Fast Talk

Fast Talk Labs

The Fast Talk podcast offers the best guides to cycling performance and endurance sports training from world-class experts.

Cohosted by cycling coaches and sport scientists Trevor Connor and Rob Pickels, Fast Talk episodes feature fascinating conversations with world-class experts discussing the endurance sports topics they know best: the best ways to train, effective workouts, questions on polarized and interval training, sports nutrition, physiology and recovery, and sport psychology.

Fast Talk guests and regular contributors include Dr. Stephen Seiler, Joe Friel, Dr. Asker Jeukendrup, Sebastian Weber, Jim Miller, Dr. Andy Pruitt, Dr. Timothy Noakes, and elite professional athletes like Kristin Armstrong, Sepp Kuss, Brent Bookwalter, Kate Courtney, and many more.

Fast Talk is part of Fast Talk Laboratories, a new endurance sports knowledgebase for endurance racers and adventurers.

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474 episodes
Updated Thursday

Episodes474

Newest first

Jan 21, 2020 · 37 min
94: Bonus Q and A on Fasted Training, Goal Setting, and the Polarized Approach
Take a guess, which one of our all-knowing hosts is an expert on Baby Yoda, and who hadn’t even heard of him until this recording? Or, more importantly, what is a palindrome? Welcome to our second bonus episode of Fast Talk...
Jan 16, 2020 · 1 hr 12 min
93: Balancing sport and life, with Brent Bookwalter
Hello and welcome to Fast Talk! I'm your host Chris Case. Today we have a great episode in store for you, with someone you’ve heard from many times before on Fast Talk. Today, we’re finally joined by Brent Bookwalter of...
Jan 9, 2020 · 36 min
92: Bonus Q and A on intensity vs. volume, overtraining, lab testing, and more
Hello and welcome to this bonus episode of Fast Talk. These new episodes, which we’ll publish every other week to supplement our flagship shows, will typically run a little shorter than our regular episodes, and they’ll also be more geared...
Jan 3, 2020 · 1 hr 16 min
91: Beyond the Data: Training is not only About Numbers
Happy New Year’s, Fast Talk friends! We are excited to be speeding into 2020 with our new company, Fast Labs. For starters, and due to popular demand, Fast Talk will now...
Dec 20, 2019 · 1 hr 9 min
90: Innovative approaches to base training, with The Cycling Gym
Base training has traditionally been all about long, slow rides. But that's tough if you live in the northern hemisphere and you hate the cold, or lack the necessary equipment to ride safely outdoors when road conditions might be perilous and light is...
Dec 6, 2019 · 1 hr 29 min
89: The Value of Physiological Testing with the University of Colorado Sports Medicine and Performance Center
Riding on the gold standard Velotron in a lab and breathing into an uncomfortable facemask while a physiologist like our guest Jared Berg pokes your ear might not sound like a good time at all. Which is probably why Coach Connor can't get enough. But...
Nov 22, 2019 · 1 hr 11 min
88: Season Planning for the Limited Racer, with Colby Pearce & Grant Holicky
We all understand that to race or ride our best, we need to periodize our season. That’s obvious and essential for a pro who’s racing upwards of 80 races in a season. Simply put, they wouldn’t survive if they went hard all the time: They need a...
Nov 11, 2019 · 1 hr 46 min
87: Preventing injuries through strength and conditioning with Jess Elliott
Typically, when we hear the words “strength training,” we think of going into the gym, slapping some plates on a bar, and seeing what we can lift. The more, the better. But there’s a lot more to strength training than that, especially for those...
Oct 25, 2019 · 1 hr 5 min
86: Listener Questions On Inflammation, Cardiac Drift, and Much More
We’ve received so many intriguing questions from our listeners, it was time to devote an entire episode to answering them. We appreciate the feedback, and generate many future podcast topics from your questions, so please keep them coming. You can...
Oct 11, 2019 · 1 hr 45 min
85: Learning to trust the science with Dr. Jim Peterman
Here on Fast Talk, we’ve been known to periodically quote a study or two. While in the past, athletes mostly figured out their training by trial and error or what felt right, nowadays, in this era of marginal gains, no coach or serious athlete can...
Sep 27, 2019 · 1 hr 4 min
84: Pro training tips with George Bennett
A few episodes back, Trevor and I interviewed George Bennett of Jumbo-Visma, who at one point was sitting fourth at this year’s Tour de France. At the time, we talked with George about the importance of recovery and adaptation. In the course of that...
Sep 13, 2019 · 1 hr 28 min
83: Training the Gut with Asker Jeukendrup
Just ask any Tour de France rider who’s frequently burning 5000 calories or more per day about in-race nutrition and they’ll tell you that it’s both critical and tricky to get right. You can spend months getting your legs ready for your target...
Aug 31, 2019 · 1 hr 30 min
82: The importance of adaptations, with George Bennett
Recovery, recovery, recovery… you’ve heard us talk about it before. You’ve heard a lot of our guests preach about its importance. We’ve emphasized again and again how one of the biggest mistakes athletes make is to not get enough recovery....
Aug 16, 2019 · 1 hr 44 min
81: The Cyclocross episode with Coach Holicky, Katie Compton, Ellen Noble, and Maxx Chance
The Fast Talk Podcast is your source for the best training advice and most compelling insight on what it takes to become a better cyclist. Listen in as VeloNews managing editor Chris Case and our resident physiologist and coach, Trevor...
Aug 2, 2019 · 1 hr 49 min
80: Properly executing intervals is hard; keep your training plan simple
Here’s your workout for today: Give me 20 seconds at high anaerobic capacity, now 10 second recovery at 65 percent, then one minute at mid-VO2max holding 100 RPM. Now rest one minute. Alright, now give me a series of 10 one-minute efforts at 102...
Jul 19, 2019 · 1 hr 36 min
79: Playing the Energy Game with Colby Pearce
There are a lot of analogies that cyclists and coaches have devised to try to understand a basic concept in cycling — we all have a limited amount of energy, and to win races, we have to use that energy carefully. Metrics such as calories,...
Jul 12, 2019 · 1 hr 19 min
78: The demands of the Tour de France with Ciaran O'Grady
Right now, the 2019 Tour de France is in full swing. Yesterday we saw the riders crawl up the steep finishing raps of La Planche des Belles Filles, and today, as we speak, they’re churning through all 230 kilometers of this...
Jun 28, 2019 · 1 hr 35 min
77: Avoiding the big mistakes even pros make, with Dr. Andy Pruitt and Frankie Andreu
We all make mistakes. No one trains and races perfectly, which can be frustrating when so often those mistakes are made out of honest effort and a desire to perform at our best. But we have a choice in how we treat our mistakes. One way is to get...
Jun 14, 2019 · 1 hr 32 min
76: When to push and when to pull the plug, with Kate Courtney and Whoop
We all know how to train hard. Tearing up a set of Tabata intervals, giving it our all at the local Tuesday night training race, or attacking someone from New Zealand on Zwift is what we do. But training — at least effective training — is actually...
May 31, 2019 · 1 hr 37 min
75: High intensity training, with Dr. Stephen Seiler
In episode 75, we’re joined by one of our favorite guests, Dr. Stephen Seiler, who is one of the top exercise physiologists working today. Dr. Seiler has talked with us previously about the polarized, or 80/20, model of endurance training, he’s...