Why Being Too Efficient Holds Back Your Cycling | Björn Kafka, Uno-X Cycling Coach

How do WorldTour cyclists train across a season, how do you profile a rider and decide what to work on, and what should amateur cyclists and triathletes know about cadence, easy riding and durability?
Björn Kafka coaches for the Uno-X Mobility WorldTour team and has also coached athletes to world and Olympic titles and medals in mountain biking, track cycling, and even snowboarding. He is also a co-developer of the A Faster You platform, formerly Aerotune.
HIGHLIGHTS AND KEY TOPICS:
• Profiling a rider from the power curve: which durations to read, and why a rider can be too efficient in December.
• The off-season plan for the typical age-group triathlete with a low VLaMax and a threshold already close to VO2max, and where cadence and fuelling come into it.
• What a look at 22 masters athletes with unusually high 4 to 5 minute power showed about how much they eat, and the cost of chasing race weight.
• Self-profiling for self-coached triathletes: three test durations, which bike to test on, and why a weak number is not automatically the one to train.
• Inside a WorldTour year: off-season volume, how volume changes before key races, weekly training patterns, and key sessions for GC riders and Classics riders.
• Cadence as a training tool, from fibre recruitment to what it changes for a triathlete who mostly rides steady.
• How easy the easy rides should be, from a GC rider to a punchy rider to an amateur on ten hours a week, and how to fit more volume around work and family.
• Durability: why there is still no good score for it, how to train it, and whether it deserves to be called a fourth performance factor alongside VO2max, utilisation and economy.
SHOWNOTES, LINKS, RESOURCES AND RELATED EPISODES:
• Follow Björn on Instagram (instagram.com/bjoern.kafka), and A Faster You on their website (afasteryou.com) and Instagram (instagram.com/afasteryou)
• The shownotes for today's episode can be found here (scientifictriathlon.com/tts720).
• The full podcast episode archives (including category filters) can be found here (scientifictriathlon.com/podcast-archives).
• Related episodes:• Training, testing, metabolism and physiology with Björn Kafka | EP#286 (scientifictriathlon.com/tts286)
• Is VO2max more important than lactate threshold? | Research roundup (scientifictriathlon.com/tts705)

• Studies discussed:• Linear increase in aerobic power induced by a strenuous program of endurance exercise (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/838658) - Hickson et al. 1977
• A transcription-translation activation feedback circuit as a function of protein degradation, with the quality of protein mass adaptation related to the average functional load (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3244278) - Mader 1988
• Aktive Belastungsadaptation und Regulation der Proteinsynthese auf zellulärer Ebene (bisp-surf.de/Record/PU199411074322) - Mader 1990 (in German)
• New horizons for the methodology and physiology of training periodization (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20199119) - Issurin 2010
• Self-rated mental stress and exercise training response in healthy subjects (doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2012.00051) - Ruuska et al. 2012
• Understanding optimal cadence dynamics: a systematic analysis of the power-velocity relationship in track cyclists with increasing exercise intensity (doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2024.1343601) - Dunst et al. 2024
• The Role of Cadence and Torque in Fatigue-Related Power Output Decline in Cycling's Grand Monuments (doi.org/10.3390/sports13110406) - Javaloyes et al. 2025
• 35 Years of Joyner's Endurance Performance Model: Assessing the Contribution of Physiological Determinants of Performance Proxies in 888 Individuals from Recreational to World Class (doi.org/10.1007/s40279-026-02439-y) - Mougin et al. 2026
• Limited reproducibility of individual physiological adaptations to repeated endurance exercise training (researchprofiles.ku.dk/da/publications/db52e02…) - Odden et al. 2026

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