About Supertraining

Supertraining has been built on one idea since 2004: progress is engineered, not hoped for. The method has two halves. The first is a way of seeing the whole athlete, captured in the Supertraining Pyramid and the 9S: Strength, Speed, Skill, Suppleness, Stamina, Structure, Spirit, Sustenance, and Sleep. Optimum performance comes when those 9 qualities are brought together in unison, not when one is chased in isolation. For a cyclist we read that pyramid through the lens of the bike, then work on the levels that are holding you back.

The second half is how we deliver it, in 3 steps we apply to every rider: Assess, Periodise, and Progress. We assess where you sit on the pyramid and what your riding actually demands. We periodise the off-bike work around your calendar, balancing strength, rate of force development, durability, and mobility. Then we progress by progressive overload, with load earned through performance and recovery rather than chased. The same method runs through all 8 of our services, whether you train in person, online, or in a blend.

For a long time cyclists were told to stay out of the weight room in case it made them slow. The turning point for Supertraining was integrating heavy strength and conditioning directly with endurance sport, and shattering that myth. The evidence is now clear: structured strength work is one of the most reliable ways to ride faster and stay healthy.

The reasons are simple. Maximal strength raises the ceiling on the force you can put through the pedals. Rate of force development sharpens how quickly you can reach it, which is what a sprint or an attack demands. Strength and mobility let you hold a lower, more aerodynamic position for longer, so a smaller CdA becomes one you can actually sustain. And resilience work keeps you training consistently, which is the thing that compounds over a season. Done in proportion to your power-to-weight goals, none of it makes you heavy. It makes you faster and harder to drop.

Everything we programme rests on a few principles, applied strictly. Adaptation follows a training stimulus: the body changes in response to a demand placed on it, then recovers and rebuilds a little stronger. Apply too little and nothing changes. Apply too much, too often, and you break down. The art is in the dose, and the structure that delivers it.

That structure is progressive overload, sequenced through periodisation. We add load, complexity, or intensity in measured steps your body can absorb, organised into blocks with a clear emphasis, and timed around your riding and events. Biomechanics guides how we coach each movement, so the work is efficient and the load goes where it is useful. It is not guesswork and it is not random hard work. It is physical preparation as a discipline, the same way it is applied in elite sport, scaled to the rider in front of us.

Both coaches are qualified and competitive. Ben Leach holds a first-class BSc in Sport and Exercise Sciences from the University of Birmingham, a Diploma in Sports Psychology, and a Level 3 Personal Training qualification, and is a member of FitPro. He founded Supertraining in 2004 after leading the physiology team at a London health practice, and brings more than 20 years of coaching to the work. As a rider, Ben has qualified for the age-group Gran Fondo World Championships on 6 occasions.

Lizi Brooke holds a Diploma in Osteopathy, which informs how she reads the way a body moves and loads, though Supertraining offers coaching rather than clinical treatment. Her racing record is deep: multiple Time Trial wins, professional cycling race victories, Ironman wins, and Hill Climb titles, and she qualified for Pro Hyrox on her first attempt. The point of all of it is simple. The cues, the programming, and the reasoning come from people who have done it, so the coaching is genuinely cycling-specific rather than gym work in a cycling jersey.

Riders who coach with us online or in a hybrid set-up often ask what they actually need to train well at home. The honest answer is less than you might think. We always build the programme around the kit you have, not a wish-list, but if you are equipping a space from scratch, a sensible order of priority looks like this.

• An adjustable barbell and plates, plus a squat rack with safety arms. The foundation for the compound strength work that drives most of the benefit.
• An adjustable bench. Opens up pressing, hip work, and a lot of useful accessory movements.
• A pair of adjustable dumbbells and a kettlebell or two. Versatile load for single-leg, upper-body, and posterior-chain work.
• A pull-up bar and a set of resistance bands. Cheap, space-light, and genuinely useful for upper-body strength and warm-ups.
• A foam roller and a mat. For the mobility work that keeps your aero position and your recovery on track.

Start with the first item and build from there. If you have access to a well-equipped gym, none of this is necessary. Either way, we write the plan to fit what is in front of you, so the work gets done.