Q: Greg, for the listeners. Can you just give us a background of how you got started into cycling?
Greg: Sure, yeah. And thank you guys so much for having me on here. My intro was back in the, I guess the late 1980s. Mountain Biking was starting to get pretty popular. I lived in Central Connecticut and it was an amazing spot to be mountain biking. Believe it or not, a lot of people roll their eyes at that. But great single track first bike ever had was a TREK antelope 820. And it was a complete hunk of junk combined compared to today's standards. But I loved that bike! And that was the gateway for me to really get into the sport. I've been pursuing cycling in some capacity, whether it was road mountain bike cyclocross, since I was probably 10-12 years old, so that's almost 30 years now. And I always swore off road cycling, said I was never going to be one of those shave leg roadie guys. And funnily enough, eventually, that came to fruition. And in terms of my career, I've always been involved in the cycling industry in some capacity, whether it's riding or racing or working with various bicycle companies. And I also have some background in business development and simulation software. I worked for a consultancy for about 10 years where we did one to one consulting with primarily CFD, and CAD & CAM tools and help them bring products to market. I think there's some parallels to what INSCYD does in terms of creating a technology that was maybe considered; hey, this isn't something that can be done and change the paradigm, the same way that a lot of CFD tools have gone through the years. There's some interesting connections to what I've done previously. And then more recently, with INSCYD this is a project that was really launched to coaches commercially about five years ago, and really, on a more global stage in the last two, three years. Something that I'm happy to be a part of, and really excited about where we might where hopefully, we can grow this thing to.
Q: Can you tell us a little bit more about INSCYD and the software?
Greg: Definitely, INSCYD as a commercially available product for coaches, was launched probably about three years ago. And there's been numerous updates since then. But prior to that, it was really exclusive to teams and Federation's and this was really any endurance sports or anything that had a time and distance component. And what we're able to do is capture whether it be lactate values, gas exchange information from a lab using metabolic cart or power data on this coming from the bike, we can take that and disseminate that into a complete physiological or metabolic profile. Our origins go back to really probably the HTC highroad days and I was back in the late 2000s. And the team was using it to really determine what are the attributes of riders and use it as a bit of a tool to assess athletes that might be coming up through the ranks and people that they want to determine: do they have the chops to make it as a pro? Our first commercial client, believe it or not, was this French Swimming Federation, and since swimming is so dependent on the anaerobic piece, they really wanted to determine, can we quantify the anaerobic power and with VlaMax being one of the pieces of the equation that we're able to assess or actually determine. INSCYD was a very powerful tool as they determined to be able to use for their athletes and their preparation for different events whether it be Olympics or World Championships.
Q: Can you tell us more on how INSIGHT actually works? What test values do you use to generate these insights?
Greg: Sure, and it's helpful before I do that is to talk about what some of the metrics are coming out inside. So when I say complete metabolic or physiological profile, what we're talking about is Vo2max and Vlamax. I think a lot of people are probably familiar with V02Max, that's your aerobic capacity. Vlamax might be new, so I'm going to give a quick description of what this is. By definition, it's your maximum ability to produce lactate. What that means is how anaerobic or how aerobic is this athlete, and really what we're able to define using that number. If we're talking about somebody that is a grand tour stage racer, and they're trying to get a high placing and the overall they're probably going to want a lower Vlamax something like 0.2 to 0.4 millimoles per liter per second. What that is capturing is their ability to produce lactate on that second to second basis. Now, what this is governing is the percentage of your V02Max, you can tap into a threshold. The lower your VlaMax, the higher your threshold number will be, and the greater the percentage of V02Max, you're able to utilize that threshold. In addition to that, it's also looking at your substrate utilization. Are you more dependent on carbohydrate or are you more dependent on fat as a fuel source better at that sparing carbohydrate? In addition, it also helps us to understand lactate production and combustion rates. Once you take all those things in, you start to see that V02Max, that's important, if you are below 70, you're probably not going to be in the game to raise professionally as a cyclist. But now, okay, let's say that we've gotten to a certain point in time, and we want to get deeper, deeper data and deeper analytics on this athlete, if we can start to understand how is the rates won or lost? Where's the power coming from? Is it aerobic is anaerobic? What does substrate utilization look like? How much grams of carbohydrate are being combusted; how much fat is being contributed to that effort? These are things that we can now utilize in our favor to create, whether it be a better training plan, or to help in the race, thinking about fueling strategy that could be a really good one, or, man, every time I go really hard. It's 500 watts, and it's the fifth time I need to do that. I just I can't do it. That's where the wheels come off. So now we can see all right, what's actually happening? What's that energy contribution percentage of aerobic and anaerobic and also how much lactate is being produced and or combusted, depending on that level of energy being put out, and now we can tailor the training to fit the needs of that athlete very, very specifically.
Q: What do you think about recent conversations where people discuss many structured training plans are not sustainable and people even burn out?
Greg: Two things to expand on that. I think number one is, as we start to think about what the benefits of this approach are, can we capture really good data using power only and I think most athletes have a pretty good intuition. Am I a good sprinter? Am I a better climber? Am I kind of in the middle? Can I do a little bit of everything.
But I like to, and as an organization are always struggling to come up with better ways to explain this to people. So maybe a good way to think of it is most of us can go on Web MD and type into Google: hey, my arm hurts or I think I sprained my wrist. How should I treat it? What are the ways to go ahead and get this thing to heal as quick as possible? The next step is I go to a doctor, or maybe they do some lab tests, whether it's a broken arm or lab test based on Yeah, I'm just not feeling very energetic. Maybe you have if you're a male, low testosterone or a thyroid issue. So what I would say is what inside is doing is giving you that deeper data, it's really giving you the behind the scenes as what is happening, what is contributing to your performance, and it gives a better starting point in terms of moving forward through time. What are those the right ratio of work to rest within a given training day? And then within a training block? What do I need to be doing to get the right adaptation that I'm going for? Do I want to be better at my time trial? Do I want to be better as a sprinter? So those are the things that hopefully athletes will start to understand and will resonate with them? Now the other thing you bring up is this idea of FTP testing. And this is a real challenge. Because there's so much information out there, there's so many people that are relying on you go on any message board, whether it be slow twitch or others and you're going to find a whole host of articles and or questions written about my FTP is this, how do I increase it? What I think most people are not understanding is the real driver of your FTP number based on that 20 minute test that you might be doing. And whether it's 30 minutes, 20 minutes, 15 minutes is your anaerobic contribution. How much anaerobic power are you producing over that period of time? So, if you're using 20 minutes as an example, a lot of people are going to use 95% of that to come up with their quote threshold or their FTP? Well, if you have a very high VlaMax, let's say you're a sprinter, you could be something like 70%. So, to your point, and what I think Dylan was probably mentioning, is somebody that's a sprinter that uses that 95% is going to be way overshooting their actual threshold and training way too hard for what their goals are, and maybe completely missing what their fat max zone is, ie not getting the right type of training in terms of the stimulus that would probably be ideal for the adaptations they're going for. And then on the flip side, is you definitely are going to have some athletes that could use 95% of that 20 minutes, that's going to be somebody with a very low VlaMax, somebody that can go out there and they're more of a diesel. They're better at using fat as a fuel source. one's not better than other, but we need to anchor to: alright, how are we capturing the essence of what makes up this athlete’s performance?