Category: Afitpilot
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What Pogačar’s Fifth Tour de France Win Actually Required
Pogačar’s fifth Tour de France win ties the all-time record, secured from stage 6 onward. This article uses his race as an entry point into the fatigue-management and load principles behind holding peak performance across three weeks, not just reaching it on one day.
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The Talent Identification Trap: Relative Age Effect
An eleven-month age gap in youth sport can look exactly like a talent gap, and coaches consistently select for it. This article covers the relative age effect, why the resulting skill gap often isn’t real, and the specific point in elite development where the bias quietly corrects itself, too late for many of the players…
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What 507 Athlete Cohorts Tell Us About Somatotype, and How to Use It
Somatotype scores physique on three components: fatness, muscularity, and linearity. Drawing on a reference dataset of 507 athlete cohorts, this article shows how builds converge by sport and position, from the most muscular powerlifters to the most linear volleyball players. It then separates the trainable components from the fixed ones, so the method can be…
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352 Extra Metres for the Queen: How the Marathon Got Its Strange Distance
The marathon is 42.195 kilometres, an oddly specific number that feels deliberate. It is not. This article traces where the distance came from, corrects the myth most runners have been told, and looks at what that exact distance demands of the body.
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Zone 2 Is Having a Moment. Here’s What the Evidence Actually Supports.
Zone 2 went from a quiet endurance-training foundation to a full wellness trend. This article separates what it reliably does from the claims that outran the evidence, and covers how it fits into a week for someone who isn’t a full-time athlete.
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When the Plan Meets the Athlete: Autoregulation in Practice
Autoregulation adjusts training to the athlete in front of you rather than to numbers set weeks ago. This article covers the main methods, what the evidence supports, and the reporting distortion that quietly undermines every one of them.
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Creatine Beyond Muscle: What the Cognitive and Mood Research Shows
Creatine’s evidence base for muscle is well established. A newer body of research looks at the brain, covering cognitive performance under energy strain and an early but promising signal in depression treatment. This article separates the mechanism from the hype.
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Muscle Memory: What Actually Stays When You Stop Training
Muscle memory, the fast comeback after a training layoff, has a genuine cellular explanation involving retained myonuclei, and a competing explanation involving the nervous system. This article covers both mechanisms, what animal and human research actually show, and what it means for programming a returning client.
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The Off-Season Is Not Optional
Skipping or shortening the off-season carries a measurable physiological cost. This article covers what the research on detraining shows, how much recovery time athletes actually need, and how to structure the off-season as its own periodized phase.
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Grip Strength and Longevity: What the Research Actually Measures
Grip strength is one of the most consistently replicated longevity markers in the research, predicting mortality more strongly than blood pressure in some large cohorts. This article covers what the studies show, why grip strength is a proxy rather than a lever, and what that means for how coaches should apply it.