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Power2Max Power Team First Move to the Max

Over the course of their pro road racing careers, Jaco Venter and Jacques Janse van Rensburg have had access to the World’s best coaches, now they are putting those many hours of training and years of learnings into practice by planning and structuring their own training plans. For this reason, First Move Sport has partnered with Power2Max, supplied by Bicycle Power Trading, to ensure we’re making the most of their time in the saddle.

Professional cyclists use power meters daily to take advantage of the real-time feedback on the bike and effectively pace efforts. Coaches utilise the collected data to structure quality training programs with varying intensities to suit racing requirements.

“Metrics such as Training Stress Score (TSS), Acute Training Load (ATL), Chronic Training Load (CTL) and Training Stress Balance (TSB) are all invaluable to athletes and coaches to continually monitor fitness and recovery during training blocks. These values allow coaches to scale back training when the athletes aren’t recovering effectively, and to step up intensities if the training load is too low,” said Jacques Janse van Rensburg, also the head coach of Ciclista Coaching,

Not only useful for training, but power data also helps to improve nutrition strategies, biomechanics performance like improving your pedal stroke, equalising the power balance and improving sprint capabilities by analysing torque data.

Below, Jacques talks us through a couple of interesting metrics as shown by data collected from a race and training ride.

RACE DATA ANALYSIS – Jaco Venter: Nissan Trailseeker #1, Banhoek

Above analysis of Jaco Venter’s 2nd Climb in Nissan Trailseeker #1 Banhoek: Climb of 3.9km @ 8% average gradient Jaco averaged 391w for 16min. That’s 6.21 w/kg which is on par with how most climbs get ridden in a Tour de France lead group. The Race was quickly whittled down from a start group of around 50 riders to 4 at the top of this climb with Jaco cresting the climb in the lead. 

Jaco lost some time on the descend of the previous climb and put in a massive effort as seen above at the start of climb no3 to rejoin the leaders. He did a big 5 min effort @ 425w (6.75w.kg) starting that effort with 30sec @ +- 600w.

Having been put on the back foot after the big descend and trying to chase back Jaco fatigued a bit near the end. Above is a 1.8km climb around 80% into the race. You can see Jaco rode @ 322w or 5.11 w/kg which is a 24% drop in average power from the 2km climb early in the race in the previous diagram. 

Both Jaco and myself can really improve our performance level by increasing our technical proficiency on the downhills. We’re taping into our FRC (Functional Reserve Capacity) every time after technical sections to chase back to the leaders, and in a highly intense sport like MTB there is little time to recharge your FRC once depleted,” commented Janse van Rensburg

TRAINING DATA ANALYSIS – Jacques Janse van Rensburg, Pretoria

Jacques’ Training file of Anaerobic power efforts @ 440 – 540w for 1min x 10. A great example of keeping a steady anaerobic 1 min effort and not fading at the end. 

Detailed data of the 1min effort. 7.27 w/kg which is quite a bit lower than his all-time best of 10.46 w/kg @ 659w for 1 min. 

Max sprint effort of just over 1000w. Jacques is best suited to 1min – 20min efforts and therefore lacks sprint power. But he has a very good 1min and 5min power profile as shown below.

It is important that a power meter is accurately calibrated to achieve correct power data, especially in 1 sec to 1 min efforts where a 5% variation inaccuracy can mean up to 100 watts variation in power readings. The P2Max NGeco sports an accuracy rating of +-2% which is excellent and a must-have, and nothing was needed to be changed on our bikes when installing the spider onto the crank. In my years of riding as a professional, I have raced with the best power meters on the market and I can honestly say with 100% confidence that the Power2Max meters are one of the best I have ever used.” ended Janse van Rensburg.

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