Mikael and Jack Hutchens each bring up four things they do in their coaching practice that the research does not support, or does not support in the form they use it. What the evidence says, what they do instead, and the reasoning they would defend it with.

HIGHLIGHTS AND KEY TOPICS:

  • Tapering: Mikael prescribes 7 to 10 day tapers where the literature converges on two to three weeks, with a smaller volume cut than the meta-analyses land on. Why he thinks the study populations do not transfer.
  • Torque training: Jack keeps low cadence work in every program despite a review finding no strong evidence it improves performance. His specificity case, and Mikael's rationale from the cadence drop late in an Ironman bike.
  • Electrolytes: why Mikael prescribes them liberally while accepting the evidence is thin, the one athlete variable no study has controlled for, and the profile that really does not need them.
  • Grey zone intervals: polarised training wins the short intervention studies, so why does Jack lean on the zone in between? The time horizon argument, and Mikael's three week VO2max block that stopped working after two.
  • Heat training: ten sessions over two weeks for acclimation, five weeks of five for haemoglobin mass, against Mikael's minimal effective dose. Jack's pushback: does half a protocol buy half the adaptation?
  • Strength training: where it sits in Jack's list of levers when time is fixed, who he does prioritise it for, and Mikael's rules on frequency, session length and the weekly hours threshold to bother at all.
  • Sprint interval training: the protocol with a decent evidence base that Mikael almost never prescribes, what goes in that slot instead, and the cycling study published five days before recording that he never expected to see.
  • Psychology: why Jack spends more coaching time on self-talk, goal setting and confidence than the evidence warrants, and Mikael's theory for why it looks so weak in group studies.

SHOWNOTES, LINKS, RESOURCES AND RELATED EPISODES:

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