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Case study: What it takes to win: establishing novel ways of training among Team GB cyclists to improve performance and enable Olympic success

Staff: Professor Glyn Howatson; Dr Kevin Thomas; Dr Stuart Goodall; Dr Kirsty Hicks

Maintaining the world-class calibre of Team GB cyclists means that the training stress required to further improve performance is difficult to achieve and can lead to injury. Northumbria’s research developed two innovative resistance-training methods that provide novel, safer ways to improve peak power output (PPO), the key determinant of sprint cycling performance. Adopted by GB Cycling ahead of Rio 2016, exemplar athletes won 4 gold and 1 silver medal as a result of the applying the research in their physical preparation programme and improved their PPO that translated to faster performance times. The use of these novel training methods contributed to medal success across multiple cycling events, helping to secure GBP25,980,427 of UK Sport’s funding for the Tokyo Olympic cycle 2017–2021. GB Cycling continues to use Northumbria’s training methods in its preparation for the Tokyo Olympics. Find out more

Underpinning research

Kordi, M., Folland, J., Stuart Goodall, Haralabidis, N., Madden-Wilkinson, T., Patel, T., Leeder, J., Barratt, P., and Glyn Howatson (2020) ‘’ Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports 30(2): 227-237

Kordi, M., Stuart Goodall, Barratt, P., Rowley, N., Leeder, J., and Glyn Howatson (2017) ‘’ Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology 35: 95-99

Kordi, M., Folland, J., Stuart Goodall, Menzies, C., Patel, T., Evans, M., Kevin Thomas and Glyn Howatson (2020) ‘’ Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports 

Harden, M., Wolf, A., Russell, M., Kirsty Hicks, French, D. and Glyn Howatson (2018) ‘’ Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 32(10): 2708-2714

Harden, M., Wolf, A., Haff, G., Kirsty Hicks and Glyn Howatson (2019) ‘’ Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 33(3): 676-683

Harden, M., Wolf, A., Evans, M., Kirsty Hicks, Kevin Thomas and Glyn Howatson (2020) ‘’ PLoS ONE 15(7): e0236663