About Rob

I love seeing riders get stronger — and most of all building a tailored schedule for each of them.

No two riders are the same, so no two schedules are either. That puzzle — what does this particular rider need, right now, towards this goal — is the best part of the job for me.

Why I do this

Helping people forward is in me — it's one of the reasons I became a doctor. Watching someone get stronger on the bike, step by step, gives me more than any result.

I've always enjoyed the training more than the race itself. The build, the feeling it's heading somewhere, the week it suddenly clicks. That's what I want to take riders along in.

And then there's the curiosity: how exactly does the body work? What does a stimulus do, why does recovery work, when does training tip into too much. That question keeps fascinating me — every time.

What I bring

I've read data for decades

I started with a heart-rate monitor in athletics and have never trained without numbers since. I don't just want to know what the data says, but understand why — that difference is in every schedule I make.

Listening to the person

My medical background taught me to listen — not just to the complaints, but to the person behind them. I do the same as a coach. What you feel, how you sleep, what happened that week: it counts just as much as your power.

On the bike myself

I've raced for over twenty years — club champion in my age category a few times and good results in Gran Fondos like the Criquielion and the Schleck. I know what it's like to train alongside an ordinary life, and what it does when a race finally clicks.

A team to the NCK

For WV Amsterdam I ran the training towards the NCK, the Dutch club team time-trial championship, several times. I trained a group of eight to ten riders and decided, based on form, which six rode the team time trial. Coaching isn't new to me — selecting and building a team neither.

How I stay sharp

How I think about training now matters more than any book I once read. I follow Friel and Rønnestad, for instance, because expertise and science keep improving training theory. Every month I read the key new publications. What research says about periodisation, recovery and power training I work straight into a rider's schedule where it helps.

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