Photo credit: Lidl–Trek

By Unbroken | Interview with Dr. Jens Hinder, Head Doctor at Lidl–Trek

At the highest level of professional cycling, success is no longer defined by talent alone. Modern WorldTour performance is built on a system - training consistency, recovery strategy, nutrition, sleep, mental readiness, and medical oversight all working together across an intense and unforgiving calendar.

Few people understand that system better than Dr. Jens Hinder, Head Doctor at Lidl–Trek. With a background in both clinical and sports medicine, Dr. Hinder has been with the team since its foundation in 2011 and continues to work directly with riders on the road as the race doctor. His role spans the full medical structure of the team - protecting rider health, supporting performance demands, and ensuring world-class medical care throughout the season.

In this interview, Dr. Hinder shares what has changed in elite cycling over the last decade, how teams manage load and health across a long season, and how recovery solutions like Unbroken fit into a holistic performance framework.

“You can’t be the problem.” The reality of Grand Tours

Cycling’s biggest stage - the Grand Tours - demands consistency at a level few sports can match. Riders must perform every day, regardless of fatigue or adversity.

“A Grand Tour is four weeks together,” Dr. Hinder explains. “And when you’re with a crew together for four weeks, this means sometimes a problem. So you have to work on this - to be a team and to stay a team in all these days.”

What often goes unnoticed is that this performance demand extends beyond athletes. “Everybody has to perform in these days,” he says. “Especially the staff. You can’t be the problem in the team. You are there to help.”

Whether it’s a three-week Grand Tour or a dense sequence of classics, the performance model is collective and every link matters.

Pressure has increased—and performance must start earlier

Photo credit: Lidl-Trek/ @cyclingimages

According to Dr. Hinder, one of the biggest changes in cycling is not necessarily the number of race days, but the importance of every race.

“In the past, early-season races could be used for training,” he says. “You could prepare your form. This is not possible anymore.” Today, the performance baseline is so high that athletes must arrive ready to deliver early and improve continuously.

“If you are not able to perform and you’re not close to your best level,” he explains, “you get dropped.”

This shift has changed how teams approach long-term planning and athlete sustainability. The challenge is no longer simply peaking for key goals but maintaining relevance and competitiveness all season.

Talent helps—but consistency is what sustains performance

While talent remains essential, Dr. Hinder is direct about what truly separates athletes at this level.

“Yes, talent helps, definitely,” he says. “But you have to work hard for it to be at this place as a professional cyclist.”

And the most important differentiator isn’t a single breakthrough. It is the ability to build form, sustain health, and perform consistently over time.

“What’s difficult now,” he explains, “is to stay competitive through the whole season.”
This is where load management becomes crucial because at WorldTour level, performance is not linear.

“It’s not possible to perform the whole year on your best level,” he says. “Nobody is able to do this.”

A long season requires peaks and valleys. The job of the performance system is to ensure those valleys don’t become injury, illness, or long-term decline.

The mental dimension: supporting focus without creating friction

Elite cycling now integrates mental performance as part of the athlete system. Lidl–Trek works with psychologists and mental coaches.

“We have been doing this for many years already,” Dr. Hinder notes. “You have to be there mentally completely focused.”

But he emphasizes that adding support must not create additional complexity. “You have to look for it that it’s not getting too much,” he says. “A lot of small things where you get help can create stress again.”

The goal is an athlete environment where performance feels simple, even when the system behind it is highly complex.

What does good load management look like at the top level?

Asked what effective load management looks like in elite cycling, Dr. Hinder returns to fundamentals. "Most of the time I explain to the guys that they should go back to the basics,” he says. “Because this makes you safe.”

For him, the foundation is clear: “The basic is training,” he explains. “If you use everything possible around performance but you don’t train, you don’t get anything.”

Load management isn’t about avoiding work. It’s about making the training process sustainable across the season. When it fails, it often fails because short-term pressure overrides long-term thinking.

“If you’re just looking for the next race,” he warns, “it’s destroying your whole system.”

Detecting fatigue versus the risk zone: experience plus data

Knowing when fatigue becomes risk is a critical medical and performance decision—and one that relies on both experience and diagnostics.

“It’s not too difficult to see things like this,” Dr. Hinder says. “You have your experience. You see the guys for years.”

From there, physiological data can help confirm the broader picture. “You can help with variables—blood samples, hormone levels, and whatever,” he explains. “It’s numbers, but it can help you get an overview.”

The goal is not to chase numbers for their own sake, but to use them to guide adjustments early—before performance decline turns into injury or illness.

Photo credit: Lidl-Trek

The system must work together: training first, everything else supports

For Dr. Hinder, performance is not about isolated interventions. It is about integration. “You have to take care of everything,” he says. “You don’t only see your part of the cake—you have to see the whole thing.”

Yet the hierarchy remains clear: “It’s all about training to get adaptation,” he says. “This is the main thing. Then all the other things come on top.”

In that framework, recovery becomes a lever not separate from training, but a requirement for adaptation and continuity.

How innovation is evaluated: test, evidence, safety

WorldTour teams constantly face new tools, technologies, and supplements. But adoption is not driven by hype, it's driven by structured evaluation.

“You have to test it,” Dr. Hinder says. “You have to see if it’s working.”

Even with research and evidence levels, performance outcomes must be validated in the real athlete environment. “Even if you have evidence, it doesn’t mean it’s working,” he explains. “A lot of these things are individual, so you have to personalize it.”

But he also recognizes the reality of elite sport: waiting for perfect evidence can mean falling behind.

“If you wait for every product to have the highest level of evidence,” he says, “you maybe wait too long.” The deciding factor is risk. “If it’s not risky for health,” he says, “sometimes you just have to start and look if it’s working.”

Why Unbroken was selected: natural origin, fast availability, and recovery support

Unbroken was introduced to Lidl–Trek as part of the team’s broader recovery strategy, and for Dr. Hinder, the process started with testing. “I had a test in the university clinic here in Münster,” he explains, “with some guys and amateurs. And I like honestly to test it by myself if it’s not a health risk.”

What stood out to him was the natural origin and fast availability of the amino acids.
“What I like most is this kind of natural part,” he says. “It’s coming from a natural protein.”

He believes nature provides performance solutions already structured in effective ways.
“I really believe that nature gives us a lot of things we can use because it’s already on a perfect level,” he says, explaining that he prefers this to solutions that are produced artificially in a laboratory.

In practical performance terms, he positions Unbroken as a recovery-support tool aligned with the muscle demands of cycling.

“If you really work so hard with the muscles you use in cycling,” he explains, “and you have a small part to give something back to this heavy muscle load you had, then it’s something worth to do.”

“Amino acids are one of these important things we have to use,” he says. “This was working. It was an easy solution.”

Photo credit: Lidl-Trek

Timing: not just after—before, during, or post-load

While many riders use Unbroken immediately after racing, Dr. Hinder emphasizes that the value isn’t confined to one “perfect moment.” The real priority is ensuring athletes consistently provide the muscles with what they need during periods of heavy load.

“Sometimes before,” he says, “but anyway, when the muscle is working hard as you do, you destroy muscle cells.” In his view, “it doesn’t matter if you take it before, in between, or after - you just need these products to create a system you had before.” And when that system is supported effectively, “you maybe get a benefit and adaptation to create a better muscle cell than before.”

For him, timing is flexible. What matters is the reliability of getting amino acids into the body in a way that supports recovery, replenishment, and ongoing adaptation across repeated days of training and racing stress.

Recovery isn’t a ‘game changer’ - it’s what prevents problems

Dr. Hinder is cautious of bold performance claims and prefers a more grounded framing.
“I don’t like this word ‘game changer,’” he says. “Because if something changes so much, then you did something wrong before.”

Instead, he describes performance support as reducing problems and helping the body operate closer to its normal, resilient baseline especially as athletes age.

“If you get the feeling my body is working better… I had a good sleep… I have good legs,” he says, “this reduces problems you have maybe without something.”

That, he suggests, is what good recovery support should do: help athletes maintain function and consistency and not promise unrealistic transformation.

What’s next: personalization

Looking ahead, Dr. Hinder believes the next wave of performance progress will come from more individualized approaches, particularly in nutrition and supplementation.

“The next step is to individualize or personalize these things,” he says. “That is one of the things I think will come in the next years.”

As the sport continues to increase in intensity and expectations, personalization may become central to sustaining performance and protecting athlete health.

A final message: performance matters—but there is life after cycling

While cycling is performance-driven by nature, Dr. Hinder closes with a long-term perspective. “As a doctor, it’s all about performance in the cycling team,” he admits. “But for sure, the main thing I take care of is the health of the riders.”

And he reminds us of the real responsibility behind elite sport: “There is life after cycling.”

 

About Dr. Jens Hinder
Dr. Jens Hinder is the Head Doctor of Lidl–Trek and has been with the team since its formation in 2011. He leads the team’s medical structure and supports riders across the season with both race-level care and long-term health oversight.