Science vs real-world cycling training

Jacob Tipper is a high-performance cycling and triathlon coach working with athletes such as Ben Healy (Tour de France stage winner and UCI World Championships third place in 2025), Lucy Byram, Dan Bigham and Jonny Brownlee. He is also a team coach or the EF Education-EasyPost WorldTour team. In today’s interview we discuss training for amateur triathletes and we dive deep into Ben Healy’s training and preparation that led to his breakthrough year in 2025. 

HIGHLIGHTS AND KEY TOPICS: 

• Jacob’s thoughts on doing aerobic runs at a decent clip to optimise biomechanical development and running economy improvements. 
• The key characteristics of Ben Healy’s training in 2025
• Being a high-volume athlete on an annual basis without having very high weekly training volumes. 
• The changes in race tactics Ben implemented in 2025 to be able to win races at the highest level. 
• The differences between the scientific literature’s view of cycling training and what it actually looks like
• How age-group triathletes should think about volume and intensity as drivers of adaptation when it comes to their cycling.
• How to maximise training return on investment for time-crunched athletes by not following rigid rules
• Monitoring training improvements by feel 
• How working on speed as the ultimate training metric is still important and still underestimated. 

DETAILED EPISODE SHOWNOTES: 

• We have detailed shownotes for all of our episodes. The shownotes are basically the podcast episode in written form, that you can read in 5-10 minutes. They are not transcriptions, but they are also not just surface-level overviews. They provide detailed insights and timestamps for each episode, and are great especially for later review, after you've already listened to an episode. 
• The shownotes for today's episode can be found at https://scientifictriathlon.com/tts690/

LINKS AND RESOURCES: 

• Jacob’s website and Instagram
• Jacob’s previous appearances on That Triathlon Show:
  • Jacob Tipper | EP#424
  • Training Talk with Jacob Tipper | EP#345
  • Sub7/Sub8 with Jacob Tipper | EP#344
• Physiological Profiling Explained – Why, How, and Important Training Implications for Triathletes

WHAT SHOULD I LISTEN TO NEXT?

If you enjoyed this episode, I think you'll love the following related episodes:

• The Hour record and aerodynamics with Dan Bigham | EP#368 - An interview going into the details of the training and aerodynamic preparations for setting the UCI Hour Record with Dan Bigham, coached by Jacob Tipper.
• Luca Zenti – UAE Team ADQ coach on Tour de France Femmes and bike training for triathletes | EP#469 - A great interview straddling both cycling and triathlon, mainly from a high performance perspective.

You can find our full episode archives here, where you can filter for categories such as Training, Racing, Science & Physiology, Swimming, Cycling, Running etc.

You can also find separate archives for specific series of episodes I've done, specifically Q&A episodes, TTS Thursday episodes, and Beginner Tips episodes. 

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