Jun 18, 2026 · 47 min · 12 segments
Episode # 151 Handling quad pain with Craig Smith Jesse is joined by mentor Dr. Craig Smith this week to chat about how to handle an increase in cycling volume. If you step on the gas with your…
Jesse VondracekHost
I just got back, I'm using the word just loosely, from a camp where I had a group of athletes and we took them into a camp where we increased their volume by a pretty drastic amount.
And we wanted to keep them healthy in order to kind of get through this higher volume camp that we were taking the athletes through.
And we noticed that we got about three quarters of the way and we started getting a little bit of niggles with a bunch of the athletes and I was working with a lot of them.
And, you know, from my experiences, increasing my volume, you know, two decades ago and kind of working with you a little bit back then.
And what I've seen since then with the athletes I coach is that most often what this comes down to, to me, especially with that ramp up in cycling volume is, is a quad, like the quad just getting tight, overused.
What I found on this last camp is that when I would say something like, Hey, you need to take care of your quads.
I think some of them were going home and like putting little bandages on their quads and say, Hey, maybe this, maybe this will take, like, I don't know.
And so I wanted to kind of reach out to an expert that might be able to provide some overall advice for people in these types of situations and beyond.
And then I guess even to go back one step, like, am I barking up the wrong tree or is there some other place I should be starting first? Um, I'm going to throw a lot of kind of open-ended questions at you there and let you, uh, Jump in, jump in wherever you want to in that whole set of
I just got back, I'm using the word just loosely, from a camp where I had a group of athletes and we took them into a camp where we increased their volume by a pretty drastic amount.
And we wanted to keep them healthy in order to kind of get through this higher volume camp that we were taking the athletes through.
And we noticed that we got about three quarters of the way and we started getting a little bit of niggles with a bunch of the athletes and I was working with a lot of them.
And, you know, from my experiences, increasing my volume, you know, two decades ago and kind of working with you a little bit back then.
And what I've seen since then with the athletes I coach is that most often what this comes down to, to me, especially with that ramp up in cycling volume is, is a quad, like the quad just getting tight, overused.
What I found on this last camp is that when I would say something like, Hey, you need to take care of your quads.
I think some of them were going home and like putting little bandages on their quads and say, Hey, maybe this, maybe this will take, like, I don't know.
And so I wanted to kind of reach out to an expert that might be able to provide some overall advice for people in these types of situations and beyond.
And then I guess even to go back one step, like, am I barking up the wrong tree or is there some other place I should be starting first? Um, I'm going to throw a lot of kind of open-ended questions at you there and let you, uh, Jump in, jump in wherever you want to in that whole set of
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