FasCat Cycling Training Tips Podcast

Getting sick or injured during a training block doesn't have to ruin your season.
Try Coaching (AI or 1:1) Free for the 1st 30 days → https://fascatcoaching.com/ 
In this video, Coach Frank breaks down how to use your coaching in the event of sickness or injury without making things worse and without losing weeks of fitness to a preventable layoff.
You'll learn a simple 6-step process used with real coached athletes to:
✅ decide when to rest vs train
✅ adjust intensity and volume
✅ avoid overdoing it
✅ revise your training plan
✅ rebuild day by day
Most athletes don't lose fitness from missing a few workouts — they lose it by pushing through pain or sickness and turning small issues into multi-week layoffs. This video shows you how to avoid that mistake.
We'll also show you how CoachCat, our AI Coach, handles illness, injury, and "something feels off" situations by revising the training plan automatically when life happens.
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Try CoachCat Free for 30 Days: https://fascatcoaching.com/app
Work with a 1:1 Coach Free for 30 Days (limited offer)
https://fascatcoaching.com/pages/hire-a-coach
What is CoachCat? CoachCat is an AI Coach that builds custom training plans, analyzes your power files, revises workouts automatically, and helps you train smarter all year round.

Learn how to eat right for your cycling. Most cyclists try to lose weight by eating less and riding more and that doesn't work.
Get the Go Fast Grocery List mentioned in this video for FREE → https://fascatcoaching.com/app 
In this video, Coach Frank breaks down the #1 nutrition mistake most cyclists make and explains why watts per kilo don't improve on the bike… they start in the kitchen. This video introduces our long-standing FasCat concept called Winning in the Kitchen: a simple, sustainable approach to performance nutrition and weight loss that works for real cyclists with real lives. You'll learn: 
why you can't out-ride bad nutrition
the 80/20 rule of weight loss for cyclists
the Go Fast vs Go Slow food framework
why grocery shopping matters more than recipes
how to avoid "Losing in the Breakroom"
what Winning in the Kitchen actually looks like day-to-day
and one of our favorite cyclist meals: Salmon Watts
This is not calorie counting. It's not a fad diet. And it won't sabotage your training. It's how cyclists fuel smarter, lose weight sustainably, and improve watts per kilo.
🛒 Want help putting this into practice? When you start a free trial of the CoachCat app, you'll get: our Go FasCat Grocery List, Performance-focused meal plans and nutrition guidance built around the Winning in the Kitchen framework including "How Much you Should Eat" before that big ride tomorrow. 
👉 Start your free trial here: https://fascatcoaching.com/app

The base training advice you've been getting from social media and indoor riding platforms is wrong. 
Riding only Zone 2 all winter doesn't work for cyclists with less than 8 hours a week to train. Riding hard indoors doesn't work either. In this video, Coach Frank Overton (aka BigCat) breaks down how to build a REAL aerobic base on just 4–8 hours per week, using the Sweet Spot training methodology he has pioneered for the past 20 years.
You'll learn:
1️⃣ Where base training actually fits in your annual plan
2️⃣ Why Zone 2-only training fails when volume is low
3️⃣ The biggest base-training mistakes cyclists make indoors
4️⃣ Why Sweet Spot delivers more aerobic gains per minute
5️⃣ How to measure base fitness using OTS & Level
6️⃣ What a real month of base training looks like (calendar example)
This is the same approach we've used for over 20 years to help time-crunched amateur cyclists get stronger, more durable, and faster without burning out.
🎁 FREE BASE TRAINING + GIVEAWAY 
If you listen to the end, you can get
✅ A full month of base training for free
✅ A chance to win a FREE YEAR of the CoachCat app
How to enter the giveaway: Start a free 30-day trial using the link below
Comment "CoachCat" on this video (plus any questions or thoughts)
No purchase necessary. One winner will be randomly selected and announced in the comments 5 days after this video goes live.
Even if you don't win, you'll still get full access to this month of base training for free.
👉 Start your free trial here: https://www.FasCatCoaching.com

What happens when you mix a live Sweet Spot group ride, real-time coaching, fueling advice, tech questions, and unfiltered athlete Q&A?
You get a live, no-BS training session led by Coach Frank that covers how cyclists train. Pardon the audio as we recorded from our discord channel that was live during the ride.
In this ride & podcast, we dove into a dozen or more topics, including:
1. How to ride Sweet Spot by feel (no rigid intervals required)
2. Why Sweet Spot is "not too hard, not too easy — just right"
3. Fueling correctly indoors (70–90g carbs/hr and why it matters)
4. ERG mode: when to use it and when it hurts your training
5. Using time-in-zone instead of chasing perfect watts
6. Heart rate vs power for Sweet Spot Time in Zone Accuracy
7. Training consistency, durability, and long-ride fatigue resistance
8. How to adapt training when life, travel, injuries, or holidays happen
9. Festive 500 strategy for road, gravel, crit, and masters athletes
10. Strength training + endurance: how to blend them without burnout
11. Why most plateaus are caused by doing the same thing too long
12. How CoachCat helps revise plans, answer questions, and guide decisions in real time 🎯
Who this ride and podcast is for:
Masters cyclists
Time-crunched athletes
Gravel, road, crit, and fondo riders
Athletes training indoors on Zwift
Anyone tired of over-complicating training
🧠 Key takeaway: Fitness comes from doing slightly more work than yesterday and recovering well enough to do it again tomorrow.
Sweet Spot training done right builds durability, raises FTP, and teaches you how to pace long efforts — without burying yourself.
🚴 Join us live again on January 3rd, 2026 Sweet Spot Saturday is part of a 7-ride progression series: Each ride gets 30 minutes longer Builds durability and confidence Ride #7 culminates in the legendary Uber Pretzel
📅 Next ride: January 3 👉 Join the FasCat Coaching Club in the Zwift Companion app
👍 Like • Subscribe • Share If this helped your training,
hit 👍, subscribe for science-backed cycling advice, and share with a riding buddy who trains hard but wants to train smarter. Train Smarter. Ride Faster. — Coach Frank 🐾

Sweet Spot Training is one of the most widely used and effective ways cyclists build their base and improve power. Sweet Spot Train the Right Way for FREE in the CoachCat App → https://fascatcoaching.com/app
But very few people know the story behind the development of 'sweet spot training'.
Long before Sweet Spot Training was mainstream, it was developed inside a secret, private beta group of coaches and sport scientists that I was part of.
We were testing a new power-based performance model that would later go on to become the Performance Manager Chart inside TrainingPeaks.
And what we discovered & developed changed endurance cycling training forever: there was a  training intensity that built the most fitness for the least fatigue.
And that this type of training enabled time crunched athletes to develop a massive aerobic engines that previously weren't possible with Zone 2 training.
That discovery became Sweet Spot Training.
Do you remember your first sweet spot workout?