That Triathlon Show just posted an interview with the elusive Philip Skiba based on the new book Dr. Skiba has worked on. The intro says the book may be out by time of posting the pod. However, a quick Google search has not popped out anything new and his physfarm website store requires a log in(?). Any idea on the status of his book? It would be an interesting read for the post season.
I always was a fan of Phil. That said, elusive seems to be the key word.
he replied to that exact question here:
https://forum.slowtwitch.com/forum/Slowtwitch_Forums_C1/Triathlon_Forum_F1/Dr._Philip_Friere_Skiba_P1675104-2/
Unbelievably, still dealing with paper shortages due to the pandemic. It is extremely frustrating. If this goes on much longer, the digital version may be released first.
Someone emailed me last week to ask if they could get an advance copy if they were on my coaching roster. I appreciate the interest, by my athlete’s aren’t getting early access either 
Phil
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Dr. Philip Skiba
PhysFarm Training Systems
Coaching and Consulting for World Champions, and You.
Listened to the first half of this interview on the way to work today. Looking forward to the rest and hopefully picking up his latest book. He makes it sound pretty simple to train - nothing magic - tracking power and speed and making improvements to get better.
Elusive? I’m right here 
Phil
Like I said in the intro to one of the older books: the secret is there is no secret. However, there has been a tremendous amount of research into the physiology of exercise, and that can really help guide you towards more productive ways of training. It’s just not easy to access sometimes ($$paywall$$), and is often written in language that’s unfamiliar to athletes (scientists like me writing for other scientists). I try to solve those problems as best I can.
There is always more to learn, but if you master the stuff in the book you will be working on a different level.
Phil
Kind of blown away by the scientific triathlon podcast, definitely want to get the book at this point. Great stuff!!
Mikael does a really good interview. Hits the high points and doesn’t get too far into the weeds. It was fun to do.
Phil
Mikael does a really good interview. Hits the high points and doesn’t get too far into the weeds. It was fun to do.
Phil
Hi Phil-
I enjoyed that interview and will look forward to your book. One thing you touched on grabbed my interest in particular . . . you mentioned that you had two very similar athletes that have different responses in terms of how quickly they benefit from hard work, and that you had plotted this out on an athlete-by-athlete basis. Can you elaborate at all how you do this or if there are some links or something that would be easier to post that would be great. Thanks!
Sure thing.
There are a class of mathematical models called impulse-response models. Imagine that you bounce a basketball in an empty gym. You hear the bounce, and then you hear the echo. The initial bounce is your training today. The echo is the response of your body. (If you want to read in more detail, you can read and download a free paper by Dave Clarke and I here.) Over time, all the bounces and all the echoes add up and become the sound in the room. In the same way, the coming and going of the fitness and fatigue you gain from each workout add up to how you can perform on any given day.
Like all models, they have strengths and weaknesses. However, one thing they are pretty good at is spotting big differences between different athletes. What you do is monitor training (you can use something like TRIMPS, or TSS, or BikeScore). Then you record their performances. Then, you ask the computer to make an equation that describes the relationship between training and performance.
What you are able to do is plot something called an effect or influence curve. See figure 8, panel B in that link above.
Read from left to right, you can see how much effect a workout has on an athlete’s physiology as they approach race day. You can see there is a peak…the day where a workout has the maximum positive effect on the eventual performance. For this athlete, that’s about 40 days before the race! Then you can see the curve slopes down, and eventually becomes negative. This tells you that hard training isn’t a good idea just before a race, because you won’t shed the fatigue in time to gain any benefit. That’s why you taper.
If you read the graph right to left, it shows you how long it takes to feel the benefit of a workout. For this athlete, it’s about 12 days.
What I am talking about in the interview is that these curves can look very different for very similar athletes. I am fortunate enough to train a lot of world class athletes. Some of them may have very similar times for the marathon, for example. However, when I generate these curves for them, I discover they are very different. One athlete may have a curve that looks like this. They need a longer taper. Another might be shorter and steeper, like a skateboard ramp. You can train them harder, closer to the event, and then taper them quicker, because they will shed the fatigue quickly.
And this is why it is important to treat a team as a bunch of individuals, and customize accordingly. Good coaches are able to figure this out through observation, trial, and error. However, the math can be very helpful, especially when you don’t know an athlete very well.
Hope that makes sense!
Phil
Looks like the software I used from you for a long time. I so loved that program! Tapering in different ways for each sport makes so much sense and thanks to that it worked very well for me. It’s so refreshing to hear of individualization in athlete training…
Yeah, it was fun while it lasted! It just got to be too much between doctoring, coaching, and software development and support. Something had to give in the end. The doctoring and coaching were more important to me, so I wound down software operations and now consult for other developers instead. Now, I occasionally get to sleep LOL.
Phil
Well it was far ahead of it’s time. I still think back and remember that seminar in Chicago with you. A small group and so much good information, much of which I still try to use. I’m sure looking forward to the new book and more info.
I appreciate you kind words. Once the world starts opening up, I’ll put on another seminar to go along with the book maybe. Or maybe we could do it over zoom…
Count me in for sure. I’d gladly come to you or watch.
Gary Geiger
Thank you for the comprehensive response. Reading through the link you provided it looks like this is a very deliberate process you go through, programming the equations based on frequent identical short tests, rather than something you fit from existing data. Maybe something to try for the future then. Thanks again for the response.
The best use case involves formal testing. However, it can be fit to existing data, depending upon how the athlete trains. If they are training a lot, hard, and regularly, it can work ok.
I just listened to the podcast today - super interesting thoughts and incredibly well-delivered.
I just wouldn’t like to be among the 2/3rd of your athletes that you axxed “in order to have more time to think”, LOL.
Waiting for the book.
Haha. It was honestly mostly by attrition. I just shrank my roster as people retired etc.
Phil
The best use case involves formal testing. However, it can be fit to existing data, depending upon how the athlete trains. If they are training a lot, hard, and regularly, it can work ok.
Hi Phil-
I’ve read most of your book by this point, thank you for publishing it. My primary question so far is how you implement the weekly testing? I think somewhere in the book you mentioned that your athletes do at least one all out 2-5min effort each week. This seems like a critical aspect to your approach for fitness/CP modeling and, more importantly, the training response model. Do you put this at the beginning of any workout? A particular workout? In place of doing a workout? I just know that a truly all out effort of 3+ minutes is likely to impact anything I do for the remainder of the workout, so was curious how you manage that.
Thanks!
Eric