Chris Peden MSc - Strength & Conditioning Coach

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Chris Peden MSc - Strength & Conditioning Coach

S&C Coach to Professional and Amateur Endurance Athletes

04/03/2026

The good old days of racing a bike.

Part of me wishes I could go back in time and talk to that guy. Especially with what I know now as I’d definitely grab him by the shoulders and say:

“Mate, wtf are you doing, you’re making this way too hard for yourself”

Because the truth is, I wasn’t doing things properly.

I rode my bike sporadically each week with no real structure to my training

I went to the gym but it was random and poorly planned.

I partied more than a serious athlete probably should have (I was in the Navy and too easily led 😬)

And my nutrition? Well I think you’re starting to get the picture 😂

My ego of being a Navy PTI thought the little bit of natural talent that I had would be enough.

I mean talk to any PTI in the military and they’ll try to convince you that they’re the dogs bo****ks at everything, safeguard (honestly in civvy street) 🤣

But performance at a high level doesn’t come from winging it.

It comes from structure, discipline and doing the basics consistently well for a long time.

Training that actually has a purpose. Strength work that supports performance on the bike. Nutrition that fuels performance and recovery and a lifestyle that matches the goals you say you want.

I certainly wish I fully understood what true high performance behaviours were a lot earlier in my life as it’s no fun taking a kicking most of the time 😂

But the upside is this. I’ve since spent years learning, studying and coaching so others don’t have to make the same mistakes I did.

Now I help cyclists build the strength, structure and resilience that actually translates to better performance on the bike.

So if you want to stop guessing and start training with a proper plan, Send me a DM with the word “UNSTOPPABLE ” and I’ll show you how we can work together 💪🏻

27/02/2026

Strength Training should always be programmed in accordance with your training age and compliment your Endurance Training rather than compete with it.

Trying to do too much or be too advanced too soon will always be detrimental to you as an athlete.

Do as much as necessary, not as much as possible and take your time, enjoy the journey

25/02/2026

If you stay in fitness or sport long enough, injury isn’t a possibility, it’s a part of the game.

Now we can’t 100% predict when injuries will happen or eliminate them completely, but we can shift the odds in our favour.

One of the most robust protective factors we have is being stronger.

A large systematic review and meta analysis by Lauersen et al. (2018) found that structured strength training reduced sports injuries by ~66%, effectively halving overall injury risk with high certainty.

When you build strength through targeted S&C, you’re increasing the capacity of your entire structural system, bones, tendons, ligaments and muscle.

A higher capacity = a greater tolerance to force and a greater tolerance to force = an ability to handle higher training loads.

When you tolerate load better, you get to train more consistently without any problems. More consistent high quality work with fewer missed sessions is what helps build progress with your long term performance.

But yes, funnily enough I’m writing this while managing my own injury at the physio which is the unfortunate reality that I mentioned above.

You can try to do everything right and still pick something up along the way.

Sometimes an injury is the cost of pushing the limits of seeing what you’re capable of.

But the stronger the foundation you build, the more resilient you become and the more likely you are to bounce back faster and stay in the game longer to reach your goals.

This becomes more and more important the older you get as despite what my brain often thinks, I’m no spring chicken anymore 😂

20/02/2026

Improving stability and performance isn’t about trying to balance on unstable surfaces, it’s about understanding how to control better positions and training the muscles responsible for that. First in a low key setting before loading up over time.

The bosu ball or other unstable surfaces are amazing tools within rehabilitation but are often mis/over used within a performance setting where their use is favoured over traditional lifting on a hard and stable surfaces.

Don’t confuse feeling harder with being beneficial. If your body is unstable, it down-regulates the power output generated by the muscle every time you go to produce force as a protective mechanism. So you lose the ability to get stronger and more powerful, therefore losing the ability to have a transfer of sports performance.

The kinetic chain from your foot to your hip is your locomotor to propel you forward at speed and the more stability that you have and can create up this chain of command will allow you to produce more power and perform better as an athlete.

13/02/2026

A strong body is powerful and robust.

The goal here isn’t to get big. It’s to ensure your abilities as an athlete don’t outrun your ability to handle the forces you’re capable of producing.

To find out how you can become unstoppable, send me a DM to find out more 💪🏻

12/02/2026

Strength Training as an Endurance Athlete is like playing a game of Snakes & Ladders.

It doesn’t matter who you are or what level you compete at, your progress will never be straightforward and linear.

Sometimes you’ll move forward quickly, sometimes you’ll move forward slowly, sometimes you’ll stall and sometimes life, illness, injury, holidays, training camps or racing will get in the way and will put a stop to any progress and pull you back a few steps.

That’s normal and that’s why you have to view your strength development and performance support as an athlete over months and years rather than days and weeks.

There are going to be periods where your strength improves, there are going to be periods where you maintain and there are going to be periods where you’re simply just trying to not go all the way back to square one.

The goal isn’t to maximise your development in one go or completely avoid setbacks. The goal is to make sure you get to the end of this year one level above and then continue to keep layering in consistency, year on year after that.

The athletes who continue to perform aren’t the ones who never slide back. They’re the ones who play the long game and keep trying to climb no matter what gets in their way.

In a world where everyone is looking for a quick fix, that might not sound sexy but if you really want to continue to improve you have to keep rolling the dice and playing the infinite game 💪🏻

10/02/2026

The age old debate… Should you go to the gym before or after your endurance training?

We know on a physiological level that the stimulus you’re not used to will cause the most fatigue so sometimes you have to be really mindful of the session order as you don’t want the gym impacting endurance sessions too much.

But equally sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do and as long as you know the impact one can have on the other, try not to get too hung up on it all and manage things as best as you can.

02/02/2026

You don’t have to completely eliminate S&C from your training but the deeper you get into the year the more careful you have to be with your approach as you can’t uncook burnt toast.

Address

Portsmouth

Website

https://linktr.ee/CPeden

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