Team headstrong will enter 2014 under 2 new teams, Greenville Velo (out of Greenville, SC) and Maddog83 (out of Tucson, Az).. It has been a great 4 years of racing, companionship, and community. We have accomplished some great things, but like all things, time moves on and so will we. See below for more details......

Friday, December 30, 2011

Aggregation of Marginal Gains

In the last few years, I have focused on a few limiters and worked hard for large improvements.   It has helped me get better but I am feeling like the strategy is less effective for where I am now.  Team Sky has put a new name on an old idea and adapted it to cycle racing.  Aggregation of Marginal Gains is 'Harvard Speak' for doing a whole lot of things a little better.

The Japanese refer to this concept as Kaizen and they almost took over the world of manufacturing before their competition caught on to the concept.  In American business, we called it CI (continuous Improvement).

Big gains in a few areas may work well for beginners but many of us have been doing this a long time and some of us are hitting a plateau of improvement.

Teenie has taught us how to use the BALANCE WHEEL for our cycle racing.   In that exercise, we list 8-10 spokes of the wheel that constitute our efforts.   You know.......training, nutrition, recovery, skills, etc.   My plan is to make 63 (my race age this year) small improvements of 1% or more in elements of my balance wheel spokes.

Nutrition is one I am working right now and I will BLOG on it tomorrow.

63 small improvements may add up? I am counting on it!



3 comments:

The Hoods said...

testing

Kristen Weinacker said...

RPM, enjoyed the post. Gets me thinking....... :)

@sbaker864 said...

This is a sound idea and one that is workable for us all. It can be intimidating to make big changes or big gains in any one aspect of our lives. Aggregation of Marginal Gains is a great concept that works. I also believe that many of the marginal gains we make are sustainable over the long haul. I'll try to join you, DS in making some marginal gains to improve this year. Good stuff.