Crisscrossing Through Sport (The Modern Training Approach of Vojtěch Hačecký)

One used to ski jump, another played football for the national youth team, a third was a world champion in ski mountaineering, and the fourth was an elite rower before becoming a world champion in e-cycling on Zwift. Today, they all meet in the professional peloton—proof that there are many paths into cycling, and that the sport has much to gain from other athletic disciplines.

Cycling is our everything—but let’s not be self-centered. There's still so much we, as cyclists, can learn from our fellow athletes in other disciplines. And if we’re open to that inspiration, it can actually make us better on the bike.

Compared to other sports, cycling is highly measurable and easy to transfer into laboratory settings, which is why it has attracted so many experts—it's simply easier to collect data from cyclists. In many ways, other sports are lagging behind. Cycling leads the way when it comes to experimenting with training concepts. On the other hand, those same sports also bring fresh inspiration to cycling. Training methods or mental coaching from football, swimming, athletics—or even ballet, which is all about core stability—can bring real benefits and open new perspectives. Pilates and yoga are now so established in training routines that they hardly need mentioning.

Swimmers, rowers, runners—representatives of Olympic sports—come to our Sports Medicine Center. Looking at their assessments, lab results, and training logs, it's clear: there’s a ton we can take from them and apply to cycling.

Since I’m not involved as a coach for any of these athletes, and I don’t carry the weight of tradition—“this is how it’s always been done”—I can observe independently and benefit from this diversity in sport.

Professional teams have caught on to this too. Wasn’t Chris Froome’s coach originally from rowing and later elite swimming? If you take a closer look at Tim Kerrison’s methods, he brought with him a reverse model of training periodization. Instead of starting with long slow miles, riders first build strength and speed, and only later increase the duration of training sessions as races approach. Teams like BMC and earlier Tinkoff adopted this too. It’s the opposite of the traditional “base miles first, speed later” model.

Each sport is unique. But one major difference—and a big topic in sports science—is movement economy: how efficiently the body can perform a task while minimizing energy use. We often talk about it in our training section. You could build a massive engine by swimming, rowing on an erg, and running. But when you get on a bike, you might not be able to "sell" those watts—because the movement is completely different.

Just look at the results from the Jizerská 50 ski marathon, where Olympian Martin Fuksa competes. Canoeists spend lots of time on skis because they rely on upper-body power, and they know how to use it on snow. He may not look like a skier—he’s huge—but his training volume at a given intensity is similar to that of elite cross-country skiers. And we’ve been discussing this together, because canoeists were among the first to ask what they could learn from other sports.

If you break down an elite athlete’s training in detail, you’ll see that the annual number of hours—say for cross-country skiers, biathletes, rowers, and cyclists—is roughly the same. Around 1,200 hours. There might be a difference of 100 to 150 hours, but not more. The real difference lies in the approach.

Rowing, for instance, requires enduring the same repetitive movement for long stretches. So rowers are used to training in two daily sessions. Road cyclists usually aren’t, although some phases of training could really benefit from it. But this approach is making a comeback. Some cyclists now train this way again—hard intervals in the morning, lunch, then an easy spin in the afternoon. Nutritionists have also stepped in, boosting the effect of double sessions through dietary manipulation. For example, skipping carbs at lunch after a hard morning session helps kickstart fat metabolism during the easy ride.

You can also take inspiration from swimmers—if you're willing. They often train three times a day, three to four times per week. Swimmers have the highest training volumes, but that’s because you can’t stay in the pool for more than 90 minutes. Even long sessions are capped at two hours, so they split training up to hit the volume they need. Swimmers require huge aerobic capacity, because swimming essentially forces you to tolerate oxygen debt. You don’t learn to breathe better—you learn to tolerate higher CO₂ levels because your body can’t breathe as freely. But if there’s one thing to take from swimmers, it’s time management. They’re excellent at it—cramming six or seven hours of training into a normal day.

Sprint canoeists will never reach cycling’s training volume for a simple reason: they kneel in the boat. Try kneeling for six hours. So they make up for it by running, mixing in other activities, climbing, playing football or floorball. It’s all about variety. It may seem like a random mix of disciplines, but the idea is to accumulate hours of movement—and make it enjoyable.

If you look at the physiology behind performance, you’ll find that canoeists and cyclists have similar engines: oxygen consumption, cardiac output, ventilation—very comparable. That doesn’t mean Fuksa wouldn’t be dropped on the bike. But what we can take from canoeists—especially as amateurs—is this: if you can’t get on the bike, it’s no problem. Any other activity can bring similar benefits. And it might even be healthier, because it avoids the one-sided stress of cycling. Pro sports aren’t healthy. They create what we call functional pathology—your body works, but you’re beating it up.

So don’t be rigid about riding the bike. As a hobby rider, you don’t have to do anything. If cycling brings you joy, that’s great. But there’s no need to stress if you can’t ride. Do something else, and the benefits will be the same. Your body doesn’t understand heart rate zones or watts. Those are external metrics we humans use to manage training. What the body does understand is: movement.

If we go back to Seiler’s pyramid of training needs, the most basic element is the total number of muscle fiber contractions—regardless of how they’re produced. So why spend an hour on the ergometer in winter if you hate it, when you could go ice skating? You’re not pros chasing half-percent gains in efficiency. You want to enjoy sport and stay healthy—not become imbalanced through single-sport overuse.

Petr Vakoč once told me how the team handed him his meal with the words: “Here, this is all you get—it’s calculated.” But where’s the joy in that? To endure the suffering of training, you need some fun too. Make it diverse. Don’t stress if you're doing something other than cycling. At the end of the day, all sports aim toward the same goal—just via different paths.

In our part of the world, the best cycling alternative is cross-country skiing. Everyone used to know this, and it was widely practiced. Today, everyone just hops on a plane to Mallorca. In the past, there was hockey, gym sessions, training camps in the mountains. Now it’s all about the sun. And when it comes to kids, that’s a tragedy. They’re treated like pros, going to Mallorca for training camps at twelve.

Being open to outside inspiration is great—but be careful. Trying to absorb too many inputs, or applying them randomly, won’t get you far. Even in Ineos, known for its innovative approaches, they don’t experiment recklessly. It all starts with asking questions, trying things in training, thinking critically, and analyzing results. Still, ideas that challenge old conventions might be just what your cycling needs.