How Tymewear helps Team Visma | Lease a Bike train smarter
Team Visma | Lease a Bike is constantly looking for ways to further refine its training approach. Data has played a crucial role in that process for years. In addition to heart rate and power data, the team has been working with a new technology since this season: Tymewear’s breathing sensor.
Team Visma | Lease a Bike riders now use the Tymewear sensor during every training session and race. While heart rate and wattage have long been key metrics in cycling, breathing data adds an entirely new layer to the analysis of performance and physical load.
The sensor works through a chest strap that measures the expansion of the rib cage. This allows the system to register both how often a rider breathes and how deep each breath is. By combining those data points, coaches gain insight into how much air an athlete is actually inhaling and exhaling during exercise.
The technology helps coaches and riders gain faster insight into how the body responds to different training stimuli. Whereas training has traditionally been guided mainly by heart rate and power output, breathing data now introduces a third important parameter.
"Breathing often responds faster and more specifically to physical load than heart rate or power"
“Breathing often responds faster and more specifically to physical load than heart rate or power,” explains coach Jasper Vaeck. “Especially in conditions such as altitude, extreme heat, or fatigue, you see the body react differently. In those situations, breathing data can become a more robust factor to guide training.”
For Team Visma | Lease a Bike, the technology not only provides additional data, but also creates new opportunities to better understand performance. Coaches can, for example, analyze why a rider develops an unusually high breathing rate during a race, or detect when an athlete is approaching their physical limit, even before it becomes visible in the power data.
The collaboration with Tymewear goes beyond simply using the technology. Because the product is still evolving, both parties work closely together. Team Visma | Lease a Bike actively shares practical feedback to help further improve both the sensor and the analyses behind it.
"Tymewear gives us new insights and new ways to guide training"
“We are in contact with the Tymewear developers at least once a week,” says Vaeck. “That works really well, because together we can look at how to further develop the product based on what we see in training sessions and races.”
Although the technology is still relatively new, Team Visma | Lease a Bike sees significant potential for the future. “We’re very happy with the Tymewear sensor,” Vaeck says. “It gives us new insights and new ways to guide training. Looking ahead, it will probably also help us in race analysis. I believe that eventually every team will work with this kind of technology and that it will become just as standard as a heart rate monitor.”
