The RIOT Principle…

In an effort to continue to hone my exquisitely trained body to eek out yet one or two more horsepower on the bike, I’ve studied all of the reference material regarding elite level training.

I’ve read all the material from the likes of Chris Carmichael, Lance Armstrong, Greg LeMond, Ned Overend and others and there’s one theme that continues to repeat itself in all of the writings…..the need for rest. The pundits all say that in order for your body to recover from hard efforts, you are required to rest. As a matter of fact, I read that most professional racers spend huge amounts of time doing absolutely nothing…

Having already gotten myself into peak physical condition, with a bodyfat percentage in the low triple digits, my quest for yet even more performance has become tougher and tougher. After all, my quads already resemble a slab of undercooked spam, my calves are as firm and as chiseled as a jello salad and my hamstrings are as taut and tense as overcooked pasta…..seriously, how much better shape could I be in?
But, such is my fate. My quest for knowledge and my desire to be even more of a cycling god drives me to continue to study and continue to train…and to this end, I think I may have come up with the ultimate training philosophy. I’ve decided to call it the RIOT principle.

As I stated above, the one common theme in all the literature I’ve studied is the need for rest after a ride. Evidently, exercise, and especially exercise at the levels that I pretend to perform, is a process of tearing and shredding muscle tissue. This tissue then heals during rest becoming stronger and more resilient so that you can ride even harder and longer on the next effort.

With my new RIOT principle which by the way stands for Rest Instead Of Training, we circumvent the entire tearing and shredding of muscle process and instead go right to the resting process. What could be better right?

In addition, my research has revealed that one of the best things to eat after a tough ride is protein. Protein, after all is one of the main building blocks of muscle tissue.
So, In addition to all the rest that I’ll be getting, I’m going to add in the eating of lots of bacon cheeseburgers. Bacon, cheese and beef all contain protein so eating more of these will help me continue to build muscle after I’ve rested.

The last and by far the most important part of my training regimen, will be increasing the amount of milk I consume, mostly in the form of vanilla milkshakes, of course, since after all Milk does a body good. Ok, I didn’t read that in the training literature, but I did hear it on a TV commercial so it must be true….right???

So, for anyone that wants to achieve the same level of fitness that I pretend to have reached, I will summarize my new RIOT principle.
•Rest. This is the first and most important part of the system and can be done by watching lots of TV, napping on a regular basis, or just sleeping in instead of riding
•Eating protein to rebuild the muscles that you didn’t tear down when you didn’t ride. Again, bacon cheeseburgers are a great vehicle for protein
•Drinking milk, since it does a body good, preferably in the form of vanilla milkshakes

I’ve decided to start this system first thing tomorrow morning. Instead of riding, I plan on getting up late, wolfing down a big bowl of coco-pebbles, with milk of course, and sitting myself in front of the TV for the rest of the day.

BTW – this article and the included training principle are copyrighted and will soon be available on VHS with an accompanying 8 track soundtrack so place your orders now before it sells out.