One Apple A Day #29
Sport is a good source of life lessons. In particular when we think of goal achievement and team working. In sports goals are clear and the results are measurable.
Today I want to talk about cycling and team working. I’ve cycled for two years when I was a teenager. I wasn’t a pro, just a bunch of amateur who want to look tough with all the stuff and gears of the real champions. One of the first things you learn when you go out cycling in a group is to ride in line. It’s a key strategy to increase the efficiency of the whole team.
When you’re cruising at 35-50km/h wind plays a big part. In particular air, resistance plays against you. The faster you go the more air you have to push in front of you, and this consumes a lot of energy. If you sit in the slipstream of other riders you can save up to 20-30% of your energy to keep the same pace. If you ever watched a race you would have notice that all pro team use this strategy.
For your team to go faster and longer, it’s important to rotate the person in front regularly. It’s a key factor to ensure that no one runs out of energy and to give everyone the time to recover. This constant rotation of the cyclist in front increases the performance of the team.
There are two typical mistakes that we used to make as amateurs.
The first one is to keep the strongest cyclist always in front. This is great in the short term because it allows the whole team to go faster. Unfortunately, this approach will soon drain out the energy of the stronger one. In the long term, you will have burned your best resource. And it’s highly possible that he will leave the team feeling exploited.
The second error is to forget the importance of the weak ones. If you keep an high pace soon the weak ones won’t be able to step in front. After some more time, they will lose the grip on the team and they’ll find themselves left behind. In a long race, you’ll lose elements and you will have fewer people in the critical moment of the race. The final kilometres. Again, on the long term, the performance of the team will be compromised.
There are a few important lessons that can be applied to the team working in every context. If you want for you team to perform at its best and go for the distance you must always remember a few rules:
1. Alternate the person in front, the one fighting the air resistance. This way you will be able to keep everyone engaged while increasing the performance of the whole team
2. Don’t put too much pressure on the stronger one. If you keep your best players always in front you will exploit their energy. You will speed up in the short term but you will compromise your results in the distance. You may lose your best people.
3. never forget the weak ones. Support them, help them keep the pace of the team. Everyone is important in the team.
In cycling, there is only one winner, the one who cross the finish line in front of every one. But no one can win alone. There is always a great team work behind every victory.