. And here's why.For a movement, non-collision sport athlete one of the goals is to generate as much strength and power per unit of body weight. In cycling, the unit of interest is watts/kilo. And to improve is to increase our power, decrease our mass or both. Sometimes an athlete has maxed out on the power they can produce but they are carrying a few extra pounds. Leaning up a little bit can be the difference to increased performance.Obviously for the weight loss client we want to shed as much unnecessary mass as possible while keeping as much muscle as possible.And for the rehab client a leaner physique helps in a number of ways. A leaner indivudual can move better than an overweight one. They will have more energy to do more. And a leaner frame takes stress on load-bearing joints. With the knees for example, every pound that is shed takes four pounds off the knees.With my own training and goals I'm looking to be as lean and strong as possible. With the fondo coming up in a little over a week all the hard training should be done or wrapping up soon. And now it's just a matter of dialing in the nutrition and resting up.Obviously a lighter bike helps, especially when climbing hills. But instead of looking to save grams by upgrading seat posts, wheels and bottle cage holders, it would make more sense to shed pounds on the scale.For example, going from an...
