Opportunity cost the economics of sports science

The next season of racing is upon us. Are you looking for the edge to fine tune your racing legs?

Whether your goal is to win the Nationals or simply tear the legs off the local peloton, understanding the gain you get from one session always comes at the cost of another.

Evaluating your time When training is aimed at improving performance, there is always a choice of a number of different types of sessions that can be performed through any one phase of training or at any one time.

The simple way of evaluating whether what you are doing is the best possible thing for you is simply to ask “Could I be doing something else with this time, to improve performance more effectively?”.

If the answer is no, then you are on the right track!

If you never ask yourself this question, then the answer is probably a resounding “yes”, you could be doing something else to improve performance more effectively.

In cycling and like most sports there is nothing better than actually performing the sport.

If you are riding for two hours per week and doing two one hour yoga sessions a week then by cutting the yoga and doing four hours on the bike, you will undoubtedly become a better cyclist, simply by doubling your volume.

I have nothing against yoga, it is just that the opportunity cost of another two hours of riding in this case, is more than the benefit of doing the yoga sessions.

Of course, like anything, there are always exceptions and if you had an injury preventing you from riding that yoga was improving, then that would be an exception.

The benefit of weights or “resistance training” is another common question people ask me all the time.

Again we can refer this back to the opportunity cost of the session.

Let’s look a little more closely at this example.

Here are the variables I would look at in weighing up the opportunity cost of any session, using resistance training as an example:

Physiology of the athlete - body type etc
Physiological race specific strengths and weaknesses
Timing - of the season and training phase
Athlete’s age
Training history
Goals for the season and long term goals
Injury history
Any other athlete specific variables

If it is deemed that the opportunity of doing a particular session is greater than the cost of anything else the athlete could be doing, then using a similar set of variables, the session can be designed and implemented.

This does not just apply to supplementary training like yoga, pilates, resistance training, visualisation etc. but also to the types of cycling you might do in any given session.

Weighing up the variables

If you are an ectomorph build (very slight / skinny) who lacks the ability to accelerate hard in racing then as a result you may get dropped at critical times in your key events.

In this case resistance training pre season may be a good idea and an “opportunity session” that outweighs the cost of any other session that could be performed at that time.

If it is hill climbing where you struggle and if climbing hills faster will mean you are there at the end of the race, then all training decisions will stem from a medium and / or long term goal of improving watts per kilo.

Any session not aimed at that will be a supplementary session (not a key session) or will not be done at all.

Training progression - the key theme

If we use the ability to climb hills, as an example of an area of improvement needed, doing a lot of ascended metres in your early season training will be the first piece of the puzzle.

This will then lead on to performing hill reps of at least the total ascended metres in the event (if not more).

Which will in turn lead on to fast, hard hill reps, probably slightly above race pace in the event, in the speed phase.

This is what I call the “key theme” which runs through any training programme progression.

Everything else in the programme is based around this key progression so that the main performance improvement goal is not compromised in any way.

When looking through a training programme and evaluating the opportunity cost of every session in that plan there should be a very clear reflection of what it is you are trying to achieve.

It is not good if the coach understands this but not the athlete.

At the end of the day it is the athlete who performs the training and needs to understand the progression.

Take a look at your training week and say to yourself, “Is that the best possible training I can be performing with my time, for performance improvement?”

Silas Cullen is the founder of “Smart Coaching Limited” the coaching system designed to enable maximum performance improvement for time spent training. Silas has a proven track record of giving anyone with the desire, the tools to improve without limits. Visit www.smartcoaching.org