Imagine yourself in a hard session or a race. You are challenging yourself, but at the same time, it just feels right; every pedal stroke feels like a joyous expression of your fitness. You are living the moment fully. You don’t want to be anywhere else. Your five senses are fully engaged: you feel, see, hear, smell, and taste your environment. This is what training in accordance with your body feels like.

When I started cycling, I didn’t have access to all the technology; some of it already existed, but it was not very common, and a young cyclist wouldn’t commonly use it. As I grew older, I started introducing more and more technology in my riding, with its increased availability and my seriousness in performing at the highest level. In the beginning, it seemed that this technology, especially the integration of the power meter, would lead to a better cycling experience and, at least, better fitness. However, this doesn’t match my experience.

As I became more reliant on data, I lost my passion for the sport. It wasn’t about enjoying cycling for itself anymore—which is a way to connect with oneself and nature—but it became a burden to hit some numbers.

Also, the phenomenon of social proof is ingrained in the world of cycling as in the rest of the world. If everyone is doing something, it must be the best way. Why would you want to go against the standard narrative? Remember when people started smoking so they wouldn’t look like they weren’t part of the cool kids? That’s how social proof can make us do things we wouldn’t have done. The lesson here is that if you feel something is wrong deep inside of you, do not do it.

In that regard, I always felt like an outsider. I would always try to challenge ideas, get to the bottom of them, and ask the “whys.” Most of the time, I was met with criticism from my various cycling teams, but I knew something was pulling me to explore further. I couldn’t do something and not examine it. This led me to develop my training philosophy.

As you know, in today’s society, we are surrounded by technology; it has become (almost) impossible to avoid using it completely, as even legal procedures have moved online. This rapid shift in how we organize our lives has caught us by surprise, which didn’t leave us much time to correctly decide how to integrate this technology into our daily lives. Some people adopt technology very early, while others wait for the masses, and some others are skeptical of embracing it, but they might eventually do so if they are forced to do so.

What if there was a better way? What if you tried the technology and then took a step back to assess what it really does to our lives? If a piece of technology or how we use it doesn’t improve our lives, why keep it? All of these questions have led me to that philosophical understanding of cycling. I was dissatisfied with the standard answers, leading to this journey.

In the past few years, I’ve turned around, progressively removing technology rather than adopting more of it mindlessly. On the bike, this has led me to a point where I still use a cycling computer to record my data, but I only use a heart rate monitor as an external sensor. This is enough data for me. I don’t use a power meter anymore, not even a cadence sensor.

I keep the heart monitor because it’s not distracting under certain conditions. I only record with it, but I don’t look at it except peeking at it a few times during the ride. Data shouldn’t distract us from the beauties of the cycling experience itself. Most of the time, my computer records but doesn’t display anything but the map. The power meter constantly distracted me, even when not displaying its data. I couldn’t stop thinking about numbers, even when not looking at them.

The power meter is indeed an interesting invention as it measures an output while the heart rate monitor measures an input. As cyclists, we have the luxury of having a reliable measurement of power. This is not the case in other sports, but it might be a blessing in disguise. The power meter indicates how much converted energy is produced, while the heart rate monitor shows how much energy is needed to produce that converted energy.

The goal of cycling is simple: enjoying the experience to the maximum and achieving one’s full potential. For many people, it may seem that these two do not overlap. This means that if you want to achieve the greatest pleasure, you won’t be able to reach your full potential, and the other way around, achieving your full potential while having the greatest enjoyment is impossible. Based on my experience, this is false. Cycling should enhance our health, mental and physical, not compromise it.

We can look at it from a philosophical lens as well. Many people think that the goal of life is pleasure, so they pursue it directly. Still, this hedonistic view is also a dangerous one, as many activities leading to short-term pleasure have some unintended consequences that might make the pleasure that you have gotten in the experience less significant than the pain it produced. In this case, the result is a net negative, which we can logically argue is not the best decision. Even Epicurus, who promoted a pain-free life full of pleasures, warned us about the unintended consequences of pursuing immediate gratification.

Cycling follows the same universal rules—everything does. We must first build a discipline of what is right according to nature, which will challenge us to grow as we are now pursuing something greater than ourselves. However, it will lead to true pleasure in the long term without the negative consequences of the aforementioned hedonistic process. We should cycle our way to potential while enjoying the process thoroughly. This is the road to a healthy practice.

Learning to connect deeply with my body allows me to do that. I feel the importance of sharing such knowledge in a world that has never been so connected to technology but paradoxically never disconnected from its soul.

I found that focusing less on external data and more on internal sensations during cycling leads to a more pleasurable and fulfilling experience without compromising performance, reducing perceived effort for a given output. I suggest that riders can benefit from a more mindful approach to cycling, emphasizing internal cues over data-driven metrics.

I remember performing interval sessions, staring at the power output numbers fluctuating relentlessly on my screen. This is extremely taxing mentally, as our brains have a limited capacity to concentrate. Wouldn’t it be better to give all our attention to what we are trying to accomplish rather than make it a game of chasing a number on the screen?

While some of you might be reluctant to ditch the data, especially the power meter, as I did, you might not need to. The goal is to have an intentional relationship with technology. For that matter, with anything else as well. We want technology to be used to make our lives richer, not let it make it more complicated without adding any performance benefit. This means selecting the best technologies and using them in the most helpful way.

You might also think achieving a great connection with your body is impossible or might take too long. First, patience is a virtue. Then, I believe anyone can tap into his inner wisdom; the problem is just that we aren’t encouraged to do so. With twenty-three years of competitive cycling and much trial and error, I hope that by teaching you these hard-fought lessons, you will climb faster to your potential in that sport, reaching both the highest enjoyment and the highest performance.

With this course, I hope to guide you towards a mindful practice of cycling, which will even serve you in other areas of life. Awareness leads to mastery.

Summary:

• We should only use technology that serves us and in the best way for us.
• Technology doesn’t make us faster.
• Training listening to our body makes us at least as fast, and we enjoy the sport more. It’s also the road to health.